He joined the City Imperial Volunteers during the Black Week of the early Second Boer War, and served as a dispatch rider.
[1] They went to Canada in autumn 1915, and resolved the administrative supply difficulties, to the satisfaction of Robert Borden and Sam Hughes, by appointing Joseph Flavelle to head the new board, replacing the existing Shell Committee.
[8][1][9] Cammell Laird had common ground with English Electric, which had taken over Coventry Ordnance Works from it in 1918, and a financial stake through loans made.
[11] Hichens stayed as chairman until 1930, when restructuring had occurred and Holberry Mensforth had been brought in, who recruited George Nelson.
[1] Hichens was considered a progressive employer, with views on working hours, minimum wage and job security comparable to those of Lord Leverhulme and Seebohm Rowntree.
[15] In the wartime context of the Ministry of Munitions he had suggested a type of joint industrial council, about which George Ranken Askwith had reservations.
[16] He gave a paper in 1919 to the Society for Arts on "The Wage Problem in Industry", which caused Askwith to express astonishment.
[21][22] David Carnegie, whom Hichens had encountered on the Shell Committee and Imperial Munitions Board, was a CSU supporter and Liberal Party candidate who adopted his line on industrial relations in the ICF.