Warfare and belligerence: Perspectives in First World War Studies

Citation preview

WARFARE AND BELLIGERENCE

HISTORY OF WARFARE General Editor

kelly devries Loyola College Founding Editors

theresa vann paul chevedden VOLUME 30

WARFARE AND BELLIGERENCE Perspectives in First World War Studies

EDITED BY

PIERRE PURSEIGLE

BRILL LEIDEN BOSTON 2005 •

On the cover: Emile Friant, “Venez en aide aux soldats Alsaciens-Lorraines” (“Come to the aid of the soldiers of Alsace and Lorraine”), 1916. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington. Fr.G2.1916. Brill Academic Publishers has done its best to establish rights to use of the materials printed herein. Should any other party feel that its rights have been infringed we would be glad to take up contact with them. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Warfare and belligerence : perspectives in First World War studies / edited by Pierre Purseigle. p. cm. — (History of warfare, ISSN 1385-7827 ; v. 30) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: “It all goes wrong” / Dennis Showalter—Discipline in the Italian Army, 1915-1918 / Vanda Wilcox—New Jerusalems / Patrick Porter—Encountering the enemy / Heather Jones— Marc Sangnier’s war, 1914-1919 / Gearóid Barry—From liberalism to labour / Paul Mulvey—Protest and disability / Jennifer D. Keene—Huts, demobilization, and the quest for an associational life in rural communities in England after the war / Keith Grieves—An American geographer between science and diplomacy / Nicolas Ginsburger—The Great War and modern scholarship / Elizabeth Fordham—New writers, new literary genres, 1914-1918 / Nicolas Beaupré—Women readers of Henri Barbusse / Leonard V. Smith—Cinematic representations of the enemy in Belgian silent fiction films / Leen Engelen—Paris, Berlin / Elise Julien. ISBN 90-04-14352-1 (alk. paper) 1. World War, 1914-1918—Social aspects. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Historiography. 3. War and civilization—History—20th century. 4. War and society—History—20th century. I. Purseigle, Pierre. II. Series. D523.W345 2005 940.3—dc22 2005042022 ISSN 1385–7827 ISBN 90 04 14352 1 © Copyright 2005 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ........................................................................ List of Figures, Maps and Graphs ............................................ Notes on Contributors ................................................................

vii ix xi

Introduction Warfare and Belligerence: Approaches to the First World War .............................................................. Pierre Purseigle

1

Chapter One ‘It All Goes Wrong!’: German, French, and British Approaches to Mastering the Western Front ........................................................................ Dennis Showalter Chapter Two Discipline in the Italian Army 1915–1918 .... Vanda Wilcox

39 73

Chapter Three New Jerusalems: Sacrifice and Redemption in the War Experiences of English and German Military Chaplains ................................................................................ 101 Patrick Porter Chapter Four Encountering the ‘Enemy’: Prisoner of War Transport and the Development of War Cultures in 1914 .................................................................................... 133 Heather Jones Chapter Five Marc Sangnier’s War, 1914–1919: Portrait of a Soldier, Catholic and Social Activist ............................ 163 Gearóid Barry Chapter Six From Liberalism to Labour: Josiah C. Wedgwood and English Liberalism During the First World War .............................................................................. 189 Paul Mulvey Chapter Seven Protest and Disability: A New Look at African American Soldiers During the First World War ... 215 Jennifer D. Keene

vi

contents

Chapter Eight Huts, Demobilisation and the Quest for an Associational Life in Rural Communities in England after the Great War .............................................................. 243 Keith Grieves Chapter Nine An American Geographer between Science and Diplomacy: The Mission of Douglas W. Johnson in Europe, May-November 1918 .............................................. 265 Nicolas Ginsburger Chapter Ten The Great War and Modern Scholarship: Academic Responses to War in Paris and London ............ 295 Elizabeth Fordham Chapter Eleven New Writers, New Literary Genres (1914–1918): The Contribution of Historical Comparatism (France, Germany) .................................................................. 323 Nicolas Beaupré Chapter Twelve Women Readers of Henri Barbusse: The Evidence of Letters to the Author .............................. 347 Leonard V. Smith Chapter Thirteen Cinematic Representations of the Enemy in Belgian Silent Fiction Films ................................ 359 Leen Engelen Chapter Fourteen Paris, Berlin: War Memory in Two Capital Cities (1914–1933) .................................................... 379 Elise Julien Index ............................................................................................ 413

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The essays gathered together in this book were originally presented at the Second European Conference organized by the International Society for First World Studies in Oxford on 23 and 24 June 2003. I would like to express my gratitude to those without whose support neither the conference nor the book would have been possible. The conference was jointly sponsored and financially supported by the Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO), the Faculty of Modern History at the University of Oxford, and the Scientific Services at the French Embassy in the United Kingdom. Professor Jean-Claude Sergeant, at the Maison Française, Professor Hew Strachan, at Oxford, and Dr. Mariana Saad, at the French Embassy, were instrumental in securing the support of their respective institution. Co-founder of the International Society for First World War Studies, Dr. Jenny Macleod inspired and supported this project from its inception. Her friendship and intellectual rigor have once again proved invaluable. At the Maison Française, fellow historians and Lavoisier Scholars, Clarisse Berthezène and Pauline Lavagne d’Ortigue, deserve special mention. I shall remain indebted for their friendship, encouragements, advice and our endless conversations over most needed black coffee. The presence and participation of the following speakers, discussants, and chairs greatly contributed to the success of our conference: Dr. Niall Barr, Dr. Clarisse Berthezène, Gail Braybon, Veronika Burget, Dr. Martin Conway, Dr. Anne Duménil, Dr. Martin Farr, Professor Robert Gildea, Dr. Stefan Goebel, Dr. Adrian Gregory, Dr. Jenny Macleod, Dr. Jessica Meyer, Dr. Mike Neiberg, Catriona Pennell, Moni Riez, Dr. Gary Sheffield, Professor David Stevenson, Dr. Matthew Stibbe, Professor Hew Strachan, Ismee Tames, Dr. Jeff Verhey, Dr. Thomas Weber, Professor Jay Winter. This book and its contributors benefited immensely from the perceptive comments and insights they then offered. The smooth running of the conference largely depended on the help and professionalism of the MFO staff. I am especially grateful

viii

acknowledgments

to Pascale Jacquot, Beatrice Miller, Anna Rosenschild-Paulin, Lucia Sa, Claire Stevenson, and Fanny Thépot. At Brill Academic Publishers, Julian Deahl and Marcella Mulder have, once again, been outstanding. Michael Finch did not only manage to emerge relatively unscathed from my tutorials while at Pembroke, but also provided me with priceless editorial assistance towards the completion of this book. Throughout its preparation, I have also benefited from the financial support of the Besse Foundation and of the Centre d’Etude d’Histoire de la Défense. Thanks to the Master, the Fellows, and the Members of Pembroke College, Oxford, I have had the chance to work in a congenial and dedicated academic community. My friends within the Middle Common Room helped me seeing this project through in ways they do not know. Pierre Purseigle

LIST OF FIGURES, MAPS AND GRAPHS

Figures 1. An analysis of descriptive associations made in British prisoners’ statements in the Report on the Transport of British Prisoners of War to Germany, August-December 1914, PRO, Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 8084, Miscellaneous no. 3 (1918) MF 124.233. 2. “Red Cross or Iron Cross?”. From Gilbert, S. and Gubar, S.M. No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Vol. II, Sexchanges (New Haven-London: 1988–1994), p. 289. Trustees of the Imperial War Museum. 3. “The End of the War: Starting Home”, Horace Pippin, 1930–33. Philadelphia Museum of Art (Gift of Robert Carlen, 1941). 4. German General-Governor Colmar von der Goltz, “Von der Goltz Pacha”. Still from La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit, Armand du Plessy, 1921. 5. Poster for La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit, Armand du Plessy, 1921. Collection of Paul Geens (Belgium). 6. ‘Une importante réunion des têtes carrées.’ Still from La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit, Armand du Plessy, 1921.

Maps 1. Paris and the Département of the Seine. 2. Berlin and its memorials.

Graphs 1. Memorials to the Dead in Paris and Its Suburbs. 2. Memorials to the Dead in the Old and Greater Berlin.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Gearóid Barry is a Government of Ireland Research Scholar. Graduating from the University of Dublin with a Moderatorship in History and Political Science, he has been a visiting teacher at the École normale supérieure, Cachan. He is currently completing his doctoral thesis on French Catholicism and cultural demobilization in the interwar period at the Department of Modern History, Trinity College Dublin, where he is also a Teaching Assistant. Nicolas Beaupré, Ph.D. in History (2002), is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the CRIA (CNRS-EHESS, Paris). A Research Associate at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Les écrivains combattants français et allemands de la Grande Guerre (1914–1920). He is the co-editor, with Anne Duménil and Christian Ingrao, of 1914 –1945. L’ère de la guerre, 2 vols. (2004); and with Dorota Dakowska and Agnès Bensussan, of Die Überlieferung der Diktaturen. Beiträge zum Umgang mit Geheimarchiven in Polen und Deutschland nach 1989 (2004). Leen Engelen studied at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. After receiving a degree in Media Studies, she started working as an assistant at the Department of Media Studies of the Catholic University of Leuven where she specialized in film studies and history with a strong interest in 1920s silent film. Since 2001, she has been a Research Scholar at the Fund for Scientific Research in Flanders. She is working towards a Ph.D. on the representation of the First World War in interwar Belgian fiction films. Elizabeth Fordham is a graduate of Cambridge University and the European University Institute, Florence, and is currently a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She has published several articles on French and British intellectuals in the twentieth century.

xii

notes on contributors

Nicolas Ginsburger teaches Modern History at the University of Paris X – Nanterre. A graduate from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, he studied at the Sorbonne (Paris I) and at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. He is working towards a Ph.D. on American and European geographers during the First World War under Professor Annette Becker. Keith Grieves is Reader in History at Kingston University. He has edited source materials on Sussex in the First World War for the Sussex Record Society in 2004, and written articles on the impact of war on local communities. He is currently working on a project on changes in rural social structures during and after the Great War in southern England. Heather Jones was educated at Trinity College, University of Dublin and St John’s College, Cambridge. She is at present completing a Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin on the treatment of British, French and German prisoners of war during the First World War. She was elected to a Foundation Scholarship in Trinity in 1998. Jones is a Government of Ireland Research Scholar. Elise Julien is a Research Scholar at the Berliner Kolleg für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas (Berlin School for the Comparative History of Europe). She read History at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the Free University in Berlin. She is working towards a FrancoGerman Ph.D. on the memory of the First World War in Paris and Berlin. Jennifer D. Keene is an Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Chapman University in Orange, California. She is the author of Doughboys, the Great War and the Remaking of America (2001) and The United States and the First World War (2000), as well as numerous articles about the American experience during the First World War. Keene has been the recipient of Fulbright, Mellon, Beveridge, and National Research Council grants. She is presently completing a book on the African American experience during the First World War. Paul Mulvey is currently lecturing in International History at the London School of Economics. He has a first degree in Law from

notes on contributors

xiii

Oxford University and a Master’s degree and Doctorate in History from London University. His first book, a biography of the British Edwardian Radical J.C. Wedgwood, is due to be published by the Royal Historical Society in 2006. Patrick Porter is a graduate history student at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London and a Tutor in Modern History at the University of Oxford. A graduate from the University of Melbourne with degrees in History and Law, he is writing a doctorate on the religious language of blood sacrifice in the British and German armies in the First World War. Pierre Purseigle is a graduate member of Pembroke College and a Tutor in Modern History at the University of Oxford. He graduated from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Lyon and studied History at the University of California, Berkeley and at the University of Toulouse where he is completing a European Doctorate on social mobilization in WWI England and France. He is the co-editor, with Dr. Jenny Macleod, University of Edinburgh, of Uncovered Fields. Perspectives in First World War Studies (2004). Dennis Showalter is a Professor of History at Colorado College and held Visiting Distinguished Professorships at the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy. A past President of the Society for Military History, he has published widely on military history, German history and the history of the First World War. His most recent books include The Wars of German Unification (2004); Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (2nd Ed., 2004), winner of the Paul Birdsall Prize of the American Historical Association; History in Dispute: World War I, 2 vols. (2002); and The Wars of Frederick the Great (1996). Leonard Smith is Frederick B. Artz Professor of History at Oberlin College. He is the author, with Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, of France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (2003), which won the 2004 Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr. Book Prize from the Western Front Association for the best book in English on World War I. He is also the author of Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I (1994), which won the 1994 Paul Birdsall Prize from the American Historical Association; and a

xiv

notes on contributors

co-editor of France at War: Vichy and the Historians (2000). Smith has been a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the Université de Paris VII-Jussieu, and has held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center. Vanda Wilcox is a graduate student at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford, where she graduated in Modern History. She is working towards a D.Phil. on the Italian front in World War I. Her research interests include morale, cultural mobilization and the commemoration of the war.

INTRODUCTION

WARFARE AND BELLIGERENCE: APPROACHES TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR Pierre Purseigle

In 1929, Elie Halévy, the celebrated French historian of the English people, came to Oxford to deliver the third Rhodes Memorial Lectures, and to present the University with his interpretation of the World Crisis of 1914–1918. Halévy intended ‘if not to tell the history of the war, at least to give [. . .] some hints towards a new way of approaching its history, through the knowledge of the action and interaction of [the domestic and international] forces’ that brought about the conflict and ushered in what he went on to call the ‘Era of Tyrannies’.1 In this celebrated speech given without notes to a critical audience2 Halévy propounded a seminal analysis of the conflagration and its consequences that deliberately ignored academic demarcations to encompass the military, economic, social, political and cultural dimensions of the First World War. The contributors to this volume did not expect—and even less pretend—to keep up with the ambitious program bequeathed by Halévy to future historians. However, in accordance with the objectives assigned to the International Society for First World War Studies, this collection of essays suggests some of the ways in which an interdisciplinary perspective may contribute to our understanding of the Great War. The dynamism and diversity of current First World War studies may be interpreted as a belated historiographical adaptation to the transformations of war which led, in the words of Clausewitz, to the ‘Absolute War’, dramatically epitomized in 1914–1918. Beyond the technological and logistical evolution precipitated by the Industrial Revolutions, ‘this transformation was itself ’, as Michael Howard put it, ‘a function of the transformation of society which occurred when 1

Halevy (1967) 181. According to H.A.L. Fisher in the London Times’ obituary of Halévy on 27 August 1937. 2

introduction — pierre purseigle

2

the narrow social basis of the states-system was broadened by the political participation of new layers of the population.’3 Thenceforth, ‘the military and their activities ceased to enjoy the kind of autonomy that had given the concept of ‘military history’ its peculiar legitimacy.’4 Mischievous commentators might see a demonstration of the resilience of intellectual traditions in that it took generations before the critical changes in the character of war elicited the appropriate academic responses. It was, ultimately, the last decades of the twentieth century that witnessed the development of the interdisciplinary approach which now distinguishes contemporary war studies.5 Historians of the Great War have accordingly established in their own sphere an on-going dialogue between sub-disciplines. Wary of confusing the troops’ experiences and those of the home front populations, scholars now also recognize that the front lines not only separated warring nations, but also cut across belligerent societies and ultimately determined the social responses to the conflict.6 Indeed, the ‘totalizing logic’7 of the First World War entailed the blurring of boundaries between combatants and non-combatants, ‘soldier and civilian’.8 Thus, the coming together of the military and cultural histories of the war, of which this volume is one of many manifestations, demonstrates a timely historiographical adjustment to the dimensions of the conflict. Moreover, the examination of the relationship between the character of the war and the nature of belligerent societies also raises a set of issues which emerged in light of the Second World War. The evolution of warfare then witnessed on a truly global scale, the advent of atomic weapons, and of course, the Holocaust, lent a new significance to the reflections on war and society in the modern era. While not directly concerned with the ethics of war, historians now certainly address the challenges posed by the First World War with an increased sense of urgency. As Antoine Prost and Jay Winter have commented, 3

Howard (1977) 217. Howard (1993) 128. 5 An excellent example is provided by the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War, directed by Professor Hew Strachan, which brings together practitioners, historians, political scientists, lawyers, sociologists, philosophers, and theologians. See http://ccw.politics.ox.ac.uk. 6 In a ‘gender history’ perspective, Susan Grayzel provides a brilliant illustration of this shift. See Grayzel (1999). 7 Horne (1997) 3. 8 Becker (2002) 336–337. 4

warfare and belligerence

3

The war of 1914 . . . is now perceived as the founding act of a short but barbaric century, and those who question it have in their field of consciousness, the enormity of the genocide of Jews, and that of the Soviet camps. Was not the war of 1914 an experimentation of totalitarianisms and mass death?9

The position of the First World War in the periodization of the twentieth century has, therefore, become a central issue. However problematic, the issue of continuity between both world wars now underpins the historiographical agenda. Consequently, historians have begun to question national chronologies deemed inadequate for examining the significance of the war. Moreover, this rupture with traditional and national narratives has resulted in the growth of comparative studies that analyze the conflict as a transnational phenomenon. Indeed, while soul-searching about the nature of European identity has grown rife on the continent, the historiography of the First World War has become part of a wider cultural and political reflection on the contours of Europe. Thus, the study of the 1914–1918 ‘crisis in European history’ has led to an investigation of the conditions of a European history of the war. As a truly comparative undertaking, this European history of the conflict ought to move beyond a mere juxtaposition of national case studies to propound a common interpretative framework that would shed light on the war experience of societies and armies, and stress their commonalities as well as their distinctions. A concomitant engagement with the historiography of extra-European belligerents would then question the emergence of a ‘European identity’ through the wars and catastrophes of the twentieth century. Ultimately, this enterprise may also suggest ways and methods to combine the history of warfare into general history. Yet, such an integrated historical narrative not only demands ongoing exchanges between different quarters of the historiography; the description, understanding, and explanation of the wartime experience of two or more societies necessitates the construction of common analytical categories. Their elaboration constitutes one of the challenges of comparative history. This introduction is intended to be a modest and limited contribution towards this most urgent collaborative effort.

9

Prost & Winter (2004) Ellipses and translation are mine.

introduction — pierre purseigle

4

The attention given here to the issues of mobilization, participation and violence, reveals a particular—but not exclusive—perspective on the dialectical relationship between the nature of the Great War and the investment of European societies in the conflict or, in other words, an assessment of the relationship between warfare and belligerence in 1914–1918. In order to carry out any such assessment it is necessary to discuss two historiographical positions that respectively tackle the aforementioned issues to provide a general interpretation of the First World War. First I will address the perspective developed by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker in their study of the 1914–18 ‘war culture.’10 Second, I will consider Michael Geyer’s analysis which interprets the Great War as the stepping-stone towards the ‘militarization of Europe’.11 Equally ambitious, wide-ranging and challenging, these interpretations constitute two distinct but related paradigms that see the First World War as the harbinger of a brutalized twentieth century. Since their original formulations, they have stimulated and contributed to a dynamic program of research and spurred fruitful debates among historians. My objective in the following pages is to engage in the discussions both paradigms invite us to, and in so doing, to call into question the specific type of belligerence that characterized European societies at war between 1914 and 1918.

From the cultural history of the Great War to the 1914–1918 ‘war culture’: The shift towards an interpretive paradigm Arguably, many—if not most—of the questions addressed in the works discussed here have been part of the historical agenda since the conflagration broke out. Nevertheless, their current articulation largely derives from the comparative and cultural turns that reinvigorated the study of the conflict from the 1990s onwards.12 Out of this particular historiographical configuration, arose a ‘new cultural history’, whose proponents explicitly embarked on the writing of a European history of the war. An international group of scholars,

10 11 12

Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker (2000). Geyer (1989). Winter (1998).

warfare and belligerence

5

associated with the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne, has thus led a movement whose influence on recent scholarship is undeniable, and acknowledged by those who, like the present author, have entered the fray in the wake of Péronne’s scientific project.13 Central to the Historial’s undertaking was the conviction that the systems of representation that developed in the belligerent societies shaped the experience of the conflict through the mobilization of state agencies and civil societies, regardless of nationalities and allegiances. Thus conceived, the cultural history of the Great War induced a fresh look at the interplay between nation-states at war and the diverse social, political and religious cultures of their populations and armies, encompassing front and home front in a globalizing approach.14 The co-directors of the Historial’s research center, Stéphane AudoinRouzeau and Annette Becker, have been instrumental through their individual and collaborative works in bringing about this significant development in First World War studies, which has been critical to our understanding of the conflict. Anxious to make sense of the ‘investment of the European populations in the conflict’,15 they have systematized an interpretation, which hinges on the articulation of consent, eschatology, and violence. In doing so, they argue against the grain of collective memory, and refute the notion that the experience of the conflict was solely one of victimization, and instead emphasize the importance of mechanisms of popular consent to the war.16 They describe how ‘defensive acquiescence’17 to both military engagement and social mobilization was made possible by the force and resilience of national cultural constructions. These had been endowed with ‘immense positive expectations,’ which reinforced the strength of national sentiments through the language and images of the sacred. Building on Becker’s insights into wartime spirituality,18 they stress the ‘immense collective tension of an eschatological kind’19 and the syncretic

13

Purseigle & Macleod (2004). Prost & Winter (2004) 220. 15 Audoin-Rouzeau (1995) 10. 16 ‘Dans la conscience mémorielle, mieux vaut être victime qu’agent de souffrance et de mort. Celle-ci est toujours reçue, toujours anonyme, n’est jamais donnée : on en est, toujours, la victime’ Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker (2000) 9. 17 Audoin-Rouzeau (1997) 112. 18 Becker (1994). 19 ‘Qu’on le veuille ou non, la guerre de 1914–1918, dès qu’on veut bien l’envisager sous 14

6

introduction — pierre purseigle

convergences of religious creeds and secular ideologies into a ‘war culture’. However, it is the integration of George L. Mosse’s concept of ‘brutalization’20 that turned their exploration of the cultural history of the First World War into the construction of a fully-fledged historiographical paradigm, in which war violence assumes a critical centrality, and where ‘war culture’ is no longer apprehended as a mere consequence of the war, but as ‘its true matrix’.21 This insistence on the matricial character of the ‘war culture’ therefore ascribes a new significance to the conflict, seeing it as the harbinger of the industrialized massacres of the Second World War, and as the midwife of the barbaric ‘short twentieth century.’22 Vigorously pursued by its proponents, the ‘war culture’ paradigm has permeated through a large section of the historiography and given rise to a fascinating and growing body of scholarship, but it also lies open to criticism. The emphasis on the matricial character of the ‘war culture’ prompted reviewers to point out in the first instance the circularity of a causal system that, despite all its potency, curtails the heuristic quality of its main concept and thus undermines the overall interpretation of the conflict.23 Moreover, the central role bestowed on ‘war culture’ in this paradigm implies a hierarchy of interpretative factors on top of which culture would be the ultimate determinant. In this respect, military history raises a caveat. It allows for the complexity of warfare and conduces to a more balanced appraisal of elements such as logistics, technology, tactical or operational constraints that, along with the combatants’ cultures, affected the character of war.24 Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker rightly highlight the major components of wartime systems of representation. As they correctly contend, the hatred of the enemy loomed large in the ‘dominant represental’angle des cultures, fut une immense tension collective de type eschatologique.’ Audoin-Rouzeau (1995) 179. 20 Mosse (1990). 21 Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker (1994) 6. 22 Audoin-Rouzeau (2002). 23 I am very grateful for the perceptive comments made by Jenny Macleod on this point. More recent elaborations on this ‘circularity issue’ may be found in Mariot (2003) 160 and Prost & Winter (2004) 141. 24 Showalter (2002) 82. A significant contrast thus appears between Howard (1986) and Cosson (2003).

warfare and belligerence

7

tions’25 of the war and sustained the cultural, moral, and ideological commitment of each nation to fight an uncivilized—even dehumanized—enemy until it capitulated, lest enemy victory should lead to the end of one’s own culture, identity, and way of life. Industrialized warfare was thus construed as a life-and-death struggle and was represented in absolute terms. However, despite its prevalence, this core narrative was constantly reconfigured through a process of acculturation and appropriation that committed social identities and groupings to the war effort. For all its cogency, the intricate dynamic of the wartime system of representation thus brought about a plurality of modes of figuration, rooted in concomitant senses of belonging (class, religious, gender, local identities, etc.) derived from the social history of each belligerent society.26 Therefore, while the diversity of war cultures is paradoxically not to be found in the clash of national identities, it may be misleading to invoke a unified ‘war culture’ to account for the specificities of the undeniable cultural investment into the war effort. Another strand of the critique directed at the ‘war culture’ paradigm has focused on its emphasis upon the belligerent societies’ consent to the war effort. In France, this legitimate debate has turned into a controversy pitting two antagonistic schools of thought, which respectively emphasize ‘consent’ and ‘coercion’.27 In the latter’s perspective, the coercive and ideological State apparatus accounts for the successful suppression of dissent and overall maintenance of discipline.28 Accordingly—and in contrast to most World War I historians—this school contends that the resilience of the armies and belligerent populations could not have manifested a positive commitment to the war effort. A recent and more sophisticated discussion of this issue rightly calls for a precise definition of ‘consent’. Drawing on the work of fellow sociologists, J.D. Wright and M. Dobry, Nicolas Mariot suggests an interesting typology of wartime attitudes and elaborates on the notions of ‘consent’, ‘dissent’, and ‘assent’.29 Whereas the inherent polysemy of ‘consent’ ought not to rule it out

25

Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker (2000) 131. Purseigle (2004). 27 For a distanced, critical yet balanced presentation of the controversy, see Prost (2002). 28 Rousseau (1999), Cazals & Rousseau (2001), Cazals (2003). 29 Mariot (2003). 26

introduction — pierre purseigle

8

of historical narratives, a qualification of this category of attitudes is indeed most welcome. Yet I would take issue with Mariot’s ‘assent’, which implies a sociological alienation that does not seem to characterize the belligerent societies.30 Although alienation should not be excluded as an intellectual hypothesis, it might only have characterized a marginal section of the population, since the scale of disruptions caused by the conflict and above all the near-universality of grief and mourning meant that the war pervaded all spheres of social and individual life. In this respect, the capacity to choose had deserted the European populations; the war was all but impossible to ignore and reject to the outer margins of one’s life. Nonetheless, historians would do well to pay heed to Mariot’s call for a sociological approach to the consent of the populations to the war. Lastly, with Mosse’s concept of ‘brutalization’, it is the cornerstone of the ‘war culture’ paradigm,31 which has recently been qualified and so criticized that doubts may be expressed about the heuristic value of the ‘war culture’ for a comparative history of the war. Mosse’s analysis of the ‘Myth of the War experience’ considers the political consequences of the encounter with mass death, and its effects on the ‘civic religion of nationalism’: Did the confrontation and transcendence of the war experience and death in war lead to what might be called the domestication of modern war, its acceptance as a natural part of political and social life? Did the Myth of the War experience entail a process of brutalization and indifference to individual human life, which was to perpetuate itself in still greater mass violence in our own time?32

In his seminal study of the memory of the First World War, George Mosse thus intended to provide an interpretative key to the emergence and tragic success of Fascisms in the twentieth century. Despite its comparative perspective, historians soon pointed out that however illuminating in the case of Germany, Mosse’s interpretation could not do justice to the post-war period in other major belliger-

30

In J.D. Wright’s words: ‘The chief distinguishing trait of assenters is that they ‘go along’ with the system, not because they are ‘deeply attached to the regime as such’, but because the system is pretty much beside the point of their lives and felt concerns.’ Wright (1976) 268. 31 Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker (2000) 49. 32 Mosse (1990) 11.

warfare and belligerence

9

ent countries.33 Jon Lawrence has demonstrated for instance how, in Britain, the legacy of the war, and the subsequent ‘fears about brutalization’ precluded any legitimation of violence in state and national politics.34 Nonetheless, such criticisms detract nothing from the significance of Mosse’s premise, for in addressing the modalities of the continuation of war in the ‘mind’ of former belligerents, he opened up an area of research, which is now being explored through the study of cultural demobilizations in inter-war Europe.35 Rather more problematic are the links between combat and combatants’ violence, between the unprecedented thresholds reached by war violence in 1914–18 and their transfer and translation into the cultural and political realms. In their acclaimed study of the 1914 ‘German Atrocities,’ John Horne and Alan Kramer explore the dialectical relationship between actual and imagined warfare and the outbreak of illegitimate violence. Their analysis serves as a powerful reminder of the cultural determinants of combat and invites a careful distinction between symbolic and actual violence.36 Moreover, the refracted—and logically distorted—image suggested by ‘violence’ as a historiographical ‘prism’,37 requires further study. In fact, as Antoine Prost recently pointed out, the ‘brutalization’ thesis does not appear to be borne out by a scrutiny of combatants’ narratives and memoirs of Western Front soldiers.38 While remaining a valid hypothesis then, ‘brutalization’ alone may not account for the various processes whereby the war experience altered the political and cultural foundations of the belligerent societies or affected the combatants’ personality structures. By shifting the historiographical emphasis towards the conditions and production of violence, the ‘war culture’ paradigm has reevaluated the importance of agency in the experience of war. Such an

33

Prost (1994). Lawrence (2003). 35 See the conference held at Trinity College, Dublin in September 2001 on this theme: ‘Demobilizing the Mind. Culture, Politics, and the Legacy of the Great War, 1919–1933’ and John Horne’s introduction to Horne (2002). 36 Horne & Kramer (2001). Of course, symbolism often merged into actual violence but this does not diminish the importance of a strict analytical distinction between both categories. 37 Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker (2000) 25, and Audoin-Rouzeau (2002) 74. 38 Prost (2004). 34

10

introduction — pierre purseigle

approach has thus raised issues and challenges cognate to the themes that Michael Geyer considers in his interpretation of the militarization of Europe.

The militarization of Europe and the transformation of civil society In a series of articles addressing the concomitant transformations of war and society in Europe, Michael Geyer adopts a perspective on the history of warfare in the twentieth century akin to that of Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker. Geyer approaches the First World War as a watershed, a ‘rupture in civility’,39 that fundamentally recast the role of warfare in modern European history: The German mobilization for war in World War I was a first step in a long transition toward the habitualization of war—that is, a condition in which the preparation and the use of violence were no longer seen as exceptional or as deviations from the norms of civil society but became their embodiment. This development reached a high water mark in World War II and in the Cold War.40

Encompassing the major belligerents as well as the Western and Eastern fronts in a bold comparative analysis, Geyer focuses on violence in order to illustrate how the evolution in the nature of warfare conduced to the emergence of characteristic warring societies, to which the notion of home front (Heimatfront) referred most appositely. From 1914 onwards, ‘Total war’ thus brought about the dismantling of the civilian sphere, subverted by war violence, which inexorably pervaded societies and led to the dissolution of the civilmilitary divide.41 Therefore, this [martial] national mobilization of society could and did become a source of social self-assertion. It raised questions about the status of mass participation in the organization of the war effort and national politics as well as about social identity and cohesion, and it challenged existing forms of political subordination and social deference. It broke

39

Geyer (1993) 159. Geyer (1989) 101. 41 Geyer (2004). Original German version published as ‘Gewalt und Gewalterfahrung im 20. Jahrhundert—Der Erste Weltkrieg’ in Spilker, Rolf, Ulrich, Bernd, (eds.) Der Tod als Machinist 1914–1918, 1998, 241–257. 40

warfare and belligerence

11

down old modes of domination and created new ones; it recast class, gender, and ethnic identities.42

In this exploration of the ‘militarization’ of Europe, Geyer thus calls for nothing less than a total history of warfare, which would override traditional academic boundaries.43 Geyer underscores the functions and role of civil society in the prosecution of war, for he defines ‘militarization’ as ‘the contradictory and tense social process in which civil society organizes itself for the production of violence’.44 Such a perspective beneficially shifts the emphasis away from the conventional vision of an overbearing ‘industrialized Leviathan’, whose exuberance, rightly underlined by historians of the First World War,45 has nonetheless missed a significant part of the complex relationship between the State and civil society in wartime. Geyer proposes a broad and ambitious analysis of the multifarious dimensions of warfare in twentieth century Europe, that affected social structures and identities alike, as war violence reconfigured modern politics. Geyer ultimately sets out to make sense of the emergence of violence as a political instrument in the interwar years, when together with war, it assumed a central place in the definition of politics and policies adopted by fascist and militant leftist groups. Such groups based their identity on their military service for the nation, pursued the mobilization of society for war as social therapy, or, ultimately, aimed at the violent creation of new societies—societies whose raison d’être and identity were defined by war or the threat of it.46

Here, ‘militarization’ appears in some respect to prefigure Mosse’s ‘brutalization’. In a recent essay, Michael Geyer elaborates on earlier insights to present war as the overarching, defining principle of civil society. Beyond the mere clash of armies and the Materialschlacht, from 1914 onwards war became a permanent state of mind if not a permanent state of affairs. Through this consent to sacrifice for victory, men, equipment and finance in truly unlimited quantity, politics lost its capacity to think

42 43 44 45 46

Geyer (1989) 75. Gillis (1989). Geyer (1989) 79. Bock (1984). Geyer (1989) 70.

