Major-General Sir Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware (17 June 186928 April 1949) was a British educator, journalist, and the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). He also served as Director of Education for the Transvaal Colony and editor of The Morning Post.
Ware was born in Clifton, Bristol, and graduated from the University of Paris in 1894. Several years after graduation, he travelled to the Transvaal Colony where, as a member of Milner's Kindergarten, he became Director of Education in 1903. Two years later, Ware became editor of The Morning Post and returned to England. While editor, he expanded the paper and reoriented it to focus on colonial affairs. After several controversies, culminating in a failed effort to purchase an airship for the United Kingdom, Ware was forced to retire in 1911.
When the First World War started in August 1914, Ware attempted to join the British Army but was rejected because he was too old. With the assistance of Alfred Milner, he obtained an appointment as the commander of a mobile ambulance unit provided by the British Red Cross Society. In this role he began marking and recording the graves of those killed. The unit soon began to focus exclusively on graves, and the organisation was transferred to the British Army in 1915. The following year the Army Department of Graves Registration and Enquiries was created with Ware at its head. On 21 May 1917 the Imperial War Graves Commission was founded. Ware served as vice-chairman. He ended the war as a major-general, having been mentioned in despatches twice.
Post-war, Ware was heavily involved in the IWGC's function. He frequently led negotiations with foreign nations over cemeteries and memorials, dealt with prominent figures in the commission, and worked to ensure the commission's financial security. Ware also attempted to raise support for his ideal of cooperation between the Dominions. In the lead-up to the Second World War, he attempted to use the IWGC's work as a tool for ensuring peace. When war broke out, he continued to serve as vice-chairman of the IWGC and was re-appointed director-general of Graves Registration and Enquiries. He retired from the Commission in 1948 and died the following year.
Early life
Ware was born in Clifton, Bristol, on 17 June 1869 to Charles and Amy Carew Ware, Goulstone. He was privately tutored until his father died when he was 18. Ware then taught in private schools to pay for tuition at the University of London. Dissatisfied with his education, Ware left the university and after saving enough money began attending the University of Paris, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 1894. He worked as an assistant schoolmaster from 1889 to 1899; the last four years at the Bradford Grammar School. While teaching, he was occasionally employed as an examiner for the Civil Service Commission. He married Anna Margaret (1868–1952) on 1 August 1895; they had a daughter and a son.
Transvaal
Ware began contributing articles to The Morning Post in 1899. He served as the representative of the Education Committee of the Royal British Commission at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris and afterwards worked as an inspector of schools for the Board of Education. In October 1901 Ware was appointed assistant director of education in the Transvaal by Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, becoming a member of an informal group of young Britons later known as Milner's Kindergarten. He moved to the Transvaal and stopped writing for The Morning Post. As assistant director Ware chaired two committees in 1902 and 1903 on the topic of technical education in the colony. The Transvaal Technical Institute was created in early 1904 upon their recommendations. Ware served as chairman of the institute's council.
In early 1903 Ware became acting director of education when Edmund Beale Sargantthe director of education for the Transvaal and Orange River Colonyreturned to England in failing health. On 17 June 1903 Ware was made a member of the Transvaal Legislative Council, and in July he became permanent director of education for the Transvaal. Author wrote that as a member of the council Ware was "probably the only South African Superintendent of Education that has represented education directly before the legislature". Under Ware, the number of children in education in the Transvaal doubled in less than four years. As director, he advocated the eventual creation of a de-centralised system of education with responsibility largely in the hands of local authorities.
The Morning Post
When the editor-in-chief of The Morning Post, James Nicol Dunn, resigned during the Russo–Japanese War, Ware had written to Oliver Borthwick and asked whether he could work on the paper's staff. Several years later, in April 1905, Lord Glenesk offered the editorship of The Morning Post to Ware, in part through Milner's influence. Ware accepted, and moved back to England, taking the position in March. Historian A. J. A. Morris wrote that Glenesk intended for Ware to "be the much needed new broom" for the paper. When Ware became editor, The Morning Post had no offices. Its staff worked instead in temporary wooden sheds. He began expanding the paper by hiring Richard Jebb as a contributor, who in turn hired many other correspondents.
The two began to focus the paper on the British Dominions, a move they presented as a means to increase the paper's circulation; though it allowed for new sources of advertising, the move did not lead to higher circulation. Ware aimed to make the paper "the authority on all colonial questions," and supported social and tariff reform. He invited radicals such as William Beveridge and R. H. Tawney to contribute to the paper. Shortly after beginning work, Ware came into conflict with Glenesk, who thought he should not promote tariff reform, and wrote asking Lord Glenesk's daughter, Lady Bathurst, to intervene and threatening to resign. As a result of his initiatives, Ware was disliked by some members of the paper's staff, particularly Spenser Wilkinson, the paper's leader writer, and E. E. Peacock, the paper's manager. Ware also supported Richard Jebb's campaign against respected Conservative candidate Robert Cecil for the Marylebone East Parliament seatwhich cost the paper readership.
