The white feather is a widely recognised propaganda symbol. [1] [2] It has, among other things, represented cowardice or conscientious pacifism; as in A. E. W. Mason's 1902 book The Four Feathers . In Britain during the First World War it was often given to males out of uniform by women to shame them publicly into signing up. In the United States armed forces, however, it is used to signify extraordinary bravery and excellence in combat marksmanship.
The use of the phrase "white feather" to symbolise cowardice is attested from the late 18th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary . The OED cites A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), in which lexicographer Francis Grose wrote "White feather, he has a white feather, he is a coward, an allusion to a game cock, where having a white feather, is a proof he is not of the true game breed". [3] This was in the context of cockfighting, a common entertainment in Georgian England.
Shame was exerted upon men in England and France who had not taken the cross at the time of the Third Crusade. "A great many men sent each other wool and distaff, hinting that if anyone failed to join this military undertaking they were only fit for women's work". [4] Wool played an important role in the medieval economy, and a distaff is a tool for spinning the raw material into yarn; the activities of textile production were so firmly associated with girls and women that "distaff" became a metonym for women's work.
At the start of World War I, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald, who was a strong advocate of conscription, wanted to increase the number of those enlisting in the armed forces. Therefore he organised on 30 August 1914 a group of thirty women in his home town of Folkestone to hand out white feathers to any men that were not in uniform. Fitzgerald believed using women to shame the men into enlisting would be the most effective method of encouraging enlistment. [5] [6] The group that he founded (with prominent members being the authors Emma Orczy and Mary Augusta Ward) was known as the White Feather Brigade or the Order of the White Feather. [7]
While the true effectiveness of the campaign is impossible to judge, it spread throughout several other nations in the empire. In Britain, it started to cause problems for the government when public servants and men in essential occupations came under pressure to enlist. That prompted Home Secretary Reginald McKenna to issue employees in state industries with lapel badges reading "King and Country" to indicate that they were serving the war effort. Likewise, the Silver War Badge, which was given to service personnel who had been honourably discharged by wounds or sickness, was first issued in September 1916 to prevent veterans from being challenged for not wearing uniform. [7] Anecdotes from the time indicate that the campaign was unpopular among soldiers, not least because soldiers who were home on leave could find themselves presented with feathers.
One example was Private Ernest Atkins, who was on leave from the Western Front. He was riding a tram when he was presented with a white feather by a girl sitting behind him. He smacked her across the face with his pay book and said, "Certainly I'll take your feather back to the boys at Passchendaele. I'm in civvies because people think my uniform might be lousy, but if I had it on I wouldn't be half as lousy as you". [8]
Private Norman Demuth, who was discharged from the British Army after he had been wounded in 1916, received numerous white feathers after he returned from the Western Front. In Forgotten Voices of the Great War , Demuth says:
Almost the last feather I received was on a bus. I was sitting near the door when I became aware of two women on the other side talking at me, and I thought to myself, "Oh Lord, here we go again". One lent forward and produced a feather and said, "Here's a gift for a brave soldier." I took it and said, "Thank you very much—I wanted one of those." Then I took my pipe out of my pocket and put this feather down the stem and worked it in a way I've never worked a pipe cleaner before. When it was filthy I pulled it out and said, "You know, we didn't get these in the trenches", and handed it back to her. She instinctively put out her hand and took it, so there she was sitting with this filthy pipe cleaner in her hand and all the other people on the bus began to get indignant. Then she dropped it and got up to get out, but we were nowhere near a stopping place and the bus went on quite a long way while she got well and truly barracked by the rest of the people on the bus. I sat back and laughed like mad. [9]
Supporters of the campaign were not easily put off. A woman who confronted a young man in a London park demanded to know why he was not in the army. "Because I am a German", he replied. He received a white feather anyway. [10]
Occasionally injured veterans were mistakenly targeted, such as Reuben W. Farrow who after being aggressively asked by a woman on a tram why he would not do his duty, turned around and showed his missing hand causing her to apologise. [7]
Perhaps the most misplaced use of a white feather was when one was presented to Seaman George Samson, who was on his way in civilian clothes to a public reception being held in his honour for having been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the Gallipoli campaign. [11]
Roland Gwynne, later the mayor of Eastbourne (1929–1931), received a feather. That prompted him to enlist, and he would receive the Distinguished Service Order for bravery. [12]
The writer Compton Mackenzie, then a serving soldier, complained about the activities of the Order of the White Feather. He argued that "idiotic young women were using white feathers to get rid of boyfriends of whom they were tired". [13] The pacifist Fenner Brockway said he received so many white feathers that he had enough to make a fan. [14]
The white feather campaign was renewed during World War II. [15] [16]
In contrast, the white feather has been used by some pacifist organisations as an icon of abstinence from violence.
