On 3 August 1914, the British Empire declared war on Germany.   Sir Arthur Conan Doyle captured the feeling of the time when he declared:  ‘If the cricketer had a straight eye let him look along the barrel of a rifle. If a footballer had strength of limb let them serve and march in the field of battle.’  At first the football season continued without interruption, but by November 1914, as much of Britain's professional army lay dead in the mud of Flanders, the game came under increasingly hostile criticism in the press.  In response a Special article appeared in The Times on 28 November defending football’s contribution to the war effort.   Written by G. Wagstaffe Simmons, Hon. Secretary of the Herts Football Association, the article claimed that there were only about 5,000 professionals all told and 2,000 were already serving in the armed forces.  Only about 6,000 unmarried men who depended on the game for their livelihood had not volunteered.     On the same page a list of leading clubs was given together with some detail about the volunteers which they had provided.   West Bromwich Albion, for example, had formed a special company attached to the Fifth South Staffordshire Territorials.  Although it had been raised principally from among their supporters eight of the club’s players had enlisted.    ‘Those who play and watch football cannot understand why this sport should have been singled out’, Wagstaffe Simmons complained ‘bearing in mind that it has contributed more men to the colours and more money to war funds than all other sports combined.   Over 100,000 amateur football players have responded to the call to arms, and others are joining every day.  Thousands of clubs have suspended operations because they have not players to play matches.’   

In spite of the controversy, the 1914-1915 football season was completed with Sheffield United defeating Chelsea in the FA Cup final.  The match was dubbed “The Khaki Final” because of the number of uniformed spectators present.   Despite a hostile press the recruiting campaign among football followers had been so successful that by the end of the season attendances fell by half and most of the best players were in uniform.  The pressures from falling attendances and associated financial problems, the increasing difficulty of keeping up team strengths and the perils of travelling on a wartime railway, persuaded the football authorities not to continue after the 1914-15 season.   After he had presented the FA Cup and medals in 1915, Lord Derby said, ‘the clubs and their supporters had seen the cup played for, and it was not the duty of everyone to join with each other and play a sterner game for England’.  The Football League expressed much the same hope to its players: ‘every eligible young man will find in the service of the nation a higher call than in playing football’.    Unlike many continental powers, Britain in 1914 had no tradition of compulsory military service.   War Minister, Earl Kitchener, undertook instead to raise a New Army of volunteers for the relatively small British Expeditionary Force that the government considered necessary.   The formation of a volunteer army in 1914 was greatly assisted by the decision to General Henry Rawlinson suggestion that men would be more willing to join up if they could serve with people they already knew.   These regiments became known as ‘Pals Battalions’.    The 15th (service) Battalion (1st Leeds) The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) was known as "The Leeds Pals".    Amongst its ranks were sportsmen such as Yorkshire County Cricket Club players, athletes and footballers.   Prominent among the later was Evelyn Lintott,  a teacher who became a professional footballer, appearing for Plymouth Argyle, Queens Park Rangers, Bradford City and Leeds City. He was the first professional footballer to gain a commission.   He was killed in action on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Somme offensive.   

The 17th Battalion of the Duke of Cambridge's Own Middlesex Regiment was known as the "Footballers' Battalion".   Its numbers included no less than forty players and staff from Clapton Orient (now Leyton Orient) the first English Football League club to enlist together.   The club’s leading goal-scorers Richard McFadden and William Jonas were amongst those killed during the Battle of the Somme. Walter Tull, one of the first black professional footballers, was another outstanding footballer who abandoned his career and joined the 1st Football Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment.  On 25th March, 1918, Walter was ordered to lead his men on an attack on the German trenches at Favreuil.   Soon after entering No Mans Land, he was hit by a German bullet. In Scotland, though the Scottish FA withheld their Cup for the duration, the League programme continued.   At the beginning of the 1914 football season, Hearts was Scotland's most successful team, winning eight games in succession.   In response to an appeal to the Hearts players every member of the team joined a new battalion being promoted in Edinburgh by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George McCrae.  Three of the Hearts’ players, Harry Wattie, Duncan Currie and Ernie Ellis, were killed at the Somme.  Another member of the team, 22 year old Paddy Crossan, survived the war but later died as a result of his lungs being destroyed by poison gas.  By the end of the war seven members of the Hearts team had been killed in action.   

Football did not only provide the army with many of its greatest stars, it also left us with two lingering images of the bloody conflict on the Western Front.   The Christmas Truce of 1914, when British and German soldiers gathered in No Man’s Land and took part in a kickabout between the shell-holes has become the stuff of legend.  Another image is that of regiments, most notably the 8th East Surreys, who kicked footballs as they advanced across No Man’s Land through heavy machine gun and motor fire.   Both events underline the importance of football to the common solider.  Whether as regimental competitions or a simple knockabout, it provided soldiers with a welcome diversion and thousands of footballs made their way to the Front.  Captain J.L. Jack, of the Scottish Rifles complained ‘However tired the rascals may be for parades, they always have enough energy for football’.  When peace finally came in November 1918 it took people by surprise much as the outbreak of war had done four years earlier.   With the war at an end, the appetite for football quickly returned as the clubs assessed their playing staff and repaired their grounds.   By 1921-22 the Football League had expanded to 86 clubs compared with just 40 before the war as football move into its golden era.   It did so without a whole generation of footballers, both household names and unknown, who had been killed and maimed on the battlefields of the First World War.   Many clubs had lost players, Tottenham alone had lost eleven players who were once on their books.   They are remembered now only by the most dedicated of football fans.  Heart’s have a permanent memorial to their war dead situated in Edinburgh’s Haymarket and every Remembrance Sunday officials, players and supporters of the club gather to pay their respects to a team which inspired a nation at war.