In November 1902, when the Education Act was passing through its final stages, Macnamara was interviewed for the magazine the World, which was running a series entitled ‘Celebrities at Home’. On the wall of the drawing room of his house in Rollscourt Avenue, Herne Hill, hung two portraits, one of his father-in-law, clad in the plaid and tartan of the Camerons, the other of Sergeant Macnamara. In the study was an old tin pipe case which, Macnamara said, had been compulsorily sold to soldiers for two shillings and sixpence. His father had used it for months in the trenches before Sebastopol. The tale evoked an expression of regret that in the House of Commons circumstances had tied him to one subject. He was particularly anxious to speak up for the private soldier: ‘Now if I had my own way, I should like to be heard on the subject of Tommy Atkins and his condition of life, but no-one would listen to me … There is much I could say on the wrongs of poor speechless Tommy.’

Sponsored by the NUT and the Educational Newspaper Company to advance the cause of education, Macnamara had never disguised his interest in the Army. ‘Are you a pro-Boer?’, he had been asked at a constituency meeting during the khaki election, when the Liberal Party's reservations about the conduct of the war were being exploited by its opponents.