In the 1870s, the Māori prophet of passive resistance Te Whiti o Rongomai promoted the wearing of white feathers by his followers at Parihaka. They are still worn by the iwi associated with that area, and by Te Āti Awa in Wellington. They are known as te raukura, which literally means the red feather, but metaphorically, the chiefly feather. They are usually three in number, interpreted as standing for "glory to God, peace on earth, goodwill toward people" (Luke 2:14). Albatross feathers are preferred but any white feathers will do. They are usually worn in the hair or on the lapel (but not from the ear).
Some time after the war, pacifists found an alternative interpretation of the white feather as a symbol of peace. The apocryphal story goes that in 1775, Quakers in a Friends meeting house in Easton, New York were faced by a tribe of Indians on the war path. Rather than flee, the Quakers fell silent and waited. The Indian chief came into the meeting house and finding no weapons he declared the Quakers as friends. On leaving he took a white feather from his quiver and attached it to the door as a sign to leave the building unharmed.
In 1937 the Peace Pledge Union sold 500 white feather badges as symbols of peace.
In the United States, the white feather has also become a symbol of courage, persistence, and superior combat marksmanship. Its most notable wearer was US Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, who was awarded the Silver Star medal for bravery during the Vietnam War. Hathcock picked up a white feather on a mission and wore it in his hat to taunt the enemy. He was so feared by enemy troops that they put a price on his head. Its wear on combat headgear flaunts an insultingly-easy target for enemy snipers. [17]
The Four Feathers (1902), an adventure novel, by A. E. W. Mason, tells of Harry Feversham, an officer in the British Army, who decides to resign his commission the day before his regiment is dispatched to fight in Sudan (the 1882 First War of Sudan, leading to the fall of Khartoum). Harry's three fellow officers and his fiancée conclude that he is resigning to avoid fighting in the conflict, and each sends him a white feather. Stung by the criticism, Harry sails to Sudan, disguises himself as an Arab, and looks for the opportunity to redeem his honour. He manages this by fighting a covert war on behalf of the British, saving the life of one of his colleagues in the process. On returning to England he asks each of his accusers to take back one of the feathers.
The 1907 P. G. Wodehouse novel The White Feather is a school story about cowardice and the efforts a boy goes to redeem himself by learning the sport of boxing.
Rilla of Ingleside (1921) by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the penultimate book in her Anne of Green Gables series, sees Anne Shirley's son, Walter Blythe, enlist in the First World War after receiving a white feather in the mail; he subsequently dies in battle.
The Man Who Stayed at Home , a 1914 play by J. E. Harold Terry and Lechmere Worrall, was renamed The White Feather when staged in North America. The title character is a British secret agent who is falsely perceived to be a coward for his refusal to enlist as a soldier. [18]
In The Camels are Coming (1932), the first collection of Biggles stories, Biggles is handed a white feather by a young woman while on leave in civilian clothes, who is later taken aback to find that he is one of the Royal Flying Corps' leading pilots.
In Pat Barker's 1991 novel Regeneration , the character Burns is given two white feathers during his home leave from Craiglockhart War Hospital.
