1914–1915

The day war was declared, 4 August 1914, Dent wrote in his diary: ‘My work is getting rather disturbed by the war excitement but I generally manage to do some at home and read at the Library most days … We agreed that the best thing for ordinary people to do was to go on doing their ordinary things.’ But it was the ‘ordinary things’ which would change first, and Dent found himself once again fighting elements beyond his control. It wasn't simply bland denial; he kept to the unpopular view that music should be kept alive especially in wartime. Nor was it simply that Dent hated war – he would later say that he hated ‘this war’ – rather the blinkered, self-righteous attitude it fostered, too much like the unacceptable face of a self-righteous religion. A number of his friends and acquaintances like Bertrand Russell and Edward Carpenter immediately went to work organising anti-war movements, but Dent held back, declaring that music was his priority. The patriotism he saw emerging almost at once repulsed him, while its official vehicle, the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), ‘that all-purpose weapon against dissent’ giving vague and enormous powers to government, fostered what historian Samuel Hynes called a ‘conflict of values’, provoking strong reactions from a wide range of disparate groups.

Dent's own internationalism had begun years before, but the war would give it focus and purpose.

Immediately, Cambridge became a visible repository for almost every aspect of this new war. Only a week after war had been declared, Dent strolled out with Timmy Jekyll, observing the camps springing up on Midsummer Common and Coe Fen, the hospital being set up in Neville's Court at Trinity College.