12

introduction — pierre purseigle out a European peace—simply to think of a time after war. . . . Politicians and the nations they represented lost sight of their nations’ ability to survive as civil societies in a European context.47

The very scope of Geyer’s interpretation is welcome as it encourages the examination of the First World War across national boundaries and classical chronologies. Yet, its insights as well as its shortcomings remind us of both the virtues and the problems inherent in any interdisciplinary and comparative history of the conflict. To some extent, the ‘militarization of Europe’ appears as a historiographical prolepsis that projects the characteristics of wartime mobilization and subsequent demobilization—or lack thereof—in Germany onto other belligerent societies. It is thus open to the same objections raised by historians of Britain and France to Mosse’s ‘brutalization’ thesis. Moreover, a rather prosaic approach to ‘the production of violence’ in interwar Europe raises another caveat. Should war or the threat of war have remained the raison d’être of European nation-states after the Armistice, then arguably their financial and budgetary structures would certainly have reflected such a dramatic shift in their core policies. However, a brief overview of basic statistical data invalidates this hypothesis. For instance, in France as in Britain, defense expenditures (as a percentage of central government expenditures) decreased until the mid-1930s. At no point between 1918 and 1938 did they even match their pre-war levels.48 In addition, there was a similar trend in the evolution of military personnel.49 In fact, Britain’s ‘ten-year-rule’, whereby the Treasury enforced restrictions on defense departments, stipulated that financial planning should exclude the possibility of any major war over this period of time. That this rule was re-asserted annually until 1936 thus undermines the notion of a ‘militarization’ of Britain.50 More fundamentally, Geyer’s insistence that war ‘organized soci-

47

Geyer (2004). Ellipses and translation are mine. In France, defense expenditure represented 41.1% of the central government expenditures in 1912 and 40.7% in 1938. In Britain, it represented 54.1% in 1913 and 44.4% in 1938. See Flora (1983) 380, 444. 49 In France, military personnel represented 8.6% of the male population aged 20–44 years in 1913 and 7.5% in 1938. In Britain, it represented 6.4% in 1913 and 4.2% in 1938. Ibid., 248–249. 50 I am most grateful to Adrian Gregory for his observations on this point. Clarke (1996) 136. On the transience of wartime policies see also Roseman (1997). 48

warfare and belligerence

13

ety along functional lines and individuals according to their use value in destruction’51 strangely glosses over well-known aspects of wartime social mobilization and misrepresents participation in the war effort as the sole production of violence. Whereas industrial mobilization undeniably supplied the means of violence, and so contributed to its application on the battlefields, historians ought not to equate the soldier’s experience of violence with that of the war worker. Stressing the importance of technological evolutions and especially of the introduction of aerial warfare and bombardment, Geyer also insists on the ‘socialization of danger’ whereby traditionally protected civilians found themselves under enemy fire, in what amounted to the dissolution of the concept of battle and finally, to the collapse of the soldiers’ role as representatives of the nation.52 Yet a critical difference endured between combatants and non-combatants in their respective relationship to the infliction of war violence. If soldiers and civilians alike could fall under the enemy’s assault, the production of violence in 1914–1918 overwhelmingly remained the preserve of the former.53 Further, a significant part of the wartime activity of civil society was also devoted to supporting the troops through the provision of services and goods and to alleviating distress caused by the conflict.54 Soldiers’ comfort and families’ relief funds loomed large in the wartime associational landscape, while the increasing scale of losses set mourning at the heart of the home front community life.55 Any globalizing approach to violence is, in fact, bound to ignore the plurality and inner ambivalences of the war experience and to induce a detrimental confusion between warfare and belligerence.56 Admittedly, renewed attention to war violence between 1914 and 1918 is all the more welcome as it prompts a reevaluation of the Eastern Front, which has so far been relatively neglected by military

51

Geyer (1989) 75. Ibid., 75 and Geyer (2004) 67. 53 It is nonetheless worth noting that in certain circumstances, civilians could acquire military status, as did the members of the Belgian espionage network analyzed by Tammy M. Proctor. See Proctor (2004). 54 For a partial summary of the civil society’s engagement in Britain see Helen Donald-Smith, War distress and war help. Short catalogue of the leading war help societies showing their scope and objects and the addresses of their offices. (London: 1915). 55 Winter (1995). 56 On the notion of ‘ambivalence’ and its significance in the history of societies at war see Laborie (2001) 33. 52

14

introduction — pierre purseigle

and cultural historians alike.57 Indeed, the fate of occupied Serbia, the administration of the Ober Ost,58 and the Armenian Genocide,59 underline among other tragedies the historical significance of the combats that took place in Eastern and Central Europe. For all that, crucial distinctions must nonetheless be maintained between the nature, cultural determinants and strategic significance of the violence witnessed on the Western and Eastern fronts. Hence, Michael Geyer’s assumption of the centrality of violence in the experience of belligerent civil societies deserves, at least, a strict qualification. In fact, the logic that drove wartime social mobilization was less straightforward than Geyer seems to assume. In analyzing the reception of war refugees, I have suggested elsewhere that a dialectic of victimization versus participation may have structured the perception and behavior patterns which ultimately determined the level and form of social mobilization.60 More generally, as the war dragged on, a series of distinct ‘characters’, dominated by the towering figure of the soldier in arms came to embody the ethics of mobilization, creating a ‘language of social morality (what is felt to be ‘fair’ or ‘unjust’, acceptable or unacceptable)’ which regulated ‘relations between social actors.’61 The munitions worker, the nurse, the shirker, the profiteer,62 the prostitute,63 to name but a few, thus presented distinctive figures of mobilization, however positive or negative, that corresponded to specific levels of participation in the war effort. The 1914–1918 ‘language of sacrifice’64 thus shaped the experience of societies at war, whose belligerence was as much determined by restrictions, hardships and the staggering losses as it was by the production of violence. Despite its limitations, Michael Geyer’s interpretation provides some illuminating insights that any exploration of warfare and bel-

57

This re-evaluation of the Eastern Front is another common point between the ‘militarization’ and the ‘war culture’ paradigm. 58 Liulevicius (2000). 59 Bloxham (2003). 60 Purseigle (2005). 61 Horne (1993, 1995). 62 Robert (1997). 63 Le Naour (2002). 64 Stryker (1992).

warfare and belligerence

15

ligerence in the First World War should take into account, lest it miss a much-needed reconsideration of institutional politics, which the recent emphasis on the cultural dynamics of the war effort has somewhat pushed towards the margins of the historiography.65 In fact, Geyer clearly stresses the organizational dimensions of the ‘militarization of Europe’ and points to the reconfiguration of social domination brought about during the conflict. However, this willingness to bring the State—and the mechanisms of domination—back into the history of the First World War stumbled over the difficulty of forging the analytical categories that could meet the challenge of such an ambitious comparative project. For all the importance Geyer rightly ascribes to ‘civil society’, conceived as the main agent of ‘militarization’, he fails to provide an operative definition of the concept. Indeed, he appears to waver between two visions of civil society, whose uneasy combination consequently obscures his analysis of the State in wartime. At first he appears to adopt a definition of civil society as the sphere of economic relations and akin to that of Hegel.66 But he goes on to equate ‘civil society’ with ‘civilian government’ thanks to the very institutional separation from ‘military organization’ that the process of ‘militarization’ would have abolished.67 Here the problem is not so much his understanding of ‘civil society’ as his subsequent definitions of the State in wartime and of the role of the military in the state apparatus. In fact, the distinction so made between the State and the military in 1914–18 does not seem apt. If we were—however tentatively—to suggest how the evolution of the relationship between the military and civilian government came to define political modernity, it would not be by stressing their institutional separation, but rather the subordination of the former to the latter within the hierarchy of the state apparatus, resulting in the emergence of liberal forms of government if not of fully-fledged democracy. Of course, the particular evolution of individual regimes witnessed a significant

65

Prost & Winter (2004) 280, and Mariot (2003) 161. Hegel (2001) §182 passim. Civil society (or civic community) is indeed critical to Hegel’s analysis of the System of Wants. Here the separation between the State and civil society is not complete insofar as the State ensures and guarantees, notably by the administration of justice and by means of police, the satisfaction of wants and the actualization of freedom. See §188. 67 Geyer (1989) 70. 66

16

introduction — pierre purseigle

alteration of the pre-war balance of power within the State apparatus, as the German ‘third OHL’ under the joint leadership of Hindenburg and Ludendorff illustrated. From August 1916, the Supreme Command ‘became the dominant force in German politics, and no civilian politician could effectively oppose its authority’.68 However, the very fact that the implementation of the Hindenburg Program had to come to terms with the growing importance of organized labor and a ‘certain parliamentarisation of the German system of government’69 demonstrates the limits of this process of ‘militarization’. At any rate, it seems difficult to evoke a complete dissolution of the distinction between the military and civilian agencies of the State or the absorption of civil society into the military. The First World War undeniably impelled a realignment of the relationship between states and civil societies. Yet making sense of the interactions between the states and the nations they instituted, represented and ruled, necessitates the construction of clear analytical categories. While comparative historians and social scientists alike often raise a notch in abstraction to subsume national or regional variations within a common intellectual framework, they do so at the risk of submerging and confusing historical reality. Comparative history ought not to sacrifice the imperatives of historical description and narrative on the altar of interpretative ambitions. However stimulating, Geyer’s analysis of France in the Great War illustrates the shortcoming of an approach that dispenses with a strict definition of categories of analysis. Examining the stresses of French all-out mobilization, he notably insists on the devolution of ‘social control and political power . . . to provincial fonctionnaires’ and elites that successfully managed the war effort.70 While he rightly highlights an aspect of wartime mobilization which has often been overlooked, his recourse to a Weberian terminology obscures the politics of mobilization he set out to explain. For all his emphasis on bureaucratic and institutional domination in 1914–1918 he overlooks the fact that Weber’s ‘bureaucracy’ encompasses all sorts of social groupings—be they political, hierocratic, economic, etc.—wherein legitimate domi-

68 69 70

Chickering (1998) 75. Kocka (1984) 130. On the Hindenburg Program see Chickering (1998) 76–82. Geyer (1989) 81 passim.

warfare and belligerence

17

nation is being exercised.71 Therefore, his recourse to a French translation of Weber’s Beamte somehow ahistorically merges civil servants, local elected officials, entrepreneurs, and religious or associational leaders, to name but a few. This confusion is all the more detrimental to his comparative undertaking, in that he seems to neglect the characteristics of the Third Republic’s administrative system. It would for instance be misleading to see the Prefects, the administrative heads of the Départements, who played a critical role in wartime mobilization, as ‘provincial fonctionnaires’. Indeed, even though their administration or ‘bureaucracy’ directed local resources into the war effort and their ‘domination’ was exerted within the Département’s boundaries, they nonetheless remained the representatives of the State, who exercised on its behalf, the prerogatives of the State over the national territory. Subsequently, his indeterminate use of ‘provincial elites’, ‘bourgeoisie’, ‘urban fonctionnaires’, obfuscates his analysis in that we ultimately lose sight of the documented activity of the plurality of social agents, which accounted for social mobilization and testified to the exercise of social domination in wartime. Moreover, any comparative study of wartime politics ought to take stock of the structure of military participation in the communities under scrutiny. It seems difficult to argue as Geyer does, that ‘provincial elites and fonctionnaires managed a course of mobilization while limiting participation’ and to evoke ‘the resurgence of the provincial bourgeoisie’72 in France without considering the respective patterns of recruitment in the country. When the number of enlisted men as a percentage of the male population of military age hovered around 80% in France and Germany, as opposed to 53% in Britain, the political availability of the younger cohorts was significantly curtailed in the former countries.73 Therefore, military recruitment reinforced the social determinants of a political system that already put a premium on the accumulation of social capital and financial resources. The characteristics of wartime politics may thus have owed more to the structure of military participation than to the nature of a hazy ‘militarized provincial bourgeoisie’. The ‘war culture’ and ‘militarization’ paradigms defined and set

71 72 73

Weber (1995) §122–130. Geyer (1989) 83. Gregory (1997).

18

introduction — pierre purseigle

a historiographical agenda, which has undeniably contributed to our current understanding of the First World War. The challenges and issues raised by their respective interdisciplinary and comparative ambitions enable and invite us to formulate some exploratory propositions towards a European history of the First World War.

Propositions towards a European history of the First World War The interpretive paradigms discussed above are distinguished by a common commitment to an integrated approach to the conflict that combines the perspectives and methods of both military and cultural histories of the war. A similar interdisciplinary ambition, coupled with an explicit comparative perspective runs through this volume. Yet such an enterprise is fraught with difficulties that must be acknowledged and addressed for the first lesson taught by the historiography of the First World War is one of humility. The sheer scale of the conflict, the complexity of the situation on its distant battlefronts, the respective characteristics of warring armies and societies, starkly highlight the limitations of any individual attempt to understand and explain the experience of European societies between 1914 and 1918. These pages make no exception and are merely intended as an individual contribution to the running dialogue between sub-disciplines within the field of First World War studies. Inspired by a work-inprogress on the process of social mobilization in France and Britain, the following remarks nonetheless suggest how a distinction drawn between warfare and belligerence might benefit both the military and the social history of the war. ‘Belligerence’ here refers to the cultural dispositions toward the prosecution of war which constituted the matrix of collective and individual behaviors that made up the wartime mobilisation. Belligerence is therefore not merely a state of mind, but rather a set of attitudes that, socially constructed and thus inscribed into networks of social interactions, framed the way soldiers and civilians alike contributed to the operations of warfare. Constantly reconfigured in the face of the demands of an industrial conflict, belligerence refers to the process of negotiation that accounts for individual and collective adaptations to the war effort and underscores the conditionality of consent. Although couched in sociological terms, this definition of belligerence stresses the correspondence between the

warfare and belligerence

19

specialized questioning of the historian of the armed forces and that of the social historian. Dennis Showalter, in his chapter analyzing the adjustment of the British, French and German armies to the conditions on the Western Front, thus moves beyond traditional perspectives on technology, materiel and structure to emphasize the role of social agency in operational and tactical evolution. This interdisciplinary approach to belligerence in the First World War obviously derives from the ‘new cultural history’ of the First World War. It is, therefore, necessary to clarify our understanding of the cultural dynamics of the war effort before moving on to specify how such a history of belligerence may add to the social and political histories of the war. In order to do this, it is necessary to pay close attention to the construction of the categories of comparative analysis. For, according to sociologist Reinhard Bendix, comparative studies should not only highlight the contrast between different human situations and social structures, but also underscore the inescapable artificiality of conceptual distinctions and the consequent need to move back and forth between the empirical evidence and the benchmark concepts which Max Weber called ‘ideal type’.74

Indeed, if the cultural history of the war is to provide a general interpretation of the conflict, it ought to hinge on analytical categories that allow for the plurality of rationales that sustained the war effort. In her contribution, Heather Jones defines a ‘war culture’ as ‘the system of cultural supports that allows populations to adapt to and perpetuate conflict’. Well aware of the risk of reification entailed by the concept, Jones stresses the national, regional and diachronic variations of the representations of prisoners of war. Moving beyond the analysis of the core schemes of figuration of the enemy, she distinguishes between an ‘active’ and a ‘passive’ war culture, and thereby emphasizes the social configuration, the encounter, that made possible the emergence and expression of war cultures. In this volume, the analysis of the conditions of production and dissemination of the various representations of the conflict and of the enemy also serves to expand the examination of the relations between the actual experience of warfare and its cultural constructions. Leen Engelen in her study of Belgian silent films thus encompasses the cultural specificities

74

Bendix (1964) 18.

20

introduction — pierre purseigle

of the occupied territories and the particular modes of figuration offered by the cinematic medium. The wartime systems of representation appear as ongoing processes that articulate in varying ways and degrees, a set of core elements such as the hatred of the enemy or the idealization of the national community. The history of belligerence must address such schemes of figuration, not only as the structural elements that combined to form a discourse about the war, but also with regard to the way this discourse performed specific functions within the belligerent societies. Thus considered the representations of the conflict accounted for the type of social mobilization brought about by the war and determined different kinds of engagement in the war effort. However, the relationship between a particular system of representation and participation in the war effort was rarely straightforward as the studies presented in this book attest. Indeed the very notion of a ‘system of representation’ might in some cases be misleading in suggesting the existence of a neat interpretive apparatus. Rather the ‘war culture’ articulated by an individual or a particular group may be envisaged as the translation of an effort made by social agents, as an attempt at understanding the conflict. Leonard V. Smith’s scrutiny of the female readership and their reception of Barbusse thus underlines the significance of the mediation provided by literature for those women who tried to address the gap between front and home, to bridge the ‘gulf in understanding’ that separated them from their loved ones. Furthermore, Patrick Porter, Gearóid Barry, and Paul Mulvey demonstrate in their contributions that war cultures, which explicitly contributed to and positively sustained the eschatological or ideological tenets of the war effort did not ease the psychological and political tensions entailed by military service and social mobilization. Nor did proximity to religious or political authorities make it any easier for participants to resolve their ambivalences. In fact, the cultural dynamic of the First World War was the result of a continual process of questioning and legitimating the commitment to the prosecution of the war. Lastly, the study of academic milieux reveals that individual participation in the war effort was also contingent upon particular scientific and professional agendas that the conflict had not entirely subsumed or obliterated. Nicolas Ginsburger shows how American geographers consciously served U.S. foreign policy. Nevertheless, their patriotic service on the diplomatic stage also reinforced the domestic institutionalization and inter-

warfare and belligerence

21

national recognition of American geography. Focusing on academic responses to the war in Paris and London, Elizabeth Fordham then invites a reconsideration of the conventional approaches to cultural change in wartime and reveals how cultural history allows for a reassessment of academic modernity by scrutinizing scientific, educational, and institutional agendas in their own right. Defying the conventional demarcation between cultural and social history, Roger Chartier suggested a definition of representations, which may fruitfully be adopted by historians of belligerence.75 According to Chartier, the notion of representation enables to ‘articulate three registers of reality’: on the one hand, collective representations reveal a classification of the perceived divisions of the social world, a taxonomy that informs and orients social and collective action. Representations are also assertions of social identities that agents claim and expect others to acknowledge. Lastly, the notion refers to the delegation of authority to ‘representatives’ be they individuals or institutions, deemed to formalize the existence of the group, the community or the class.76 The history of representations thus points to the forms, instances and sites of mediation of social experience, and in this case, of the war experience.77 Antoine Prost subsequently reaffirmed that cultural history ought to be understood and practiced as a ‘social history of representations’.78 For in this perspective, symbolic products establish communication as well as community between individuals. Hence, representations are inseparable from the social ties and groupings they are derived from. As JeanLouis Robert put it, they enable us to construct the way contemporaries envisioned and represented the system of social relations in which they lived.79

The war lends a particular significance to this questioning in that it brought about a specific system of norms, which created new divisions, new categories within the citizenry—the profiteer being a case in

75 Cf. “Le monde comme représentation”, in Annales E.S.C., 11–12/1989, 6, 1505–1520, reproduced in Chartier (1998) 67–86. 76 Ibid., 12, 78. 77 For a similar approach in the metropolitan context, see Winter (2005, forthcoming). 78 Prost (1997). 79 Robert (1997) 105.

22

introduction — pierre purseigle

point—whose respective positions were evoked in terms of duty and according to the wartime ‘social relations of sacrifice’.80 Moreover, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s work on symbolic domination, Chartier underscores the significance of representation in the manufacturing of submission—in the production of ‘internalized coercion’.81 This highlights the range of cultural mechanisms that pertain to political analysis and invites scholars to investigate the logics and procedures of domination that lay beyond the remit of state apparatus and direct domination. The figure of the war profiteer examined by Robert offers an excellent illustration of such mechanisms. While the social relations of sacrifice determined legitimate comportment in both the economic and the private sphere, encouraging for instance moderate consumption and the husbanding of resources, wartime norms were not solely enforced through the implementation of state-sanctioned rules. Significantly, the constant lambasting of the amoral, and therefore unpatriotic, behavior of ‘profiteers’ constituted a powerful effective pressure originating from within the community. Of course, the most sensitive issue of military participation provided many opportunities for symbolic coercion to surface as in the denunciation of ‘shirkers’ or the infamous handing-out of white feathers in Britain or more light-heartedly, through the humor of popular press cartoons.82 Benefiting from Chartier’s and Prost’s complementary approaches, a social history of representations would thus help to reevaluate the relations of power and the mechanisms of domination, which have so far been relatively neglected in cultural interpretations of the First World War. This brief methodological ‘detour’ thus eventually locates the history of belligerence with regard to the cultural history of the conflict by anchoring the wartime system of representation in social relations and collective behaviors. Elise Julien’s chapter on the memory of the conflict in Paris and Berlin thus analyses the post-war restructuring of collective identities, and shows that the differing formulations of the cultural legacy of the war in the metropolitan space corresponded to different levels—international, national, urban, communal—of sociability and representations.

80 81 82

Ibid. and Gregory (1997). Chartier (1998) 80. Gullace (1997), Purseigle (2001).

warfare and belligerence

23

Furthermore, in order to understand the belligerent societies it is necessary to emphasize the conditionality of consent. By arguing that the social location of the process of mobilization determined the patterns of commitment to national defense, I now wish to suggest how the analysis of civil society might contribute to the history of belligerence in 1914–1918. For war is essentially the health of the State. . . . The State becomes what in peacetimes it has vainly struggled to become—the inexorable arbiter and determinant of men’s business and attitudes and opinions.83

The Spanish influenza prevented Randolph Bourne from seeing in print the feverish argument he was writing in his final days. However, his indictment of the encroachment upon civilian life and liberties by states in the Great War resonated with many radicals and liberals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Castigating the submission of his fellow-Americans to the demands of the State, he concluded: ‘It is States that make wars and not nations’. Yet, the belligerent societies proved him wrong in a spectacular and terrible way. There is no need here to discuss at length the indisputable expansion of state agency entailed by the nature of an industrial conflict waged on a global scale. The historiography has notably highlighted the social and political outcomes of the specific legal regimes imposed in the course of the war.84 Consequently, civil liberties—and therefore the autonomy of civil society—were significantly curtailed while the State threw its weight behind the Nation’s war effort. The liberal philosophical tradition had long insisted on the detrimental effect war would have on civil society and ultimately, on liberal democracy, in accordance with Tocqueville’s early warnings: ‘All those who seek to destroy Freedom in the bosom of a democratic nation must know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish this.’85 However, the historiography now runs counter to this ‘liberal’ perspective on war and civil society and has demonstrated how voluntary organizations compensated for the shortcomings of the State, proving indispensable in the mobilization of the material and cultural 83

Bourne (1964) 65–106., passim. In Britain, D.O.R.A., the Defence of the Realm Act, “conjured up” in Arthur Marwick’s words “in the public mind the image of a cruel and capricious maiden who at the snap of her fingers could close down a newspaper, requisition a ship, or prohibit whistling for cabs”. Marwick (1991) 76. 85 Tocqueville (1981) 330. 84

24

introduction — pierre purseigle

resources of the nation, and even benefiting from the war.86 Historians of the state have even stressed the necessity and importance of the ‘state’s ability to secure the consent of key groups in civil society’.87 Indeed, as General Groener put it in November 1916, ‘the war could in any case not be won against the opposition of the workers’.88 Therefore, building on these recent reevaluations and on John Horne’s definition of national mobilization,89 I would consider civil society as one major site of the mediation of the war experience, which constituted belligerence in 1914–1918. If not, pace Marx, ‘the true focal point and theatre of all history’,90 the concept of civil society still enables us to combine the analysis of cultural dynamics and of social agency in wartime mobilization, without downplaying the issues raised by coercion. This focus on civil society, as an essential site where consent was elaborated during the conflict, thus concerns social and military historians alike; first because those who manned the trenches of the Great War were civilians in uniform,91 and secondly because the conflict’s violence challenged the civility of European societies.92 ‘Civil society’ is nevertheless a problematic category of analysis laden as it is with reference to the ‘ideas of 1989’ and the debates that followed the demise of communism in Eastern and Central Europe.93 It seems of paramount importance here to distance our study from any prescriptive or political discourse, which would prejudge the links between liberal democracy and ‘civil society’, and thence introduce normative distinctions between the French and British political systems and those of the Central Powers.

86 For a contemporary perspective on British voluntarism see Masterman, C.F.G., “The Temper of the People”, in Contemporary Review, July 1915, vol. 108, 1–11. On the assistance to war orphans in France see Faron (2001); On American voluntarism, Skocpol, Karch & Camp (2002). 87 Cronin (1989) 459. 88 Kocka (1984) 136. 89 ‘The ‘mobilization’ explored here is that of the engagement of the different belligerent nations in their war efforts both imaginatively, through collective representations and the belief and value systems giving rise to these, and organizationally through the state and civil society.’ Horne (1997) 1. 90 Marx, Karl, The German Ideology, vol. I, p. 36 quoted in Bobbio (1988) 82. 91 Fuller (1990); Audoin-Rouzeau (1986). 92 Elias (1988) 177–198. 93 For a good overview of the debates over a European and global civil society, see Kaldor (2003) and especially Chapter 3: The Ideas of 1989: the origins of the concept of Global civil society.

warfare and belligerence

25

‘Civil society’ will be defined here, as the set of organized and plural groups that, beyond the domestic and familial spheres, interacted with the State and the market without being exclusively predetermined by one or the other. These groups established and arranged mediations of the war experience that imposed restrictions upon the State or offered the means, however limited, to resist the State’s infringement on rights and liberties. Yet, ‘civil society’ also contributed to the totalizing logic of the conflict. Instituted mainly by associations and voluntary organizations, civil society not only expressed the social demand in the public sphere, but is also of interest to historians of the Great War, as a space where wartime’s social norms were elaborated, disseminated, and where power relationships or political conflicts reined in by the state of war, could be played out and exercised.94 It is then necessary, as Frank Trentmann put it, to distinguish ‘between the institutional body of civil society and the values flowing through its veins’.95 This is especially important in the context of the First World War when ‘civil society’ contributed to the monitoring and censoring of public opinion. Literary societies or local church groups for instance periodically encouraged the national war effort through their publications and public conferences.96 Most significantly police records attest that the suppression of dissent was not the preserve of the state’s apparatus insofar as the military or civil authorities could rely on the ready collaboration of individuals on the lookout for subversive comments uttered in the public sphere.97 If the modern idea of civil society was undeniably the brainchild of political liberalism, the First World War demonstrated that civil society could also trample on its principles for the sake of national defense. This pragmatic approach to civil society, which emphasizes social agency98 over a presupposed ideological agenda, provides a way of looking afresh at the mechanisms of social domination and mobilization

94 For a critical, comparativist and interdisciplinary approach to ‘civil society’ see Trentmann (2000a). 95 Trentmann (2000b) 22. 96 Archives Départementales de l’Hérault Par 846, ‘Tout Béziers y passera’ and PAR 1639 ‘Le bourdon Saint Nazaire’. 97 Archives Départementales de l’Hérault 4 M 1859. 98 For a ‘social agency’ approach to war and remembrance see Winter & Sivan (1999).

introduction — pierre purseigle

26

in 1914–1918. It is thus hoped to bridge the divide between the social history of the war—traditionally understood as the ‘history of defiance’—and its cultural history—presented as the ‘history of consent’.99 Positing, beside the centrality of the State, the critical importance of civil society in the process of mobilization, this perspective apprehends consent and coercion as reciprocal functions of each other, and reasserts a distinction between the dominant representations and the representations forged by ruling groups and individuals. Among the immense literature on ‘civil society’, Antonio Gramsci explicitly situates his own reflections within a larger debate on the conditions of social domination. Moving beyond classic Marxist interpretations, the Prison Notebooks address the cultural dimensions of domination to encapsulate in the notion of ‘hegemony’ the mechanisms whereby ‘the great masses of the population’ give their consent ‘to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group’.100 Acknowledging the ‘direct domination’ exercised through the State, Gramsci emphasizes how civil society ‘operates without “sanctions” or compulsory “obligations”, but nevertheless exerts a collective pressure and obtains objective results in the forms of an evolution of customs, ways of thinking and acting, morality, etc.’101

Such a perspective on civil society may beneficially inform our analysis of belligerence in the First World War, insofar as it stresses both the autonomy of social agents and their position within systems of domination. Above all it suggests that the ‘war cultures’ most forcefully articulated by the elites were neither uncritically endorsed by the masses, nor merely imposed from above through the state ideological apparatus. Thus conceived, consent to the war effort and subsequent social mobilization resulted from ‘a lived hegemony’, which, as Raymond Williams put it, ‘is always a process’. It is not, except analytically, a system or a structure. It is a realized complex of experiences, relationships, and activities, with specific and changing pressures and limits. In practice, hegemony can never be singular. . . . Moreover . . . it does not just passively exist as a form of

99 100 101

Winter (1998) 88. Gramsci (1971) 12. Ibid.

warfare and belligerence

27

dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own.102

These reconfigurations, renegotiations, resistances, and reformulations which constituted the war effort took place, mutatis mutandis, on the home front as well as on the front lines. Accordingly, the ‘hegemonic belligerence’ that characterized European societies in 1914–1918 could form the core of a collaborative program of research, involving both military and cultural historians, for it would stress the propinquity of the social and cultural mechanisms that determined the respective engagements of combatants and non-combatants. Indeed, in the First World War as Michael Howard put it, military achievement depended on maximising the amount of manpower and material one could put into the field. But this in itself depended on achieving the widest possible basis of consensus within society—consensus which it was difficult to achieve without maximising participation or at least a sense of participation. So the broadening of the political basis of the state and the increase in the fighting capacity of the armed forces went hand in hand—from the time of Scharnhorst until that of Lloyd George.103

Howard reminds us that mobilization and participation would not be fully comprehended if our analysis were to ignore the role of the State, and especially its relationship with its belligerent citizenry. Moreover, the adoption of a Weberian definition of the State also enables us to reconsider war violence, in a way that supplements the analyses of Audoin-Rouzeau, Becker and Geyer, and adding a sociological dimension to their ‘anthropological’ and ‘cultural’ points of view. In his fundamental Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Weber defines the State by the ‘monopoly of legitimate physical coercion’ which it claims and exercises over a territory and a population. In a remark of paramount importance for the social historian of war, he went on to stress that, in the early twentieth century, violence is only legitimate insofar as the State allows and prescribes its exercise.104 A modern military conflict such as the First World War, therefore,

102

Williams (1977) 112. My ellipses. Howard (1977) 218. 104 Weber (1995) 99. Although Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft was first published in German in 1956, I here refer to the French translation published in 1995. 103

28

introduction — pierre purseigle

issued a series of specific challenges to the State, which, through the mobilization of a mass army, critically devolved the means of violence and the foundations of its legitimacy to a significant part of the male citizenry. In his study of the French Fifth Infantry Division, Leonard V. Smith illuminated the negotiations between soldiers and commanders that accounted for both the mutinies and the resilience of the combatants throughout the conflict. Informed by a Foucauldian approach to ‘the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom’, Smith carefully examined the exercise of command authority and explored the conditionality of consent.105 Highlighting the importance of the political identity of the French ‘citizen soldiers,’ he ultimately demonstrated that the legitimizing principles, which underpinned the political communities that fought each other in the trenches of the First World War, were at stake in combat. In her chapter on discipline in the Italian army, Vanda Wilcox shifts the traditional emphasis on the incomplete nationalization of the Italian masses to scrutinize the exercise of citizenship and its limitations in the Italian forces. She thus shows how, in keeping with the social structures of the country and the prejudices of its elites who had not internalized the basic tenets of liberal democracy, military management failed to understand the social and political dynamic at work in the front lines and so failed to maintain the morale and cohesion of the troops. A sociological approach to violence and legitimate coercion in 1914–1918 also allows for a contextualization of the Great War that makes another departure from the ‘war culture’ and ‘militarization’ paradigms. Indeed, such a perspective sets the war in the larger context of the construction of the national states and of the subsequent emergence of citizenship. Therefore, the First World War appears less as the watershed that ushered in the ‘Age of Massacre’106 than as the continuation and affirmation of a broader social and political process that inextricably linked war and society. As Charles Tilly has demonstrated, the evolution of warfare and its growing demands for material resources and organizational reforms accounted for the

105 Smith (1994). Interestingly, Foucault’s definition of domination in ‘The Subject and Power’ (1982) seems very close, in Smith’s discussion, to that of Max Weber. See Weber (1995) 285–6. 106 Hobsbawm (1995) 24.

warfare and belligerence

29

formation and development of State structures in Europe. While ‘the organization of coercion and preparation for war’ constituted the State’s main objectives and functions, the raising of mass armies and the advent of industrial warfare contributed to the extension and gradual empowerment of citizenry; a movement that in turn affected the conduct of war. With a nation in arms, a state’s extractive power rose enormously, as did the claims of citizens on their state. Although a call to defend the fatherland stimulated extraordinary support for the efforts of war, reliance on mass conscription, confiscatory taxation, and conversion of production to the ends of war made any state vulnerable to popular resistance, and answerable to popular demands as never before. From that point onward, the character of war changed, and the relationship between war making and civilian politics altered fundamentally.107

In fact, Tilly not only sets out to explain ‘how war made states and vice versa,’108 he also suggests how the preparation for war and war making affected the polity as a whole including civil society109 within which, I would contend, the respective demands of the state and the citizenry were mediated. The First World War dramatically reinforced the terms of the social contract to which ‘citizenship’ refers. A continuing process of negotiation and bargaining thus manufactured popular consent to a war effort elaborated as much through struggles and conflicts as through outspoken support. All this bargaining created or confirmed individual and collective claims on the state, individual and collective rights vis-à-vis the state, and obligations of the state to its citizens. It also created rights—recognized enforceable claims—of states with respect to their citizens. The core of what we now call “citizenship”, indeed, consists of multiple bargains hammered out by rulers and ruled in the course of their struggles over the means of state action, especially the making of war.110

Despite the inherent coercive dimension of military service, the war also offered real political opportunities for participants, and particularly for those who until then had seen their claims to political rights

107

Tilly (1990) 83. Ibid., 67. 109 Surprisingly, Charles Tilly does not mention Norbert Elias’s Civilizing Process (2 vols, Oxford: 1978) whereas he does also explicitly link the monopolization of legitimate coercion and the decline of interpersonal violence. Tilly (1990) 68ff. 110 Tilly (1990) 102. See also Tilly (1996) 229. 108

30

introduction — pierre purseigle

or full citizenship denied.111 In this volume, Jennifer Keene thus sheds light on the political struggles of African American soldiers, whose war and post-war experiences ought to be integrated into the history of the civil right movement. In the very different context of rural England, Keith Grieves, thanks to a critical shift in the scale of analysis, shows how returning veterans asserted a growing autonomy vis-à-vis traditional local authorities and challenged conventional forms of domination. Veterans’ requests for self-governing social amenities illustrated the way in which combatant sociabilities determined both their demobilization and the reconstruction of belligerent societies. Moreover, Grieves also emphasizes the mediating role of voluntary organizations in local communities, in a way that echoes the findings of Deborah Cohen’s comparative study of civil society in post-war Germany and Britain.112 While Tilly’s interpretation insists on the importance of national bureaucracy, I would also join with Keith Grieves to stress the significance of the often-overlooked local manifestations of this process of negotiation. These translated consent into local practices of solidarities that made up social mobilization. In this respect the organization and running of the local military service tribunals set up in Britain by the Military Service Act of 1916 provides a most striking example of the complex relationship between the State and civil society in wartime.113 Established at a critical period when the scale of human losses and material deprivations had dented the energies that had initially sustained social mobilization in Britain, as well as in France and Germany,114 the local military tribunals heard, according to Adrian Gregory’s recent study, at least one and a quarter million individual appeals against conscription.115 Operated by local dignitaries selected from each quar-

111 Beyond military participation, ‘war service’ became the basis of the subsequent redefinition of citizenship that led to the extension of the electoral franchise in Britain for the benefit of all servicemen—regardless of age—and that of 8.5 million new women voters. See Gullace (2002). 112 Cohen (2001). 113 A comparative study may also be fruitfully extended to include an analysis of the local recruitment board set up in the United States in June 1917. See Skocpol, Karch, & Camp (2002) 152. 114 For a comparative chronology of national mobilization see Horne (1997). 115 Men who were called-up, their employer, or their family could make appeals against conscription. The military could also appeal at the county and central levels. Gregory (2004) 179.

warfare and belligerence

31

ter of the local community, these tribunals arbitrated between the demands of the military and the interests of local communities, which were formulated in economic, moral or political terms. They provided a site where agents of the State pursued military manpower in face of individual opposition and local economic interests. Representatives of civil society thus adjudicated conflicts which often reflected a wider debate over the extraction of the means of war making.116 The very nature of the job, as well as the number of meetings it entailed, represented a real burden on the people who took on the task. The discussions that animated the tribunals’ sessions then were echoed in the community at large through the local press. They highlight the significance of the constant process of negotiation whereby civil society attempted to limit the claims of the State over the Nation. Furthermore, the participation of civil society in the enforcement of the State’s authoritative requests may lead us to revise the very definition of the State in wartime. Indeed, as Gregory puts it, ‘this system was anything but a model of bureaucratic anonymity. It was rooted in the localities and conducted in the full glare of publicity’. Therefore, ‘one of the paradoxes of conscription in Britain was that the system could only be made to work by a massive volunteer effort’.117 Eventually, a reevaluation of the role played by civil society in the First World War, would certainly contribute to a redefinition of the social contours of the State in wartime that would take into account the local operations of domination.118

Conclusion The era of tyrannies dates from August 1914, that is, from the time when the belligerent nations turned to a system which can be defined as follows: a. In the economic sphere, greatly extended state control of all means of production, distribution and exchange;—and at the same time, an appeal by the governments to the leaders of workers’ organizations to

116 On the articulation of war making, state making, protection, extraction, distribution and production, see Tilly (1990) 97ff. 117 Gregory (2004) 181. 118 It would certainly supplement the approach developed in Green & Whiting (1996).

introduction — pierre purseigle

32

help them in implementing this state control hence syndicalism and corporatism along with étatisme. b. In the intellectual sphere, state control of thought, in two forms: one negative, through the suppression of all expressions of opinion deemed unfavorable to the national interest; the other positive, through what we shall call the organization of enthusiasm.119

A few years after his Rhodes Lectures, Elie Halévy developed his analysis of the First World War before the Société Française de Philosophie. His emphasis on the State’s direct domination paradoxically led the great liberal historian to set little store by the role of civil society in wartime. In his view, the ‘World Crisis’ of 1914–1918 had opened up a new and ominous period in modern history, whose ‘evils’ he wished to exorcize. In so doing, he tackled a problem that, to this day, has besieged scholars of the conflict. As Antoine Prost and Jay Winter recently pointed out, the integration of the Great War into a ‘relevant continuity’ remains a critical challenge for scholars who attempt to overcome the limitations imposed by national historiographies and their periodizations.120 In the light of the difficulties such an undertaking entails, this introductory chapter has attempted to contribute to this debate by reasserting the necessity for and addressing the conditions of a European history of the First World War. This historiographical enterprise has demonstrated how comparative and interdisciplinary approaches could compensate for the shortcomings of studies confined to national boundaries. Nicolas Beaupré, in his chapter on French and German combatant literature, thus demonstrates how a comparative investigation enables the historian to fill in the existing gaps in the historiography of the conflict, and raises questions that may otherwise be ignored. Yet, the comparative history of the war also demands that scholars pay close attention to the categories of analysis they resort to, since these determine the conditions for cross-fertilization of national historiographies and sub-disciplines. Drawing extensively on the works which have reinvigorated First World War studies since the late 1970s, I have suggested that the distinction between warfare and belligerence, and the exploration of the ‘hegemonic’ characteristics of the latter,

119

Halevy (1967) 205. Extracts from a paper presented on November, the 28th,

1936. 120

Prost & Winter (2004) 270.

warfare and belligerence

33

might offer a useful analytical response to the ‘totalizing logic’ of the conflict. For it seems possible to construct a truly comparative framework that would focus on the process of legitimation of the war effort, and account for the resilience of the belligerent societies by encompassing the cultural determinants of mobilization and the mechanisms of social domination. In other words, this may provide, an opportunity to combine two historiographical configurations and reconcile the ‘study of social conflicts’ with an exploration of ‘the roots of consensus’.121 The significance this understanding of ‘hegemonic belligerence’ ascribes to the manifold process of mediation that took place within the civil societies of the warring nations is not solely derived from an interest in the mobilization of the home fronts. Military historians and particularly those concerned with morale, discipline and the officer-men relations have stressed the importance of negotiation in the management and ultimate success or failure of the operations of warfare. It nonetheless reveals, in my view, the critical resilience of civility—or the weakness thereof—within the belligerent societies that fought each other in 1914–1918. A consequence of the monopolization of physical violence that led, according to Max Weber, to the emergence of the modern State, civility also resulted from the internalization of pacified norms of comportment; from the ‘Civilizing Process’ described by Norbert Elias. Yet, according to Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker, the undeniable and unprecedented thresholds reached by war violence in the First World War would irremediably undermine Elias’s interpretation.122 This critique of Elias, while correctly pointing out his relative neglect of the First World War,123 glosses over the fact that in Elias as well as in Weber, the monopolization of violence remained confined to the domestic boundaries of the State, and hence did not significantly affect inter-state relations.124 Positing the demise of civility, the ‘brutalization’ thesis fails in my view to account for the resilience of societies, such as France, Britain, and Germany to a certain extent125 whose relative parliamentarisation 121

Ibid., 217. Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker (2000) 45, 47. 123 Himself a WWI veteran, Elias discussed his war experience in a ‘biographical interview’ conducted in 1984 and first published in Dutch. I here refer to the French edition: Elias (1991) 23ff. and passim. 124 Gerth & Wright Mills (1998) 177; and Elias (1988) 177–198, 180. 125 Kocka (1984). 122

34

introduction — pierre purseigle

and democratization made possible the necessary reconfiguration and renegotiation of wartime consent at national, local, and community level. Nevertheless, the concomitant presence and pursuit of different approaches to violence, mobilization and participation in wartime leaves considerable room for a debate that this volume does not aim to exhaust, and that the International Society for First World War Studies will strive to encourage and foster.

