When All Men Starve. Showing how England Hazarded her naval supremacy, and the horrors which followed her interruption of her food supply was written by Charles Gleig. Gleig (1862-1945) was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and the author of short stories and adventure novels.

The trouble begins in the “summer of 18--,” following the Diamond Jubilee. There is a native uprising in Egypt and then in the Transvaal, with the latter revolt proving successful. English vanity, political incompetence, and lack of foresight, especially regarding the status of its defenses, doom the country, and following a war with Germany, France, Russia and the Transvaal the English Navy is beaten, the country’s trade routes are closed, food becomes scarce in the Home Islands, and the colonies are placed in great danger. Crime becomes rampant and the Army, police, government, capitalists, aristocrats and M.P.s flee the country, leaving it in the hands of the anarchists. When a group of six thousand policemen are sent against the anarchists the police are massacred, most “hacked to death.”¹ Eventually the leaders of the anarchists lead the “excited and hungry” mob in an uprising against the middle and upper classes, and When All Men Starve ends with the mob in “its mad dance of anarchy, reveling in the downfall of the Respectabilities.”²

When All Men Starve is a dystopic Future War novel as well as a novel about anarchy. When All Men Starve is nakedly didactic in intent, preaching the need for military awareness, the need for a strong army and navy, and the need for a national freedom from reliance on foreign investment and grain. But despite Gleig's blatant lecturing When All Men Starve is a quick and entertaining read. Gleig gave it a scholarly gloss, making use of footnotes and providing detailed comparison of the numbers of ships of the line in the British and foreign navies. He also put his naval experience to good use in his attention to naval matters such as ship maneuvers, tactics, and battles during Britain’s war against its enemies. Gleig used real people as secondary characters, changing only their names but leaving their positions and personalities, so that Sir Compton Domville (1842-1924) becomes "Sir Dompton Colville," Sir John Hopkins (1863-1946) becomes "Sir John Skipworth," Lord Charles Beresford (1846-1919) becomes "Lord Harry Gasington," and so on. This adds a feeling of topicality and relevance to the novel. Interestingly, the politics of When All Men Starve are not conservative, which was usually the case with novels about anarchy. Gleig is critical of Parliament, capitalists, aristocrats and Society, with the middle class (the presumed audience of When All Men Starve) not being held responsible for the parlous state of the nation. Nor does Gleig use When All Men Starve as a platform from which to bash the lower classes for being manipulated by the anarchists. Instead Gleig uses the novel to support the working man, to decry institutionalized poverty, and to hint that a better treatment of the working classes would leave anarchists with fewer potential allies. Gleig is specifically complimentary of “Alfred Norrison and his ‘Madge of the Gutter,’”³ an approving reference to Arthur Morrison’s Child of the Jago.

When All Men Starve doesn’t exactly have a protagonist. The leader of the anarchists is Robert Margrave, who “committed the unpardonable social sin of marrying a woman of the people.”⁴ This rendered Margrave unfit and an outcast in the eyes of Society. Embittered, he became “a revolutionary of the most pronounced type.”⁵ But the most compelling character in the novel is a secondary character, Mr. Lampooner. Lampooner is a Member of Parliament, a “cultured gentleman, a student of many languages, an able journalist, and a man of aristocratic descent.”⁶ He is sardonic about the revolt, and once his Cassandra-like warnings are ignored he simply smiles knowingly and cynically as the revolution proceeds. When the anarchists reach Parliament, Mr. Lampooner is the one to welcome them.

Print: Charles Gleig, When All Men Starve, Showing How England Hazarded Her Naval Supremacy. London: J. Lane, 1898.

¹ Charles Gleig, When All Men Starve, Showing How England Hazarded Her Naval Supremacy (New York: J. Lane, 1898), 179.

² Gleig, When All Men Starve, 192.

³ Gleig, When All Men Starve, 65.

⁴ Gleig, When All Men Starve, 138.

⁵ Gleig, When All Men Starve, 138.

⁶ Gleig, When All Men Starve, 83.