You will almost certainly ignore all the facts you have been presented with - a few more for you to ignore
Jim Carroll

The traditional image of recruitment in 1914 is of an initial wave of enthusiasm and volunteering greeting the outbreak of war. At the beginning of August 1914, Parliament issued a call for an extra 100,000 soldiers. Recruitment in the first few weeks of war was high, but the real 'recruiting boom' began in the last week of August, when news of the British retreat following the Battle of Mons reached Britain. Recruiting peaked in the first week of September.[2]
By the end of September, over 750,000 men had enlisted; by January 1915, a million. The reasons for their enlistment cannot be pinned down to a single factor; enthusiasm and a war spirit certainly drove some, while for others unemployment prompted enlistment. Some employers forced men to join up, while occasionally Poor Law Guardians would also refuse to pay support for fit military-aged men. The timing of the recruiting boom in the wake of the news from Mons, though, suggests that men joined knowing that the war was dangerous and indeed many joined precisely because it seemed to be a threat to their home, district and country.[3]
One early peculiarity was the formation of "Pals battalions": groups of men from the same factory, football team, bank or similar, joining and fighting together. The idea was first suggested at a public meeting by Lord Derby. Within three days, he oversaw enough volunteers sufficient for three battalions. Lord Kitchener gave official approval for the measure almost instantly and the response was impressive. Manchester raised fifteen specific 'Pals' battalions; one of the smallest was Accrington, in Lancashire, which raised one. The drawback of 'Pals' battalions was that a whole town could lose its military-aged menfolk in a single day.
The government demand for men continued unabated, and after the first call in August for 500,000 men; a further 3.5 million were called-for before the year ended. The pre-war calculations had supposed that the British Expeditionary Force would lose around 40% of its manpower in the first six months of fighting. Kitchener's predictions of three years fighting and a million men needed was regarded as incredible. The seven divisions of the BEF, totalling 85,000 men, had been landed in France at the outbreak of war; casualties in the first three months totalled almost 90,000. By mid-1915, this total had risen to around 375,000 even before the autumn offensives and the rate of recruitment was falling off, for a number of reasons.


May 1915 poster by E. V. Kealey, from the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee
In 1915 the total available number of men of military age was 5.5 million, with around 500,000 more reaching the age each year. By late September, 2.25 million men had been enlisted and 1.5 million were in reserved occupations. Of the rest, the recruiters had uncovered a dismaying fact — almost two in every five volunteers were entirely unsuitable for military service on the grounds of health. When volunteer numbers fell to around 70,000 a month after the Dardanelles Expedition, the government felt forced to intervene, although they initially avoided conscription. A National Registration Act in 1915 created a register that revealed the number of men still available and they were targeted in a number of ways. The skills of advertising were brought to bear with posters, public meetings, tales of German atrocities, and the threat of shame. The 'Derby Scheme' used door-to-door visits to gather men to 'attest' to serve if needed, with a promise that bachelors would be called up before married men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recruitment_to_the_British_Army_during_the_First_World_War