Bibliography Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, (1986) Les combattants des tranchées. (Paris: 1986). ——, Becker, Annette, (1984) “Vers une histoire culturelle de la Première Guerre mondiale.” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire (1994): 5–7. ——, (1995) L’enfant de l’ennemi 1914–1918. Viol, avortement, infanticide pendant la Grande Guerre. (Paris: 1995). ——, (1997) “Violence et consentement: la ‘culture de guerre’ du premier conflit mondial.” in Pour une histoire culturelle, ed. Rioux, Jean-Pierre, Sirinelli, Jean-François, Becker, Annette (Paris: 1997) 251–270. ——, Becker, Annette, (2000) 14–18: Retrouver la guerre. (Paris: 2000). ——, (2002) “Au coeur de la guerre: la violence du champ de bataille pendant les deux conflits mondiaux.” in La Violence de Guerre, 1914–1945, ed. Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, Becker, Annette, Ingrao, Christian, and Rousso, Henry (Bruxelles: 2002) 73–97. Becker, Annette, (1994) La guerre et la foi. De la mort à la mémoire. 1914–1930. (Paris: 1994). Becker, Jean-Jacques, (2002) “Retour sur la comparaison et réflexion sur les héritages.” in La violence de guerre, 1914–1945, ed. Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, Becker, R. Annette, Ingrao, Christian and Rousso, Henry. (Bruxelles: 2002) 329–339. Bendix, Reinhard, (1964) Nation-Building and Citizenship. Studies of our changing social order. (New York-London-Sydney: 1964). Bloxham, Donald, (2003) “The Armenian Genocide of 1915–1916: Cumulative Radicalization and the Development of a Destruction Policy.” Past and Present, no. 181 (2003): 141–191. Bobbio, Norberto, (1988) “Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society.” in Civil society and the state: new European perspectives, ed. Keane, John (London: 1988) 73–99. Bock, Fabienne, (1984) “L’exubérance de l’Etat en France de 1914 à 1918.” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire, no. 3 (1984): 41–51. Bourne, Randolph, (1964) “The State.” in War and the intellectuals, essays by R. Bourne. 1915–1919, ed. Resek Carl (New York-London: 1964) 65–106. Cazals, Rémy, Rousseau, Frédéric, (2001) 14–18: le cri d’une génération. (Toulouse: 2001). ——, (2003) Les mots de 14–18. (Toulouse: 2003). Chartier, Roger, (1998) Au bord de la falaise. L’histoire entre certitudes et inquiétude. (Paris: 1998). Chickering, Roger, (1998) Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918. (Cambridge: 1998).

warfare and belligerence

35

Clarke, Peter, (1996) Hope and glory. Britain 1900–1990. (London: 1996). Cohen, Deborah, (2001) The War Come Home. Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939. (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: 2001). Cosson, Olivier, (2003) “Expériences de guerre et anticipation à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale. Les milieux militaires franco-britanniques et les conflits extérieurs.” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 50, no. 3 (2003): 127–147. Cronin, James, (1989) “The crisis of state and society in Britain, 1917–22.” in Strikes, wars, and revolutions in an international perspective. Strikes waves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ed Haimson, Leopold H., Charles Tilly. (Cambridge-Paris: 1989) 457–476. Elias, Norbert, (1978) The civilizing process. 2 vols. (Oxford: 1978). ——, (1988) “Violence and Civilization: the State monopoly of physical violence and its infringement.” in Civil Society and the State: new European perspectives, ed. Keane, John. (London: 1988) 177–198. ——, (1991) Norbert Elias par lui-même, Agora. (Paris: 1991). Faron, Olivier, (2001) Les enfants du deuil: Orphelins et pupilles de la nation de la Première Guerre mondiale, 1914–1941. (Paris: 2001). Flora, Peter, (ed.) (1983) State, Economy, and Society in Western Europe, 1815–1975. (Chicago-London-Frankfurt: 1983). Fuller, John G., (1990) Troop morale and popular culture in the British and Dominion armies. 1914–1918. (Oxford: 1990). Gerth, H.H., Wright Mills, C., ed. (1998) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. (London: 1998). Geyer, Michael, (1989) “The Militarization of Europe, 1914–1945.” in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. Gillis, John R. (New Brunswick, N.J. and London: 1989) 65–102. ——, (1993) “War and the Context of General History in an Age of Total War.” Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (1993): 145–163. ——, (2004) “Violence et expériences de la violence au XXe siècle—la Première Guerre mondiale.” in 1914–1945: L’ère de la guerre. Violence, mobilisations, deuil, ed. Dumenil, Anne, Beaupre, Nicolas, Ingrao, Christian. (Paris: 2004) 37–71. Gillis, John R., (1989) “Introduction.” in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. Gillis John R. (New Brunswick, N.J. and London: 1989) 1–12. Gramsci, Antonio, (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Trans. Hoare Quintin and Nowell Smith, Geoffrey. (London: 1971). Grayzel, Susan R., (1999) Women’s identities at war. Gender, motherhood, and politics in Britain and France during the First World War. (Chapel Hill and London: 1999). Green, S.J.D., Whiting, R.C., (1996) “The shifting boundaries of the state in modern Britain.” in The boundaries of the State in modern Britain, ed. Green, S.J.D., Whiting, R.C. (Cambridge: 1996) 1–11. Gregory, Adrian, (1997) “Lost generations: the impact of military casualties on Paris, London, and Berlin.” in Capital Cities at War. Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1919, ed. Winter, Jay M., Robert, Jean-Louis. (Cambridge: 1997) 57–103. ——, (2003) “Military service tribunals: Civil society in action, 1916–1918.” in Civil Society in British History. Ideas, Identities, Institutions, ed. Harris, Jose. (Oxford: 2003) 177–190. Gullace, Nicoletta F., (1997) “White feathers and wounded men: Female patriotism and the memory of the Great War.” Journal of British Studies 36 (1997): 178–206. ——, (2002) “The Blood of our Sons”. Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War. (New York-Basingstoke: 2002). Halevy, Elie, (1967) The Era of Tyrannies. Essays on Socialism and War. Trans. Webb R.K. (London: 1967). Hegel, G.W.F., (2001) Philosophy of Right. Trans. Dyde S.W. Kitchener (Ontario: 2001).

36

introduction — pierre purseigle

Hobsbawm, (1995) Eric J., Age of extremes. The short twentieth century 1914 –1991. (London: 1995). Horne, John N., (1993) “Social identity in war: France, 1914–1918.” in Men, women and war, ed. Fraser, T.G., Jeffery, K. (Dublin: 1993) 119–135. ——, (1995) “Soldiers, civilians and the warfare of attrition. Representations of combats in France, 1914–18.” in Authority, identity and the social history of the Great War, ed. Coetzee, F., Shevin-Coetzee, M. (Providence-Oxford: 1995) 223–249. ——, (ed.) (1997) State, society, and mobilization in Europe during the First World War. (Cambridge: 1997). ——, Kramer, Alan, (2001) German atrocities, 1914. A history of denial. (New HavenLondon: 2001). ——, (ed.) (2002) Demobilisations culturelles après la Grande Guerre., 14–18. Aujourd’hui. Today. Heute. Vol. 5. (Paris: 2002). Howard, Michael, (1977) “Total war in the twentieth century: participation and consensus in the Second World War.” in War and society. A yearbook of military history, ed. Bond, Brian, Roy, Ian. (London: 1977) 216–226. ——, (1986) “Men against fire: the doctrine of the offensive in 1914.” in Makers of modern military strategy, ed. Paret, Peter. (Princeton: 1986). ——, (1993) “World War One: The Crisis in European History. The Role of the Military Historian.” Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (1993): 127–138. Kaldor, Mary, (2003) Global Civil Society: an answer to war. (Cambridge: 2003). Kocka, Jürgen, (1984) Facing Total War. German Society, 1914–1918. Trans. Weinberger, Barbara. (Leamington Spa: 1984). Laborie, Pierre, (2001) “1940–1944: Les Français du penser-double.” in Les Français des années troubles. De la Guerre d’Espagne à la Libération. (Paris: 2001) 25–37. Lawrence, Jon, (2003) “Forging a Peaceable Kingdom: War, Violence, and Fear of Brutalization in Post–First World War Britain.” Journal of Modern History, no. 75 (2003): 557–589. Le Naour, Jean-Yves, (2002) Misères et tourments de la chair durant la Grande Guerre. Les mœurs sexuelles des Français. 1914–1918. (Paris: 2002). Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel, (2000) War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I. (Cambridge: 2000). Mariot, Nicolas, (2003) “Faut-il être motivé pour tuer? Sur quelques explications aux violence de guerre.” Genèses 53 (2003): 154–177. Marwick, Arthur, (1991) The Deluge. British society and the First World War. (London: 1991). Mosse, George, (1990) Fallen soldiers reshaping the memory of the world wars. (New YorkOxford: 1990). Proctor, Tammy M., (2004) “La Dame Blanche: Gender and espionage in occupied Belgium.” in Uncovered Fields. Perspectives in First World War Studies, ed. Macleod, Jenny, Purseigle, Pierre. (Boston-Leiden: 2004) 227–242. Prost, Antoine, (1994) “The impact of war on French and German political cultures.” The Historical Journal 37, no. 1 (1994): 209–217. ——, (1997) “Sociale et culturelle indissociablement.” in Pour une histoire culturelle, ed. Rioux, Jean-Pierre, Sirinelli, Jean-François. (Paris: 1997) 131–146. ——, (2002) “La guerre de 1914 n’est pas perdue.” Le Mouvement Social 199 (2002): 95–102. ——, (2004) “Les limites de la brutalisation. Tuer sur le front occidental, 1914–1918.” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire 81 (2004): 5–20. ——, Winter, Jay, (2004) Penser la Grande Guerre. Un essai d’historiographie. (Paris: 2004). Purseigle, Pierre, (2001) “Mirroring societies at war: pictorial humour in the British and French popular press during the Great War.” Journal of European Studies 31, no. 3–4 (2001): 289–328. ——, (2004) “1914–1918: Les combats de l’arrière. Etude comparée des mobilisa-

warfare and belligerence

37

tions sociales en France et en Grande-Bretagne.” in Experiences de guerre. 1914–1945, ed. Beaupre, Nicolas, Dumenil, Anne, Ingrao, Christian. (Paris: 2004) 131–151. ——, Macleod, Jenny, (2004) “Perspectives in First World War Studies.” in Uncovered fields. Perspectives in First World War Studies, ed. Macleod Jenny, Purseigle, Pierre. (Boston-Leiden: 2004) 1–23. ——, (2005) “A litmus test of wartime social mobilization: The reception of Belgian refugees in Europe, 1914–1918.” in Zealandia’s Great War, ed. Crawford, John, McGibbon, Ian. (Auckland: 2005). Robert, Jean-Louis, (1997) “The image of the profiteer.” in Capital Cities at War. London, Paris, Berlin, 1914–1919, ed. Winter, Jay M., Robert, Jean-Louis. (Cambridge: 1997) 104–132. Roseman, Mark, (1997) “War and the people. The social impact of total war.” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War, ed. Townsend, Charles. (Oxford-New York: 1997) 245–263. Rousseau, Frédéric, (1999) La guerre censurée. Une histoire des combattants européens de 14–18. (Paris: 1999). Showalter, Dennis, (2002) “Mass Warfare and the impact of technology.” in Great War, Total War. Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914 –1918, ed. Chickering, Roger, Förster, Stig. (London-New York: 2002). Skocpol, Theda, Karch, Andrew, Camp, Bayliss (2002) “Patriotic partnerships: why Great Wars nourished American civic voluntarism.” in Shaped by war and trade. International influences on American political development, ed. Katznelson, Ira, Shefter, Martin. (Princeton-Oxford: 2002) 134–180. Smith, Leonard V., (1994) Between mutiny and obedience. The case of the French Fifth division during World War I. (Princeton: 1994). Stryker, Laurinda. (1992) “Language of sacrifice and suffering in England in First World War.” (Ph.D, University of Cambridge, 1992). Tilly, Charles, (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990. (OxfordCambridge (MA): 1990). ——, (1996) “The Emergency of Citizenship in France and Elsewhere.” in Citizenship, identity and social history, ed. Tilly, Charles. (Cambridge: 1996) 223–236. Tocqueville, de, Alexis, (1981) De la Démocratie en Amérique. Vol. II. (Paris: 1981). Trentmann, Frank, (2000a) “Introduction: paradoxes of civil society.” in Paradoxes of civil society. New perspectives on Modern German and British history, ed. Trentmann, Frank. (New York-Oxford: 2000) 3–46. ——, (ed.) (2000b) Paradoxes of civil society: New perspectives on Modern German and British history. (New York: 2000). Weber, Max, (1995) Economie et Société. 2 vols. (Paris: 1995). Williams, Raymond, (1977) Marxism and Literature. (Oxford: 1977). Winter, Jay M., (1995) Sites of memory, sites of mourning: the Great War in European cultural history. (Cambridge: 1995). ——, (1998) “Recent trends in the historiography of Britain and the First World War: cultural history, comparative history, public history.” in Change and Inertia: Britain under the impact of the Great War, ed. Berghoff, Hartmut, Friedeburg, Robert (von). (Bodenheim: 1998). ——, Sivan, Emmanuel, (ed.) (1999) War and remembrance in the twentieth century. (Cambridge: 1999). ——, (forthcoming, 2005) “Metropolitan Nostalgia and Metropolitan Iconoclasm: Representations and urban identities in wartime Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1919.” in Capital Cities at War. Paris, London, Berlin, 1914 –1919., ed. Winter, Jay M., Robert, Jean-Louis, (2005, forthcoming). Wright, James D., (1976) The Dissent of the Governed. Alienation and Democracy in America. (New York: 1976).

CHAPTER ONE

‘IT ALL GOES WRONG!’: GERMAN, FRENCH, AND BRITISH APPROACHES TO MASTERING THE WESTERN FRONT Dennis Showalter

The distinguishing characteristic of the Western front was not the stubbornness with which the principal combatants clung to their prewar tactical and operational conceptions. It was rather the speed with which they adjusted to the conditions imposed by numbers and technology. By the end of 1914 front-line soldiers on both sides were throwing away the books by digging in, replacing maneuver with fire, and allowing the enemy to take the risks of attacking. These changes, not always reported to higher headquarters still concerned with winning the war by Christmas, were no less effective for being informal. They represented, however, limited responses to a general problem: how to break the military stalemate in reasonable time and at an acceptable cost. That pattern persisted throughout the conflict, as the major combatants pursued false starts with a vigor that too frequently proved counterproductive. Mining operations offer a case study in a steep learning curve that led to a dead end. The French, the Germans, and above all the British demonstrated increasing skill and sophistication in driving tunnels under each other’s positions, attacking and defending underground, then blowing up anything from sections to sectors of the enemy’s defenses. The subterranean war culminated on June 7, 1917, when nineteen British mines blew the top off Messines Ridge in history’s greatest man-made non-nuclear explosion. The gains, however, were still measured in yards. And when the time and resources necessary to prepare the mines was compared with the distance to the Rhine River, it was clear that this brilliant siege operation was a “one-off.”1

1

Passington, I. (1998) is the only modern study.

40

chapter one — dennis showalter

The mines of Messines reflect a fact unusual, perhaps unique, in the history of modern warfare. The fundamental problem of the Western Front was tactical: the gridlock imposed by a drastic imbalance among the tactical triad of mobility, protection, and firepower. The consequences of that imbalance were enhanced because none of the combatants viewed either retreat or the defensive, at any level, as acceptable long-term options. Despite the obvious exponential supremacy of defensive technologies, each side throughout felt the war could only be won by attacking. With the 1917 German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line as an exception, the armies grappled with each other where they found themselves. That determination reflected as well the fact that northern France and Flanders was the only area of the entire Eurasian land mass able to support industrial war on a large scale for a significant length of time. Everywhere else, with the possible eventual exception of Palestine, the standard pattern was demodernization, with war making regressing to early nineteenth century paradigms not only operationally, but in terms of logistics and administration as well, until the very end of the conflict.2 The uniqueness of the Western Front was, however, not clear to combatants seeking to overcome its gridlock. Each initially chose a different path before deciding that there was no way around. France took the direct approach. On policy levels the decision was predictable. A significant proportion of French resources and French people were under the military occupation of an enemy French propaganda increasingly stigmatized as beasts in human form.3 Apart from the effect on the country’s war making capacity, there was the question of a fundamental social contract transcending a Union Sacrée that was at bottom a utilitarian agreement with the objective of defending France. No government that failed to be perceived as bending every effort to restore the polity was likely to survive, and several did not. Military passivity might well place the Republic itself in danger.4 2 Medical care outside the northern France/Flanders sector did benefit from improvements in diagnosing and treating such traditional wartime diseases as typhus, dysentery, and typhoid. Sickness, however, remained the major cause of admission to hospitals. See Harrison, M. (1996). 3 Cf. Horne, J. and Kramer, A. (2001, 292); and Audoin-Rouzeau, S. and Becker, A. (2000, 113). 4 Becker, J.-J. (1980).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

41

Militarily as well France was conditioned to hit back. For several years prior to the outbreak of war, under the guidance of Chief of Staff Joseph Joffre, the concept of offensive à outrance, initially one among several sets of theories, had been transformed into doctrine in an army setting Cartesian store by first principles.5 The limitations of the doctrine as initially applied were apparent from the war’s first battles. Joffre, however, did not lose faith in the principle. Rather, the operations of the French 4th Army in Champagne from midDecember 1914 to mid-March 1915 inaugurated a pattern of mass: increasing the number of troops and guns available for a particular operation without significantly modifying the doctrines followed. Though the army commander’s report recommended a pattern of small gains made by successive methodical attacks (a forerunner of British “bite and hold” methods), Joffre was sharply critical; superior rank prevailed. The offensive’s final stages were characterized by head-down attacks, one after another, that gained an average of about a kilometer at brutally high cost.6 The army making these mass attacks was less operationally effective than its predecessor of August 1914. Prewar technical developments in observation and communications had been adopted without being assimilated, which meant they were often misused or neglected.7 Infantry training was at its nadir, with replacements being funneled into the line as soon as they acquired rudimentary skills, only to find a dearth of officers and NCOs able to provide the “front wisdom” that improved, albeit marginally, survival prospects. As for the artillery, the increased number of guns reflected the recycling of long-obsolete pieces long since stored in arsenals. Many of the “heavy” guns so proudly recorded in the official statistics were in fact old field pieces, fixed-carriage predecessors of the 75-mm, whose designs dated as far back as 1877, categorized as “heavy artillery” by virtue of their 90- and 95-mm caliber but deceiving no one except postwar statisticians.8 By the end of the summer’s fighting two schools had developed in French thinking on the subject of the Western Front. One favored

5

See particularly Akavia, G.Y. (1993); and Setzen, J.A. (1972). Doughty, R.G. (2003). 7 See Goya, M. (2002, 25 passim). 8 Several hundred of these survived to the end of the war as bombardment weapons in “position batteries” manned by the foot artillery. 6

42

chapter one — dennis showalter

delivering a succession of massive blows. The other advocated maintaining continuous pressure. Joffre came down firmly in favor of the latter as promising quicker results. The autumn offensive mounted in Artois and Champagne was planned and projected as an attempt to crack open the enemy’s defenses in one fell swoop. When it failed, Joffre attempted to get the British to assume the burden of executing a similar plan. Paradoxically, in the process of preparing and executing French participation on the Somme, Joffre became an increasing convert to the methodical battle—not least because of its relative successes as practiced under Ferdinand Foch on the Somme.9 By then, however, it was too late for a French army which had so squandered its resources in the war’s first years that by the end of 1916 it was, paradoxically, unable to conduct a war of attrition even had its generals accepted that British paradigm. “Attrition” in the context of World War I has acquired the same kind of negative connotation as “appeasement” for World War II. It implies mindless mutual commitment of forces until at some unspecified future time the last three surviving French and British soldiers would totter on aged legs across No Man’s Land and bayonet the two remaining Germans, then toast their success in prune juice. In fact, the policy of attrition developed early in the war as a prudent use of British resources—in particular, British ground forces which were considered to be severely limited in quality and quantity by the volunteer principle. It differed essentially from the grignotage, or “nibbling,” that Joffre described as his alternative to the eventual failure of the 1915 offensives to “rupture” the front. The British government in 1914 proposed to win the war. It also intended that by the time peace was made, Britain would be the strongest among the belligerents, and in a corresponding position to impose, if not exactly dictate, peace terms to her allies and enemies alike. To those ends it sought a policy of “business and usual:” supporting its continental allies with “guineas and gunpowder,” while providing a minimal (though not a token) expeditionary force as an indicator of good will and a direct hostage to fortune. Lord Kitchener, almost alone expecting a long war, began raising his New Armies

9 Doughty, R.G. (2003, 17). See the recent exchange in War In History: Greenhalgh, E. (1999a); Philpott, W. (2002); and Greenhalgh, E. (2002). Greenhalgh, E. (1999b), is also useful.

‘it

all goes wrong!’

43

with the intention of bringing them to a peak of effectiveness as the resources of Britain’s allies as well as her enemies eroded beyond compensation—sometime in 1917.10 These calculations were upset initially by the unexpectedly high casualties suffered by the Expeditionary Force. The Western Front sucked in men from everywhere: the full-strength battalions of longservice regulars brought home from the Empire; the peacetime volunteers of the Territorial Force, engaged first by battalions and then larger formations; the recalled reservists and the wartime volunteers who filled the gaps in the “first seven divisions.” The deployment of an Indian Corps in Flanders in the winter of 1914 showed how near Britain’s disposable military manpower was to exhaustion.11 Added to the growing personnel demands of the Western Front was an increasing pressure to use the New Armies in other theaters in an effort to break the stalemate. Kitchener’s hope that the Germans would contribute to their own decline by mounting large-scale offensives in the West proved ephemeral—not least because France so thoroughly preempted the offensive role during 1915. At the same time the BEF’s high command redefined attrition from policy levels to operational ones. Insisting the Germans were already on the edge of exhaustion, Sir John French and his successor Sir Douglas Haig increased pressure to commit New Army (and Territorial) divisions to complete the process of “wearing out” the Germans to the tune of 200,000 casualties a month. The Cabinet eventually accepted, albeit somewhat faute de mieux, the generals’ argument that the BEF, attacking at a place and time of its choosing, could inflict heavier losses than it would suffer. July 1, 1916, was the initial test of the hypothesis. The exact balance of material and moral loss on the Somme remains debatable. What is certain is that the Somme campaign fundamentally revised the concept of attrition with which Britain went to war—and occasioned corresponding reappraisals of how best to solve in Britain’s favor the conundrum of the Western Front.12 The Germans, turning to the indirect approach in both policy and

10

Cf. French, D. (1988); and more generally French, D. (1986). See Grieves, K. (1988); and on the issue of employing Indians in Europe, Corrigan, G. (1999). 12 Cf. inter alia on this controversial subject French, D. (1988, 396); Strachan, H. (1998). Cassar, G. (1996) and Philpott, W. (1996). 11

44

chapter one — dennis showalter

strategy, mounted a two-pronged effort. It involved on one hand what Hew Strachan describes as a “global strategy” of broadening the war by striking at its opponents’ perceived weak points in Asia and Africa. India, Persia and Afghanistan, the Suez Canal region, French North Africa—all were targets of German and German-sponsored initiatives, political, military, even religious, beginning in the war’s early months. None, however, generated the kind of prompt, large-scale payoffs that might have lifted them from shadow/sideshow status.13 Relatively more promising was the Ottoman Empire’s Caucasian offensive in 1915, which diverted enough Russian resources and generated enough concern about a Muslim uprising that it encouraged pursuing a second form of indirect approach.14 The stunning victories of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in autumn 1914 had convinced a significant number of senior officers including the responsible commanders Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff that in the Russian theater of operations, against the Russian army, the German army as configured still had a chance of winning a decisive series of decisive victories. Erich von Falkenhayn, who succeeded Helmuth von Moltke the Younger in the aftermath of the Battle of the Marne, was less sanguine. But as the prospects for forcing an immediate military/political decision in the West sank into the mud of Ypres, Falkenhayn began urging Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg to consider dividing the Allied coalition along its salient fault line by negotiating with Russia. Bethmann was initially dubious. He did not share Falkenhayn’s belief in the fundamental identity of Europe’s eastern monarchies. Nor did he believe Russia would come to the peace table after being taught a few lessons in the field. His contacts with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, however, began to change his mind. Now it was Falkenhayn who hung back, reluctant to send reinforcements to an Eastern command team emerging as his professional rivals, he was convinced that Hindenburg and Ludendorff saw no further than military victories, as opposed to the political gains military action was supposed to provide. It was Austria-Hungary’s growing weakness,

13

The best overview is Strachan, H. (2001, 698). Cf. Bihl, W. (1975); and more generally Mc Kale, D.M. (1998). For a summary the military aspects see Erickson, E.M. (2001, 52). 14

‘it

all goes wrong!’

45

combined with the prospect of Italian and Rumanian intervention that finally led the Chief of Staff to commit enough troops in Russia to mount a major offensive. The Battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, beginning on May 8, 1915, tore the front wide open on a forty-kilometer sector, and eviscerated the Russian army. It did not bring peace. Bethmann’s proposals to Russia in the summer of 1915 were initially moderate, involving frontier rectifications rather than massive transfers of sovereignty. They fell on deaf ears in a Russia whose war aims had metastasized in proportion to the sacrifices made by state and society. Entente promises proved more alluring that German demands.15

I As its end runs stagnated, the German army began addressing directly and systematically the challenge of trench warfare. The discrediting of the old tactical order culminated around Ypres in October and November, 1914. Frontal attacks and flanking movements alike collapsed in confusion. Newly-raised reserve formations and elite regiments of the Prussian Guard alike were shot to pieces by handfuls of British troops. In the next months the German soldier’s world shrank to a few meters’ worth of holes and ditches. Thousands of men were expended “holding what’s there to be held” (halten, was zu halten ist), or counterattacking to retake lost positions representing nothing more than map coordinates.16 During 1915 the German High Command began recognizing that this new war was not 1870 written large. While the concept of elastic defense was still embryonic, senior officers no longer felt compelled to retain possession of every terrain feature. Killing Frenchmen and Tommies was becoming more important. Stormtroop tactics made a disproportionate contribution to that process. Initially they

15 Afflerbach, H. (1994), 259, and Jarausch, K. (1973, 266), combine for a good overview. Cf. as well Guth, E.P. (1984); and Ullrich V. (1984). 16 The principle of holding every possible meter of ground came directly from the top. Falkenhayn (von) E. (1936, 36). Seeselburg, F. (1928) surveys the subject from a military perspective. Beumelberg, W. (1927) blends history and construction, eloquently conveying a sense of the nature of the fighting at this period and its impact on the German participants.

46

chapter one — dennis showalter

represented improvised local responses to specific situations. In that, the carefully-prepared, in-and-out raids against selected enemy positions that were the early focal point of the new methods were part of a Stellungskrieg regarded as temporary by the High Command and Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn.17 As early as March 1915, Falkenhayn requested plans for breakthrough operations from the armies on the Western Front, and established a new army headquarters as the nucleus of a decisive attack. Its chief of staff, Hans von Seeckt, eventually recommended an operation on a 25-kilometer front from just south of Albert to just north of Thiepval, on the Somme. Falkenhayn endorsed the project, ordering in particular careful training in the use of “technical methods of attack”—in which the stormtroopers specialized.18 Falkenhayn’s decision to suspend plans for a western offensive in favor of operations in the east temporarily marginalized the development of stormtroop tactics. They remained overshadowed in the mass operations that began with the Verdun offensive of 1916. Falkenhayn proposed to decide the war by drawing the French onto a killing ground that would bleed their army to death.19 The French came well up to scratch, eventually rotating most of their field army through the trenches and shell holes of what became “the heart of France”. Over 150,000 Frenchmen were killed or listed as missing in action, which at Verdun usually meant that nothing identifiable could be recovered for burial. Verdun eroded not so much the army’s material strength— Falkenhayn kept careful control of his mincing machine—as its moral underpinning. Never before had the Prussian/German army regarded human beings as expendable in the way “. . . a businessman looks at his balance sheets.”20 The Allied offensive on the Somme that began on July 1, 1916, and lasted until November further strained 17 The concept of what one might call scientific counterattack had been applied as early as January, 1914, by Hans von Seeckt, at that time a corps chief of staff. MeierWelcker, H. (1967), 43; and Torrey, G.E. (1997). See more generally Linnenkohl, H. (1990); Gudmundsson B. (1989); and Samuels, M. (1995, 231). 18 Falkenhayn’s plans for a Western offensive in 1915 are discussed and analyzed in Foley, R.T. 19 The best analysis of Falkenhayn’s intentions and behavior at Verdun in a policy context is Afflerbach, H. (1994, 351). For the military aspects see especially Foley, R.T., 176. 20 Gen. Adolf Wild von Hohenborn to his wife, Aug. 5, 1916, in Hohenborn (von) W. (1986, 79).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

47

the social contract between the German army and its soldiers. There too attrition was a dialectical process. German losses were no less severe, their sacrifices were no smaller—and their purpose was by no means as obvious.21 During 1916 the German high command accepted, albeit unwillingly, that the war had become an industrial war and the army was now a labor force.22 Two approaches to the situation were possible. One involved developing Germany’s capacity to wage a war of machines and material. Instead the Hindenburg Program for total economic mobilization proved that, to paraphrase R.H. Tawney, a general with a factory is like a monkey with a watch. Nor could German manufacturers and German designers keep up in such crucial fields as motor transport, armored fighting vehicles, and aircraft. In the categories of strategic and operational technology the German army of 1917 and early 1918 was not exactly demodernizing, but it was doing a great deal of running in place.23 If the High Command could not rise to the “greater world” challenge of managing an economy to produce a high-tech armed force, it did succeed in the “lesser world” of tactics. Before 1914 the German soldier’s primary group had been the company—two hundred men or more. As long as the infantryman carried only a rifle, both fire and maneuver depended significantly on numbers for effect. The systematic introduction of the light machine gun and the hand grenade in 1916–1917 multiplied fighting power—not of the individual, but of the team. The German “light” machine gun, water-cooled, beltfed, and weighing over forty pounds, was far more a crew-served weapon than the Lewis and Chauchat guns that were its allied counterparts. It took an unusually strong man to fire an 08/15 from the hip. Moving it from place to place was “like dragging an engine block.”24 Similarly, the German Stielhandgranate, the familiar “potatomasher,” had good range because of its handle, but a limited fragmentation effect. A single grenadier was more likely to alert than intimidate or destroy an enemy position. A half-dozen had a good

21

Deist, W. (1994). A fact—or a perspective—affirmed by no less an authority than Ludendorff, E. (1919, 532). 23 Chickering R. (1998, 76), is an excellent summary of the Hindenburg Program and its limitations. Cf. Mollin V. (1986). 24 Bruce, R. (1997, 42). 22

48

chapter one — dennis showalter

chance of keeping heads down long enough to close in and finish the job—especially if covered by a light machine gun. With tactics and weapons depending increasingly on fire and movement by mutually-supporting small groups. German companies and platoons during 1917 reorganized into building blocks. Depending on available manpower these might have seven or eight men apiece; they might have four or five. A strong platoon might have two or three squads of riflemen/grenadiers and two light machine gun crews. A weaker one would organize around its guns, with the riflemen in effect becoming spare numbers.25 German front-line soldiers did not automatically bond with each other in the “trench comradeship” so often nostalgically described by veterans.26 Nevertheless the everyday life of the infantry in particular generated the development of small relational groups based on combinations of proximity, affinity, and experience. In essence they were survival mechanisms; a man alone on the Western Front was—eventually—a dead man or a madman. These groups had a strong affective function as well. Far more than their French or British equivalents they functioned as surrogate families, often with a complex delineation of roles. Nurturing functions that civil society assigned to women were assumed by “men supporting men.” Patriarchs, uncles, and mentors, reliable older brothers and scapegrace younger ones, consistently grace the pages of front-line memoirs and fiction. The case of Adolf Hitler indicates that there could be room as well for eccentric cousins.27 The social and personal dynamics of these groups were highly congruent with the new weapons and new tactics. The Great War has often been described in terms of a factory. Michael Geyer has credited the German army with developing what he calls machine warfare.28 What was happening in the shell holes and the trenches of 1917, however, might be better described as an artisanal pattern.