After the First Moroccan Crisis in 1905, Ware campaigned heavily against war with Germany. He later said
When Glenesk died in November 1908, Lady Bathurst became owner of the paper. Lady Bathurst and Ware generally got along as they both held a political stance firmly to the right - though Ware's instincts for social reform were very strong. Ware was involved in hiring Robbie Ross as an art editor for the paper in August 1908. After the Bosnian Crisis in 1908, Ware became further convinced that the United Kingdom was falling behind Germany in military strength, a stance Wilkinson did not agree with. In a letter to Wilkinson, Ware wrote that The Morning Post "should boldly point to the German danger" and "rub in the immediate necessity of universal military service and the re-organisation of naval matters". He said that if the newspaper did not adopt that stance, "I cannot... continue to accept the responsibility of its editorship." Wilkinson considered the letter "a demand that I should abandon my sincerity as a writer, that is commit suicide". He felt Ware wanted "to hasten a war with Germany while I hope it may be averted by proper attention to navy and army and by sound foreign policy".
In response to the perceived military deficiency of the United Kingdom and Germany's successful test of a Zeppelin, The Morning Post announced the creation of a National Airship Fund on 21 June 1909. The aim of the fund was to raise £20,000 through public subscription to purchase the United Kingdom an airship. Lady Bathurst contributed an initial £2,000 to the fund. Ware travelled to Paris in July and signed a contract for Lebaudy Frères to build the Lebaudy Morning Post. In August, it was revealed that the Daily Mail had offered to pay for a hangar while an airship from Clément-Bayard was shipped to England. Ware rushed to ensure The Morning Posts airship arrived first, and by May 1910 he began helping plan the airship's route to England. However, the Clément-Bayard No.2, sponsored by The Daily Mail, arrived in England on 16 October 1910. The War Office purchased the airship and the National Airship Fund was left out of negotiations. The Lebaudy Morning Post was damaged when it arrived in England ten days after the Clément-Bayard No.2 because its hangar was too small, and it crashed on its first test flight. Ware was accused by H. Massac Buist and Lancelot Julian Bathurst, the paper's manager and Lady Bathurst's brother-in-law, of financial mismanagement and poorly managing the paper. After threatening to sue Lancelot Julian Bathurst over libel, Ware was given £3,000 and agreed to retire. His retirement was announced on 14 June 1911.
After leaving The Morning Post, Ware planned to create a weekly paper independent from political parties, with funding from various British Dominions. The project was unsuccessful. Ware became a special commissioner for Rio Tinto, negotiating with the French government. In 1912 he published The Worker and His Country, which historians John Lack and Bart Ziino describe as "an alarmist diagnosis of social unrest in France and Britain". In the book, Ware advocated for land redistribution to ease tensions between British social classes.
First World War Mobile ambulance unit
With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Royal Automobile Club began assisting the war effort with the creation of the Royal Automobile Club Volunteer Force. On 12 September 1914 several members of the club volunteered their services to the British Red Cross, which established the Motor Ambulance Department. Warewho was 45 years oldhad been rejected from serving in the British Army because he was too old, and obtained an appointment to command a mobile Red Cross ambulance unit with the assistance of Lord Milner. He arrived in France and took command of the unit on 19 September 1914.
One of several Red Cross units in France, Ware's unit operated in northern France as a semi-autonomous command. He had a degree of independence afforded by the Joint Finance Committee of St John Ambulance and the Red Cross, who gave Ware his own operating budget for three-month periods. Ware was struck by the lack of an official mechanism for managing the graves of those killed and following British defeats at Mons and Le Cateau in September, Ware's unit began sharing information with Lord Robert Cecil, the head of the Red Cross's Wounded and Missing Department.
According to an Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) report, the original object of the unit was to "search for British wounded and missing in the district which had been overrun by the Germans during the retreat from Mons, and to convey them back to the British lines or to a British base". However, by early October 1914, the unit had begun extensively working with the French and handling their casualties. By mid-October, Ware's unit had added a medical staff and mobile light hospital. That month Ware visited an extension of the Béthune cemetery which had British graves not maintained and some not even recorded. He soon convinced the Red Cross to fund durable grave markers. By December, the unit had dealt with more than four thousand wounded soldiers.