He was also controversial, because neither he nor his brother Sydney – also working in Hollywood – had volunteered for the British Army. Lord Northcliffe’s Weekly Dispatch singled out Charlie in 1917: "Until he has undergone medical examination he is under the suspicion of regarding himself as specially privileged to escape the common responsibilities of British citizenship." Charlie responded with a statement that he was ready to answer the call, once the British Embassy advised that he should go. The embassy supported him: "He is of as much use to Great Britain now making big money and subscribing to war loans as he would be in the trenches."

Charlie Chaplin's Tramp was a character a down-at-heel world could easily relate to.

Chaplin continued to receive white feathers even after it was reported that he had gone to a recruiting office and been turned down as underweight. As his authorised biographer David Robinson writes, these attacks did not come from servicemen: the Tramp was the soldiers' favourite. His films were even cited as having miraculous powers. A theatre owner in Lancashire wrote that "a wounded soldier laughed so much he got up and walked to the end of the hall, and quite forgot that he had left his crutches behind".

Chaplin invented the Tramp just before the war, but he was the right character at the right time. Small but pugnacious, he had both virtue and vice. The troops saw someone who wouldn’t back down in the face of bullies and policemen; a man who always got up after a knockdown, and usually gave more than he got; a man of indomitable spirit, but down on his luck. If ever there was a character to make a soldier feel better, this was he. But where did he come from?

Early biographies claim the Tramp made his debut in Kid Auto Races at Venice, Chaplin’s second film at Keystone. In fact, David Robinson points out that it was in Mabel’s Strange Predicament, shot before Kid Auto Races, but released two days after. Robinson quotes the legend of how the costume was created "spontaneously, without forethought" one rainy afternoon in the communal male dressing room at Keystone. "Chaplin borrowed Fatty Arbuckle’s voluminous trousers, tiny Charles Avery’s jacket, Ford Sterling’s size fourteen shoes, worn on the wrong feet to keep them from falling off, a too-small derby (bowler) belonging to Arbuckle’s father-in-law, and a moustache intended for Mack Swain’s use, which Chaplin trimmed to toothbrush size". That was the Keystone publicity version. In fact, Chaplin set out to create "an ensemble of contrasts – tiny hat and huge shoes, baggy pants and pinched jacket". Most of it was straight from the music hall, in which he had been performing since the age of nine. He had used elements of the character in his stage career, particularly the drunk act.