25 Gudmundsson B. (1989, 98), is a good overview. “Maschinengewehr 08/15,” in Bruce, R. (1997, 33–45), is recommended because of its description of what is actually required to move and shoot the gun. The quotation is from page 42. 26 Cf. Schauwecker, F. (1921, 217); Marx, J. (1964, 32); Richert, D. (1989). 27 Remarque, E.M. (1929); Glaeser, E. (1929); Beumelberg, W. (1930); Renn, L. (1934); examples can be multiplied from across the political and ideological spectrum. For Hitler’s front-line family dynamic see Joachimsthaler, A. (1979, 106). 28 Geyer, M. (1986).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

49

The front line increasingly came to resemble a workshop, with small groups of craftsmen cooperating to complete a particular job in the most effective way. Warriors in the mold of an Ernst Jünger were welcome, as a wolf may be in a pack of feral dogs, but only when their personal fires fuelled the small collective enterprise that was the definition of a mission based on stormtroop methods applied by surrogate families. The concept of defense in depth, systematically developed at General Staff levels after the Somme, took advantage of the increasingly-refined tactics of close assault and immediate counterattack that grew out of trench experience in both offensive and defensive operations during 1916. During the next year 1917 Germany’s front-line infantry was retrained to “resist, bend, and snap back,” giving ground when necessary, mounting local counterattacks at every stage.29 The new infantry tactics were complemented by a major conceptual change in the use of artillery. Like the other combatants, German artillerymen had developed their branch of service in a context of destruction: “a blunt instrument for the indiscriminate hammering of entire patches of real estate.” In the East, however, the ratio of guns to space limited the effect of the hammering to a point where artillery officers began considering, then developing, ways for using artillery as a precision instrument of neutralization. The new techniques, most closely identified with Colonel Georg Bruchmueller, were first tested at Riga in September 1917.30 Applied to the West, in conjunction with the stormtroop system, they offered the possibility of a window of opportunity, a strategic surgical strike to restore mobility to the battlefield. A High Command increasingly desperate for an end game chose to seize the moment. The eventual failure of Ludendorff ’s offensives was arguably less the product of short-sighted strategic planning than the limitations of the new tactics. Bruchmueller’s artillery system, brutally effective in the offensive’s initial stages, ultimately lacked the organizational flexibility and the tactical mobility to keep pace with changing situations. Too many of its heavy guns were horse-drawn, and too many

29 Lossberg (von) F. (1939, 295) is a first-hand analysis of the new tactics. Lupfer, T. (1981), takes a similar “top-down’ perspective, while Gudmundsson, B. (1989, 77 passim), emphasizes the “grass-roots” origins of the changes. 30 Zabecki, D. (1994). The previous quotation is from page 14.

50

chapter one — dennis showalter

of the artillery teams had been weakened by hunger. The stormtroop principle of infiltration, bypassing strong points in the way water seeks the easiest path, led to a downward focus that negatively complemented Ludendorff ’s strategic principle of “punching a hole and seeing what happened.” In both cases there were no objectives—just processes, ultimately leading nowhere in particular. About 70 of the army’s 240-odd divisions had been designated “attack” formations. They received first priority for reinforcements, equipment, and supplies. Their training remained, however, well below the standard of the stormtroop battalions even though these formations, unlike most elite forces, played a major role as school and demonstration troops. The price of the new tactics, moreover, was the certainty of being in the front lines of the offensive whose coming was foretold on every leave train and in every brothel in the war zone. The remaining divisions were regarded as “position troops” useful at best for consolidating gains, most likely to spend the rest of the war holding trenches. Their already-short commons grew even shorter. Their replacements included increasing numbers of the partially disabled and the more or less disaffected. In action both types of division tended to regress to tactics reflecting their limited practical training of any kind for offensive operations. Time and again British and French sources report German follow-up forces moving in what might be called “columns of flocks:” large numbers of men huddled formlessly together for emotional closeness and drawing fire like a magnet.31 Nor, finally, had German planners prepared an exploitation force able to take the burden from the surviving stormtroopers. In his memoirs Ludendorff is mildly critical of the High Command’s failure to consider the concept. In any case the tools were lacking. Germany’s cavalry on the Western Front had been largely dismounted. German armored vehicle designs were primitive, and few in number. The army’s motor vehicles were mostly heavy trucks, designed to operate on a network of paved streets and roads, within easy reach of maintenance facilities, and correspondingly unsuited to be

31 The most recent detailed account of the campaign and its problems is Kitchen, M. (2001).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

51

converted to moving men and weapons forward of a main line of advance, against opposition, over war-ravaged terrain.32 By the time of the great Allied counterattacks in July and August, the army’s combat units were burned out. The spring offensives cost almost a million casualties. Between July and November as many more were lost: dead, wounded, missing. Hundreds of thousands of others, undernourished and exhausted, fell victim to influenza. By early October an army corps with seven divisions in its order of battle was reporting its infantry strength at less than 5,000 men—less than ten per cent of authorized tables of organization.33 One regiment could count only 200 men. Another mustered 120, organized in four companies instead of the regulation twelve. Units with such low strengths fell far below the critical mass necessary to sustain cohesion as a combat force. The fighting power of the front line’s artisan groups correspondingly eroded in favor of their survival aspects. Getting home alive became a primary objective of the Korporalschaften that had become Kameradschaften. Wilhelm Deist describes the result as a “camouflaged strike,” with the “proletariat” of the war machine downing tools in a Marxist model of behavior. One might refer as well to Robert Darnton’s model of pre-industrial protest: challenging a system by defying its norms. Even before the army fell back towards its own frontiers, its rear areas contained increasing numbers of men who had drifted away from the war. The will to enforce more than the minimum forms of discipline evaporated—less from fear of a bullet in the back than a sense that it no longer mattered.34 Modern conscript armies are held together by a complex interface between front and home, military and civil society, incorporating varying combinations of compulsion, patriotism, and ideology.35 Underlying all of them, however, is an implied contract between the soldier and the system. When the nature or the conduct of a particular conflict breaks that contract, soldiers are likely to respond. To speak of a “strike” is to minimize the emotional factors, especially the sense of betrayal that accompanies the process. One might

32

Showalter, D. (1994). Report of Hans von Below, commanding LXI Corps, in Bundesarchiv/ Militaerarchiv Freiburg, Nachlass Otto von Below, N87/2. 34 Deist W. (1995). Cf. as well Lipp A. (1996); and Jahr C. (1998). 33

52

chapter one — dennis showalter

be better advised to talk of alienated affection. By November 1918, the German High Command could count no more than a dozen or so of its divisions as able and willing to fight anyone.36 For the most part the desires of the disaffected soldiers were expressed in a joke created by American GI’s in World War II. A suitably edited version is “when I get home, I’m going to do three things. First I’ll have a beer. Then I’ll make love to my wife. Then I’ll take off my pack.” Such a mind-set may not make revolutions, but it can halt wars. The Imperial German Army ended its existence with a collective sigh of relief.

II At least at lower levels, the French army was rich in innovative ideas. Michel Goya describes the imaginative and insightful approaches employed by French soldiers in confronting the challenge of the trenches. The best known was Captain André Laffargue, whose Etude sur l’Attaque dans la Periode actuelle de la Guerre proposed a method for breaking through German defenses based on companies advancing as rapidly as possible on their own, without concern for their flanks. Laffargue’s pamphlet was published in 1915, thanks in part to the patronage of then General Ferdinand Foch, translated into English a year later, and widely circulated in the United States.37 Most innovators, however, frequently of junior rank or otherwise “exiled” from the army’s intellectual mainstream, were not given the opportunity to present their theories on any scale until relatively late in the war.38 That in turn owed much to the fact that France, unlike the other two major participants on the Western Front, had no fall-back position. That had been eliminated in the autumn of 1914. Non-French critics of the French way of war frequently describe it as committed to following principles to their logical conclusion even when the outcome makes no empirical sense. During the Great War, however, France’s responses to the Western Front were char-

35 36 37 38

Strachan, H. (1996). Bessel, R. (1988). See Laffargue, A.C.V. (1962). Goya, M. (2002, 43).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

53

acterized by a level of heroic improvisation that was almost Nietzschean. Two technological examples may be cited to support the thesis. In terms of personal weapons the French soldier remained throughout the war by far the worst off of any major combatant. The Lebel rifle, with its bottle-necked cartridge and tubular magazine, had led the field when first introduced—but that had been in 1886. Its long, slender bayonet had the unpleasant habit of bending at inconvenient times. The French hand grenade had neither the power of the Mills nor the throwing range of the potato masher. The Hotchkiss heavy machine gun was adequate, but as an air-cooled design was slightly inferior to its water-cooled Vickers and Maxim counterparts as a sustained-fire weapon. Nevertheless in 1915 the French army made a technical jump intended to enable its shock tactics. Often described as a light machine gun, the Chauchat is better understood as a forerunner of the modern assault rifle. It had originally been designed before the war as a means of enhancing the individual infantryman’s firepower: firing short bursts from the hip during an advance, for the purpose of keeping heads down until the final rush. The Chauchat’s designers originally nicknamed it “gladiator,” presumably in the belief it would give infantrymen the power of arena champions. The men constrained to use the weapon usually found other names for it—none of them complimentary. As casualties increased, the army’s call for something to compensate led in 1915 to an authorization for the mass production of Chauchats in dozens of small workshops and factories. The rest of the story is familiar enough among weapons historians. An unripened design, handicapped by poor quality control that even under ideal conditions (no mud, no dust) jammed about every 300 rounds if one of its working parts did not malfunction earlier. Poor human engineering made the Chauchat uncomfortable to carry and almost impossible to fire from the hip—its ostensible main purpose in the first place. Its value as an assault weapon, substituting steel for blood, was close to zero. And there was no time to fix any of those shortcomings until after November 11, 1918. Instead the Chauchat found its eventual place as a base of fire for the rifle section. French tacticians and gun designers deserve better than the ridicule usually heaped on them for the Chauchat. The principle behind the weapon was sound enough—John Browning’s automatic rifle, a similar design, held an honored place in US rifle squads for almost fifty

54

chapter one — dennis showalter

years. But not for another thirty years would metallurgy and ballistics make the concept practical in the Wehrmacht’s World War II assault rifles and their successor the Soviet Kalashnikov. The weapon nevertheless illustrated the haste and waste syndrome impelling French response to the Western Front in the war’s middle years.39 The Chauchat’s bookend is the tank—or at least its original versions. Colonel J.E. Estienne advocated arming and armoring a tractor chassis beginning in 1915, at the same time that two of France’s heavy armament producers began developing versions of such a vehicle. Joffre, initially guardedly favorable, was won over when a prototype of one of the designs was demonstrated for him on February 21, 1916. Four days later, a contract was signed for 400 of them. Both the Schneider and the St. Chamond, as the two versions were known, were essentially armored boxes on treads, with overhangs that left them vulnerable to trenches and shell holes, remarkably unreliable engines, and armor vulnerable even to small arms fire. Such shortcomings were predictable, but in the climate of Verdun Etienne insisted that the new fighting vehicles be delivered as rapidly as possible. That pressure was congruent with the belief of General Robert Nivelle, who succeeded Joffre in December, 1916, that France must mount a decisive offensive as soon as possible. The resulting attack of April/May 1917 bore every hallmark of improvisation, and met a fate appropriate in a conflict that demanded planning above all else at tactical/operational levels. The tanks in particular proved little more than deathtraps for their unfortunate crews.40 In the aftermath of the Nivelle offensive and the “collective indiscipline” that followed it, The French army for the first time in the war took stock of itself, and began substituting system for “system D,” muddling through and improvisation. While he did not shift to a defensive strategy, the new commander in chief, Philippe Pétain, is perhaps best known for his aphorism that France must wait—for the Americans, who joined the war in April 1917, and for the tanks.

39

Demaison, G. and Buffetaut, Y. (1995), is a massive labor of love that contextualizes the Chauchat in the French war effort without revising its status as the worst small arm issued by a major power in the 20th century. Griffith, P. (1991) is a solid overview. 40 Ramspacher, E.-G. (1983); Dutil (Capt) (1919) is particularly useful for the early period. Cf. as well Perre, J.-P. (1937). Pedroncini G. (1997) is a good overview.

‘it

all goes wrong!’

55

He arguably deserves even more recognition for the creation in May 1917 of an “Instruction Section” at GHQ. Each branch of service was represented by a senior officer—including tanks and aviation. The Section’s responsibility was to evaluate and apply lessons from the front, independently of the conduct of operations.41 It was in the same context, though not always through the same institution, that previously compartmentalized innovations and reforms began coming together synergistically. This seems to have been more of a top-down process than in either the German or the British armies. While primary groups were no less important in the French army, they seem to have operated essentially as social units, providing their members with a sense of belonging that the homogenizing French replacement system eroded. Correspondingly, these groups lived according to their own rules and functioned at the margins of official authority, not overtly challenging the system. not integrating with it either, but “consenting” when consenting made sense.42 In September 1917 the infantry platoon was restructured with the automatic rifle as its central weapon; by November 1918 the Chauchat would be decentralized to squad level. Estienne had reacted to the failures of the large gun tanks and the overloading of French heavy industry by sponsoring the development of an entirely different vehicle. The 6-ton, two-man Renault FT, carrying a machine gun or a oneponder cannon, was intended as a true infantry accompanying vehicle—in tactical terms a Chauchat gunner behind armor. Pétain liked the concept. The first battalions were organized and equipped in March 1918, and the Renault played a key role throughout the rest of the war in both the French army and the AEF.43 During that same time frame the artillery came into its own. Pétain and Foch were both gunners by training, and by 1917 the French

41 Pedroncini, G. (1974) remains the best general treatment of Petain’s tenure in command. Goya (2002, 59) discusses the section’s procedures in the context of the new order. 42 Cf. Audouin-Rouzeau, S. (1993); Smith L.V. (1994); and Smith, L.V., AudoinRouzeau, S., and Becker, A. (2003, 96). In the same context my preliminary comparative investigation of front-line memoirs and fiction with a front-line basis suggests a German tendency to homogenize characters and personalities within the group, sometimes to near-indistinguishability, compared to a French pattern of distinguishing among them, making each a spokesman for a class, a region, or a perspective. 43 Cf. Perre, J.-P., et al. (1940); and Johnson, D.V. II and Hillman, R.L. Jr. (1999).

56

chapter one — dennis showalter

army had developed the best stable of heavy artillery among the combatants. The prewar 105 mm gun had been joined by the 155 mm Schneider howitzer, its 220 mm counterpart, and the 155 mm GPF long-range gun—all state of the art designs in terms of range and firepower. Increasingly motorized, with a flexible organization and developed methods of indirect fire, French artillery stood at least equal with any on the Western Front.44 The final material factor was almost literally a gift from heaven. For most of the war, the aviation branch had fought in its own element and compartments, providing observation and reconnaissance, undertaking embryonic strategic bombardment operation, generating a corps of fighter ace, and all in isolation. Beginning in August 1917, however, the air arm too underwent a fundamental reorganization that produced the Division Aérienne: a combined force of fighters and light bombers around 600 aircraft strong. Employed in unprecedented masses, it played the role of fire brigade during the German offensives, then switched to interdiction and sector support for the final Allied advances.45 The increasing integration of the new and improved weapons systems gave France for the first time in the war a combined arms force. The Instruction Section proposed to use it carefully and systematically, in “managed battles” orchestrated by the highest level of command involved. The Section’s initial project, the battle of la Malmaison, in October, 1917, was successful enough to become the postwar model for an attack with limited objectives. In August 1918 the concept of synergized management was applied at a higher level at Montdidier, where fifteen divisions, sixteen hundred guns, and two tank battalions seemed to prove the wisdom of combining the tactical ideas of 1915 by attacking on a broad front and simultaneously applying concentrated effort at selected points.46 More than either of its counterparts the French army responded to the Western Front in personnel contexts. It is ironic that once the shooting started, French generals poured out blood like water, while before the war one of the French military’s principal concerns

44

Gascouin (Gal) (1921). Cf. Carlier, C. (1997); and Facon, P. (2001), is a sound introduction by a leading authority. 46 Doughty, R.A. (1985, 81); and Daille, M. (1922). 45

‘it

all goes wrong!’

57

had been the significant population imbalance between France and the Second Reich: forty million to sixty million. To compensate the army supported campaigns against physical and moral “degeneration:” bad habits from absinthe to unprotected sex that allegedly diminished individual and collective fitness for war. Eventually France adopted, over significant internal objections, a three year term of active military service in contrast to its neighbor’s two. Even then conscription was so rigorous that men with physical defects and emotional problems frequently found themselves doing duty in regimental service companies (compagnies hors rang).47 France’s first wartime step in rationalizing its use of manpower was its reorganization during 1915 from the prewar standard division of two brigades and four regiments to the three-regiment configuration that became a general norm for the next fifty years. Most of the regiments thus released were used to form new divisions, and most of these were paired two by two more or less permanently in army corps that, in contrast to their British and German counterparts, retained the same two or four divisions at least in principle. The new configuration was considered to provide a better combination of striking power and flexibility in major operations than its predecessor, while the smaller divisions could more readily be detached and transferred to meet particular emergencies. It was successful enough that the American Expeditionary force copied at least the outline in its large divisions, which in numbers of men and guns closely approximated a French two-division corps. The crucial difference, contributing significantly to the AEF’s tactical clumsiness, was the American version’s relative lack of higher headquarters able to control subordinate maneuver units effectively.48 The French army also took the lead in replacing riflemen with heavy weapons. During 1916 one rifle company in each battalion was replaced by a company of heavy machine guns. Each battalion received as well a platoon of engins d’accompagnement: a Stokes mortar on the British model, and a 37-millimeter cannon whose deadly accuracy made it sufficiently useful against machine gun nests and pillboxes to justify a 250-pound weight that in any case by Great War standards was practically hand-portable.

47 48

Krumeich, G. (1984). Cf. Cooke, J.J. (1997); and for a different perspective Rainey, J.W. (1992–1993).

58

chapter one — dennis showalter

As its losses mounted and its depots emptied, the French army took sterner measures. Territorial recruiting, assigning men from a region to particular regiments, was abandoned in 1915. Henceforth all metropolitan regiments drew reinforcements from a common pool. The resulting homogenization was widely praised by social theorists for its contribution to turning “provincials into Frenchmen”. More to the operational point, the new system enabled prompt concentration of replacements where they were most needed.49 Ultimately, however, reorganization and rearmament were stopgaps. Before the war, soldiers like Charles Mangin argued for the creation of a force noir, tapping what was considered the inexhaustible reservoirs of men in sub-Saharan Africa. To more conventional minds that seemed a bit risky both socially and militarily.50 North Africa was another matter. The Algerian tirailleurs had proven their worth against Russians, Austrians, and Germans in the nineteenth century, and Algeria was legally part of France. In 1912 conscription was extended to its Muslim population, over protests that escalated into violence even before the outbreak of war. Nevertheless the Muslims and pied-noirs of North Africa combined to furnish the equivalent of a half-dozen divisions in 1914—no bagatelle when compared to a metropolitan active army that produced forty-four. The North African divisions rapidly earned a reputation as shock troops, committed time and again where the front was hottest. The extent to which that image camouflaged their use as cannon fodder remains debatable. French generals also used colonial troops because they believed the Germans feared the “savages” more than they did Frenchmen.51 What is certain is that France’s appetite for African manpower grew with time. From first to last over a hundred and twenty North African battalions were raised between 1914 and 1918. Sub-Saharan Africa was milked for over a hundred more battalions of Tirailleurs Sénégalais, generally attached in twos and threes to metropolitan divisions and again widely regarded as shock troops, genetically indifferent to casualties. The Senegalese enjoyed as well a public image as exotic heroes, which was denied to the more workaday North Africans. Miscegenation

49 50 51

On the subject generally see Boulanger, P. (2001). Michel, M. (1974). See Sussini, J.-L. (1997).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

59

was hardly a feature of wartime French policy. Actual contact of any kind between French women and African men was discouraged by every means possible. Obvious sexual attraction of French women, especially of the better classes, to African men was nevertheless a major theme of cartoons, postcards, even advertising. One telling postcard shows a white rabbit dressed as a Frenchwoman sharing a park bench with a black rabbit in tirailleur uniform. In broken “tirailleur French” he tells her that when the war is over, they will go back to Africa and make many black-and-white rabbits for France. Racial integration in the front line went much further in the French army than any other, particularly for the Senegalese. Cross-attachment of tirailleur and metropolitan companies was increasingly accompanied by the direct assignment of Europeans to Senegalese battalions. Usually the postings called for literacy and language skills beyond the ordinary late-war tirailleur. There were other advantages as well, which it did not do to mention, in having Europeans manning the machine guns.52 The desire of French generals to acquire American troops of any color to supplement the Africans did much to shape Allied/Associated tensions well into 1918. The French eventually settled for four regiments of blacks AEF commander John J. Pershing considered eminently dispensable.53 They continued as well organizing new regiments of Africans. Of the hundred divisions optimistically projected for the 1919 campaign, ten or a dozen were expected to be half Senegalese. Three more were Franco-(black) American. Another half-dozen were North African, with additional North African regiments replacing one regiment in as many metropolitan divisions as possible.54 The handwriting was on the wall. Staff officers proclaiming “the battle of 1919 will be a battle of aviation and tanks”55 were less

52 By far the best general work in this subject is Dean, W.T. (1999). For the Senegalese see Michel, M. (1982), and Lunn, J. (1999a). Lunn, J. (1999b) inevitably suffers from the time lapse involved in collecting survivors’ testimonies. 53 The most detailed analysis of the amalgamation controversy is in Bruce, R.D. (2003, 144). 54 See the memo of Aug,. 29, 1918, and the attachment of August 18, in AFGG, VII/1. Annexes, Vol. 2, 374 ff. Ironically in light of future events, the Indochinese tirailleurs were regarded as physically and emotionally unfit for front-line service and were used instead as labor and service troops. 55 “La bataille de 1919,” Aug, 29, 1918, in Les Armées françaises de la Grande Guerre, 103 vols. Tome VII, Vol. I, Annexes: Vol. 2 (Paris: 1922–1938).

60

chapter one — dennis showalter

expressing conversion to high-tech war than recognizing that the army had finally run out of men. The Republic had the doctrine and possessed the tools for modern combat. But by the time of the Armistice “the emptiness of the battlefield” was more than just a metaphor in French sectors.

III In recent years a virtual cottage industry has emerged rehabilitating the military effectiveness of the BEF and the competence of its commanders. Without uncritically accepting their arguments’ more extreme ramifications, the revisionists have established several key points that structured British responses to the Western Front. The British army faced the challenges of that theater with a startling absence of doctrine compared to its continental counterparts. Instead, as Albert Palazzo in particular argues convincingly, the British had an ethos: a continuity and coherence of thought that integrated the army into an entity. This ethos, according to Palazzo, was based on intangibles instead of principles. Above all it reflected amateurism.56 “Amateurism” in a British context meant not “muddling through” but flexibility and empiricism: a capacity for responding to new ideas, experiences, and inventions without forcing them onto Procrustean beds. That definition reflected British experience for over a century and a half. The formation of a national identity, the response to commercial and industrial revolutions, the achievement of global primacy—these had been essentially ad hoc processes.57 Amateurism reflected as well a military experience shaped under widely different circumstances, in the context of a dominant regimental culture. Even general officers identified themselves—and were identified in the system—by their regiments and corps rather than, as in the French and German armies, their common membership in a structure of high command. The British army’s approach to war correspondingly favored seeking generalizations at the expense of specifics. Its theoretical approaches were, in Hew Strachan’s words, “one step removed from the particular.”58 56 57 58

Palazzo A. (2000, 8). See for example Colley L. (1992). Strachan, H. (2002, 94). Travers, T. (1982) takes a sterner line.

‘it

all goes wrong!’

61

What was this ethos expected to achieve? The ultimate outcome, best expressed in the Field Service Regulations of 1909, was victory in decisive battle: the kind of victory no enemy could withstand. That victory in turn was best sought in four phases: Fixing the enemy in position; achieving fire superiority; breaking through enemy positions; and mounting a pursuit.59 Q.E.D.—except that experience on the Western Front rapidly demonstrated that the historically inherent advantages of the defensive had been exponentially multiplied, to a point where achieving offensive superiority in that theater became during 1915 the principal self-defined task of the BEF.60 Six factors shaped the BEF’s development as an offensive instrument. First, morale remained solid throughout the war. Its highs and lows were temporary. In general British morale reflected a class society in which men knew their place before joining up: but morale was also the product of a distinctive regular army experience that for over a century had “made riflemen from mud” and officers from younger sons, then bonded them in the community of the regiment. Other ranks offered deference; officers provided paternal care. The pattern was so dominant that its periodic absence, in some POW transports during 1914, for example, or in the aftermath of the surrender at Kut-el-Amara, stand out significantly.61 Applied to the citizen soldiers of 1914/1918, the “British way” proved more flexible and more enduring than its French and German counterparts. And it provided a correspondingly powerful matrix for developing military effectiveness.62 Logistics was a second taproot of offensive superiority. In the course of the war the BEF built up the most comprehensive, best-coordinated logistics system of any of the belligerents. Combining rail, horse, and motor transport, its ability to keep the front line supplied by 1918 had vitalized the concept that the real “artillery reserve” was not the number of guns, but the amount of ammunition. In the context of morale, the British logistical system contributed decisively to sustaining the “culture of competence” that provided hot food,

59 Field Service Regulations, Part 1: Operations, ed. General Staff (London, 1909); Palazzo, A. (2000, 17). 60 Travers, T. (1989) highlights the obstacles to clear thinking on the subject. 61 See Heather Jones’s contribution to the present volume, and her forthcoming dissertation. 62 Sheffield, G.D. (2000).

62

chapter one — dennis showalter

mail, and medical care on regular and predictable bases, sustaining an image of transplanted normality that balanced out tours in the trenches and major offensives. While the characteristic is most frequently associated with American armed forces, the BEF was the first army in history to benefit systematically at all levels from redundancy and abundance. Thanks to the combination of a fully developed industrial economy and a relatively short supply line, there was more of everything in northern France and Flanders than was needed or could be used. French soldiers admired their allies’ warm, practical uniforms, and envied the reliable provision of such luxury ration items as jam! The reaction of the Germans to the contents of British dugouts and supply dumps during the spring 1918 offensives, when such basic spoils of war as food, clothing, and liquor held up entire divisions, highlights Britain’s capacity to support its foe as well as itself, at least temporarily.63 Third on the list of British responses was technological innovation. The interactive development in the BEF of weapons systems, fire control techniques, and command methods eventually produced an artillery force that would only be matched, relative to its circumstances, by the Red Army in 1944–45. In survey and counter battery techniques, in calibrating barrel wear, in fire control the BEF led the field as the war progressed. The first experiments with predicted fire were made in the later stages of the Somme offensive. Despite limited success the gunners persisted. The Cambrai offensive of November 1917 featured the first successful large-scale predicted fire plan—which arguably had even more to do with the initial British success than the more spectacular mass employment of tanks. By the summer of 1918 artillery planning was conducted at army levels, incorporating correspondingly broad levels of intelligence. While senior artillery officers still remained essentially advisors as opposed to commanders, the British centralization of counter-battery and fire support at corps level gave their gunners an unrivalled combination of power and flexibility. The Royal Artillery had more men than the Royal Navy. Artillery-style weapons (including Engineer-operated versions) played

63 The best overview of this subject is Brown, I.M. (1998). Young, M. (2000), is a mine of useful details on a process no less remarkable for its time than the globalization of logistics in World War II.

‘it

all goes wrong!’

63

as well an increasing role in the integration of chemical warfare, gas and smoke, into an increasingly-sophisticated British program of inflicting casualties and damaging morale through chemistry.64 This concern for technology was not confined to the artillery. By the summer of 1917 what might be called “platoon technologies,” the arms and equipment of the infantry, had fully developed to meet the conditions of the Western Front. If by modern standards the infantryman remained scandalously overloaded, British webbing at least distributed the burden in physiologically friendly fashion. British steel helmets were reliable, standing in that respect between the German coal-scuttle and the French Adrian. The Lee-Enfield rifle, the Lewis light machine gun, and the Mills model hand grenade formed an unmatched trifecta of personal weapons. At higher levels each brigade had a company of eight Stokes mortars, whose descendants remain in service throughout the world. The Vickers watercooled machine gun did not outshine its Western Front counterparts to the same degree, but the BEF pioneered the weapon’s use in battalion strength, and introduced sophisticated indirect fire techniques that made machine gun barrages a regular tactical feature by 1918. The fourth source of British offensive capacity was not platoon technology itself, but the matching of infantry tactics to infantry weapons. Between 1915 and 1918 the BEF developed a system of minor tactics that was both aggressive and decentralized at least to platoon level. As the production and issuing of new weapons improved, Lewis guns and rifle grenades were combined with rifles in fortyman units small enough to respond to one commander, strong enough to function despite casualties, and flexible enough to utilize the positive qualities of a citizen army that to the war’s end retained a strong volunteer ethos.65 The “artisanal” structure of German small units had its counterpart in the British Army’s higher levels, in that preparation for combat tended to be a regimental affair. Brigades and divisions similarly differed significantly from each other in ethos and internal dynamics. Despite the efforts of systematizers like Lieutenant-General Sir Ivor Maxse, a strong element of unit localism

64 Cf. Marble, S. (1998), and the contextualizations in Bailey, J.B.A. (1989, 127), and Bidwell, S. and Graham, D. (1982). Palazzo, A. (2000) handles the chemical aspects. 65 Cf. Griffith, P. (1994); Ramsey, M.A. (2002); and Rawling, B. (1982). Much of the latter work’s data can be applied to the BEF as a whole.

64

chapter one — dennis showalter

remained in British methods throughout the war. Its potential negative consequences were, however, mitigated by an increasingly sophisticated system of circulating lessons and ideas among divisions despite the disadvantage inherent in the British system of rotating them from corps to corps.66 The fifth British benchmark was mobility. The BEF from the beginning of the war sought ways to enable its artillery to keep pace with the eventual decisive infantry advance. Prewar interest in some combination of armor, guns, wire-crushing capacity, and cross-country mobility became folded into the larger question. The large, clumsy rhomboids that accompanied attacks from Flers through the Hundred Days were above all weapons carriers, mounting heavier guns that their successors would carry until 1940. With experience the tanks developed as sideline in wire-crushing that frequently proved even more valuable than their firepower. And obsolete versions, along with a few specialized vehicles, found second lives as supply carriers, bringing stores, water, and ammunition into the very front lines in amounts that significantly diminished the by-then traditional need for large infantry carrying parties.67 For all its fearsome reputation the tank was nevertheless neither an actual nor a potential war-winner by itself. Tim Travers describes a growing dichotomy between “command” and “technology” in 1918: between the managed battle controlled from headquarters and the mechanized—or at least semi-mechanized—battle structured around the operations of armored fighting vehicles.68 An alternate approach depicts a synergy among infantry, artillery, tanks, and an increasingly effective system of close air support. The artillery sealed the flanks of an attack, conducted counter-battery fire against German gun positions, and provided the initial creeping barrage. Within the “artillery zone” the tanks sought targets of opportunity while the infantry probed for soft spots, each supporting the other as needed. Aircraft provided reconnaissance, artillery observation, and increasingly, ground attack roles; by August 1918 the Tank Corps had an RAF squadron attached. The complex interaction of these four arms could not be “con-

66 67 68

Baynes, J. (1995) serves as an introduction to a subject needing development. Cf. Childs, D.J. (1999); and Harris, J.P. (1996). Travers, T. (1992, 145).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

65

trolled” in any meaningful sense with the communication technology of 1918. Radios above all were impractical below brigade level. Operations could, however, be monitored and regulated to a degree that it is legitimate to speak of the evolution of the “semi-managed” battle, controlled at corps level, with division commanders able to move their combined-arms forces forward in a kind of lurching progress that grew steadier with practice.69 It is similarly appropriate to speak of a “semi-mobile” battle, with men, vehicles, and firepower pushing back the German front as opposed to rupturing it.70 The gains of an Amiens were deceiving. Neither the tactics nor the technology of 1918 were quite up to breaching even improvised defensive positions at acceptable cost. What they could do was maintain a steady pressure that compelled an eroding German army to fall back steadily—until its despairing generals demanded that the government sue for peace rather than risk a desperate end-game on German soil.71 The British had one additional resource for addressing the problem of the Western Front: a working model of how the thing was best done. That model was the Canadian Corps: the finest large fighting unit relative to its circumstances in modern history. Here some fine-tuning —and perhaps some backpedaling —is necessary. Since halfway through the war, the rivalry between Australian and Canadians for pride of place on the Western Front has informed the history of both contingents, with New Zealand’s great “Silent Division” making its own claims for primacy.72 In recent years an entire Battle Assessment Project has devoted its efforts to establishing a case for at least an upper tier of British divisions relative to the “dominion supermen.”73 The position asserted here is not that Canadian troops were superior fighters, man for man and unit for

69 The development of the division as the BEF’s higher unit of identity combined with rotation among corps headquarters to retard significantly the development of cooperation between these major levels of command. See Simpson, A. (2001). 70 Cf. Bailey, J. (1996, 2001). Particularly significant in this process was the increasing proportion of heavy artillery drawn by caterpillar tractors—an unspectacular innovation, but one which bestowed tactical mobility on heavy as well as light field artillery, with corresponding benefit to the infantry’s fire support. 71 See Barr, N.J.A. (2001). 72 Wise, S.F. (1999). 73 Sheffield, G.D. (1999).

66

chapter one — dennis showalter

unit, to their counterparts. It is rather that the Canadian Corps as an entity was the best adapted of any formation in any army to the particular demands of the semi-mobile, semi-managed battle as it evolved on the Western Front in 1916–1918.74 Scale was decisive. The experience of the Western front had shown the division, usually between 12,000 and 16, 000 strong, as the most suitable level for tactical control of combined-arms battles. On the other hand, the division by itself lacked the strength and sustainability to conduct grand-tactical or operational combat. As a result, particularly for offensives the next level of command, the army corps or its equivalent, was usually reinforced far beyond any organic elements it might possess, with corresponding loss of cohesion. The Canadian Corps had existed since 1915 and had had corresponding time to develop a smooth-working, institutionally functional staff and command system. A certain case can also be made that the significant level of politicization in the corps during its existence eventually proved an advantage by providing lessons in negotiation and compromise for a common purpose. Institutionally the Corps’s composition was both permanent and homogeneous: the same four divisions, all Canadian. Its corps troops were also entirely Canadian— in contrast to the Australian Corps, which depended to a degree on British heavy artillery and service elements. The Australians were also suffering a personnel shortage as early as the end of 1917 and by the end of their service in 1918 were cannibalizing front-line battalions for replacements. In contrast the Canadian Corps’s front-line strength, infantry, machine-gunners, and engineers, was not only sustained but enhanced in 1918, due to the political and military selfdiscipline that resisted the temptation to reduce the size of divisions, expand their number, and assert a claim to form a Canadian Army. This institutional matrix, however, was insufficient to explain the Canadians’ effectiveness. The Corps had also developed its own doctrine, schools, and procedures. It had cultivated, especially under Sir Arthur Currie, a culture of exchanging information and sharing

74 For the following cf. Shane Schreiber, S.B. (1997); Hyatt, M.J. (1987); Rawling, B. (1999); and Brown, I.M. (1994). The Canadians also led by a good margin in venereal disease rates, in 1918 running 158 per thousand compared to 144 for the Australians in 1917 and 34 per thousand in the BEF as a whole for 1918. Beckett, I. (2001, 215).

‘it

all goes wrong!’

