A History of the First World War in 100 Moments: Campaign for peace turned former hero into public enemy No 1

by Guest Wed Jun 25, 2014 8:41 am

“With a clang, the gates spring open and inward. The fog rushes in, in eddying billows. But through it there comes the sound of a beloved voice…”

The “beloved voice” that Edmund Morel heard as he left Pentonville prison, at the end of January 1918, was that of his wife Mary, who stood by him steadfastly through the worst ordeal of his life, as he fell in popular esteem from being hero to public enemy.
ED Morel had established himself early in the 20th century as the greatest investigative journalist of his time. While working as a shipping clerk in Liverpool and Belgium, he studied the cargoes coming in and out of Antwerp and had deduced that something terrible was happening in the Congo, from which somebody else was skimming vast profits. His campaign to expose slavery and corruption in the land that Joseph Conrad called the Heart of Darkness earned ED Morel international renown and the respect of the British authorities.
There was a very different reaction to the next campaign in which he immersed himself. Though he was not a pacifist, he believed from the start that the 1914-18 war was an unnecessary slaughter, that no principle was at stake, and that the British public was not being told the truth about why they were fighting. He thought it was cant for the UK to claim to be fighting for freedom and democracy when it was allied to Russia, and suspected that the real explanation lay in secret treaties. His wartime essay Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy was later acknowledged by AJP Taylor as the foundation for all subsequent research into the causes of the war.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments/a-history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments-campaign-for-peace-turned-former-hero-into-public-enemy-no-1-9560686.html