Britain declared war on Germany on August 4th 1914, but rivalry between the two countries had been growing for years. Germany resented Britain's control of the world's oceans and markets, while Britain increasingly viewed a Europe dominated by a powerful and aggressive Germany as a threat which must be contained. The German government believed that the onset of war and its support of Austria-Hungary was a way to secure its place as a leading power, which was supported by public nationalism and further united it behind the monarchy. This weekend, as the country remembers the start of the First World War, I have to mention the 1000 or so Carthusians, members of the "Public School in Godalming", who fought and died for their country in the two World Wars. As August 1914 came round, over 600 boys associated with the school, signed up, fought and died. About 300 died later in World War 2. Many other schools all over the country suffered similar losses.
Thomas Rowlandson (pictured) was an old boy of Charterhouse School and he was a member of the famous Old Carthusians Football Club. As a goalkeeper, with family roots in Darlington, he played for Cambridge University, Sunderland in 1904-5, England XIs and the famous Corinthian FC of England. He perished on the parapet of a German trench, ahead of his men, fighting and leading in 1915, at the Somme.
A year before his death, in August 1914, the Corinthian Football Club was heading to Brazil on a goodwill football tour, when they heard, on landing at Pernambuco, that hostilities had started in Europe.
Two Carthusians in the tour party, John Fosdick, a Cambridge Blue and John Tetley, who also played for the Corinthians, immediately found another ship heading to Europe and they joined the war as soon as they could.
Fosdick died in action in 1915 and Tetley during the build up to Ypres in 1917. Worth reflecting on this the next time you don't get a decision from the REF!
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