On 7th August, 1914, Lord Kitchener, the war minister, began a mass recruiting campaign, three days after Britain declared war on Germany.
Kitchener's appeal called for men aged between 19 and 30 to join the British Army. At first an average of 33,000 men were joining up each day but this was still not enough, and three weeks later Kitchener raised the recruiting age to 35. By the middle of September over 500,000 men had volunteered their services. By the end of 1915 some two million men had volunteered their services, including the entire Hearts first team squad who joined en masse leading supporters to the recruiting office. By the war's end a total of 147,609 Scots had been killed, a fifth of Britain's dead from a country that made up only 10% of its population.
