IT could not have escaped readers’ attention, with all the moving ceremonies that have been held throughout Europe this week, that 100 years ago the country was coming to terms with being at war.

Famous names were getting behind the war effort according to The Argus including the wife of inventor and electric railway pioneer Magnus Volk.

Mrs Magnus Volk was reported in the paper as leading the local Red Cross Society war effort in donating medical supplies for the army and navy while also creating servicemen’s shirts.

All and sundry were offering up their services for the cause.

A Mrs Taplin of Harrington Road in Brighton was reported to have “intimated her readiness to receive and give attention to a poor wounded soldier if one is entrusted to her charge”.

It is hard to tell looking back through the mists of time whether this was the act of a fiercely patriotic servant or the plea of a lonely spinster.

Our reporter also witnessed “pathetic scenes” in preparation for war in Worthing – though one suspects he was not using the word with the modern definition.

Horse owners were visibly moved by the act of giving up their finest thoroughbreds to the war effort – and this without knowing what carnage they were packing them off to.

The struggles were felt at home as they were on the battlefields and authorities were remarkably quick to be alive to this fact.

Within days of the country’s entry into war, East Sussex County Council chairman RL Thornton was calling upon the mayors of Lewes, Bexhill and Rye among others, to form a committee “for the purpose of dealing with distress and unemployment which may be caused by a rise in prices or dislocation of trade owing to the war”.