Secret documents from WWI, which the government had order to be destroyed, were recently discovered just outside Usk.
Jeremy Arter, a former soldier, was clearing out his aunt’s attic and came across the documents.
“I was about to throw everything away but, leafing through, I saw a book with MI7(b) written on it and decided to take a closer look.”
It was lucky he did because the documents turned out to be the only surviving examples of work from the WWI propaganda organisation, formerly know as MI7.
The author of the documents was Jeremy’s great uncle, Captain James Lloyd Price of the Welsh Regiment. He was injured in the battle of the Somme and, whilst recuperating in London, started to write for the agency.
A notice had been issued from General Headquarters, Home Forces in August 1916, and posted in all officers messes, inviting officers of literary experience serving in Home Commands and on light duty to send in their names. To this invitation there was a large response. The officers were asked to send in specimen articles on military matters, the better writers being encouraged to further efforts. Jeremy’s uncle Jim was amongst those who were chosen to write on a regular basis for the department.
In 1917, the Government was concerned with support for the War. The Easter rising in Dublin the previous year, along with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and mutiny in the French Army gave grounds for real concern that should social unrest and get out of hand.
MI7 (b)’s role was to sustain and encourage continued support by posting articles in the press that would help the cause.
During its second year the staff of MI7(b) averaged 20 officers, including such well-known writers as Lord Dunsany, A.A. Milne and Patrick McGill.
The total number of articles produced by the staff and outside contributors from September, 1916, to November, 1918, was 7,500.
These articles were distributed to the press at home and abroad and gave a very specific view of the war effort. At home, they were also concerned with re-establishing the acceptance of the class system and paternalistic hierarchy, which was under threat.
The re-discovered documents include Captain Lloyd Price’s work from pencil jotted notes to final submitted documents.
One of his earlier pieces, entitled ‘Before Battle’, written on the 28th September 1917 shows that, although his writing was excellent, he had not yet understood the nature of the department since he describes, in detail, the horrors of war. Unsurprisingly, this text was rejected by MI7(b).
However, the most fascinating find was ‘The Green Book’ which was a pamphlet published when the organisation was disbanded at the end of 1918. It is a tongue in cheek collection of writing and articles about the work the authors did for MI7 (b), including a poem by A.A. Milne about the moral difficulty facing an author when asked to write propaganda material.
Jeremy Arter has published an ebook on Amazon which includes his family history and many of the documents which were hidden away in the attic for so many years.
Nikolai Fedotov, Senior InfoWatch analyst comments: «This is the old, eternal problem of both home archives and record offices. Warehousing and storage of documents requires significantly fewer resources than their analysis and study. Therefore, the number of archived, but never viewed documents is growing.
The same problem exists in processing electronic data, but multiplied by a billion. Data collection and data storage on media is falling in price constantly and now costs peanuts. And processing (indexing and categorization at least) is much more expensive and even state-of-the-art equipment do not cope with the task. For example, a disk space and a power of DBMS is enough for storing of all office’s traffic. And modern DLP-systems often do it. But if some analytic system is launched over this base, new modern computers won’t pull.
And cyberarcheologists will make a lot of curious discoveries in the old electronic archives in the future».