67

advice that balanced the entropy inherent in the British regimental ethos. In the words of one brigade commander, no one of any rank should “get back to Canada and say that he had a good idea or suggestion upon any subject connected with the war and that he could not get it considered by a Higher Authority.”75 Because its routines worked smoothly, the corps at all levels was able to think beyond immediate situations to the next stage—moving, in other words, from a tactical to an operational level. The Canadian Corps, was, in short, ideally suited to bear the role of BEF spearhead Haig assigned it in the war’s final months. Specializing in elaborately prepared set-piece actions, the Canadians were unmatched at executing large-scale high-intensity offensives one after another. And yet despite its qualities, the corps suffered almost a fifth of its total casualties in the war’s final three months. A few weeks more at the same operational pace would have eroded the Canadians to the same status as every other contingent else on the Western Front—except an AEF just at the beginning of its learning curve. Even in the war’s final stages method and technology could not significantly reduce casualties. They could only improve the ratio of gains. Among themselves, the major combatants might have laid the foundations of modern combined-arms maneuver warfare. They might have inaugurated three-dimensional combat. They might even have introduced a Revolution in Military Affairs. But the Great War was hard war by any standards, and its achievements came at a high price.

Bibliography “La bataille de 1919,” Aug. 29, 1918, in Les Armées françaises de la Grande Guerre, 103 vols. Tome VII, Vol. I, Annexes: Vol. 2 (Paris: 1922–1938). Afflerbach, H. (1994) Falkenhayn. Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich (Munich: 1994). Akavia, G.Y. (1993) Decisive Victory and Correct Doctrine: Cults in French Military Thought Before 1914. A Rereading of Ardant du Picq, Ferdinand Foch, and Loyzeau de Grandmaison (Stanford, Ca.: 1993). Audoin-Rouzeau, S. and Becker, A. (2000) 14–18. Understanding the Great War, tr. C. Tennerson (New York: 2000).

75

Quoted in Brennan, P.H. (2003, 85).

68

chapter one — dennis showalter

Audouin-Rouzeau, S. (1993) Men at War 1914–1918, tr. H. McPhail (Providence, RI: 1993). Bailey, J. (1996) ‘The First World War and the Birth of the Modern Syle of Warfare’ Strategic and Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper, 12 (Camberley: 1996). ——. (2001) ‘The First World War and the Birth of Modern Warfare’ in The Dynamics of Military Revolution eds. M. Knox, W. Murray (Cambridge: 2001), 132–153. Bailey, J.B.A. (1989) Field Artillery and Firepower (Oxford: 1989). Barr, N.J.A. (2001) ‘The Elusive Victory. The BEF and the Operational Level of War, November 1918’ in War in the Age of Technology, eds. G. Jensen and A. Wiest (New York: 2001), 211–238. Baynes, J. (1995) Far from a Donkey: The Life of General Sir Ivor Mazxe (London: 1995). Becker, J-J. (1980) “Union sacrée et idéologie bourgeoisie,” Revue historique, 264 (1980), 65–74. Beckett, I. (2001) The Great War, 1914–1918 (London: 2001). Bessel, R. (1988) ‘The Great War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilization, and Weimar Political Culture’, German History, VI (1988), 20–34. Beumelberg, W. (1927) Loretto. Schlachten und Treffen des Weltkrieges XVII (Berlin: 1927). ——. (1930) Gruppe Boesemueller (Oldenburg: 1930). Bidwell, S. and Graham, D. (1982) Fire-Power and Theories of War, 1914–1945 (London: 1982). Bihl, W. (1975) Die Kaukasus-Politik der Mittelmaechte, Vol. I, Ihre Basis in der OrientPolitik und ihre Aktionen 1914–1917 (Vienna: 1975). Boulanger, P. (2001) La France devant la conscription: géographie historique d’une institution républicaine, 1914–1922 (Paris: 2001). Brennan, P.H. (2003) ‘From Amateur to Professional: the Experience of Brigadier General William Antrobus Griesbach’ in Canada and the Great War. Western Front Association Papers, ed. B.C. Busch (Montreal: 2003). Brown, I.M. (1994) ‘Not Glamorous but Effective: The Canadian Corps and the Set-Piece Attack, 1917–1918’ The Journal of Military History, 58 (1994), 421–444. ——. (1998) British Logistics on the Western Front, 1914–1919 (Westport, Ct.: 1998). Bruce, R. (1997) Machine Guns of World War I (London: 1997). Bruce, R.D. (2003) A Fraternity of Arms. America and France in the Great War (Lawrence, Ks.: 2003). Carlier, C. (1997) ‘L’émergence d’une arme nouvelle: l’aéronautique 1914–1916’ in La bataille de Verdun, eds. C. Carlier and G. Pedroncini (Paris: 1997), 37–58. Cassar, G. (1996) ‘Kitchener at the War Office’ in Facing Armageddon, ed. H. Cecil and P. Liddle (London, 1996), 37–50. Chickering, R. (1998) Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: 1998). Childs, D.J. (1999) A Peripheral Weapon? The Production and Employment of British Tanks in the First World War (Westport, Ct.: 1999). Colley, L. (1992) Britons. Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Ct.: 1992). Cooke, J.J. (1997) Pershing and His Generals. Command and Staff in the AEF (Westport, Ct.: 1997). Corrigan, G. (1999) Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–1915 (Staplehurst: 1999). Daille, M. (1922) Le bataille de Montdidier (Paris: 1922). Dean, W.T. (1999) The Colonial Armies of the French Third Republic: Overseas Formation and Continental Deployment, 1871–1920, 2 vols. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, (Chicago: 1999). Deist, W. (1994) ‘Le moral des troupes allemands sur le front occidental a la fin de l’année 1916’ in Guerre et culture 1914–1918, eds. J.J. Becker et al. (Paris: 1994), 91–102.

‘it

all goes wrong!’

69

——. (1995) ‘Verdeckter Militaerstreik im Jahre 1918?’ in Der Krieg des kleinen Mannes, ed. W. Wette (Munich: 1995), 142–167. Demaison, G. and Buffetaut Y. (1995) Honour Bound—The Chauchat Machine Rifle (Coubourg, Ontario: 1995). Doughty, R.A. (1985) The Seeds of Disaster. The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919–1939 (Hamden, Ct.: 1985). Doughty, R.G. (2003) ‘France and the Great War: Misfortune or Misdirection?’, Paper presented at the May, 2003 meeting of the Society for Military History, Knoxville, Tenn. Dutil, (Capt) (1919) Les chars d’assaut leur création et leur rôle pendant la guerre 1915–1918 (Nancy, 1919). Erickson, E.M. (2001) Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War (Westport, Ct.: 2001). Facon, P. (2001) ‘La division aérienne ou l’emploi en masse de l’aviation en 1918’, 14–18, 3 (Aug-Sept, 2001), 41–47. Falkenhayn, (von) E. (1936) General Headquarters, 1914–1916 and Its Critical Decisions (London: 1936). Foley, R.T. “Germany in the First World War: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Strategy of Attrition,” unpublished manuscript. French, D. (1986) British Strategy and War Aims, 1914–1916 (London: 1986). ——. (1988) ‘The Meaning of Attrition, 1914–1916’, English Historical Review, 103 (1988), 385–404. Gascouin, (Gal) (1921) L’évolution de l’artillerie pendant la guerre (Paris: 1921). Geyer, M. (1986) ‘German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare’ in Makers of Modern Strategy, rev. ed., P. Paret et al. (Oxford: 1986), 527–597. Glaeser, E. (1929) Jahrgang 1902 (Berlin: 1929). Goya, M. (2002) Le processus d’ evolution tactique de l’armee francaise pendant la grande guerre (1914–1918), MA Dissertation, Sorbonne (Paris: 2002). Greenhalgh, E. (1999a) “Why the British Were on the Somme, War In History 6 (1999), 147–173. ——. (1999b) “‘Parade Ground Soldiers’: French Assessments of the British on the Somme in 1916” Journal of Modern History, 63 (1999), 263–312. ——. (2002) “Flames Over the Somme: A Retort to William Philpott” War In History 10, 335–342. Grieves, K. (1988) The Politics of Manpower 1914–1918 (Manchester: 1988). Griffith, P. (1991) ‘The Lewis Gun Made Easy: The Development of Automatic Rifles in the Great War’, The Great War, 3 (1991), 108–115. ——. (1994) Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916–1918 (New Haven, Ct.: 1994). Gudmundsson, B. (1989) Stormtroop Tactics (New York: 1989). Guth, E.P. (1984), ‘Der Gegensatz zwischen dem Oberbefehlshaber Ost und dem Chef des Generalstabes des Feldheeres 1914–15. Die Rolle des Majors v. Haeften im Spannungsfeld zwischen Hindenburg, Ludendorff, und Falkenhayn’, Militaergeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 35 (1984), 75–111. Harris, J.P. (1996) Men, Ideas, and Tanks (Manchester: 1996). Harrison, M. (1996) ‘The Fight against Disease in the Mesopotamian Campaign’ in Facing Armageddon. The First World War Experience eds. H. Cecil and P. Liddle (London: 1996), 475–489. Hohenborn, (von) W. (1986) Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des Preußischen Kriegsministers als Kriegsminister und Truppenführer im Weltkrieg, ed. H. Reichold and G. Granier (Boppard: 1986). Horne, J. and Kramer, A. (2001) German Atrocities 1914. A History of Denial (New Haven, CT.: 2001). Hyatt, M.J. (1987) Sir Arthur Currie. A Military Biography (Toronto: 1987).

70

chapter one — dennis showalter

Jahr, C. (1998) Gewoenliche Soldaten. Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer 1914–1918 (Goettingen: 1998). Jarausch, K. (1973) The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann-Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven, Ct.: 1973). Joachimsthaler, A. (1979) Korrektur einer Bibliographie. Adolf Hitler, 1908–1920 (Munich: 1979). Johnson, D.V. II and Hillman, R.L. Jr. (1999) Soissons 1918 (College Station, Tex.: 1999. Kitchen, M. (2001) The German Offensives of 1918 (Stroud: 2001). Krumeich, G. (1984) Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve of the First World War, tr. S. Conn (Dover, N.H.: 1984). Laffargue, A.C.V. (1962) Fantassin de Gascogne. De mon jardin à la Marne et au Danube (Paris: 1962). Linnenkohl H. (1990) Vom Einzelschuss zur Feuerwalze. Der Wettlauf zwischen Technik und Taktik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Koblenz: 1990). Lipp, A. (1996) ‘Friedenssehnsucht und Durchhaltebereitschaft: Wahrnehmungen und Erfahrungen deutscher Soldaten im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 36 (1996), 279–292. Lossberg (von) F. (1939) Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkriege 1914–1918 (Berlin: 1939). Ludendorff, E. (1919) Meine Kriegserinnnerungen 1914–1918 (Berlin: 1919). Lunn, J. (1999a) “‘Les Races Guerrières:’ Racial Preconceptions in the French Military about French West African Soldiers during the First World War”, Journal of Contemporary History, 34 (1999). ——. (1999b) Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth, N.H.: 1999). Lupfer, T. (1981) The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine during the First World War (Ft. Leavenworth, KS.: 1981). Marble, S. (1998) “‘The Infantry Cannot Do With a Gun Less’: The Place of the Artillery in the BEF, 1914–1918,’ Ph.D. Dissertation, University of London (London: 1998). Marx, J. (1964) Kriegstagebuch eines Juden (Frankfurt am Main: 1964). Mc Kale, D.M. (1998) War by Revolution: Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War I (Kent, Ohio: 1998). Meier-Welcker, H. (1967) Seeckt (Frankfurt: 1967). Michel, M. (1974) “Une mythe: la ‘force noire’ avant 1914,” Relations internationales, 1 (1974), 83–90. ——. (1982) L’appel d’Afrique (Paris: 1982). Mollin, V. (1986) Auf dem Wege zur “Materialschlacht.” Vorgeschichte und Funktionieren des Artillerie-Industrie-Komplexen im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Pfaffenweiler: 1986). Palazzo, A. (2000) Seeking Victory on the Western Front: The British Army & Chemical Warfare in World War I (Lincoln, Neb.: 2000). Passington, I. (1998) Pillars of Fire: The Battle of Messines Ridge, June 1917 (Stroud: 1998). Pedroncini, G. (1974) Pétain Général en chef (Paris: 1974). ——. (1997) ‘Le retour du mouvement: les chars’, in L’émergence des armes nouvelles, eds. C. Carlier and G. Pedroncini (Paris: 1997), 171–190. Perre, J.-P. (1937) Batailles et combats des chars français: l’armée d’apprentissage, 1917 (Paris: 1937). Perre J.-P., et al. (1940) Batailles et combats des chars français: la bataille défensive, avriljuillet 1918 (Paris: 1940). Philpott W. (1996) Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Basingstoke: 1996). ——. (2002) ‘Why the British Were Really on the Somme: A Reply to Elizabeth Greenhalgh’, War In History 9 (2002), 446–471.

‘it

all goes wrong!’

71

Rainey, J.W. (1992–1993) ‘Ambivalent Warfare: The Tactical Doctrine of the AEF in World War I’, Parameters, 22 (Winter, 1992–1993), 34–46. Ramsey, M.A. (2002) Command and Cohesion: The Citizen Soldier and Minor Tactics in the British Army, 1870–1918 (Westport, Ct.: 2002). Ramspacher, E.-G. (1983) Le général Estienne, “père des chars” (Paris: 1983). Rawling, B. (1982) Trench Warfare. Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914 –1918 (Toronto: 1982). ——. (1999) ‘A Resource Not to be Squandered: The Canadian Corps on the 1918 Battle field’ in Defining Victory, eds. P. Dennis and J. Grey (Canberra: 1999). Remarque, E.M. (1929) Im Westen nichts Neues (Berlin: 1929). Renn, L. (1934) Krieg (Berlin: 1934). Richert, D. (1989) Beste Gelegenheit zum Sterben: Meine Erlebnisse im Krieg 1914–1918, ed. A. Tranitz and B. Ulrich (Munich: 1989). Samuels, M. (1995) Command or Control? Command, Training, and Tactics in the British and German Armies, 1888–1918 (London: 1995). Schauwecker, F. (1921) The Fiery Way (London: 1921). Schreiber, S.B. (1997) Shock Army of the British Empire. The Canadian Corps in the Last Hundred Days of the Great War (Greenwood, Ct.: 1997). Seeselburg, F. (1928) Der Stellungskrieg (Berlin: 1928). Setzen, J.A. (1972) The Doctrine of the Offensive in the French Army on the Eve of World War I, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago (Chicago: 1972). Sheffield, G.D. (1999) ‘The Indispensable Factor: the Performance of British Troops in 1918’ in Defining Victory, eds. P. Dennis and J. Grey (Canberra: 1999), 72–95. ——. (2000) Leadership in the Trenches. Officer-Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of the First World War (New York: 2000). Showalter, D. (1994) ‘German Mobile Warfare: The Missing Model’, Military History Quarterly, 7 (Autumn, 1994), 82–89. Simpson, A. (2001) The Operational Role of British Corps Command on the Western Front, 1914–18, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of London (London: 2001). Smith, L.V. (1994) Between Mutiny and Obedience. The Case of the Fifth Infantry Division during World War I (Princeton: 1994). Smith, L.V., Audoin-Rouzeau S., and Becker A. (2003) France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: 2003). Strachan, H. (1996) “The Morale of the German Army, 1917–1918,” in Facing Arrmageddon, 383–398. ——. (1998) ‘The Batttle of the Somme and British Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 21 (1998), 79–95. ——. (2001) The First World War, Vol. I, To Arms (Oxford: 2001). ——. (2002) ‘The British Army, the General Staff, and the Continental Commitment, 1904–1914’, in The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, c. 1890–1939, eds. D. French and B. Holden Reid (London: 2002), 75–94. Sussini, J.-L. (1997) ‘La perception des ‘Troupes noires’ par les Allemands’, in Les Troupes coloniales dans la Grande Guerre, eds. C. Carlier and G. Pedroncini (Paris: 1997), 69–82. Torrey, G.E. (1997) ‘L’affaire de Soissons, 1915’, War in History, 4 (1997), 398–410. Travers, T. (1992) How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918 (London: 1992). ——. (1982) ‘The Hidden Army: Structural Problems in the British Officer Corps, 1900–1918’, Journal of Contemporary History, 17 (1982), 523–544. ——. (1989) ‘Learning and Decision-Making on the Western Front, 1915–1916: The British Example’, Canadian Journal of History, 18 (1989), 87–97. Ullrich, V. (1984) ‘Entscheidung im Osten oder Sicherung der Dardanallen: das Ringen um den Serbienfeldzug 1915’, Militaergeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 32 (1984), 45–63.

72

chapter one — dennis showalter

Wild von Hohenborn, A. (1986) Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des preussischen Kriegsministers als Kriegsminister und Truppenfuehrer im Weltkrieg, ed. H. Reichold, and G Granier (Boppard: 1986). Wise, S.F. (1999) ‘The Black Day of the German Army: Australians and Canadians at Amiens, August 1918’, in 1918. Defining Victory, eds. P. Dennis and J. Grey (Canberra: 1999), 1–32. Young, M. (2000) Army Service Corps, 1902–1918 (London: 2000). Zabecki, D. (1994) Steel Wind: Colonel Georg Bruchmueller and the Birth of Modern Artillery (Westport, Ct.: 1994).

CHAPTER TWO

DISCIPLINE IN THE ITALIAN ARMY 1915–1918* Vanda Wilcox

Among the causes of the defeat at Caporetto in October and November 1917 was a failure of Italian military discipline on an enormous scale. Whilst poor discipline was not the sole cause of the Italian retreat it was immediately identified by Luigi Cadorna and his apologists as being the single most important factor in explaining the defeat. Like the Italians, other armies had experienced a number of disciplinary problems in the opening years of the war, yet no Caporetto occurred elsewhere. The collapse of the Russian army was a part of the wider social and political revolution underway there; the mutinies of 1917 in the French army which were triggered by the failure of the Nivelle offensive did not involve mass surrender or retreat.1 Paradoxically, Cadorna, the army commander who struggled the most with discipline, was also the general who placed the greatest emphasis on its importance and who operated the most brutal regime. This paper will focus primarily on the period up to and including November 1917. In particular I intend to examine the role of General Cadorna, to evaluate the extent of his personal influence and how it was that the structure of command permitted the commander in chief to exercise such extensive and in some ways unconventional powers. The focus on Cadorna’s leadership is also in part due to the fact that under his successor Armando Diaz the emphasis on discipline was lessened. Although after Caporetto discipline continued to be a key component of the army’s strategy for keeping men in the line, and the system remained broadly the same, increased attention was given to tactics, training and sustaining morale. Since

* I would like to thank my supervisors Dr Adrian Gregory and Professor Hew Strachan for their advice. Many helpful comments were made at the Second Conference of the International Society for First World War Studies, especially by Dr. Anne Duménil, and Pierre Purseigle. 1 (Smith 1994).

74

chapter two — vanda wilcox

discipline was no longer as central as it had hitherto been, it seems logical to focus chiefly on the first two and half years of the war. Cadorna believed that strict discipline was the most important element in maintaining morale. In his background, training and professional experience he was a typical aristocratic Piedmontese army commander, reliant on traditional practices and army structures. Cadorna’s views on morale and discipline are consistent with the rest of his military thought: hierarchies should be inflexible, social status was a valuable indicator of reliability, ability was less important than rank, and the masses were untrustworthy and lacking in any sophisticated understanding. The Italian Army has rightly been considered to have had one of the most brutal disciplinary regimes during the First World War. One well-documented episode from 1917 can serve to illustrate the structures of Italian military discipline and the attitudes which prevailed in the army.

The Ravenna Brigade In 1919, Alfredo Caloro, former adjutant to the Brigadier of the Ravenna Brigade testified to the Commission of Inquiry investigating the defeat of Caporetto, regarding an incident of collective indiscipline. The Ravenna Brigade had an excellent fighting record throughout the war and distinguished itself in several actions. By 1917 it had been stationed on the Carso for a prolonged period; the men had been in action in the front lines for an unusually long time, suffering very heavy losses, and the unit’s leave was long overdue. On the afternoon of 21st March 1917, one of the brigade’s two regiments (38th) refused to return to the lines. Several shots were fired in the air, and many men simply sat down and refused to move. Officers and men alike were tired, demoralised, poorly fed and equipped and many were slightly drunk. Their Brigadier went to inspect them and listen to their grievances; he addressed them calmly and persuaded them to return peacefully to their lines without further action. By 10 pm all men had returned to their places and order was fully restored. This episode was a typical example of the type of indiscipline most commonly found at this time in the Italian army. A localised, spontaneous, unfocused expression of protest, without leadership or political overtones, the incident was a reaction to specific circumstances

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

75

which the men involved found unacceptable or no longer tolerable. Exhaustion and perceived injustice over rest and leave entitlements were the main motivating forces. It was not a true mutiny, nor was it based in opposition to the war. The swift response of the officer involved prevented a more serious episode from developing and helped to maintain, even improve, officer-men relations within the Brigade. However, once the adjutant had reported this incident to the divisional commander, events took a more serious turn. The general arrived almost immediately. ‘What has happened here?’ [the divisional commander] demanded. ‘Nothing, everything is in order and the troop has already left.’ ‘How many were shot?’ My general was slightly deaf and to this question he thought he was being asked how many shots had been fired, so he answered ‘Few, very few.’ ‘But how many?’ the divisional commander insisted. ‘Really, I don’t know the exact number.’ ‘But where are the bodies?’ It was only then that my general realised that he had misunderstood, and he said ‘I didn’t shoot anyone, I was talking only of shots fired into the air.’ ‘That’s bad, very bad,’ the commander exclaimed.2

The divisional commander had brought with him his own carabinieri who found two men of the brigade who still remained in the rear area, both sleeping; he ordered them to be shot immediately, despite the fact that neither had been involved in the afternoon’s events. The following morning the Brigadier was summarily relieved of his command for his inadequate disciplinary response; his replacement was ordered by the corps commander to conduct further executions immediately so as to display a proper example to the men. Going up to the lines, the new brigadier selected twenty men at random from the 8th company of the regiment in question; from these, five were then selected by lot and shot immediately, in the trenches. A fortnight later, when the whole Brigade returned to the rest area, the Corps commander ordered an extraordinary tribunal. Despite testimony from the brigade’s officers, including the adjutant who submitted this report, that it was impossible to identify the guilty men

2

(Relazione Ufficiale 1919) t. 2, pp. 359–368. Own translation.

76

chapter two — vanda wilcox

with certainty, a further four men were condemned and executed; over the following fortnight, another 18 men, suspected of involvement, were tried and shot on a variety of pretexts. Others were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. In total 39 men were shot as a result of this “mutiny” which had been peacefully and easily dispelled.3 This unhappy episode reveals much about Italian military discipline, both in terms of the nature of disciplinary offences and of the army’s response. What might easily and perhaps more justly have been regarded as a simple protest, was instead interpreted as a highly threatening mutiny. This was typical of high command’s response to disciplinary problems. In this way minor incidents escalated in importance and so increasingly severe punishments were applied. The execution of so many men over what appears to be a relatively trivial episode is a significant feature of Cadorna’s policy and the culture he promoted in the army as a whole.

The Italian Disciplinary System During the First World War Italian army discipline was governed by the Italian Penal Code of 1859, the policies of Comando Supremo (the Italian high command) and the interpretation of the military tribunals. The Penal Code, unchanged since 1859 despite much debate and several proposed new versions, was almost entirely based on the early Piedmontese code of 1840. The code was both rigid and poorly defined; it was to prove wholly outdated and unsuitable for a modern war. The policies of the high command, and in particular Cadorna, were crucial, since he could informally amend the penal code and override army tribunals. Discipline was managed at army corps level. The carabinieri (military police) who were primarily responsible for enforcing discipline were attached to each army corps and worked at the direction of the corps commander. The carabinieri were most involved in discipline in rear areas, and only worked at the front under special instructions. They might be ordered to work undercover to investigate units or individuals suspected of subversive activities, or summoned to

3

(Melograni 1965).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

77

monitor ongoing tensions. Otherwise they remained in the rear, policing the war zone. The carabinieri were hugely unpopular with the troops, especially the elite units, and in some instances acts of indiscipline were directly aimed at them. In addition to its own military police, each Italian army corps had a permanent court martial which had responsibility for all non-commissioned ranks; extraordinary tribunals were set up when there was a need to try any commissioned officer. Cadorna disliked the slow legalistic processes of the tribunals, and deplored their clemency and the existence of the right to appeal, which he succeeded in severely limiting by Christmas 1915. He also opposed the presence of civilian lawyers to the tribunals on the grounds that they were insufficiently thorough and took an over-indulgent view of military offences. Military justice was to be less concerned with truth, legality or fairness than with order, efficiency and providing deterrents: Cadorna conceived it to be a tool of punitive repression. Whilst officers who took swift retributive action were praised in official despatches, he complained incessantly in his letters and despatches about the slowness and leniency of the tribunal system.4 It does not seem, however, from a comparative perspective, that Italian military tribunals were excessively lenient. Between 1915 and 1919 around 350,000 cases were dealt with by Italian military tribunals, including soldiers, civilians and prisoners of war. 170,000 soldiers were pronounced guilty, with numbers increasing continuously throughout the war as Cadorna introduced ever stricter measures and pressed for greater numbers of convictions. Between May 1915 and May 1916 there were 23,016 convictions in total. In the year to May 1917 this rose to 48,296 and in the next 12 months the figure almost doubled again to 82,366.5 Around 6% of the total number of serving men were involved in some sort of disciplinary action and roughly 60% of those tried by the tribunals were found guilty.6 The most common punishment applied by military tribunals was imprisonment, with terms ranging from a week through to life. Tribunals specified whether ordinary imprisonment or solitary confinement was to be implemented; they could also sentence a man

4 5 6

(Melograni 1965). (Ufficio Statistico 1929). (Forcello and Monticone 1968) Introduction.

78

chapter two — vanda wilcox

to a lifetime’s forced labour. The records suggest that the severity of sentencing was wildly inconsistent from one army corps to the next, due, perhaps, to the poorly constructed penal code as well the imprecise instructions issued by Cadorna on disciplinary matters. Occasionally men were fined for lesser offences, amounts ranging from 100L up to substantial sums such as 5000L, which would have been far beyond the means of most.7 But military tribunals were also able, and encouraged, to apply the death penalty; the sentence would specify whether a man was to be shot in the chest or in the back (death with dishonour, specifically for offences of cowardice). Cadorna considered good discipline to be among the most important criteria for military success; not only he did not believe that morale needed to be actively sustained by any other means, but he considered that discipline was more important than training or tactical sophistication. Despite the lack of war enthusiasm, he did not introduce any program of patriotic instruction, and almost no propaganda was produced for the troops under his command. Nor did he believe in the importance of rest and recreation in maintaining good spirits. One reason for the absence of positive measures to promote patriotism or war enthusiasm was that since Italian unification the army itself had been seen as ‘the crucible of nationhood;’ the simple existence of military service was supposed to create a sense of italianità. On the basis of this assumption, there should have been no need for further encouragement of patriotic sensibilities. Any measures for the benefit of men’s morale during the first three years of the war were entirely independent initiatives, often hindered rather than supported by Supreme Command. Only in 1918, under Diaz, did the army establish a propaganda and education section, the Uffizio ‘P’, and introduce a series of measures to alleviate soldiers’ boredom and disaffection. For Cadorna, discipline alone was to maintain order and morale. Given, then, that Cadorna placed such heavy emphasis on discipline and its importance in military success, it is unsurprising that it occupied much of his attention. On 24 May 1915, the first day of Italy’s war, Comando Supremo’s Circular No. 1 outlined Cadorna’s conception of the role discipline should play in the conflict to come. Amongst his remarks was that

7

Infantrymen received 0.5L a day. (Melograni 1965) p. 110.

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

79

the main source, the most pernicious, of a declining discipline is the culpable and sometimes criminal tolerance by those who should instead be its most vigilant guardians . . . One proceeds with sharp-sighted observation and suppresses with inflexible rigour . . . Punishment must follow swiftly, the immediateness of the response succeeds by salutatory example, destroys at birth the germs of indiscipline.8

The emphasis was on officers in the field to implement discipline through swift, harsh and thorough punishment. Cadorna’s own inclination was always to err on the side of severity and he expected all officers under his command to emulate him. He never once criticised a subordinate’s disciplinary action for excessive brutality, but frequently criticised or even demoted those who he considered to have acted with weakness, over-tolerance and a lack of moral firmness, as happened to the hapless brigadier of the Ravenna Brigade. In total 217 generals were demoted or removed from their command by Cadorna, many for leniency.9 In the aforementioned order, Cadorna stated that he would hold fully responsible those officers who show hesitation to take, without delay, the initiative to enforce, when the situation demands, the extreme measures of coercion and repression.10

Discipline was not merely the responsibility of tribunals and military police, although they had an important role to play, but of all officers and men. Men who retreated, who surrendered without sufficient resistance or who deserted were guilty of cowardice in the face of the enemy, and thus liable to the summary justice of lead from the lines behind them or from the military police behind the troops . . . Anyone who succeeds in escaping this salutatory summary justice will encounter—inexorably, exemplarily, immediately—that of the military tribunal.11

This quotation shows that for Cadorna, the official apparatus of military discipline, in the form of the carabinieri and tribunals, was only one part of the necessary structure. His aim was to make both officers and men responsible for discipline in their units: they were to be

8 Translation taken from (Wilks and Wilks 2001); the full text of the order is in (Ufficio Storico 1927) Vol. 1: Circular 1, 24 May 1915. Italics in original. 9 (Whittam 1977). 10 (Ufficio Storico 1927) Vol. 1 Circular n. 1. 11 Comando Supremo Circular n. 3525, 28 Sep 1915 (Ufficio Storico 1927).

80

chapter two — vanda wilcox

encouraged to execute their fellow soldiers if it was considered necessary. Summary action was not considered to be a last resort to be reserved for extreme emergencies but a central plank of the army’s disciplinary system. Many aspects of this system were unpopular if not actively counterproductive. Relations between the carabinieri and the infantry were apparently always bad. Infantrymen doubted the fairness of the carabinieri and despised them as imboscati (shirkers). There was resentment as well against military tribunals who passed judgement on frontline matters without themselves ever having experienced life at the front. Above all, soldiers perceived military discipline as being arbitrary, unjust and excessively harsh.

‘The Summary Justice of Lead’ Of the 170,000 convictions by military tribunals, 4028 capital sentences were passed; many of these represented men condemned in absentia for surrendering too easily to the enemy, and once they returned after the war most were granted an amnesty or had their sentences commuted. Of those 1006 who were present, 729 were executed; the remaining 277 were reprieved.12 This is a relatively high number of executions, and also a correspondingly low proportion of reprieves. During the war the British Army issued 3080 death sentences of which 307 were carried out (for military offences); the French condemned about 2000 and executed around 700 and the German army issued around 150 death sentences, of which only 48 were carried out.13 However, considerably more than 729 men were executed by the army during the war. Comando Supremo’s emphasis on haste and immediacy of response meant that many men were shot without ever coming before a military tribunal. Of the 39 men of the Ravenna Brigade who were executed, fewer than half were formally condemned by a tribunal. Such informal judgments were to some extent Cadorna’s preferred procedure, as suggested above. This makes it hard to ascertain precise numbers of men executed as many summary executions

12 13

Figures from (Ufficio Statistico 1929; Forcello and Monticone 1968). (Shepherd 2002).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

81

took place, and these were often poorly recorded. According to the army’s own figures, there were 114 recorded instances of summary executions; each case could involve numerous individuals, however, and there are instances reliably documented elsewhere which were omitted from this account, so that the total number of men executed in this way was certainly much higher.14 The total figure of summary executions is likely to be at least two hundred, maybe more, but it is impossible to be certain. The Italian army was unique in the frequency and severity of its summary actions. In the French army executions could only take place after a lengthy legal process, and even minor offences were dealt with by tribunals. Cadorna considered that the very absence of legal processes made these measures more effective. Summary executions saved time, paperwork and effort; Cadorna thought they acted as a good example to others, and his subordinates were encouraged to think along the same lines. In his 1938 novel ‘Un Anno sull’altipiano,’ former lieutenant Emilio Lussu recounted the reaction of a general to the negative report made by a scout: ‘Have that man shot!’ ordered the general. . . . ‘How can I have a man shot when he’s committed no crime, and without any sort of trial?’ . . . But the general was only irritated by [these] juridical arguments. ‘Give orders at once for a firing squad’ he shouted, ‘and don’t force me to have you shot too, by my own carabineers.’15

In a notorious letter to the government, Cadorna made this explicit: . . . it has been necessary to resort to immediate executions, on a vast scale, and to renounce the forms of judicial proceedings, because it is vital to cut off the evil at its roots, and it is to be hoped that we have done so in time.16

In order for discipline to deliver the cautionary message to others which he believed would sustain fighting spirit, Cadorna ordered that executions be not only swift but public:

14

(Forcello and Monticone 1968) pp. 444–450. (Lussu 1945) p. 49. 16 Letter to President of Council of Ministers (hereafter P.C.M.) n. 2627, dated 6 June 1917. 15

82

chapter two — vanda wilcox for the infamy of the guilty, and as an example to others, the capital sentence will be carried out in the presence of adequate representatives of the corps.17

On several documented occasions units were summoned to watch or even participate in the execution of one of their members.18 The Ravenna Brigade’s adjutant reports that he and his fellow officers were severely shaken by the brutal response of the Corps commander, and that the men ordered to enact the executions were dismayed, and were trembling as they fired. It never seemed to occur to Cadorna that such executions had a profoundly demoralising effect on the junior officers and men ordered to arrange and perform them, and that the apparent absence of justice or reason in such affairs shook men’s faith in their superiors. The most notorious aspect of Italian discipline was the practice of decimation, which Cadorna first began to introduce in January 1916. The first well-documented incident of decimation was during the Strafexpedition in May 1916. Several members of the 141st Regiment fled under attack; a 2nd lieutenant, 3 sergeants and 8 men were summarily shot by their commanding officer, whilst a further 74 men were subsequently sent to military tribunals. This summary action was intended to punish a proportion of those involved, selected at random, in order to prevent the recurrence of such events in future. The commanding officer received a special commendation from Cadorna in recognition of his prompt action.19 There were two distinct types of decimation. The first was described as “humanitarian”. In the event that a large number of men should be found guilty of an offence punishable by execution, the death penalty would only be applied to a proportion who were to be drawn by lot from amongst the guilty. The Italian Penal Code of 1859 did in fact lay down that, in a case where a large group were found guilty of a capital offence, only the ringleaders, officers and graduates were to be executed, whilst the others should receive prison terms. Cadorna extended this rule to include not only the aforementioned groups but others chosen at random. This was consid-

17

(Ufficio Storico 1927). See various memoirs of the war such as (Monelli 1921; Salsa 1924; Lussu 1945). 19 (Melograni 1965). 18

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

83

ered to be a humane application of decimation as it ‘saved’ certain lives. On the other hand it is arguable that the application of decimation in such situations was primarily a practical measure since the execution of large numbers of men was wasteful of a precious military resource and also liable to stir up further dissent within the unit. Less commonly, decimation was used to punish an entire unit in the event that the guilty party could not be identified. In this type of decimation, the entire unit would be drawn up and men selected by lot were summarily shot; sometimes every tenth man, sometimes a higher proportion. On the 30th October 1916 in the 75th Regiment an unknown man threw stones at the commanding officer; the Corps Commander, unable to identify the culprit, executed 2 men chosen from among the suspects. Cadorna sent a telegram commending this action and citing it as an example to others. Cadorna claimed that all contemporary armies practiced decimation but this was clearly untrue. For instance, in France, all death sentences had to be reviewed and confirmed by the President, and all condemned men held the right to appeal directly to him. By contrast in Italy, not only did the civil authorities not have to be informed but Cadorna gave his subordinates permission to carry out summary executions without even informing him, and constantly urged them to greater severity. This policy stemmed partly from his mistrust of government and resentment of civil involvement in army affairs and was also based on his distrust of mass conscript armies in general: in common with most Italians of his age and class he thought that both officers and men were ill educated, unreliable, poorly trained and lacking in military discipline. It was typical of Cadorna’s leadership that he made little attempt to address these problems by improving training or education for the troops. It was not until 1918 that the policies of General Diaz and the influence of French and British troops in Italy began to rectify these failings in a more positive way. Diaz also immediately ended the application of decimation. This shift in emphasis from fear to inducements as the primary means for keeping men in the line was an echo of the policies introduced to the French army by Petain once he replaced Nivelle. Although Cadorna urged the government to legislate for it decimation was never officially introduced; it was neither specified nor forbidden by the penal code. In June 1917 he wrote

84

chapter two — vanda wilcox Decimation is . . . the supreme act of repression, which unthinkably you wish to remove from the penal code, but which is an essential weapon in the hands of army command, now more than ever.20

In encouraging its application he received the tacit consent of the civil authorities; indeed, in July 1917, Minister Bissolati felt he had achieved a significant victory in persuading Cadorna to shoot suspects and not simply randomly chosen men. This is a prime example of Cadorna and Supreme Command informally amending and overriding the penal code in order to introduce their own policy. These many instances of summary action severely undermined the independence of military tribunals. In most instances of indiscipline, the tribunals still had a role to play as once summary action had been taken in a few cases, the majority would be sent on for trial. However the actions already taken limited the possible options for tribunals in such cases; they were effectively obliged to follow the judgement already passed by the commanding officer, and their freedom of action was thus curtailed. So, whilst tribunals continued to play an important role in enacting disciplinary policy, Cadorna’s emphasis on summary action removed much of their influence on shaping policy and concentrated that power in the hands of Comando Supremo.

