short length of county court cases and the number of cases Hastings got meant that he dealt with up to six cases in a single day, running from court to court with his pupils in a "Mafeking procession" which he later described as "the forerunners of the modern Panzer division". First World War Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Hastings and his family were preparing to travel to Germany for a holiday. On the day of departure he received a note from a client, which read "You tell me you are going to Germany. Don't go, we shall be at war within forty-eight hours". Hastings heeded this warning, and remained in England – war was declared between Britain and Germany less than two days later. Hastings himself volunteered to serve in the armed forces, but was rejected as medically unfit. Gruban v Booth His next noted civil case was that of Gruban v Booth. John Gruban was a German-born businessman, originally named Johann Wilhelm Gruban, who had come to England in 1893 to work for an engineering company, Haigh and Company. By 1913 he had turned the business from an almost-bankrupt company to a successful manufacturer of machine tools, and at the outbreak of the First World War it was one of the first companies to produce machine tools used to make munitions. This made Gruban a major figure in a now-large market, and he attempted to raise £5,000 to expand his business (equivalent to approximately £ in 2015). On independent advice, he contacted Frederick Handel Booth, a noted Liberal Member of Parliament who was chairman of the Yorkshire Iron and Coal Company and had led the government inquiry into the Marconi scandal. When Gruban contacted Booth, Booth told him that he could do "more for [your] company than any man in England", claiming that David Lloyd George (at the time Minister of Munitions) and many other important government officials were close friends. With £3,500 borrowed from his brother-in-law, Booth immediately invested in Gruban's company. Booth worked his way into the company with a string of false claims about his influence, and finally became chairman of the Board of Directors by claiming that it was the only way to avoid Gruban being interned due to his German origin. As soon as this happened, he cut Gruban out of the company, leaving him destitute, and eventually arranged for