During the
First World War Winnington-Ingram threw himself into supporting the war effort. He saw the war as a "great crusade to defend the weak against the strong" and accepted uncritically stories of German atrocities. For a clergyman the language he used about the German people verged on xenophobia and
H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister at the outbreak of the war, described his pitch as "jingoism of the shallowest kind". He spoke in aid of recruiting drives and later in the war urged his younger clergy to consider enlisting as combatants. Chaplain from 1901 to the
London Rifle Brigade and
London Royal Naval Volunteers, he visited the troops on both the
Western Front and at
Salonika, and the
Grand Fleet at
Rosyth and
Scapa Flow. A despatch from Field Marshal
French portrayed Winnington-Ingram's visit to the Western Front; "The Bishop held several services virtually under shell fire, and it was with difficulty that he could be prevented from carrying on his ministrations under rifle fire in the trenches." Such apparent derring-do and appeals to patriotism strengthened his reputation as a 'people's bishop'. Winnington-Ingram was renowned as a charismatic preacher and persuasive writer, and he was arguably better known and more influential than either of the archbishops. Examples of his persuasive vocabulary can be traced throughout the War in the monthly
London Diocesan Magazine, often quoted in the press: "Now, Jerusalem is a beautiful place, but England is far more beautiful", "We face possibly another year of war, but it is God’s War; it is War for peace; it is a War for all the things which are essential to lasting peace, freedom, respect for national aspirations, international honour and chivalry to the weak", "Great Britain has risen like a tower out of the deep and stands today higher in the opinion of the world than it has since
Trafalgar and
Waterloo". For his war work he was
Mentioned in Despatches and awarded the
Grand Cross of the Order of the Redeemer (
Greece) and the
Order of St Sava, 1st Class (
Serbia). ==Later life and legacy==