Acts of Indiscipline: Mutiny, Mutilation, Draft Evasion and Desertion As the war went on the types of offences commonly committed changed. Convictions for collective indiscipline, insubordination and desertion increased whilst those for self-mutilation, draft evasion and individual offences decreased. Due to poor record-keeping and the subsequent loss of many records, it remains hard to be absolutely certain of the numbers of cases; President Nitti claimed in 1919 that well over a million cases had come before tribunals, but this seems an improbably high figure. According to the army’s own figures, around 870,000 military charges were issued during the war, of which over half were for draft evasion and around 400,000 for offences whilst actually serving.21

20 21

Letter to P.C.M. n. 2627, 6th June 1917, cited in (Relazione Ufficiale 1919). (Ufficio Statistico 1929).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

85

In 1917 military tribunals and carabinieri recorded a significant increase in acts of indiscipline in early May—in other words, as soon as offensive action was resumed after the winter break.22 Even if an offensive had not yet been ordered, the arrival of Spring meant that many considered such an order to be inevitable, and therefore resorted to indiscipline; collective indiscipline was most common under these circumstances. Fraternisation however was more likely at Christmas or when winter shortages of food encouraged bartering. Whilst there were fewer acts of indiscipline in the elite troops – the Alpini, the Bersaglieri and the Arditi – there were still serious cases of both individual and collective indiscipline amongst these groups. Overall, whilst around 6% of serving men were involved in disciplinary proceedings, only 0.5% of officers were accused of offences. Officers were also less likely to be found guilty than men (35% convictions to 65% for ordinary soldiers) but, if convicted, were punished more severely. It is notable that whilst perhaps as many as 35–40% of all infantry men were illiterate, the records of military tribunals show that roughly half of those charged with disciplinary offences were illiterate. This means that illiterate soldiers were overrepresented in the numbers of men tried for disciplinary offences. The single most common military offence was probably draft evasion, with around 470,000 Italians being accused during the war. Of these, at least 370,000 were emigrants, mostly to the USA or Latin America. In November 1915 it was reported in Italian-language American newspapers that only 15% (65,000) of the 400,000 Italians called-up from the USA had actually responded. This failure to report was considered desertion by the Italian authorities. The figure of 470,000 includes those who never left their country of residence and so never stood trial, and also those who served in the armed forces of another Allied country. In practice men who served in the French, British or United States armies were not punished but they were still officially classified as deserters for their failure to report, and thus were technically subject to the death penalty. Those still living in Italy who resisted conscription risked arrest and trial for desertion; it was common practice for these men to be sentenced to death or imprisonment. These sentences were then suspended for the duration of the war and usually repealed thereafter, so that the convicted

22

(Relazione Ufficiale 1919) t. 3, pp. 658–60.

86

chapter two — vanda wilcox

deserter would serve as normal. However, a soldier in such a position who committed another offence of whatever kind was then liable to have the original sentence applied or even its severity increased— for instance, prison sentences were often increased. The most common type of offence once under arms was desertion and this also witnessed the greatest increase during the war. The main reason for this was that Cadorna managed to reclassify other, lesser offences as desertion as the war progressed, enabling him to apply the death penalty to a wider variety of offences. According to the Italian Military Penal Code of 1859, desertion was classified into two types: ‘in the presence of the enemy’ (article 137) and ‘in the face of the enemy’ (article 92), being subtly different from one another; both could be punished by death. The original code seemed to indicate that ‘in the presence of the enemy’ was to signify within the war zone, or situations when there was a probability or possibility of coming into contact with the enemy. ‘In the face of the enemy’ was taken to mean situations of actual engagement with the enemy, or when action had either been ordered or already begun, and was a more serious offence, punishable by death with dishonour. Moreover, any unauthorised absence from the line was technically desertion, no matter how valid the cause. These definitions had been developed during the wars of the Risorgimento, and were now quite unhelpful: the whole of the war zone could now be defined as ‘in the presence of the enemy’ allowing for much confusion. Tribunals found these distinctions hard to interpret, and many complained that the penal code was outdated and inadequate for dealing with modern warfare, though little was done during the war to standardise these definitions or to coherently update the code. Conviction rates were highest for those who had gone over to the enemy, but soldiers were also more likely to be convicted of offences in the presence of the enemy than those committed under other circumstances.23 Surrendering ‘too easily’ to the enemy, absconding from rear lines and returning late from leave were all considered to be desertion. Allowing oneself to be taken prisoner was probably the most controversial definition of desertion as this regulation was applied almost indiscriminately. On 1st July 1916 a company of the Salerno Brigade

23

(Ufficio Statistico 1929).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

87

attempted to surrender, having been isolated in no-man’s-land for two days without food or water, and having no chance of either returning to their own lines or being rescued. They were shot down in the attempt by their own artillery and machine guns. The Corps Commander subsequently ordered the execution of eight of the survivors, four on suspicion of attempting desertion and a further four selected at random.24 In 1915 an Austrian newspaper published the ‘secret diary’ of an Italian infantryman just taken prisoner; the diary, at least as published, discussed Italian military and political weaknesses. The man concerned was identified and condemned in his absence for treason.25 Many peasants were tried for desertion having either absconded or remained on leave for longer than permitted in order to help their families with the harvest. Supreme Command’s recognition of the scale of this problem, and the national need for food, meant that in 1918 new late summer leave periods were introduced to enable farmers to legitimately assist at harvest time. Desertion was a crime which became more common as the war went on, and from Caporetto onwards it was a serious problem. Like most military offences it was more common in spring, as new offensives loomed. According to official figures, for every 100 men condemned for desertion in the first 12 months of the war, 280 were found guilty in May 1917 and 550 in May 1918.26 Of course, the battle of Caporetto itself witnessed mass desertion and surrender, as whole units with their officers surrendered in several instances.27 There was also wide scale individual desertion as many men simply decided to go home. The growing unpopularity of the war and the devastating losses of men, material and territory suffered at Caporetto meant that surrender and absconding both increased as men sought any means to escape the war. Under Diaz, consequently, penalties for desertion became even more severe than before. New regulations introduced from December 1917 meant that for the first time capital penalties could be applied to desertion from the rear areas, in cases where the deserter was absent for more than 30 days; all convicted deserters lost their electoral and political rights as well as their 24 25 26 27

(Melograni 1965). (Forcello and Monticone 1968) pp. 24–26. (Ufficio Statistico 1929). (Rommel 1990).

88

chapter two — vanda wilcox

financial entitlements. This marked a change in policy as new types of coercive measures were introduced, moving away from a dependence on corporal or capital punishment. Despite these measures, the offence continued to spread right up until November 1918. From the end of 1916 there was a significant increase in incidents of collective indiscipline especially amongst troops going up to the front or returning to the war zone from leave. This was the point at which men were most likely to mutiny or protest, in Italy as on other fronts. Men actually in the lines risked much more through indiscipline, whilst those leaving the front had much less incentive to revolt. Episodes included stones being thrown or shots fired from troop trains, and soldiers shouting abuse from trains or trucks at civilians, factory workers and railwaymen, calling them imboscati (shirkers) and cowards. Troops also vandalised buildings and equipment, sometimes scrawling anti-war slogans, smashing windows or inflicting more serious damage to telegraph and signal equipment. Less common, but most alarming for the army authorities, were shots fired at railway workers, carabinieri and staff officers organising transport, in stations and on trains. Numerous attempts were made to improve discipline whilst travelling but with relatively little success. Cadorna’s orders of the day on 28 March, 5 June and 16 July 1917 were all chiefly concerned with the problems of maintaining discipline on trains and whilst organising transport; however, in January 1918 Diaz finally found it necessary to order that all troops in transit to the front were to be disarmed for the duration of the journey. In one respect these incidents are typical of the fact that acts of indiscipline and mutiny were more likely to happen in rear areas. Men were reluctant to return to the front after their leave, as the horrors and hardships of war were emphasised by time spent at home. Men who saw how much their families and communities needed them, especially farmers, were made newly aware of the deprivations their families suffered in their absence. However, simple homesickness or war-weariness alone cannot explain these incidents. Accusations of shirking and cowardice against civilians and especially factory workers, who were perceived to be profiteering, suggest that it was the way in which the war was being conducted which was so unpopular. Resentments focused on poor leadership (both military and civilian) and on the inequality of suffering. Soldiers were especially angry that their sacrifices seemed to go unrewarded.

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

89

Collective indiscipline was taken very seriously; if 4 or more armed men revolted, the principals were liable to be executed and accomplices to receive up to 10 years imprisonment. These penalties were to be imposed irrespective of whether shots had been fired or officers actually threatened. Unarmed revolt was punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment. For much of the war, and especially up until 1916 self-mutilation was a significant problem, both at the front and in the rear lines and reserve areas, taking many forms. The most common incidents involved the deliberate application of substances designed to induce an infection to small wounds, both self-inflicted and those acquired in action. The substances involved ranged from chemicals such as petrol and benzene to mud, rotten food and faeces. Such substances might also be mixed with water and injected into joints or other parts of the body, as might petroleum or olive oil which would then form lumps beneath the skin. Other men deliberately gave themselves chemical burns with sulphuric acid or lye, or inserted objects or irritants such as sand and tobacco into their eyes and ears, often with extremely serious medical consequences. In 1917 19 Sicilian peasants presented themselves with severe eye-infections, caused by the deliberate introduction to the eye of gonorrhoeal mucus. Four were permanently blinded and many more suffered long-term visual impairment (in addition to receiving prison sentences of up to fifteen years at a consequent military tribunal).28 Less common were incidents of men deliberately shooting themselves, usually in the hand or foot. In November 1915, medical officers on the Carso reported a high number of point-blank shot wounds in the palms of men’s left hands; such injuries were obviously self-inflicted. A more sophisticated ruse was to deliberately expose a part of one’s body to the enemy and wait for them to shoot. These types of self-mutilation was almost exclusively reserved to those in the immediate front lines rather than those in safe reserve zones, being more dangerous, and immediately more suspicious to army medical officers, who were warned to be vigilant for malingerers. Self-mutilation was most common amongst older men who were desperate to return home, especially fathers of large families or men who were needed for the harvest.

28

(Forcello and Monticone 1968) pp. 205–208.

90

chapter two — vanda wilcox

The first sentences for self-mutilation were passed as early as July 1915, when 46 men serving on the Carso were tried; 27 were condemned to 20 years’ imprisonment, the remaining cases were dismissed for lack of evidence. This proportion of acquittals or dismissals is typical for cases of self-mutilation, and is remarkably high in comparison to tribunal records for other types of offence. Self-mutilation was hard to correctly identify and even harder to prove satisfactorily. It is likely that only a relatively small proportion of offenders even came before a tribunal. Sentences varied hugely, from a year’s imprisonment to death. According to official figures, around 10,000 men were convicted for self-mutilation during the war, 1,403 in the first 12 months of the war, rising to 4,133 during 1916–17, then falling to 3,620 and finally down to 705 in the last year of the war.29 This dramatic change was largely due to the new disciplinary regulations introduced in October 1916 with the express purpose of limiting the offence, which had been steadily increasing in frequency as the war progressed. Up to this point all wounded or ill men, even those whose suffering was self-inflicted, were sent on prolonged trips to the rear to convalesce. Those who were convicted of self-mutilation were sentenced to solitary confinement, commonly for around ten years, but to many this was a price worth paying for escaping from the line. The new regulations instead stated that all those who were physically capable of fighting on were to remain at the front, and prison sentences were to be suspended until after the war; a reprieve from the front could now only be obtained by inflicting upon oneself a very severe injury and so most men were dissuaded from such action. Another effective tactic was the establishment of special military hospitals for self-mutilation offenders which combined medical care with strict military discipline. In a further measure, from December 1916 self-mutilation at the front was considered to be ‘cowardice in the face of the enemy’ and thus punishable by death, although tribunals were still more likely to apply the lesser punishment of imprisonment. Among high command’s concerns was the development of temporary truces, whether impromptu or formalised, defined by Ashworth as the ‘live and let live system’.30 Men who had been recruited from

29 30

(Ufficio Statistico 1929). (Ashworth 2000).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

91

the northern border regions were usually the most committed to the war, but might also harbour fellow-feeling for their near neighbours on the other side. Soldiers from further south, lacking enthusiasm for the war, might identify with their opponents as fellow peasants or workers forced unwillingly to war. Either way, truces could spring up. It was difficult to punish this type of offence since it was largely one of omission. Attempts to try at tribunals men who had failed to fire at the enemy when they were clearly visible were not notably successful. However, fraternising with the enemy fell also within this category, and was punished severely. In 1917 a corporal of the 129th infantry was condemned to a year’s imprisonment for exchanging Christmas greetings with the Austrian troops directly opposite his trench; in the same year a group of peasant infantrymen from the 140th regiment were given sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years imprisonment for exchanging bread, tobacco and lemons with the enemy. Much more rare, and more serious, were actual discussions with the enemy about military secrets; in July 1917 3 men were found guilty of communicating information to the enemy by means of messages tied to a stray dog; the chief culprit was sentenced to life imprisonment.31 Despite Cadorna’s extreme anxiety about disciplinary matters, upon only one occasion in the entire war was a mutiny or act of collective indiscipline proven to have been premeditated. This was the notorious mutiny of the 141st and 142nd infantry regiments of the Catanzaro Brigade in July 1917. In early June there had been signs of unrest during the return of the 142nd regiment to the lines, when shots were fired in the air and shouts of protest were heard; however order was restored after a few minutes by the prompt intervention of the officers present. One soldier was taken before a military tribunal and condemned to death; he testified about the role of others in the unit in return for having his sentence commuted. Acting on this information, several carabinieri were drafted in undercover to monitor the situation from within. On the 14th July the officer responsible for these carabinieri informed his men that the infantrymen of the regiment had discovered the deception, and ordered them to leave the units and report to him. On their arrival, they informed him that they had already identified

31

(Forcello and Monticone 1968) p. 130, p. 239.

92

chapter two — vanda wilcox

nine men who might be planning further acts of insubordination should suitable occasions arise. As the brigade was due to return to the front lines, the brigadier decided to take immediate action based on this information. He ordered the arrest of the nine men identified, and further specified that carabinieri and a cavalry unit should be held in readiness at his headquarters. The following day, the 15th July, at around 10:45 pm, revolt broke out almost simultaneously in both regiments. Shots were fired from the barracks of the 141st regiment, men from both regiments then ran outside firing weapons and shouting “subversive” slogans. Groups of armed men attempted to incite those men who seemed uncertain, and threatened those who remained within their barracks as ordered by their officers. By midnight the brigade’s machine-guns had been seized by the mutineers. The 6th company of 142nd regiment ordered their officer to cede authority or be shot; groups of men went off to the nearby village of Santa Maria La Longa armed with machine-guns and hand grenades. Officers feared that they intended to march on Udine, where General Headquarters were based. During the night 2 officers (one lieutenant, one carabiniero) and 9 men were killed, whilst a further 2 officers and 25 men were wounded. The brigadier called on loyal infantrymen, cavalry, artillery and his carabinieri to surround the mutinous men, but during the night there was little that these troops could do to restore order as it was almost impossible to distinguish the mutineers from loyal officers in the darkness. At dawn, around 4 a.m., the revolt seemed to end of its own accord; men returned peaceably to their barracks, such that it became hard to identify the culprits.32 Immediately that morning, 16th July, 28 men were executed. 16 of these had been considered to have been ‘caught in the act of firing shots,’ identified by their still-warm rifle barrels. The other 12 had been selected by lot, as decimation was applied to the 6th company of the 142nd regiment. By 11 am the Catanzaro Brigade was travelling towards the rear to be further punished. 135 men were tried by military tribunals, of which 123 were from 6th company; at least 4 more were executed. Of these, one was accused of killing the carabiniero; he had been identified after the censorship office inter-

32

(Melograni 1965).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

93

cepted a letter to his mother in which he confessed to the offence. It was decided by the tribunal that he had not, in fact, committed this killing, since his description of the event did not fit with the injuries on the victim’s body. However, he was still sentenced to death for his role in the mutiny, his false assertion of his own actions serving as evidence that he had been a keen participant. Others, also tried on the grounds of intercepted letters, were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. 463 soldiers suspected of complicity were transferred to other units, as were 33 junior officers and NCOs who were considered to have reacted with insufficient firmness and determination. The brigadier and the two regimental commanders were both replaced immediately.33 The Duke of Aosta, in his report to Cadorna on the episode, was at pains to emphasise its distinctive nature. He considered the mutiny to be unusually serious and alarming, due to the evidence of premeditation, the violence against officers, and the continuing resentment and bad feeling within the unit once order had been restored. This mutiny was a unique episode in the Italian experience of the war, despite Cadorna’s efforts to portray Caporetto as a planned revolt. Although there were attempts to plan or to lead mutinies made elsewhere, they were almost entirely failures. Lussu recounts that when two battalions of his regiment throw down their rifles and demand the end of the war, they tried to encourage other battalions to join them, but unsuccessfully.34 The records of military tribunals also show that numerous soldiers were denounced to officers or carabinieri by their fellows for attempting to incite rebellion. Preplanned or organised acts of indiscipline were the exception rather than the rule, despite the fears of army commanders; armed mutiny was extremely rare. Instead, acts of indiscipline were usually spontaneous expressions of soldiers’ fears, needs and desires, which were mostly more innocuous than Cadorna was willing to accept, and which rarely merited the response they received.

33 34

(Forcello and Monticone 1968) pp. 236–238. (Lussu 1945) Ch 24.

94

chapter two — vanda wilcox Discipline and Ideology

Cadorna’s explanations of poor troop morale were not solely shaped by the experience of Caporetto; by mid-1917 he was already blaming socialist and pacifist propaganda for indiscipline. He wrote to President Boselli three times within one week of June 1917 to complain of defeatism at home and poor political leadership undermining military discipline. Explicitly ideological objections, especially pacifist and revolutionary ideas, became more widespread feature of indiscipline from the spring of 1917, as graffiti or shouted slogans against the war began to appear more regularly. At the same time, the terminology of government and army accusations against opposition propaganda changed from ‘subversive,’ ‘anarchist,’ or ‘unpatriotic’ to speaking of ‘defeatism.’35 Such manifestations often accompanied outbreaks of indiscipline amongst troops going up to the front; on the 21st April 400 reserve troops being sent to the war zone chanted ‘We don’t want to go, down with the war, we want peace.’36 However these ideas were by no means present in all incidents of collective indiscipline or mutiny. It is important to distinguish between simple anti-war sentiments, which were common and not necessarily ideologically based, and active pacifism or socialism, which were much rarer, and almost unheard of before 1917. Occasionally dissenters advocated neutralist and Giolittian ideas, or proclaimed anarchist views of the war. Other ideological protests came from committed interventionists and patriots who had suffered disillusionment at the front, cast into despair and defeatism by the lack of military success, poor leadership and the failure to end the war swiftly as they had believed it would be. Also the horrific experiences of life at the front caused a few soldiers to raise ideological objections to the war as inhuman, immoral and unjust. Explicitly Catholic objections to the war amongst soldiers were rarer; religious opposition was considered to be unfortunate but not significantly troublesome. Only one such example has been located in the tribunal records, although Italian civilians, both clerical and lay, could and did raise significant anti-war protests.37

35 36 37

(Relazione Ufficiale 1919) t. 2, p. 473. (Forcello and Monticone 1968) p. 162. (Forcello and Monticone 1968).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

95

However, most ideologically-motivated opposition to the war was explicitly socialist. Such incidents commonly involved slogans in support of the Russian Revolution or advocating revolution in Italy. The Russian Revolution, the Second International Socialist Conference and the increased activity of socialist politicians both internationally and domestically, combined with war-weariness and growing political dissent on the home front, brought political opposition to the war to the fore.38 One of the most commonly identified occurrences of socialism in the trenches was the reading of socialist books and newspapers, which was a military offence. The best known and most significant disciplinary action against socialist activity in the army took place in August 1917 at Pradamano. A total of 43 young men were brought before the military tribunal there, charged with circulating socialist propaganda amongst the troops. The offences for which they stood trial included subscription to socialist journals, discussion of socialist ideas in the trenches, correspondence with socialist activists and promoting the ideas of the Second International, both at the front and when on leave. These activities were adjudged to be anti-patriotic, defeatist and an inexcusable breach of military discipline; the tribunal stated that their actions had ‘exposed a part of the army to dangerous ideas’ and enabled the enemy to ‘seriously harm the nation’. Sentences ranged from 1 to 15 years’ imprisonment, and included automatic demotion for those holding any senior rank.39 Of the 19 officers, cadets and NCOs who were tried by the extraordinary tribunal, 7 were students, graduates or teachers; the remainder were accountants, lawyers or skilled artisans – weavers, carpenters and shoemakers.40 All 43 men who stood trial at Pradamano were literate. By contrast, a significant proportion of soldiers were peasant farmers, poorly educated, often illiterate. Such men were commonly almost completely apolitical; socialist or pacifist ideas appeared neither in the revolt of the Ravenna Brigade nor in the mutiny of the Catanzaro Brigade. The position of the Italian socialist parties was confused and ill-defined and their leadership was poor; conse-

38 See the discussion in (Relazione Ufficiale 1919) t. 2, pp. 464–471, on the role of the socialist Deputy Treves and his speech to parliament, 12 July 1917. 39 (Relazione Ufficiale 1919) t. 2, pp. 478–481. 40 (Forcello and Monticone 1968) pp. 243–264.

96

chapter two — vanda wilcox

quently no concerted or organised opposition to the war emerged, and socialist acts of indiscipline remained isolated incidents. It is arguable that even in the Pradomano case war weariness and exhaustion played as great a role as ideology: one document scrutinised by the Caporetto inquiry asserted, . . . we are all losers, all ruined, all exhausted . . . in this mad war. Once again it is shown that the socialists, . . . through their opposition to this nationalist delirium, in their pursuit of an immediate non-annexationist peace, are the only ones who truly value their countries. Join our cry of ‘Down with the War! Long live peace!’41

It is apparent that the dangers perceived by the army and government were far greater than the reality of socialist opposition warranted. However Cadorna and Diaz were both preoccupied by the threat socialism posed, especially given the difficulty of effectively combating an ideology solely through discipline. This was a common fear for army commanders, French, British and German alike, especially after the Russian Revolution. In Italy, censorship was seen as the major weapon against pacifism, socialism and defeatism both at home and at the front. Initially the army and the government had wanted to censor all correspondence in Italy, whether of military or civilian origin or destination. It quickly became apparent that this was completely impossible and scaled down plans were introduced to censor all mail sent or received from abroad, and all communications to or from the war zone. Still the authorities struggled to find funding and personnel to operate such an ambitious scheme, and further reductions to the service were made until one observer estimated only around 2% of all mail was properly read by censors. In order to bolster the efficiency of the system without increasing expenditure, new harsher punishments were introduced to act as deterrents. Punishments were both brutal and poorly defined under this system—‘any general statement’ which criticised the war or even mentioned the high numbers of casualties was punishable by prolonged imprisonment. Large numbers of soldiers were punished for writing letters home which were deemed defeatist, unpatriotic, republican or alarmist. Letters were not only used as evidence against soldiers and civilians at trial but also enabled the authorities to monitor

41

(Relazione Ufficiale 1919), t. 2, p. 480.

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

97

both political feeling, which was their chief concern, and morale, with which they were much less interested. There was no distinction made in terms of the disciplinary response to disorder based on legitimate grievances. This appears to have been a matter not just of practice but of policy. Until 1918 no army investigations were conducted into soldiers’ morale, and Comando Supremo was neither aware of nor concerned with soldiers’ grievances. Hence policy on morale and discipline was enacted without any reference to conditions at the front or soldiers’ reactions. Sentences sometimes specified whether the offender had acted with or without any justification, but this distinction does not seem to have affected the verdict. Many episodes of mutiny or collective disobedience were expressions of dissatisfaction from units which had been in the line for an excessive period, had been denied proper leave, or who were suffering severe shortages of food or equipment. However the death penalty, and summary executions, were still considered just as appropriate as in cases of desertion in the face of the enemy. Although one could appeal against the verdicts of the tribunals, in many cases this proved impossible as executions were carried out immediately. Pleas for clemency were rarely successful unless there were some extraordinary circumstances; drunkenness, illiteracy or youth were not considered to be mitigating factors, nor were marriage, fatherhood or the financial survival of the family considered as causes for leniency by the tribunals. In 1916 a 19-year-old Sicilian, homeless and illiterate, went absent without leave in order to visit his mother; she had not received any of the military subsidy she was owed, was poor and in ill-health. At his trial serious doubts were raised over his mental health and it was suggested that he might be epileptic. The tribunal however claimed that no extenuating circumstances could detract from the seriousness of his offence, and sentenced him to death.42 Occasionally, previous good character or exemplary military service might be taken into account, especially in cases where there was considerable doubt over the guilt of the accused; but, conversely, previous military offences were always considered as virtual proof of guilt and invariably led to increased severity of sentencing. Cadorna saw military failures more in terms of poor discipline

42

(Forcello and Monticone 1968) pp. 103–106.

98

chapter two — vanda wilcox

rather than considering the possibility of tactical, strategic or logistical failures. On 7 June 1917, up to 10,000 men from three different regiments surrendered to the Austrians at Monte Hermada on the Carso. Cadorna was livid, regarding this as a supreme failure of discipline, and clear proof of cowardice. He remarked that he could justifiably write to General Boroevic, the Austrian commander, and ask him to flog the prisoners in the name of military standards.43 However, detailed accounts of the action showed that the troops had found themselves in a very poor defensive position, were then completely encircled by the enemy and surrendered only after the loss of all their senior officers.44 A close study of this engagement could have revealed a number of problems in the Italian army: poor training in dealing with infiltration tactics, an inability to select and consolidate good positions rapidly, a lack of initiative from junior officers, and poor communications with reserve troops and headquarters. However Cadorna chose instead to see the defeat as being a failure of discipline; in this way the Italian army did not learn from its tactical mistakes. The vexed question of explaining the battle of Caporetto reveals a similar pattern: Cadorna’s judgement that the defeat represented a collapse of discipline rooted in socialist defeatism allowed him to ignore the possibility of strategic or tactical failings. The true causes of the defeat, which are numerous and complex, cannot be examined here in detail; suffice it to say that whilst the defeat was in part a collapse of discipline and morale, the reasons for this failure are considerably more extensive than Cadorna’s attempt to absolve himself of responsibility would suggest.

Amnesty On 2nd September 1919 President Nitti proclaimed a general amnesty on military offences. By this time, around 60,000 men were serving terms of imprisonment, and the army had been forced to order the construction of new prisons. It became apparent that for reasons of expense and practicality alone the military justice system needed to be halted and the amnesty aimed to deal with the various problems

43 44

(Gatti 1964). (Bencivenga 1997).

discipline in the italian army 1915‒1918

99

that had arisen. In addition to the 350,000 cases already processed there were around 50,000 outstanding cases at military tribunals, of which the 30,000 least serious were dismissed; also dismissed were the 150,000 cases where suspended sentences had been issued for the duration of the war and which were now awaiting further consideration. Prison sentences of less than 10 years were reprieved altogether, whilst any longer sentences were reduced to a 10 year maximum; this resulted in the immediate release of 40,000 prisoners. Proceedings against draft evaders both within Italy and abroad were halted, provided that the men concerned reported to their local authority or consulate within three months. This meant that those abroad would be able to return to Italy in future without fear of repercussions; 100,000 of the 370,000 so affected, however, failed to report within the requisite three months.45 Overall, around 600,000 men were affected by the amnesty which, though politically controversial, resolved many of the army’s problems in 1919.

Conclusion Most protests against the war were not specifically anti-war but rather objections to the way in which the war was being conducted. Inadequate rest and leave, caused by the failures of the rotation system, were the main causes cited for acts of collective indiscipline. Troops who were unready or unable to fight properly were unwilling to go up to line; this was motivated by a sense of self-preservation but also perhaps a genuine concern for fighting effectiveness, and a belief that fresher troops might do a better job. Whilst the lack of popular support for the war was reflected in the disciplinary problems faced by the Italian army, political opposition to the war was not a key cause of military indiscipline. Disciplinary policy and practice were substantially modified during the war as the role of tribunals was curtailed and the Penal Code proved increasingly outdated. New regulations were issued to modify and extend the penal code, and simultaneously Supreme Command found ways to circumnavigate the tribunals. Supreme Command’s authority grew steadily and disciplinary policy was developed ad hoc

45

(Ufficio Statistico 1929).

100

chapter two — vanda wilcox

by the generals as the war went on. The most distinctive aspect of Italian military discipline was the prevalence of summary action. The continuing increase in numbers of offences show that simply increasing the severity of the regime had little impact in improving discipline overall. By contrast, supreme command’s success in curtailing self-mutilation showed that where a variety of measures were used, rather than simply increased severity, progress might be made. Although Cadorna’s regime succeeded, for the most part, in keeping reluctant soldiers in line, it could not provide motivation or commitment where these were absent, and most crucially could not create offensive spirit. The mass indiscipline at Caporetto showed that fear alone was an insufficient motivation for most soldiers. Both as the subjects and as the theoretical enforcers of discipline, soldiers were alienated and demoralised by the army’s disciplinary structures. The experience of Cadorna’s leadership showed conclusively that strict discipline alone was insufficient to maintain an effective First World War army in the field.

Bibliography Ashworth, T. (2000) Trench Warfare 1914–1918: the live and let live system (London: 2000). Bencivenga, A. (1997) La sorpresa strategica di Caporetto ed. G. Rochat (Udine: 1997). Forcello, E. and A. Monticone (1968) Plotone d’esecuzione: I processi della Prima guerra mondiale (Bari: 1968). Gatti, A. (1964) Caporetto: Diario di Guerra (Bologna: 1964). Lussu, E. (1945) Un Anno Sull’Altipiano (Rome: 1945). Melograni, P. (1965) Storia Politica della Grande Guerra (Torino: 1965). Monelli, P. (1921) Le Scarpe al Sole: Cronaca di gaie e di tristi avventuri di Alpini, di muli e di vino (Bologna: 1921). Relazione Ufficiale: Relazione della Commissione d’Inchiesta istituita dal R.D. 12 gennaio 1918 (1919), ‘Dall’Isonzo al Piave 24 ottobre-9 novembre 1917’. (Rome: 1919). Rommel, E. (1990) Infantry attacks (London: 1919). Salsa, C. (1924) Trincee: confidenze di un fante (Florence: 1924). Shepherd, B. (2002) A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914–1994 (London: 2002). Smith, L.V. (1994) Between Mutiny and Obedience: the case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I (Princeton: 1994). Ufficio Statistico (1929) “Dati sulla giustizia e disciplina militare”, in Statistica dello sforzo militare Italiano nella guerra mondiale ed. G. Mortara (Roma: 1929). Ufficio Storico, Corpo di stato maggiore (1927) L’Esercito italiano nella grande guerra, 1915–1918 (Roma: 1927). Whittam, J. (1977) The Politics of the Italian Army, 1861–1918 (London: 1977). Wilks, J. and E. Wilks (2001) Rommel and Caporetto (Barnsley: 2001).

CHAPTER THREE

NEW JERUSALEMS: SACRIFICE AND REDEMPTION IN THE WAR EXPERIENCES OF ENGLISH AND GERMAN MILITARY CHAPLAINS Patrick Porter

This article makes three claims. Firstly, it argues that military chaplains from the Church of England and the German Lutheran Churches held a common ideal of their nation’s mission and the meaning of the Great War. It was a war fought not merely in self-defense but to redeem their fallen nations through blood. Despite their different traditions, circumstances and confessions, they entered the war speaking a broadly common moral language that transcended the frontiers. Secondly, it argues that because of these expectations, the crisis they articulated during the war cannot be explained by the volume of destruction in casualties and losses alone. Instead, they were disturbed by the perception that high casualties and sacrifices were not leading to the desired social transformation of their societies. Finally, it argues that their role as military chaplains constrained them from articulating unfettered disillusionment. Part of the military machine as priests who sanctified the war in their frontline ministry, they were implicated in the sacrifices being made. Therefore, the cumulative weight of the dead on their consciences meant that they could not easily repudiate the millenarian belief that the apocalyptic struggle would create a ‘new heaven and a new earth’. To do so would be to cheapen the sacrifices of the dead. So instead of abandoning the belief in redemptive sacrifice, they had to reformulate it. The redemption of their societies that they had expected had been postponed. Instead of something that would be achieved by deaths on the battlefield, it was now a duty living civilians owed the dead. Their personal investment in the language, which fuelled the will to sacrifice, meant that it had become an obligation to uphold it. This article departs from the conventional social-scientific project that measures the ‘failure’ of the churches at the frontline as an

102

chapter three — patrick porter

episode in the decline of institutional religion.1 Many historians take a formal institutional approach to modern religious history, emphasizing declining attendance and the absence of religious revival. They measure the churches’ ‘performance’ only by their own lofty expectations. Their yardstick of analysis is the churches’ ambitions to create a churchgoing nation through ministry to mass armies populated by the urban working classes.2 Such a narrow approach is methodologically problematic, as the evidence for the religiosity of the armies is at best fragmentary and anecdotal. It also loses sight of the other ways in which churches played a role in defining war aims and in shaping people’s understanding of the meaning of the war, the meaning of ‘sacrifice.’ This article focuses on the ideals themselves as military chaplains defined them at the front. In their diffusive power, their language of sacrifice, apocalypse, salvation and national rebirth had a wider reach than their own active congregations in the trenches. Rather than measuring the weakening of the churches or the religiosity of the army as a whole, it examines the nature and evolution of the churches’ perceptions of the war as a redemptive experience. It also aims to turn attention to the comparative study of the Protestant war experience in both the German and British armies.3 In 1914, apocalyptic languages were everywhere. Across secular and religious boundaries, people hoped that war would change their societies, its destruction replacing a corrupt civilization with a new order. It was an idea inflected in many different forms. Socialists, even those opposed to their nation’s cause, hoped the trauma of total war would be the midwife of revolution. Social commentators, clergy and statesmen alike hoped the unity of mobilization would permanently galvanize their divided and fractious nations.4 As well as fighting a legitimate war of defence not of their own making, they also stressed that the struggle had profound domestic war aims.

