Everything in the garden was lovely! Fernbank Mill opened for business, the latest of the new mills to be built and work started on what was to become Bancroft Shed. The Calf Hall Shed company was paying a dividend of 10% and coal cost about 15/- a ton. Orders were plentiful and there was full employment in the town for most of the year. The retail shops in the town were doing so well that shop-keepers were prominent in the shareholder lists of the new mills. There were numerous instances of workers in the mills building their own houses and sometimes a shop and other houses to rent. Matt Hartley built the Majestic cinema and leisure complex on Albert Road which immediately started to do good business. The July Wakes Week saw the usual exodus from the town by rail to seaside resorts on the Lancashire coast.
There had been reports in the national press of trouble brewing in the Balkans. Serbia was seen as a threat to the Austria-Hungarian empire but this was a long way away and whilst it was worrying, it was seen to be somebody else's problem. Even the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on the 28th of June didn't immediately sound alarm bells. Things became even more serious at the end of July when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia supported by the infamous 'blank cheque' from Germany which promised unconditional support. From there events moved fast because Germany had been planning war and had already decided that a major threat was Russia which was rapidly industrialising and re-arming despite a revolution in 1905. Their war plan envisaged a lightning strike at France via Belgium to get the war on the Western Front accomplished so that they could concentrate all their efforts on the Eastern Front and Russia. On August 1st Germany declared war on Russia, on the 3rd they declared war on France and crossed the border into Belgium whose neutrality had been guaranteed by Britain. At Midnight on August 4th Britain declared war on Germany and what was known at the time as 'The Great War' started.
It's interesting to note that Germany talked about 'Weltkrieg' (world war) from the start, the general opinion in Britain was that it would all be over by Christmas and because of the way it had been presented by the government the overwhelming opinion was of sympathy for 'poor little Belgium'. Volunteers flooded into the recruiting offices desperate to play their part before the war was over. In Germany, the official line was to encourage recruitment, particularly in the universities, so that young people could experience the formative effects of a patriotic war. One of the first tragedies of the war was during the Battle of the Marne when these raw recruits came up against the disciplined rapid fire of the veterans of the British Expeditionary Force. This was the start of over four years of brutal conflict which resulted in over 10 million deaths.
Off to the seaside!