In the 1997 book Jingo, citizens of Ankh-Morpork are handed white feathers for not enlisting to fight in the impending war against Klatch.
In the novel Birds of a Feather (2004) by Jacqueline Winspear, four young girls take it upon themselves to hand out feathers to young men not in uniform in an effort to shame them into enlisting on Britain's side in The Great War.
In the 2015 graphic novel Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst's Amazons , Christabel Pankhurst is depicted encouraging women to hand white feathers to every young man they see out of uniform. Persephone Wright, the protagonist of the story and heretofore a staunch supporter of Pankhurst's Votes for Women campaigns, rejects the idea on ethical grounds, saying "a man who's been shamed into service isn't a volunteer at all".
The Order of the White Feather was the inspiration for the Weddings Parties Anything song "Scorn of the Women", which concerns a man who is deemed medically unfit for service when he attempts to enlist, and is unjustly accused of cowardice.
In 1983, new wave band Kajagoogoo released their debut album called White Feathers , whose opener was the title track, a light-hearted allegory for weak people, whereas the final track, Frayo, had a political flavour, referencing cowardice as the cause for an unchanging war-torn world.
In 1985, progressive rock band Marillion released an anti-war song called "White Feather" as the ending track to their album Misplaced Childhood .
In 2009, "White Feather" was released as the third single from the Wolfmother album entitled Cosmic Egg .
The novel The Four Feathers has been the basis of at least seven feature films, the most recent being The Four Feathers (2002), starring Heath Ledger. It was also parodied in the Dad's Army episode "The Two and a Half Feathers".
In the 1980 BBC TV series To Serve Them All My Days , David Powlett-Jones, a shell-shocked officer, takes a position in a boys' school. Suspecting that fellow teacher Carter may be avoiding war duty, he muses, "I'd give a good deal to know whether he's really got a gammy knee", to which an acerbic colleague responds, "I suppose we couldn't get some chubby cherub to give him the white feather" as a means of accusing the suspected malingerer.
The 2000 Canadian miniseries, Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story , includes a scene in which Anne Shirley's fiancé, Gilbert Blythe, receives a white feather from a young woman, despite the fact he is a medical doctor and therefore one who provides an essential service at home. He eventually does enlist, and much of the plot deals with Anne searching for him when he's declared missing in action. As noted above, in the original novels, it is Anne and Gilbert's son, Walter, who enlists after receiving a feather.
In the short-lived 2007 British period drama Lilies , the brother of the protagonists is discharged from the military during World War I after his boat sinks and he is one of a handful of shell-shocked survivors. Billy gets sent and given numerous white feathers for his perceived cowardice, and begins to hallucinate them choking him. This is a recurring theme throughout the series.
In the 2010 Australian film Beneath Hill 60 about real-life soldier Oliver Woodward, Woodward, before enlisting, receives several feathers to which he jokingly states, "Just a few more feathers, and I'll have a whole chicken."
In the first episode of the second season of Downton Abbey , a pair of young women interrupt a benefit concert to hand out white feathers to the men who have not enlisted, before being ordered out by an angry Earl of Grantham.
In the 2021 film The King's Man , Conrad is given a white feather to shame him into enlisting in the British Army.
DC Comics' spoof superhero team the Inferior Five includes a cowardly archer named White Feather. He was intended as a reference to DC Comics' more heroic character Green Arrow and similar "super archer" characters.
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win in 1918 the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
The Red Badge of Courage is an 1895 war novel by American author Stephen Crane. The novel was published on 3 October 1895. Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a "red badge of courage", to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as flag-bearer, carrying the regimental colors.
Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst was a British suffragette born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), she directed its militant actions from exile in France from 1912 to 1913. In 1914, she supported the war against Germany. After the war, she moved to the United States, where she worked as an evangelist for the Second Adventist movement.