1 Marrin (1974), primarily focuses on church failures through their bureaucratic undermining of chaplains’ ministry. Institutional failure is also the concern of Mews (1973). Nicholas Hope indicts the German Protestant churches for failing to appeal to the masses and moral failure in supporting the war, see Hope (2001). 2 See the criticisms of this approach in Cox (1982), 4–5 3 The seminal works within national frameworks on the Church of England and the German Protestant Churches in the First World War are Wilkinson (1978), and Hammer (1971). For the growing body of work on the Lutheran attitude to the Kaiserreich and to war, see Moses (1992, 1999); Jenkins (2002). 4 For analysis of this theme amongst European intellectuals see Stromberg (1982).

new jerusalems

103

Padraic Pearse and his fellow Irish republican rebels mythologized the 1916 uprising against British subjugation, in the terms of their patriotic Catholicism, as a national resurrection through violent insurrection. The blood of Catholic Ireland would resurrect the people into nationhood because ‘bloodshed is a cleansing and a sanctifying thing.’5 For many patriots, the Anzac legend recast a military failure into a ‘baptism of fire’ proving Australia’s worth for nationhood, seeing in bloodshed the expunging of the convict stain and the birth of nation consciousness.6 German nationalists hoped the war would realize their imperial destiny as the superior Kultur. Domestic armistice heralded the permanent resolution of internal divisions. Utopian supporters of the war uttered prophecies of a warless world. These different expectations all partook of the mythic core of sacrifice, of life through death.7 That war would purge, renew and redeem society was also the hope of military chaplains. In both German and British armies, clergy were present both in the hinterland behind the combat zone, in dressing stations and field hospitals, in recreation tents and canteens. They were also exposed to the rain of steel at the front, conducting funerals, helping to identify and bury the dead, often rescuing the wounded. Their frontier activity was constant and varied. They ministered through sermons and sacraments, linked the frontline with the home front by communicating with bereaved parents or writing letters on behalf of injured or illiterate combatants. Mundane comforts also fell to them— handing out cigarettes and arranging concerts. As priests chaplains brought a repertoire of biblical metaphor and sacramental ritual to sanctifying the struggle. As officers granted their commissions by their monarchs, their duties were to uphold morale and the will to war. In Germany under the Hohenzollern monarchy, chaplains were chosen from the ranks of Pietism to sustain conformity and evangelical discipline. Under subsequent rulers from Frederick the Great through to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the chaplaincy evolved both an ethos and theology oriented to consecrating the incipient German nation-state. Of the almost 2000 Protestant pastors serving as chaplains in the war,

5

Cited in Gilley (1991), 227. See Lake (1992); for the way these themes were anticipated before the event itself, see Penny (1963). 7 For a study of the etymology of sacrifice, see Bowker (1991), 41. 6

104

chapter three — patrick porter

Prussia boasted 1338 volunteers as well as 127 regular staff, Bavaria right of the Rhine provided 242 pastors and 37 left of the Rhine, Saxony 74 and Wuerttemberg 42. English armies had fielded chaplains since at least the 13th century. By the Armistice, a total of 1985 chaplains served from the Church of England. Several commonalities justify the comparison of these two groups.8 Both their confessions—the Church of England and the German Landeskirchen—were established state churches aligned with their nations’ cause. Both entered the war believing it would morally and spiritually uplift their national communities. Outweighing their differences, the apocalyptic expectation that war would destroy and replace a corrupt civilization was their common explanatory framework for the war experience. They were bearers of the ideal of national redemption in the face of slaughter. Unlike the homeland clergy, they ministered to their flock at the frontlines. More than the homeland clergy, they were directly implicated in the deaths and maiming of their nations’ manhood. Because they preached men into lethal combat, and gave divine sanction to protracted industrial war, they were responsible for abetting it. As a result, more than anyone else in their churches, mass death and the ideas that legitimized mass death became part of the fabric of their lives. This paper therefore examines how chaplains perceived the moral and social impact of war on their own societies, through their observations of the two theatres of war, the frontline and the civilian homeland respectively. The principle crisis war posed to the Christian churches of both belligerent nations is often identified as basic theodicy. How could a benign God permit such human suffering, obscene in its scale?9 Any catastrophe, particularly of this war’s magnitude, invites that dilemma. The Churches were indeed confronted with a scale of death and mourning unknown since medieval epidemics and the Thirty Years’ War. Similarly, it would be tempting to assume that military chaplains’ sheer proximity to the horrible slaughters of the western front challenged their belief in a benign deity and created a crisis of faith. The war did not introduce this problem, though it magnified

8 For reasons of space the distinctive churches and traditions of nonconformity and Protestantism in Scotland, Wales and Protestant Ireland have not been included. 9 E.g. This is the main challenge to the churches identified by David Cannadine. See Cannadine (1981), 218–219.

new jerusalems

105

it. To minister to the dying, the wounded and to communicate with the bereaved was obviously distressing. Existential questions naturally were asked. But these were recurrent problems for the churches. As one chaplain recalled, numerous men ‘seemed to be angry with God—and I, as His representative, had to stand at the bar and be judged. It was not new to me, as, long before the War, one had met this fierce resentment against God in those who had been suddenly bereaved or who had suffered great misfortune.’10 Grave though this conundrum was, it was not chaplains’ novel or central challenge. The central problem for chaplains lay not in the physical nature of frontline conditions or in the exposure to high casualties and its attendant traumas. It lay in their great expectations. Working in the eye of industrial warfare, both German and English chaplains participated in a tense proximity of tedium and death. Spasms of hideous violence punctuated lengthy banal periods. As well as the sheer scale of bloodshed, the trench system as a whole terrorized its inhabitants. Yet they continually returned to the theme of transformation through sacrifice. Willy Shlack imagined a rich return on the price of blood when he preached that war graves spoke “not only of death, offence, annihilation, but calls us in noble great language still onward, that is: sacrifice, devotion.’ The fallen were ‘truly not uselessly dead, your death is a mission, a price, with the greatest purchase.”11 In a field sermon Hans Bodensieck prophesied that the “terrible evil of the war” would win “the recasting, that rejuvenation that forwards humanity.”12 Creighton’s hopes in the war’s promise were similarly elevated. Released from the immediate strain of battle, he longed for a resurrected social order: ‘It really does not in the least matter how many people are killed, who wins, whether we starve or anything else of a transitory nature, provided that in the process human nature is transformed in some way . . .’.13 This differentiated him from those who only mourned the death toll. Even exposure to the brutal realities of warfare, and its acknowledgement, did not necessarily negate Christian idealism. Often the graphic severity of what chaplains saw was a basis for the transcendent meanings they gave the war experience.

10 11 12 13

IWM 96/38/1 (Rev. C.J. Horsley-Smith, Memoir 17). Schack (1917), 11. (My translation). Bodensieck (1918) 16. (My translation). Creighton (1920) Letter, Feb. 11–April 23, 1917, 182.

106

chapter three — patrick porter

Field hospital chaplains, for example, were under no illusions about the horrific nature of war wounds, yet precisely the severity of their sufferings lent soldiers’ wounds or corpses even greater sacrificial value. Suffering on others’ behalf was more ideal if that suffering was real and harrowing. One field hospital chaplain described the wounded victims lying in his hospital tent, ‘out of a hell against which the imagination of Dante pales’, men staggering in from a frontline of ‘blood and corpses smell and poison breath, surrounded by the jumping, screeching howling death of the grenades and shells.’ Their comradeship amidst such nightmarish conditions was a revelation of ‘the deepest reason for German courage and German dutyconsciousness, namely the piety of the German spirit.’14 Chaplains were not dissuaded of the sacred meaning of the war purely by the physical realities or traumas of the front. High casualties do not automatically produce disillusionment. Whether or not suffering, loss and death is accepted as legitimate and worthwhile is dependent upon the wider cultural and circumstantial framework in which it is interpreted. Perceptions of crisis, or moral problems of war, do not arise in a vacuum. There is no normative response of communities to wartime losses. Though some kind of emotional response to loss is universal, the meanings attached to it are not. Judgments given to the facts of war ‘are fundamentally subjective, vary between people, societies, and cultures, and change over time.’ Whether casualties are ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable’ ‘to any given society depends on cultural attitudes and historical circumstances.’15 In their context, witnessing catastrophic bloodshed, the central moral problem for most chaplains was not high casualties alone. It was the threat that mass death would not morally and spiritually transform their societies. They presumed a fallen, hedonistic and profane industrialized world, its social cohesion threatened by godless materialism, and its need for regeneration through sacred violence. Greeted by German chaplains as a cleansing storm, by English chaplains as a war to end war, they gave different accents to the same idea: as well as defending their nations,

14 ‘Vom Geist unseres Heerens Lazarettpfarrer Schäfer in Rastatt’, Monatschrift für Pastoraltheologie, October 1916–September 1917, 90–96. (My translation). 15 Gat (1998), 136.

new jerusalems

107

by blood the dead and wounded would purchase a cleansed, uplifted and redeemed society. When war erupted, the claim that God inflicted the war to redeem society was widespread in the sermons of Germany’s Protestant clergy. Alongside the justice of Germany’s cause, priests invoked the idea of an inner cleansing. Germany was the chosen nation, a righteous instrument of God’s will and retribution. While punishing God’s enemies on earth, however, the war as a unifying transcendent experience of nationhood was visited to correct Germany’s fractured polity, moral stagnation and godlessness. Protestant clerics fused apocalyptic and pagan languages as they forecast the imminent clash as a cosmic event. “The hour of the rebirth of our peoples” was painted as “God’s thunderstorm of . . . cleansing and life-awakening power”, a “purifying fire” or an “invigorating flood,” analogies with meteorological phenomena that depicted a purging through natural violence. The palingenetic ideal, the rebirth of the national community, cast war as a sacred blessing, bringing an elevated existence that would awaken “new life under the pain and death of this time”.16 Amongst Germany’s educated Protestant middle classes, the Bildungsbürgertum, the notion of a holy war proliferated, marrying biblical motifs of divinely ordained cataclysms, Nordic themes of ‘world storms’ and ‘world fires’ and nineteenth century German discourses proclaiming the sanctity of redemptive violence.17 A joyous chapter in German nationhood, the struggle had delivered Germany from an incoherent and impersonal co-existence (Gesellschaft) to a people’s community (Gemeinschaft). Anglican chaplains interpreted the meaning of the war in a similar framework. Their nation, unlike the newly unified Germany, was not hammering out a creation myth from recent national wars and national unification. However, as an established imperial power they identified a similar threat to Christian civilization. They, like the Lutherans, feared the development of an industrial urban civilization. The organic community based on kinship, neighborhood and piety was being supplanted by a society of atomized individuals pursuing individual self-interest, bonded only by the cash nexus. English churches cherished a mythical notion of the ‘Spirit of 1914,’ a civic

16 17

Cited in Pressel (1967), 157. (My translation). Vondung (1980), 68.

108

chapter three — patrick porter

truce rallying parties, classes and interests to the nation. George Edmundson’s sermon in October 1914 identified God moving to divine judgment in the ‘constant process of mingled correction and redemption.’ Were not Britain’s enemies ‘instruments in the hands of God, whose mission it was to destroy, but by destruction to renovate, to extirpate what was corrupt and diseased that more healthy conditions of moral and spiritual life might be restored?’18 The Archbishop of Canterbury anticipated redemption two days before Britain declared war on the 4th August. He declared the gathering storm ‘the work of the Devil, not of God’s’, but nevertheless if it embroiled the nation, it would be for Britain’s own good. He recalled ‘the poet’s picture’ from the Anglo-Boer war ‘of the careless, selfindulgent, easy-going lad ‘Whose gods were luxury and chance’ gaining permanent strength from the enforced self-discipline of strenuous days.’19 War had seemingly released the nation from the volatile Irish question, the clash of Labour and Capital and the battle over women’s emancipation. War would also restore piety and humility to a profane, hedonistic and materialist age. William Geare wrote home that ‘The O.T. prophets tried to bring people to it by fear lest their country should be smashed up, and we in England need such a frightening in these days. Fear for our country ought to lead us to repentance.’20 As with Israel, God’s covenant with Germany or Britain was not an affirmation of purity, but a continuous exaltation towards penitence. The memory of mobilisation itself signaled a momentous realignment of the nation’s spirit. Of the departure of leave trains, chaplain L.L. Jeeves wrote to his parishioners that ‘The quiet order which prevailed, the complete sobriety and absence of the Bank Holiday nonsense . . . made one proud to wear the uniform with such men. The sense of a real purpose in life and the stern call of duty, have produced effects . . . no subsequent peace will ever efface.’21 In the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition, which interpreted wars as a trial of the nation as well as a struggle against God’s enemies, military victory and regeneration were not guaranteed. Being God’s ‘chosen people’ was strictly provisional—it depended on the faith of

18

Edmundson (1914), 2–3. Davidson (1919), 12. 20 Geare (1918), 28, Letter, 14/08/1916. 21 IWM 80/22/1, L.L. Jeeves (Letters to St. Mary’s Whitechapel Parish Magazine) (undated). 19

new jerusalems

109

the chosen. German chaplains cast the war as a trial, a struggle that would reward the most penitent nations with victory. Preaching on divine judgment from Hebrews, German chaplain Walther Buder declared the war ‘neither good nor evil, but it is the great test of whether we are good or evil.’22 Interpreted as a trial, the war became a pivotal event in salvation history. Germany, ‘the hammer of God’ and agent of divine revelation, would impose God’s judgment on the world, identifying the Kingdom of God with imperial German policy.23 The German nation was executing the world-judgment in a war that was the ‘tribunal of the world’ (Weltgericht), redeeming the world through Germany’s unique Kultur, of excellence and virtue, apex of European achievement and engine of Germany’s world mission (Sendung). But the chosen people must prove worthy of their special status in God’s eyes or fall from grace, ‘Cannot peoples be called to the highest and come yet not to the goal? Yes . . . For God’s task to reach us, so must God’s will be our will.’24 The Church of England, therefore, shared the German Protestant concept of the nation’s wartime mission: to revive the bonds of community and fellowship in a corrupt social order at home through a renewed spirit of self-sacrifice and duty, and to export those values abroad at the point of a bayonet. For the Lutheran prophets this was the world-historical mission of Protestant Germany, cradle of the Reformation, as they equated the coming Kingdom of God with German hegemony in Europe, which would be the crucible for the spread of Kultur, German civilization. By overthrowing Britain’s imperial power, it would dethrone the materialist and mercenary values that had driven the conspiracy of hostile powers to destroy the Kaisserreich, God’s chosen nation, so visible in the invasion of East Prussia by Russia, the barbaric enemy Britain had cynically allied with. As before each major war in the nineteenth century, Germany had internalized alien secular ideologies that opposing nations represented in external form: Catholicism and Social Democracy, the legacies of French papist heresy and Enlightenment with its atheistic revolutionary tendencies, and materialism as manifested in Britain’s pursuit of economic hegemony, had infiltrated Fatherland. It was a

22 23 24

Buder (1916), 16–17. As Vondung shows, Vondung (1976), 156–7. Tahusen (1916), 9.

110

chapter three — patrick porter

time of reckoning between those values and the spiritual and collective thrust of idealism, heroism and community. That mission was contingent on the German nation proving worthy of its divine mandate. For the Church of England, the brutal invasion of Belgium signified the consequences of long-term global blasphemy. The attacks against Belgian civilians, ancient libraries and cathedrals were the climax not only of Germany’s seduction by the war-god Odin but also of world corruption, an epoch that had violated God’s commandments by embracing force, exploitation and avarice. By taking up arms against such aggression, the volunteer citizen army elected to reject the spirit of Prussian militarism as an extension of peacetime materialism, a spirit that had infected all nations. Like the German Protestant concept of the chosen nation’s mission, the British must also rally together in piety and penitence to deserve the status of ‘chosen people.’ The armies, therefore, bore a messianic purpose to the battlefield. The British New Army was the ‘Army of Redemption’, as British chaplain Studdert-Kennedy called it, just as the Lutheran chaplain Fritz Philippi assured the German army that its sacrifices would recapitulate Christ’s crucifixion to achieve the ‘German redemption.’25 In their eyes, it was emphatically not a departure from the gospel of repentance and national regeneration they had preached before the war—the war was the continuation of that struggle by other means. Geography mattered in defining the ‘holy war.’ As chaplains canonized the dead of their armies into a Christian martyrology and their living into a heroic pantheon, the landscape helped to define what made the war sacred. The religious imagination of English chaplains was stimulated by the sacred soil of allied France. The more ritualist Anglicans were drawn to the Roman Catholic iconography of the French countryside of the western front, which was a territory of horrendous conflict populated with wayside calvaries, consecrated by icons and sites of pilgrimage. Wounded soldiers were sheltered in churches, and crucifixes improbably survived bombardment. It was an intelligible way of communicating the war’s transcendent meaning to them and the homeland. A public symbol in France in a way it was not in England, the cross and its kindred crucifix appealed as potent foci of worship. J.S. Brough reported that

25

F. Philippi, An der Front Feldpredigten (Weisbaden, 1916), 9.

new jerusalems

111

soldiers ‘constantly comment on crucifixes standing among desolation and more than once one has heard to remark ‘They can’t touch Him.’ A picture of our Lord upon the Cross is eagerly welcomed, and thousands wear crucifixes they have bought . . . nothing drew men more surely to voluntary services in or just behind the trenches than the knowledge that they would hear about the cross.’26 While Roman Catholic iconography inspired, the embracing of icons came easier to Anglo-Catholics, less affected by Protestant iconophobia than some of their evangelical counterparts. When the evangelical Low Church Chaplain-General visited Harry Blackburne, ‘. . . I do not think he quite liked our Crucifix. I told him that we had learnt to understand and love the Crucifix out here.’27 German chaplains, in contrast, characterized the invasion and occupation of enemy territories as pilgrimage in a hostile landscape.28 Superintendent Leonhard described the fields of Papalist France as ‘a godless foreign land.’29 Germany’s ancestral demonology of French degeneracy stretched back to the Napoleonic wars, where pastors cast France as an irreligious and blasphemous nation of hedonists.30 Paris was Sodom, capital of their corrupt national spirit. In regimental folklore Prussian officers had left the “stinking city” to return to their robust virtuous rural people.31 Meditating on homesickness, field hospital chaplain Anton Gulielminetti described the armies as the weeping exiles of Psalm 137, “Who would blame the needy and neediest that must sit at the “rivers of Babylon” and must eat the bread of the exile.”32 Homesickness was an emblem of penitence, evidence of the army’s Christian volk idealism, a precondition for victory. The soldier’s tears of “faith and love for the family and home” would be deposed as evidence before the “throne of the chief of warlords.” While stationed “on alien soil,” and separated from their Fatherland, to miss homeland was to retain its values while purging

26

Brough (1918), 21. Blackburn (1932), 170. 28 Ludwig Hoppe described the ‘martyr death for the Fatherland’, in Hoppe (1916), 12, 42. (My translation). 29 Leonhard (1917), 18. 30 See further, Erich Pelzer, “Die Wiedergeburt Deutschlands 1813 und die Dämonisierung Napoleons” From Krumreich & Lehmann (2000), 135–156. 31 Hoover (1986), 129–30. 32 Gulielminetti (1916), 5 (My translation). 27

112

chapter three — patrick porter

Germany from Gallic immoral infiltration. Repeating the Psalm, he urged them not to forget Jerusalem, symbolic citadel of their native ideals.33 German padres believed they were stationed in the profane land of an ancestral enemy. It was their native fatherland, not the enemies’ territory, that they sacralized, and the Old Testament theme of the chosen people being tested in exile was their matrix for understanding the frontline experience. Chaplains also judged war’s social and moral impact by investigating its perceived effects on combatants. ‘It was granted me to see how our troops wrestled with the religion of their fathers and homeland, painful, bitter, obstinate often’ wrote Emil Ott.34 Chaplains inquired about the condition of the nation’s manhood in war because it was a rare pastoral opportunity in a military mission field, and because the effect of the war on the combatant went to the heart of the war’s meaning. As one reminisced, ‘in the autumn of 1914 many people thought there was a real possibility of a great spiritual revival among the manhood of the nation’ first manifesting itself ‘on the field of battle.’35 They presented war as a liminal event, the crossing of a threshold into a new kind of existence, and interpreted the war’s meaning primarily through its forecasted impact on the postwar world, assessing its impact upon the army, ‘the nation in arms.’ Communing with the soldier-saints, chaplains painted survivors as bearers of mystic knowledge, inducted into the mysteries of wartime fraternity and suffering. If the war was a quest for rediscovered community, it was the combatants who would return to re-educate Britain. ‘Through the carnage of the battle, and the sickening sight of dismembered bodies through the monotonous discomfort of mud-filled trenches . . . our men shall learn such a lesson as shall never be forgotten whilst their children can remember to tell the tale of the part that father played in the Great War.’36 Realist descriptions of the battlefield could accompany prophecies of redemption—the severity of the battlefield gave war its educational value. War could be perceived as a revelation of national character. One

33

Ibid. (my translation). Ott (1918), 2. 35 IWM 80/22/1 E.C. Crosse (Unpublished Draft, ‘The History of The Chaplains Department in the war 1914–1918’), p. 3. 36 IWM 80/22/1, L.L. Jeeves (Letters to St. Mary’s Whitechapel Parish Magazine, undated). 34

new jerusalems

113

anonymous chaplain wrote that the war represented ‘a homecoming to God and of a Christian impression on our army as well as in our entire people.’37 Emil Ott claimed ‘There are ancestral things that lie in the Germans’ blood and also cannot die in this war: besides their duty-feeling, their manly courage and their faithfulness in the upmost need.’ The Frontsoldat was like his pagan ancestors, ‘fully respectful of the great, if also ungrasped divinity that one ventured once only in that darkness of the Germanic forests and groves to pray to and could in our “modern” time only in the darkness of battles rediscover.’38 War stimulated an inner strength.39 Medieval imagery also flourished. Jeeves medievalised English martyr-soldiers in his parish magazine: ‘when knights of old, with hand on sword and Cross on breast, thus prepared to face the Turk in that Holy Land . . . And today . . . when earthly life is unavailing, men are meekly steeling into a new life through that same Creed which has proved the regeneration of mankind.’40 Others worried that the war accelerated materialist corruption. When communicating with their homelands, Chaplains enjoyed a latitude to question perceived mythologies of the war experience. Victor Kirchner asked “Is one not entitled however above all to observe that which is consistent with the unchurchly and with impiety, immorality and its innumerable cases?”, prefacing his account of soldiers’ and civilian indifference to worship.41 Erich Seeburg portrayed trench existence as a brutalising process. Its dismantling of conventional societal restraints outweighed any restraint and discipline inculcated by military service. The absence of wives, manners, the loosening of limitations through a violent power struggle, preoccupation with mere personal survival obliterated consciousness of sin and ethical boundaries: The war does not generally promote morality. It only causes today as much brutalization as ever . . . I need only recall the years-long reversal

37 “Briefe eines Deutschen Feldpredigers” Allgemeine Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung 11 Jan. 1915, pp. 828–83.1 (My translation). 38 Ott (1918), 2. (My translation). 39 For example, Lehmann (1916), 9: ‘the frights and exertions of the war’ bestowed ‘internal strength for this power-demanding war time.’ (My translation). 40 IWM 80/22/1, L.L. Jeeves (Letters to St. Mary’s Whitechapel Parish Magazine August, 1915). 41 Kirchner (1916), 237–8.

114

chapter three — patrick porter of all moral concepts, of the brutal prevailing of naked power, of the obliteration of my and your limits, of the egoism increased by the selfpreservation drive, at the wifelessness and the rapid growth of the dirty joke . . . in the long run intellectually blunting and morally brutalising.42

As well as rousing men for battle, alarmed chaplains on both sides believed that the role of their ministry was to shape the war aims of their nations and define the meaning of the war. As war loosened primitive appetites, such as officially sanctioned brothels, Georg Göens urged his chaplains to witness to the struggle against war’s ‘moral dangers.’43 Chaplains were there to resist war’s brutalisation and retain its redemptive purpose. For the Anglican Bernard Keymer, the churches’ duty was to shape the nation’s war aims, asserting that the purpose of the war was higher than the economic or territorial, beyond the defense of imperial commerce: ‘[many are] convinced that material ends and aims are what really are inspiring and influencing the British empire in these days. But this is exactly where the idealistic view is of such vital importance. We could do no greater wrong to the thousands who have made and are making the ‘great sacrifice.’44 Studdert Kennedy, rethinking his early nationalism, repudiated the assumption that a ‘crushing victory’ over Germany in itself would redeem society. Military victory was not the ultimate objective, as the war manifested on earth a cosmic struggle for ‘a lasting civilisation which lives by the Spirit of Christ.’ Unless the churches tempered the barbaric ‘Spirit of the Bayonet’ with a higher spiritual consciousness, ‘we shall lose the war’.45 Kennedy’s fear that war’s potential to morally diminish its participants could undermine these ideals reflected a common tension in chaplains’ experience: the paradox of sanctioning killing while resisting its degrading social effects. Redemptive sacrifice as a deed of human agents was theologically problematic, as the strictly orthodox sometimes regarded Patripassianism as a heresy. By identifying and conflating soldiers’ experiences with Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection it threatened the singularity of

42

Seeberg (1918), 70. (My translation). Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg 2341, 53 (Henceforth LKAN) (Militäroberpfarrer Dr. Göns, ‘Konferenz evangelischer Feldgeistlicher in St. Quentin’, 05/08/1915, p. 7). 44 B.W. Keymer, ‘Fellowship in Industrial Life’ in Macnutt (1917), 127. 45 Studdert-Kennedy (1918), 33. 43

new jerusalems

115

the Passion, the exclusive redemptive act. Four Anglican chaplains signed an interdenominational letter to Archbishop Davidson, claiming it ‘belittles our Saviour’s great Sacrifice.’46 Yet it was a popular heresy, widely accepted as a natural extension of Christ’s Passion. Anglican chaplains often welcomed the reshaping of God in the image of the suffering Tommie, returning the cross to popular imagination. Communion with the ordeal of the Christian Passion brought the manhood of the nation into the body of Christ. Many treated the Passion and the soldiers’ sacrifice as moral equivalents. ‘The Old Testament may be said to begin with the faith of Abraham, as shown in his willingness to sacrifice his son; the New Testament centres round the Sacrifice of the Lord himself. We too were being placed on the altar of sacrifice.’47 Patri-passionism was also debated in German circles. It was resisted by the pietist Hahn Society: “A hero’s death remains a hero’s death” and should be honoured, “but it is not a deed of self-redemption from all burdens of conscience; redemption from all evil is and remains the merit of Jesus Christ.”48 Chaplain Hans Bodensieck tried to affirm the sanctity of sacrifice without threatening the uniqueness of Christ’s redemption. ‘In the obedience to that god-willed law of sacrifice,’ military death would not deliver ’one, eternal redemption’ from the greatest evils, of sin and guilt, redemption ‘somehow counts also for our fallen brothers’ because ‘they gave there the best of what they had to give, joyfully: their life. And therefore they are a reflection of that holy consecration that radiates over the cross of Golgatha, resting on its victim’s death.’49 Their imaginations were less stimulated by Catholic iconography. The encounter with crosses was, for them, less of a novelty. Though crucifixes were a rarity in predominantly Protestant northern and eastern Germany, Lutheran Protestants were far less antagonised by religious iconography.50 Their Protestant churches had co-existed in Germany with a more populous Catholicism. Approximately 40% of the German population was nominally Roman Catholic.

46

Letter, Archbishop Randall Davidson Papers, Lambeth Palace Library. IWM 80/22/1 (E.C. Crosse, Unpublished draft: ‘The History of The Chaplains Department in the war 1914–1918’) p. 64. 48 Groh (1982), 584. 49 Bodensieck (1918), 17 (My translation). 50 As S. Goebbel suggests, in Goebbel (2002), 338. 47

116

chapter three — patrick porter

It was not just religious orthodoxy that led resistance to the seductive images of patri-passionism. To Geoffrey Gordon, war deaths were sacred not because they were self-sufficient, but because their sacrifices should provide an impetus to change society after the war. Recalling one soldiers’ death, ‘Here was no calm death, but a ghastly mess of blood and brain and mud, on his face and in the surrounding trench; and in the stark horror of the moment I could not see the Crucified at all.’51 Sacredness at the front is found not in the fictitious beauty of death in arms, but only in the worth of the community men die for. Civilians were also actors in their redemption and in justifying death, sustaining the army’s ideals “. . . by raising your own standard of life and service, so that the England for which men have fought and died may be more worthy of their sacrifice.”52 War’s impact on piety in the forces was a central concern for chaplains. In reports, pamphlets and submissions to inquiries, they testified about the spiritual impact of war on combatants. Significant here are not the facts of religiosity but chaplains’ social perception of facts. Genuine religiosity and piety are not objective social facts. What is ‘superstition’ to some is ‘belief ’ to others. Rather, the extent of religion in the forces was a value judgment, arising from formal institutional orthodoxies.53 Because chaplains’ testimonies brought conflicting subjective presuppositions to their reports, they differed over the effects of war on personal piety. Even seemingly obvious signs of religiosity—outward religious practices—were interpreted diversely. Worship, singing, participation in ritual to some chaplains manifested a reanimated sense of the sacred, even a dormant Christian consciousness stirring to life. To others, that could be a more superficial effervescence produced in a climate of danger, reinforced by collective ritual facilitating discipline, not to be confused with deeper piety. One German chaplain in the winter of 1914/15 distinguished the two. Pleased as he was with the ‘childish confidence in God’, the ‘joy in the religious service’ and the stature of the chaplain amongst both troops and the officer corps, he believed much was lacking from the ‘religious undertone in the army’ and doubted whether it

51

Pym & Gordon (1917), 175. Ibid., p. 178. 53 The notion that the army was largely irreligious army has been recently challenged. Recent studies indicate a more mixed spiritual map of soldiers’ piety: Schweitzer (1998); Becker (1998). 52

new jerusalems

117

could float ‘commandingly over the war music.’ Surface piety could be read only a function of the pressures of war.54 Conversely, where the danger was so great that worship required ingenuity and effort, padres made more ambitious claims. Alwin Backhaus declared his soldiers’ makeshift subterranean chapels, ‘dearest worship sites’ built by soldiers, and their passionate singing as the Holy Spirit moving amongst the army. Idealised pious soldiers were exemplars for civilians. ‘If this spirit filled us all, our people would be a right Christian people.’ Inspiring them before battle against a ‘grim ghastly enemy that has horribly indescribably wreaked havoc in our poor province of East Prussia’, God was receiving the penitent army back like the father his prodigal son.55 Some German chaplains, enlisted in official propagandist publications, blurred investigation and propaganda by circulating anecdotes demonstrating the innate piety of the German serviceman, even imputing a popular appetite for sermons.56 Similar divisions arose in English chaplains’ perceptions. Some denounced what they saw as cheap piety. They resented the misuse of prayer as a charm-like protection from harm, which they believed exposed a shallow individualism, a mercenary religion born of a mercenary era. That many soldiers supposedly only prayed under attack, for their own physical safety, and quickly discarded their faith afterwards, was symptomatic of a heretical understanding of God as a mere tool for earthly prosperity. Against these perverse forms of popular piety and its cult of petitionary prayer, one lamented that ‘We have allowed religion to become a sort of emergency affair . . . a drunken blasphemous soldier, a scoffer at religion, starts praying under heavy shell fire, and when the danger is past, he returns to his old ways . . . This emergency religion, which treats God as a sort of extra to be brought to bear when all else has failed, is simply magic, simply heathenism, a reversion to the dark ages.57 In particular, faith in petitionary prayer was vulnerable to indiscriminate killing. Thus soldiers confront Talbot with an outmoded understanding

54 ‘Mitteilungen für die evangelischen Geistlichen der Armee und der Marine’ 1915, cited in Schian (1921–5), 105. 55 Felddivisionspfarrer Backhaus, ‘Höhlenkirche’, in Maier (1915), 96. 56 E.g. ‘Bericht eines Felddivisionspfarrer’ cited in Neuberg and Stange (1915), 70. 57 Ponsonby (1917), 35–37.

