Save The Children is still going strong today

TO SUCCEED in life, you must give life, Eglantyne Jebb once wrote to a friend. But she herself did not give life in the traditional way expected of a well-to-do Edwardian lady – by marrying and having a large brood of children. IT'S CHELTENHAM GOLD CUP DAY! CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE £100 BET... In fact Eglantyne confessed she was not fond of children, calling them “little wretches” and claimed “the dreadful idea of closer acquaintance never entered my mind”. Instead she chose to “give life” from a strategic distance by setting up the Save The Children Fund at the end of the First World War and in doing so saved the lives of thousands of children immediately and many millions since.

In early 1919 Eglantyne was arrested in Trafalgar Square for handing out leaflets featuring photographs of starving Austrian children that had not been cleared by government censors. One account has her chalking up the pavements in an effort to get her message across, suffragette style. A few of these leafl ets still exist, slightly crumpled, in the Save The Children archives and on the top of one the word “suppressed!” is pencilled in Eglantyne’s unmistakable scratchy handwriting.The exclamation mark expresses her outrage at Lloyd George’s Liberal government’s policy to continue the economic blockade to Europe after the end of the war as a means of pushing through war reparations whatever the human cost.

The government had hoped that arresting Eglantyne might finally shut up this passionate but irritating woman who had been lobbying them for some time along with her influential friends Lord Parmoor, John Maynard Keynes and others. They were wrong. Realising that technically she did not have a leg to stand on, Eglantyne insisted on representing herself in court. She focused on the moral case – giving reporters plenty with which to pad out their stories. The prosecutor Sir Archibald Bodkin did not spare her in his condemnation. However although found guilty she was fined only £5, which, she wrote, “is equivalent to victory”. Then, while the court was still in session, Sir Archibald publicly pressed £5 into Eglantyne’s hands. It was a neat way of admitting that in his opinion she had won the moral case.

This was the first donation put towards a new fund to bring relief to the starving children of Austria and Germany – the Save The Children Fund. Eglantyne’s next letters that evening were written to the press and in the morning the story was all over the papers. But Eglantyne was not satisfied – press coverage alone did not feed children. To capitalise on the publicity she and her younger sister Dorothy Buxton ambitiously called a public meeting at the biggest venue they could hire – the Royal Albert Hall. The sisters were nervous that no one would come – charity, after all, was believed to start at home where there was plenty of need after the war and certainly not with the children of such recent enemies. In the event the Albert Hall did not have enough seats for all the people who arrived. Unfortunately for Eglantyne, however, half of the crowd had come with rotten fruit to throw at the traitor sisters who wanted to give succour to the enemy.

A nervous speaker at the best of times, Eglantyne was now terrified. She began quietly but her voice rose with her passion until at last she called out: “Surely it is impossible for us, as normal human beings, to watch children starve to death without making an effort to save them.” A collection was taken up as the hall erupted with applause and £10,000 was raised and delivered in aid to Vienna within just 10 days. Yet later that same year Eglantyne was writing with typical dry humour to her close friend Margaret Keynes, the younger sister of the economist: “I suppose it is a judgment on me for not caring about children that I am made to talk all day long about the universal love of humanity towards them.”

Eglantyne was not driven by maternal or sentimental concern for individual children but by a passionate, undiscriminating humanitarianism of which many had lost sight at the end of the war. She also had more specific reasons for focusing on children. She had commissioned some early research that showed that while adults can, to some extent, recover from a period of starvation, children may never be able to make up the lost ground both physiologically and psychologically, so they really should be the first to receive relief. Furthermore children were the next generation, responsible for delivering what Eglantyne hoped would be a more just and peaceful international society. But Eglantyne was also a savvy fundraiser who recognised the emotive appeal of children. One of the first people to employ the power of celebrity endorsements for charitable purpose, she was particularly fond of quoting a succinct line written by George Bernard Shaw in support of the Fund: “I have no enemies under the age of seven.”