The Four Feathers is a 1902 adventure novel by British writer A. E. W. Mason that has inspired many films of the same title. In December 1901, Cornhill Magazine announced the title as one of two new serial stories to be published in the forthcoming year. Against the background of the Mahdist War, young Feversham disgraces himself by quitting the army, which others perceive as cowardice, symbolized by the four white feathers they give him. He redeems himself with acts of great courage and wins back the heart of the woman he loves.
The Women's Party was a minor political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst when they dissolved the Women's Social and Political Union in November 1917. The party ran on the slogan ‘Victory, National Security and Progress’, in an effort to conflate winning of the war with the women's cause.
He Shall Thunder in the Sky is the 12th in a series of historical mystery novels by Elizabeth Peters, first published in 2000, and featuring fictional archaeologist and sleuth Amelia Peabody. The story is set in the 1914–1915 dig season in Egypt.
The Four Feathers is a 1939 British Technicolor adventure film directed by Zoltan Korda, starring John Clements, Ralph Richardson, June Duprez, and C. Aubrey Smith. Set during the reign of Queen Victoria, it tells the story of a man accused of cowardice and his efforts to redeem his name. It is widely regarded as the best of the numerous film adaptations of the 1902 novel of the same name by A.E.W. Mason.
Private Harry T. Farr was a British soldier who was executed by firing squad during World War I for cowardice at the age of 25. Before the war, he lived in Kensington, London and joined the British Army in 1908. He served until 1912 and remained in the reserves until the outbreak of World War I. During the war, Farr served with the West Yorkshire Regiment on the Western Front. In 1915 and 1916 he was hospitalised multiple times for shell shock, the longest period being for five months. On 17 September 1916, Farr did not comply with an order to return to the front line, and was subsequently arrested and charged with cowardice. Unrepresented at his court martial, Farr was found guilty under section 4(7) of the Army Act 1881 and was sentenced to death. He was executed on 18 October 1916.
Native Americans have made up an integral part of U.S. military conflicts since America's beginning. Colonists recruited Indian allies during such instances as the Pequot War from 1634–1638, the Revolutionary War, as well as in War of 1812. Native Americans also fought on both sides during the American Civil War, as well as military missions abroad including the most notable, the Codetalkers who served in World War II. The Scouts were active in the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Including those who accompanied General John J. Pershing in 1916 on his expedition to Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa. Indian Scouts were officially deactivated in 1947 when their last member retired from the Army at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. For many Indians it was an important form of interaction with European-American culture and their first major encounter with the Whites' way of thinking and doing things.
Private Peaceful is a novel for older children by British author Michael Morpurgo first published in 2003. It is about a fictional young soldier called Thomas "Tommo" Peaceful, who is looking back on his life so far and his going to war. The story focuses on the harsh realities of English rural life and warfare, and highlights the British Army's practice of executing its own soldiers during the First World War. Morpurgo was inspired to write the novel after learning about the around 300 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were shot for crimes like desertion and cowardice. The novel helped further the campaign to grant posthumous pardons to the men, which were agreed and implemented by the UK Government in 2006.
The Four Feathers is a 2002 war drama film directed by Shekhar Kapur and starring Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, Djimon Hounsou and Kate Hudson. Set during the British Army's Gordon Relief Expedition in Sudan, well after the formation of Mahdiyya, it tells the story of a young man accused of cowardice. This film, with altered plot events, is the latest in a long line of cinematic adaptations of the 1902 novel The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason. Other versions of the story have been set in the 1890s, with different battle events.
Private Thomas James Highgate was a British soldier during the First World War and the first British soldier to be convicted of desertion and executed by firing squad on the Western Front. He was born in Shoreham, Kent, and worked as a farm labourer before joining the army in 1913 as a seaman. When the First World War began, he fought with the First Battalion of the Royal West Kents. Highgate was executed 35 days into the war, on 8 September 1914, after being found hiding in a farmhouse wearing civilian clothes. His death was made as public as possible and used as an example to other soldiers. Highgate's name was not included on the war memorial at Shoreham; from the late 1990s onwards, some local residents fought for his name to be added whilst others disagreed. Posthumous pardons for soldiers who had been executed, including Highgate, were announced in 2006.
The Four Feathers is a 1929 American sound war film directed by Merian C. Cooper and starring William Powell, Richard Arlen, Clive Brook and Fay Wray. This was the third of numerous film versions of the 1902 novel The Four Feathers written by A. E. W. Mason. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The 1929 version of The Four Feathers premiered at the Criterion Theatre in New York City on June 12, 1929.
Storm Over the Nile is a 1955 British adventure film adaptation of the 1902 novel The Four Feathers, directed by Terence Young and Zoltan Korda. The film not only extensively used footage of the action scenes from the 1939 film version stretched into CinemaScope, but is a shot-for-shot, almost line-for-line remake of the earlier film, which was also directed by Korda. Several pieces of music by the original composer Miklos Rozsa were also utilized. It featured Anthony Steel, Laurence Harvey, James Robertson Justice, Mary Ure, Ian Carmichael, Michael Hordern and Christopher Lee. The film was shot on location in the Sudan.
The military uniforms of the Union Army in the American Civil War were widely varied and, due to limitations on supply of wool and other materials, based on availability and cost of materials. The ideal uniform was prescribed as a dark blue coat with lighter pants, with a black hat. Officer's ranks were denoted with increasing levels of golden decoration. Specific jobs, companies, and units had markedly different styles at times, often following European customs such as that of the Zouaves. Officers uniforms tended to be highly customized and would stray from Army standard. Ironically, several main pieces of gear had been created by order of the U.S. War Secretary Jefferson Davis before the war; he later became Confederate President.
The United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, nearly three years after World War I started. A ceasefire and armistice were declared on November 11, 1918. Before entering the war, the U.S. had remained neutral, though it had been an important supplier to the United Kingdom, France, and the other powers of the Allies of World War I.
The youngest authenticated British soldier in World War I was twelve-year-old Sidney Lewis, who fought at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Lewis' claim was not authenticated until 2013. In World War I, a large number of young boys joined up to serve as soldiers before they were eighteen, the legal age to serve in the army. It was previously reported that the youngest British soldier was an unnamed boy, also twelve, sent home from France in 1917 with other underage boys from various regiments.
The Black Horror on the Rhine was a moral panic aroused in Weimar Germany and elsewhere concerning allegations of widespread crimes, especially sexual crimes, committed by Senegalese and other African soldiers serving in the French Army during the French occupation of the Rhineland between 1918 and 1930. Die schwarze Schande or Die schwarze Schmach were terms used by right-wing press as German nationalist propaganda in opposition to these events. The colonial troops referred to were soldiers from Senegal, Indochina, and Madagascar. The majority of colonial African soldiers were accused of committing rape and mutilation against the German population by government propaganda and newspapers, despite a lack of complaints in the region itself. The campaign reached its peak between 1920 and 1923, but did not stop until 1930. Adolf Hitler blamed Jews for bringing the Senegalese into the Rhineland.
Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism – Women's Fight for Change is a 2018 book by Tessa Boase about Etta Lemon and her campaign against the use of feathers in hat-making (millinery) which led to the foundation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. This campaign is compared and contrasted to Emmeline Pankhurst's campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, which it pre-dated. Ironically Etta Lemon was an anti-suffragist and anti-feminist.
"Women of Britain Say 'Go!'" is a British World War I recruitment propaganda poster created in 1915. It depicts two women and a young boy looking out of an open window at soldiers marching past. Across the top of the poster is the text: "Women of Britain Say 'Go!'". The poster was designed by artist E. J. Kealey and published by the Parliamentary Recruitment Committee, which produced the majority of early World War I recruitment posters. The intent of the poster was to encourage women to tell men they should sign up to the army at a time when British voluntary recruit numbers were declining. The poster utilises gender, guilt and emasculation to emphasise its message. Although "Women of Britain Say 'Go!'" has become an iconic image of World War I, its sentiment was not universally accepted by contemporary British society.