118

chapter three — patrick porter

of prayer that was mocked by arbitrary killing, of ‘‘Bill who did pray’ but yet had ‘his head blown off.’’58 Prayer itself for other chaplains was a straightforward manifestation of piety. Danger had brought men back to God. The ‘mass of men’ realized ‘that there are times when they cannot get on without God; they are not afraid of Him, they are not afraid of Him, they flee to Him with their simple cries for strength because their surroundings are so exacting . . . They cast all their care upon Him, for they know that He careth for them. They look to Him as their Protector.’59 Thus one chaplain anticipated a ‘Great Spiritual Advance’ after ‘great moulding influences in the hands of God’, if the church could catch them’60 After repatriation, Dick Sheppard claimed ‘Soldiers would sometimes come direct from a leave train at Charing Cross to St. Martin’s for the afternoon service. Once a little party in tin hats with the mud of Flanders in evidence.’61 War’s moral impact on combatants, individual and collective, was sharply disputed in chaplains’ literature. For some, army discipline, danger and collective mutual dependence was essentially uplifting and ennobling. For others, its primitive and nihilistic ethos of mere survival diminished and brutalised the soul. Such conflicting perceptions of the war’s effects on combatants revolved around contrary assumptions about the nature of military service: as a system of discipline and restraint or as a mechanism that loosened primitive instincts. They also reflected differing reactions to the place of war in modernity—as an acceleration or reversal of an anarchic and divided modern condition. Leed identifies two rival conceptions of the relation between the social order and combatants during the war. For some the community was divided and anarchic for whom the veteran represented the man forged in ‘natural solidarities’ and therefore symbolising the resolution of those tensions. For others the community was a system of restraints which the veteran threatened as, a? man of violence, returning from an ‘arena of instinctual liberation’ outside its boundaries.62 These divisions were common amongst chaplains of both confessions. 58

Talbot (1917), 14. Anon. Submission to The Army and Religion. An enquiry and its bearing upon the religious life of the nation (London, 1919), 95–96. 60 Can England’s Church win England’s Manhood?, 7–8. 61 Ellis Roberts (1942), 101. 62 Leed (1979), 195–6. 59

new jerusalems

119

German chaplains had a greater propensity than Anglicans to preach a politically quiescent ethos, exhorting their audience to an unquestioning faith in the war. Wilhelm Stählin drew on the ethic of deference in Romans, with its inscrutable deity, to instruct departing combatants. Though it was increasingly difficult to justify war as “the noblest and most chivalrous craft”, the “warrior . . . needs not to think over the puzzle of this war, he can absolutely not allow it: he has a greater task, he has God’s will to do.”63 As a former chaplain recalled the message, it was “hold on, hold out, and hold your tongue.”64 The orders of the Prussian chaplaincy commanded chaplains to ‘stress the soldiers’ duty, his oath, loyalty, and love of country, as well as emphasise the significance of authority, and obedience to it.’65 The theme proliferated more in German war sermons because of Germany’s distinctive historical compact of throne and altar. The Reformation depended upon the protection of territorial princes, a growing compact whereby “the church gained the princes’ protection in return for obedience and loyalty,”66 later fortified by the nineteenth century Pietest revival. The Protestant church identified the Hohenzollern Prussian-German Empire and its divinely appointed monarch with God’s will, and “inculcated a virtually quietist attitude among the faithful of the state.”67 While the Church of England was constitutionally a ‘state church’, it perceived itself in a more ambiguous role as the state’s moral conscience, as the slavery debate signified.68 By contrast, Church of England chaplains often encouraged the armies to devote themselves to liberal social causes as an extension of the war effort, translating wartime sacrifice into postwar social reform. Tom Pym delivered lectures on ‘social conditions and misery produced by introduction of steam . . . factory life because we were unprepared shall be so after the war if we are not careful.’69 E.C. Crosse contributed to ‘After the War Papers’ stressing the gravity of

63

Stählin (1914), 4, 7. Cited in Bergen (2001), 232, 235. 65 C. Werckshagen (ed.) Der Protestantismus am Ende des XIX Jahrhunderts in Wort and Bild, 1901–1902 cited in Groh (1982), 595. 66 Jenkins (1989), 297. 67 Moses (1992), 48. 68 See Reckitt (1947). 69 IWM 81/17/1 J.K. Best (Diary Entry 31/12/1917). 64

120

chapter three — patrick porter

the postwar condition. The churches needed to emulate the courage of the British soldiers ‘to face, and ultimately to win, a heathen and a Godless world.’ England would need men to renounce nationalist hatreds and create ‘better housing, better education, better industrial conditions, without falling into the abyss of materialism.’70 Blood sacrifice was one element of national redemption, but chaplains also urged civilians to find an equivalent spirit of self-sacrifice in their lives. As chaplains doubted whether sacrifices in the arena of combat were sufficient to redeem their nations, the non-combatant was elevated to a role equal to the combatant. They reformulated the concept of redemption into something civilians must achieve, to justify the deaths of their compatriots. Only when civilians converted the suffering of ‘Tommie’ or ‘Siegfried’ into a higher code of living could national redemption be secured. Whether the spirit of martyr-soldiers would be sustained in the civilian sphere became problematic, as the home-front became the second theatre of national salvation. As the war changed from a campaign of rapid movement into a pattern of entrenched immobility, chaplains looked back to the first mobilization period and mythologised it as the ideal state of the nation. As they often reminded their armies, it was an occasion of unity galvanising the national community. In 1915 Christian Eisenberg reminded his Division that the war should ‘be a purification of our people’, expunging ‘bad juices from our people’s body’, waged not just for a honourable peace but for an ‘upwards inner path for our people’. ‘How lovely the unity which let all Party division be forgotten; how deep and solemn that seriousness, as the millions again show learned the living God; how great the sacrifice-willingness.’71 The memory of war-enthusiasm in the ‘Spirit of 1914’, more ideological construct than actual empirical event, was endlessly invoked as the ideal state necessary for national redemption.72 Chaplains on both sides imagined the spirits of the fallen would return to stand in judgment. In a field sermon in 1915, Ernst Vits imagined the dead condemning future survivors for squandering their sacrifices through the pursuit of pleasure. If ‘ever again either mate-

70 71 72

IWM 80/22/1 E.C. Crosse (‘After the War Papers’, pp. 8–9). Eisenberg (1915), 28. (My translation). See Verhey (2000).

new jerusalems

121

rialism, stupid Mammon-avarice, disdainful egoism, wretched riotous living wants to become powerful in German lands, then they will rise up as our judges and will say it to us: we did not bleed so that your contentment and your lusting should live.’73 To Neville Talbot British combatants ‘were paying the price for the future. As . . . each day passes, the public debt of the community to its defenders and to their folk mounts higher . . . the greater is the urgency that the better future, for which the price has been paid, may come to be. With the humility of indebtedness let good men and women see to it that . . . the agony shall not have been endured in vain.’74 Because the peace had been a sinful epoch, the armies were frequently said to be expiating the sins of pre-war society. The soldiers of the British Empire, like the substitution atonement of Christ, atoned for the sins of a fallen civilisation, ensuring war could never again occur as martyrs for peace. As Herbert Bury claimed in 1916: ‘Wounded by our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace upon them, by their stripes we are healed. They die that we may live . . . the wounded share the Passion of Him . . .’ Instead of disguising the extent of the carnage at the frontline, Bury made it a virtue. ‘You won’t mind what you have suffered and lost, will you, lads, if you have helped . . . to deliver the world from the curse of war?”75 German clergy gave a different definition to the same assurance that sacrifices would create a greater good. Their war was part of their creation myth, a grand chapter in the birth of a chosen people into a new nationhood that had begun with the wars of liberation. “Children of the light!” preached Friedrich Almer in a field sermon on Christmas Eve, 1915. “Germany’s present should be Germany’s future! God has let us become more and more a people.”76 Germany’s churches were especially active in mobilising the material resources of the home front. They donated their own copper, brass and nickel objects, organ pipes from January 1917, and from March 1917 church bells to be melted down. They also plundered

73

Vits (1915), 9. Talbot (1918), 2. 75 Bury (1916), 34. 76 Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg 2341, 53 (Henceforth LKAN) (Friedrich Almer, ‘Weihnachten an der Front’ Ansprache am Heiligen Abend, 1915). 74

122

chapter three — patrick porter

their own coffers, as church funds, bequests and donations were all collected to swell the war bonds. Chaplains gave spiritual expression to the state’s growing dependency on the productivity of the civilian body. Making the ‘religious-moral’ case for the war-loan, Paul Piechowski called on Germans to sacrifice their wealth on the altar of the Fatherland, claiming Germany would win if it proved a purer, anti-materialist people than the mercenary English. Though God favoured the German cause, God would not assure victory if the folk did not answer the summons for self-renewal.77 The heimatkämpfern, home-fighters, were becoming equally important actors to servicemen. After long service on a hospital ship, witnessing grotesque wounds and mangled corpses, an anonymous Anglican chaplain contrasted the army of saints with the ungrateful nation. In his final letter in 1917, he saw the possibilities of a new moral order arising out of the war. The fraternity of ‘fellow-citizens of the Empire’ had foreshadowed a transcending of social divisions, beginning ‘the pulling down of the old and the uplifting of the new, a breaking down of barriers, a realisation of brotherhood, and a growing recognition of the ‘real’ things of life . . . a deepening sense of the spiritual.’78 Yet he anguished over the potential of society to betray the memory of the dead: Do you realise what the Empire’s sons are doing for your sake—to preserve your rights and liberties, your honour and life? Do you realise their sufferings . . . Shall you ever either now or in the years to come forget it and be negligent of the needs of these broken wrecks of humanity? Shall you ever be willing to indulge in your luxuries again— your dinner parties and outings, your “purple and fine linen”? If you do, I for one shall cry “Shame, shame” upon you. I know the cost of your freedom and the preciousness of the price that has been paid— the price of blood.79

In both nations, these dilemmas intersected with a climate of growing tension between the two fronts. As warring governments permitted the enrichment of industrial and commercial magnates, ‘profiteer’

77

Piechowski (1917), 1–5. Fifty Thousand Miles on a Hospital Ship By “The Padre” A Chaplains Experiences in the Great War (London, 1917), pp. 283–4. 79 Ibid., p. 34. 78

new jerusalems

123

had already entered the vocabularies of both belligerent societies.80 War as a struggle against materialism could be undermined by sinister domestic interests, especially war profiteers. On the one hand, the war ‘downgraded the value of money. Other powers rule today entirely.’ Germans ‘had to relearn’ the lesson that ‘world historical decisions are not determined through money’, that national capability is measured by ‘moral power’ and ‘national will’. Not for nothing did ‘so much warm, blood flow’, as ‘we have learnt a greater fatherland need.’ At the same time, others threaten to contaminate the purity of the war effort, and ‘place their interests over the fatherland today’, advocating war only to make ‘war profit.’81 In their exhortations to civilians to ensure that the debt to the dead was repaid, the stakes for chaplains were particularly high. Most clergymen were deeply involved by participation and bereavements within their congregations or in their own families. As accomplices to the war effort, chaplains were implicated in the massive losses of the war. Their field sermons had been delivered to sustain the willingness of soldiers to fight and to die. That they might be party to a futile slaughter rather than a worthwhile sacrifice haunted their responses to the war. Julian Bikersteth, for example, privately questioned whether the bloodshed was for any good purpose. ‘The country is hoodwinked. Facts are distorted or totally misrepresented by the press. Everyone seems to be on the make. My nostrils are filled with the smell of blood. My eyes are glutted with the sight of bleeding bodies and shattered limbs, my heart wrung with the agony of wounded and dying men.’82 Bikersteth included himself as one of the guilty instigators of their deaths, identifying himself with the parasitic war profiteers and newspaper magnates: ‘When will this grim butchery of unfledged boys, German and English, end? For whose glory do we mangle the bodies of our splendid youth—God’s or our own? Or that the Northcliffe Press can sing of another triumph?’83 This drove chaplains to urge the beneficiaries of sacrifice, civilians, to repay it. As chaplains on leave conducted a ministry to their homelands, they exhorted civilians to a higher ethical existence,

80 81 82 83

De Groot (1996), 73; Chickering (1998), 103. LKAN 3210a (Feldpredigten, Thomas Breit 1917, nd.) Cited in Bikersteth (1995) Letter, Dec. 1917, 220. Ibid. 30 August 1918, 268 (my italics).

124

chapter three — patrick porter

stressing the bond of obligation between living and dead. ‘Should the immense sacrifice have been achieved in vain?’ pleaded Hermann Bauke, preaching while on leave at the graves of Lüttich. ‘Nevermore, comrades!’ he insisted. Commemorating the dead would be worthless if it were only ‘respectful feeling.’ The graves of the fallen of Brandenburg were more than memorials; they were reminders to civilians. Their ‘immense sacrifice’ imposed duties that reached beyond the war. ‘If we, God willing, will someday have peace’, the ‘new future of our people and fatherland should be built’ to fulfill ‘the serious admonition these graves shout at us.’ Redemption of the community meant executing Germany’s civilising mission to the world in both war and peace, galvanised by the martyrs who died ‘for the great and good future.’84 As agents of morale reinforcing the war machine, chaplains’ complicity in the sacrifice of the ordinary soldier meant that they were extremely sensitive to its potential waste. The few chaplains who did eventually express unqualified disenchantment had to conclude that their friends, congregations and compatriots had died in a meaningless cause. Such shattering implications themselves explain why it was so difficult to reject the war’s legitimacy and overarching meaning. Paul Tillich’s iconoclasm was unrepresentative of his colleagues, when he recalled in hindsight the devastation of the Battle of Champagne, when he ‘moved among the wounded and dying as they were brought in—many of them my close friends, much of my German classical philosophy broke down that night . . . I well remember sitting in the woods in France reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, as many other German soldiers did, in a continuous state of exaltation . . . European nihilism carried Nietzsche’s prophetic word that “God is dead.” Well the traditional concept of God was dead.’85 Tillich’s rejection of the old God encompassed a rejection of the ancestral belief in the sanctity of the Prussian social and political order, Germany’s chosen status, and the anointed status of Germany’s military forces. To question the sovereignty of God and the providential meaning of the war was unavoidably to question the mythology at the basis of the Kaiserreich. Thus implications of disillusionment were revolutionary in their denial

84 85

Bauke (1916), 4–6. P. Tillich, Time 73:11 (March 16, 1959), 47.

new jerusalems

125

of a greater purpose to sacrifice and in their political implications, and for most military chaplains reared in the conservative and monarchist climate of the Old Prussian Union that was too big a leap. Postwar sermons show an unease about the sense of personal complicity in sacrifices whose value was uncertain. Preaching in Westminster Abbey about the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in 1923, Tom Pym recalled an oath he made to a dying soldier who ‘asked me if I thought his pain was doing anyone any good . . . I pledged him my own word . . . that those for whom he died would try to make the world a better place.’86 On Easter Sunday in 1920, Woods preached about a society failing to reconcile with God. ‘Again and again I have stood by the graves of our men in France, and as I stood there it came to me . . . that we who survive are men and utterly committed to the task of breaking down the prison doors of an enslaved world . . .’87 Because of their sense of personal complicity as military chaplains in the casualties and losses suffered, they could not easily disown or reject the ideals. Some English chaplains, perceiving that war diminished combatants and civilians, concluded that God had not ordained the war. The apparent absence in war of a redemptive purpose discredited the notion that God was its architect. They attributed the war to human sin and abusive free will, in which redemption was only possible by God overriding the war through human repentance. Tom Pym concluded that ‘we must be disillusioned. There are far too many flamboyant assertions that war has turned men to God; such assumptions become blasphemous when they add that the Almighty stage-managed the war with this particular end in view.’88 StuddertKennedy claimed the war was an iconoclastic struggle against the very concept of a God ordaining suffering: ‘God cannot be absolutely Almighty. It is the Almighty God we are fighting; He is the soul of Prussianism. I want to kill him . . . and tear Him from His throne . . . This war is no mere national struggle, it is a war between two utterly incompatible visions of God.89 For these Anglicans, the only God that could endure the realities of the new frontier of suffering on

86 87 88 89

Ibid., 72–3. E.S. Woods, ‘The Living Christ’ Challenge April 9, 1920, 363. Pym & Gordon (1917), 15–16. Studdert-Kennedy (1919), 40–41.

126

chapter three — patrick porter

the western front was the fellow-sufferer, a modernized crucifixion of Christ remade in the image of the soldier. Divine fellow suffering, God’s kinship with the world, had to be mediated through the experience of the soldier: ‘Not a few have come to regard what they have seen and suffered as incompatible with the reign of a loving Father. The chaplain who can portray the story of the Cross and Resurrection in terms of the soldier’s own experience will find the soil crying for the seed.’90 Julian Bikersteth denied the war redemptive power. War might enable heroism, but diminished humanity, and was found wanting in the moral balance: ‘This War may bring out some of the good qualities in man, but the evil it does is incalculably greater. The whole thing is utterly devilish and the work of all the demons of hell. It will take generations to eradicate the work done to civilization by it. I feel that our whole moral outlook is being systematically lowered.’91 Many doubted the deity set over and against the world, rewarding and punishing good and evil deeds, remote from the mechanism of human suffering, and inflicting wars. God was present as victim rather than patriarchal ruler. Most German chaplains, in contrast, stubbornly affirmed the war’s divine origins. They maintained that God had inflicted the war on Germany to purge the chosen people and test their worthiness for imperial destiny. Where they lamented the war’s impact on the common soldier or on the national character, it was the failure of the Volk to prove to respond faithfully to the tribunal of war. Paul Piechowski depicted a furious and punitive God, ‘the eternal over us excites the storm flood of a war . . . God has played on the lyre of the war a powerful song.’92 The script was already written by 1914, that failure and degeneration after war were a manifestation of their unworthiness. Ernst Vits, preaching in the Berlin Cathedral, depicted God looking down on judgment over the ‘terrible criminal court’, as the ‘thunder of the world trial rolls,’ foretelling that ‘The great Lords’ day hurries near . . . a day of misery and anxiety, darkness clouds and fog . . . Your blood is supposed to be spilt.’93 These

90 Committee of Enquiry upon the Army and Religion, The Army and Religion An Enquiry and its bearing upon the religious life of the nation (London, 1919), 28. 91 Cited in Bikersteth (1995) Letter, u.d. September 1916, 137. 92 Piechowski (1917), 13–14. 93 E. Vits, Den Sieg woll’n wir erlangen Predigt Sontag 28 Jan 1917 in Dom zu Berlin (Berlin, 1917), 4.

new jerusalems

127

pronouncements reflected the transformation of the image of God in Protestant piety in nineteenth century Germany, from the summum bonum of the Enlightenment to the Lord of peoples and kingdoms, the great God of battles.94 The reluctance of most German chaplains to deny God’s designs in the war can be attributed to their more immanentist politicalreligious tradition, identifying all historical development with divine will and divine revelation. Arming for war was an event pregnant with the Holy Spirit. Gustav Freybe compared August 4, the day of German mobilization, with the day of Pentecost. ‘When the day for mobilisation had fully come, there were Germans gathered all together in unity . . . Then suddenly there occurred a rushing from heaven. Like a powerful wind it swept away all the party strife and fraternal bickering.’95 Only history and its central theme, the struggle of the nation, could reveal God, who was more than an active agent in the historical process, but was almost inextricable from Being. They thought in a matrix which interlocked Ritschilian liberal theology with its vision of a Kingdom of God happening on earth within historical time, Hegelian dialectical philosophy with its vision of history as an evolutionary process that would culminate in the triumph of Prussia as the ideal state, and Protestant nationalism, which saw the clash of nations as the inner logic of history.96 If history itself was the vehicle for divine revelation, God was continually present and revealed in the momentous events of German national history, a critical event in the ‘history of salvation.’97 German chaplains were therefore far less likely to deny the hand of God from the inception of the war in the diplomatic history leading to 1914 culminating in the July Crisis. In this respect, their mentality was more self-fulfilling in its logic. Even if the experience was diminishing its combatants, all their observations derived from an assumption that occurrences revealed the judgment of God. For German chaplains, even defeat rarely dislodged the Lord of History. Bavarian Emil Wolffhardt had preached on the Kaiser’s birthday that the German people, the most ‘highly gifted’ people with a ‘special relationship’ with God, like Israel

94

Scholder (1989), 35–60, 51. Pressel (1967), 17. 96 Hammer (1971) demonstrates the imprint of Hegelian historicism on German war theology, 109. 97 As K. Vondung argues in Vondung (1988), 190. 95

128

chapter three — patrick porter

had to prove itself through faith in the terrible struggle.98 The same understanding of the war as a national trial predisposed him to interpret defeat as a judgment on Germany. Hence his acquiescence to defeat in November 1918: ‘The struggle is over. The judgment is spoken. We bow to you, oh Lord of the World! We were great. You have broken us. Lord, you wish it! Lord, as it pleases you! And whether also something much different came, as we dreamt, hoped— to our pious it will be, if we believe imperturbably: no devil can steal you, dear God, from us!99 Several differences emerge in the testimonies of Lutheran and Church of England military chaplains. Lutherans, because of their historical dependence on the patronage of secular rulers from the reformation, espoused a more quiescent politics, preaching discipline and piety where Anglicans called for social reform. Identifying similar symptoms of social disorder, they believed the war experience was a lesson in Protestant civic duty whereas Anglicans argued it was a lesson in liberal social reconstruction. German Protestants ministered to armies of conquest occupying foreign and hostile territory, an experience of dislocation which shaped their sense of the war as a sacred undertaking. The surrounding terrain they invaded in France and Belgium was populated by Roman Catholic iconography in wayside calvaries, churches and crucifixes, invoking memories of the Kulturkampf and their particular brand of nationalism, which derived its linguistic, cultural and political identity from Martin Luther. It accentuated their belief that they were the ‘chosen people’ being spiritually tested in exile, modeling themselves on the Israelites of the Old Testament. Because of their Lutheran-Hegelian tradition, with its providential view of history as the ‘tribunal of the world’, German military chaplains were less inclined to deny the sovereignty of God in the origins of the war. Overall, the differences between them were mostly of temperature rather than substance. Despite their mutual antagonism, the Lutheran and Anglican churches held a similar conception of their nations’ mission in the war, to combat godless materialism at home by forg-

98 LKAN 3209 (Emil Wolffhardt ‘Königsgeburtstags-Feier im Felde Predigt über Pred. Sal. 8,2 gehalten am 7.1.1917’), 6–7. 99 LKAN 3209 (‘Bericht des Div. Geistl. Wolffhardt über seine Tätigkeit während des Feldzuges 1914–1918’), 47.

new jerusalems

129

ing communitarian values of sacrifice and duty in wartime and defending them against their greatest threats. When Lutheran military chaplains looked at British, French or Russian armies, they saw the domestic anti-national forces of commercialism, Social Democracy, and ultramontane Catholicism in external form. When Anglican chaplains looked at German forces, they saw the military and foreign manifestation of grasping industrial competition at home. Just as their concepts of world mission were similar, chaplains identified similar challenges to it. The apocalypse churches imagined the war to represent was an image of salvation, raising a “New Earth” out of the ash and bone of a corrupt world. They encountered not so much a crisis of faith in God, as a crisis of faith in war, and war’s capacity to deliver the transformations expected of it. On both sides many of them feared the effects of war on combatants, and the potential for civilians to waste the sacrifices of the dead by the survival of the materialistic and godless social order the war was supposed to destroy. As chaplains doubted whether war was intrinsically redemptive, they reformulated the idea. Redemption became a continuing civic duty on the living to resacralise society in the name of fallen soldiers. They anticipated that warring societies would neglect to repay their blood-debts to the dead. Outweighing the distinctions separating German Protestant and Church of England chaplains, this evolution in attitude was found on both sides of the front. Finally, chaplains in both armies were personally implicated in the massive blood payment made by the armies they ministered to. The notion that the war erased high ideals and abstract moral values mostly did not apply to chaplains. Their attachment to the cause was too personal. Their legitimacy as chaplains depended upon reaffirming the validity of the ‘big ideas,’ because so many under their ministry had died for them. That also could engender guilt. In his advice to clergy contemplating ministry in the armed forces in 1939, one former padre declared: ‘The dead before their maker who might have been better men if I had been a more faithful priest!— the pity of it grieves after all these years; and I still plead to God by the broken Body and outpoured Blood of His Son that He will not count it to their loss and to mine.’100

100

Barnes (1939), 9.

130

chapter three — patrick porter Bibliography

Primary Anon. (1917) Fifty Thousand Miles on a Hospital Ship By “The Padre” A Chaplains Experiences in the Great War (London: 1917). Bauke, H. (1916) Im Deutschen Lüttich Vier Reden (Berlin: 1916). Barnes, R.L. (1939) A War-Time Chaplaincy (London: 1939). Bikersteth, J. (1995) The Bikersteth Diaries 1914–1918 (London: 1995). Blackburn, H. (1932) This Also Happened on the Western Front; the padre’s story (London: 1932). Bodensieck, H. Gotteskraft in schwerer Zeit—Zwölf Predigten aus Feld und Heimat (Osnabrück: 1918). Brough, J.S. (1918) ‘Religion in the Army’ Church Quarterly Review 86:171, (April 1918). Buder, W. (1916) Gute Ritterschaft Zwölf Feldpredigten 1914–1916 (Stuttgart: 1916). Bury, H. (1916) Here and There in the War Area (London: 1916). Committee of Enquiry upon the Army and Religion (1919) The Army and Religion An Enquiry and its bearing upon the religious life of the nation (London, 1919). Creighton, O. (1920) Letters of Oswin Creighton 1883–1918 (London: 1920). Davidson, R. (1919) The Testing of a Nation (London, 1919). Edmundson, G. (1914) Sermon preached at St. Saviour’s Church, October 4 (n.pl., 1914). Eisenberg, C. (1915) Zwölf Feld-Predigten (Marburg: 1915). Geare, W.D. (1918) Letters of an Army Chaplain The Rev. William Duncan Geare (London: 1918). Gulielminetti, A. (1916) Heimweh und Heimkehr Ein Feldbrief an die heimwehkranken Kameraden (Feldgeistlicher in einem Kriegslazarett des Westens) (München: 1916). Kirchner, V. (1916) ‘Religiös-sittliche Erneuerung durch den Weltkrieg? Zu dieser Frage zwei Beispiele’ Dienet Einander! Monatschrift für praktische Theologie und Religionsunterricht der Schule 24, April 1916. Hoppe, L. (1916) Feldpredigerfahrten an der Westfront Kriegserlebnisse aus großer Zeit (Berlin: 1916). Lehmann Pfarrer, H. (1916) Erinnerungen eines Feldpredigers (Berlin: 1916). Leonhard, Superintendant Dr. (1917) ‘Das religiöse Leben der Feldsoldaten’ Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelischen Landeskirchen Deutschlands 1917 44 Jahrg (1917). Macnutt, F.B. (1917) The Church in the Furnace, Essays by Seventeen Temporary Church of England Chaplains on Active Service in France and Flanders (London: 1917). Maier, L. (1915) Gottesoffenbarungen im Deutschen Kriege 1914/15 Zuegnisse aus den Feldpostbriefen unserer Soldaten und den Mitteilungen der Feldprediger, sowie Beispiele aus den Erlebnissen in der Heimat (Stuttgart: 1915). Neuberg, A., Stange, E. (1915) Gottesbegnungen im Großen Kriege Feldpostbriefe, Aus Tagebüchern und Erfahrungen von Feldpredigern (Dresden: 1915). Ott, E. (1918) Die religiöse Lage an der Front (Heidelberg: 1918). Penny, B.R. (1963) “The Age of Empire An Australian Episode” Vol. 11, No. 41, Historical Studies (1963) pp. 32–42. Piechowski, P. (1917) Die sechste deutsche Kriegsanleihe in Religiössittlicher (Berlin: 1917). Philippi, F. (1916) An der Front Feldpredigten (Weisbaden: 1916). Ponsonby, M.G.J. (1917), Visions and Vignettes of War (London: 1917). Pym, T.W. and Gordon G. (1917) Papers from Picardy (London: 1917). Schack, W. (1917) Zehn Leichenfeiern im Felde (Göttingen: 1917). Schian, M. (1921–5) Deutsche Evangelische Kirche im Weltkriege (i) Die Arbeit der evangelischen Kirche im Felde (Berlin: 1921–5). Seeberg, E. (1918) Religion im Feld (Berlin: 1918).

new jerusalems

131

Stählin, W. (1914) Der Krieg—Gottes Wille? Predigt von Dr Wilhelm Stählin 15 November 1914 (Nürnberg: 1914). Studdert-Kennedy, G.A. (1919) The Hardest Part (London: 1919). Ott, E. (1918) Die religiöse Lage an der Front (Heidelberg: 1918). Tahusen, D.F. (1916) Werfet euer Vetrauen nicht Weg! Predigt am 6. August 1916 (Berlin: 1916). Talbot, N. (1917) Thoughts on Religion at the Front (London: 1917). ——. (1918) Religion Behind the Front and After the War (London: 1918). Vits, E. (1915) Deine Toten werden leben De gefallenen Kameraden zum Gedächtnis, den kämpfenden zum Ansporn Feldpredigt gehalten am Totenfest 1915 (Straßburg: 1915). Secondary Bergen, D.L. (2001) ‘German Military Chaplains in World War II and the Dilemmas of Legitimacy’ 70:2 Church History ( June 2001) p. 232. Bowker, J. (1991) The Meanings of Death (Cambridge: 1991). Chickering, R. (1998) Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: 1998). Cox, J. (1982) The English Churches in a Secular Society Lambeth, 1870–1930 (1982). Crosse, E.C. Unpublished draft: ‘The History of The Chaplains Department in the war 1914–1918’ (no date). Gat, A. (1998) Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddle-Hart, Douhet, and other modernists (Oxford: 1998). De Groot, G.J. (1996) Blighty British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: 1996). Dwyer, P.G. (2001) Modern Prussian History (New York: 2001). Ellis Roberts, R. (1942) HRL Sheppard Life and Letters (London: 1942). Goebel, S. (2002) ‘Medievalism and commemoration of the Great War in Britain and Germany 1914–1939’ (Unpublished Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2002). Gilley, S.W. (1991) “Pearse’s Sacrifice: Christ and Cuchulain Crucified and Risen in the Easter Rising, 1916, In S.W. Sykes, ed. Sacrifice and Redemption Durham Essays in Theology (Cambridge: 1991). Groh, J.E. (1982) Nineteenth Century German Protestantism The Church as Social Model (Washington: 1982). Hammer, K. (1971) Deutsche Kriegstheologie 1870–1918 (Frankfurt: 1971). Hoover, A.J. (1986) The Gospel of Nationalism German Patriotic Preaching from Napoleon to Versailles (Stuttgart: 1986). Jenkins, J. (1989) ‘War Theology, 1914 and Germany’s Sonderweg: Luther’s Heirs and Patriotism’, The Journal of Religious History 15:3 ( June 1989) pp. 292–310. ——. (2002) Christian Pacifism confronts German nationalism The ecumenical movement and the cause of peace in Germany, 1914–1933 (New York: 2002). Krumreich, G., Lehmann, H. (2000) Gott mit Uns Nation, Religion und Gewalt im 19 und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: 2000). Lake, M. (1992) “Mission Impossible: How Men gave Birth to the Australian Nation—Nationalism, Gender and Other Seminal Acts Vol. 4, No. 3 Gender & History (1992) pp. 305–319. Leed, E.J. (1979) No Man’s Land Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge: 1979). Marrin, A. (1974) The Last Crusade The Church of England in the First World War (Durham: 1974). Mews, S. (1973) ‘Religion and English Society in the First World War’ (Unpublished Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1973). Moses, J. (1992) “State, War, Revolution and the German Evangelical Church 1914–1918” 17:1 Journal of Religious History ( June 1992). ——. (1999) ‘Justifying War as the Will of God: German Theology on the Eve of the First World War’ Colloquium 31:1 (May, 1999) pp. 3–20.

132

chapter three — patrick porter

Pressel, W. (1967) Die Kriegspredigt in der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands 1914–1918 (Göttingen: 1967). Reckitt, M.B. (1947) Maurice to Temple: A Century of Social Movement in the Church of England (London: 1947). Scholder, K. (1989) A Requiem for Hitler and Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle (Philadelphia: 1989). Schweitzer, R. (1988) ‘The Cross and the Trenches: Religious Faith and Doubt Among Some British Soldiers on the Western Front’ 16:2 War and Society (October 1998) 33–59. Stromberg, R.S. (1982) Redemption by War The Intellectuals and 1914 (Kansas: 1982). Verhey, J. (2000) The Spirit of 1914 Militarism, myth and mobilisation in Germany (Cambridge: 2000). Vondung, K. (1976) Das Wilhelminische Bildungsbürgertum (München: 1976). ——. (1988) Die Apokalypse in Deutschland (München: 1988). Whaley, J. (1981) Mirrors of Mortality Studies in the Social History of Death (London: 1981).

CHAPTER FOUR

ENCOUNTERING THE ‘ENEMY’: PRISONER OF WAR TRANSPORT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WAR CULTURES IN 1914* Heather Jones

Introduction: Creating War The arrival of the first military prisoners of war in 1914 was the object of considerable scrutiny all across Europe. In the Vatican Pope Benedict XV received reports from French clerics who described how German crowds in 1914 insulted wounded French military prisoners and the French religious traveling with them as medical carers.1 At Schneidemühl close to the 1914 German border with Russia, excited, curious crowds gathered to stare at the arrival of the first Russian prisoners.2 In the small Irish town of Templemore in Co. Tipperary, the local nationalist newspaper, The Tipperary Star, announced its delight that the local barracks would house German prisoners, potential allies in a national struggle against Britain, depicting the captured German troops as ‘men of splendid physique, [. . .] marched from the railway to the barracks [. . .] they sang all the way. Fine singers.’3 This singing motif was particularly apt. To paraphrase the famous song, it was indeed a long way from Tipperary to Schneidemühl in 1914. Yet the phenomenon of excitement at the arrival of prisoners was common to both. This similarity raises the question of what the arrival of military prisoners of war in 1914 signified. How different were the reactions

* I am grateful to the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences for funding this research. 1 Archivio Segreto Vaticana [hereafter ASV], Segretaria di Stato, Guerra, Anno 1914–1918, Rubrica 244, Fasc. 137, Folio 104, Letter from Bishop of Versailles to papacy, 20.9.15, enclosing written statements from two priests deported with French military prisoners in September 1914. 2 Mihaly (1982), p. 48. 3 The Tipperary Star, 3.10.14, p. 5 and 29.8.14, p. 5.

134

chapter four — heather jones

to prisoners of war among local populations across Europe? Was there a shared war experience or did diverse regional and national war cultures emerge? Although considerable work has been done to enhance our understanding of the war cultures of 1914–1918, popular consent to war in 1914 and the rapidity with which it manifested itself, are still something of an enigma to modern observers.4 How quickly did a sense of wartime mobilization, with its concomitant labeling and dehumanization of the ‘enemy,’ appear at local levels? For analysts of any burgeoning conflict this problematic exists: what defines the starting point of any war culture? A war culture is defined here as the system of cultural supports that allows populations to adapt to and perpetuate conflict. What cultural phenomena constitute its opening phase and what are the social processes by which it embeds itself within belligerent populations and engenders popular wartime hatreds? It seems clear that the reaction of a population to arriving prisoners of war in 1914, whether fearful or kind, angry or conciliatory, can reveal much about the level of public wartime mobilization and affiliation to wartime cultures at the juncture between peace and conflict. It lies outside the scope of this study to examine these questions on any comprehensive scale. Instead these issues shall be explored solely through an examination of negative civilian reaction to British, French and German military prisoners, being transported to prison camps in France and Germany in August-November 1914. This chapter will outline two case studies in turn: the arrival of German prisoners of war in France and the arrival of French and British prisoners of war in Germany. Finally, it will examine the development of a media discourse relating to the 1914 arrival of military prisoners of war and how it reflected or distorted reality to accord the prisoners’ arrival a symbolic value within each mobilization culture.

Mobilization Culture: Establishing the ‘Enemy’ Essentially, mobilization culture is the initiation of populations into a culture of fear-cum-hatred of the enemy figure. The establishment of different dynamics of hatred, which often stemmed from fear,

4

Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker (2000), pp. 109–111.

encountering the ‘enemy’

135

marked the opening period of the war in 1914 and represented the cultural backdrop to the arrival of the first military prisoners.5 This period of mobilization was marked by spy scares and xenophobia in Britain, France and Germany.6 To an extent this marked the symbolic purging of the national sphere of any foreign elements in order to consolidate its unity. The reception of prisoners of war offers another perspective on these xenophobic aspects of mobilization culture. However, in one sense the prisoner of war represents a different figure to the enemy spy. Hatred for the spy figure was fuelled by a fear that the spy was capable of harming the home nation. The figure of the prisoner, disarmed and vulnerable, posed far less of a threat to the nation at war and, therefore, expressions of hatred towards prisoners were more likely to stem from public feelings of impotency, desire for vengeance and a displaced sense of frustration at the disruption of daily life by war, than from fear. Aggressive behavior towards prisoners also represented a form of bonding on the home front against the external enemy—a type of socially ‘constructive’ aggression.7 In many cases, violence towards prisoners, verbal or physical, was used to popularize and culturally teach the new mark of ‘otherness’ of the enemy in wartime. It was a means of defining the new wartime boundaries that divided belligerent groupings. The prisoners in 1914 thus provided a key blooding in the wartime culture of friend and foe for civilian populations. Clearly, the establishment of systems of representations propagating hatred of the enemy marks one stage in the beginning of any war culture. However, such violent cultural representations often considerably predate the outbreak of physical hostilities, and, indeed, can exist at a passive level in a society for many years without that society being at war. Therefore, it seems that it is necessary to differentiate between what might be termed ‘passive’ and ‘active’ war culture. War culture proper does not begin in its ‘active’ form until the moment of face to face confrontation between opposing belligerents at a point where the legitimacy of the act of killing the enemy figure, the impulsion to active physical violence, has become accepted and thus cultural representations of violence and actual violence merge. For combatants this occurred on the battlefield in August

5 6

On cultural mobilization see Horne (1997), pp. 1–17. Strachan (2001), pp. 105–108 and Becker (1977), pp. 497–514.

136

chapter four — heather jones

1914. For non-combatants, a similar process was at the root of the hostile reactions to foreigners and the first prisoners of war. In 1914 there was little in international law regarding the treatment of prisoners during transport. Although the Geneva Convention established the principle that wounded prisoners should be treated in the same manner as the wounded of one’s own side, and the Hague Convention on Land Warfare of 1907 established that prisoners should be treated humanely, the specifics of prisoner transport, including the feeding of prisoners, their sleeping conditions, their exposure to enemy populations and medical treatment on the journey, were not dealt with in any detail.8 This meant that in each country the treatment of prisoners in 1914 depended upon the military culture and, more importantly, the wartime mobilization culture of the captor nation.

The Statistics of Capture The vast difference in the numbers of prisoners captured by Germany, France and Britain in 1914 is crucial to any study of public reaction to prisoners in these countries. 1914 was a period of mobile warfare, which resulted in a higher number of prisoners than trench warfare allowed for. In August alone, 8,190 British prisoners were taken.9 This was a remarkably high figure, given the total British casualties for the entire month of 14,409, and the relatively small size of the British Expeditionary Force.10 German prisoner-taking vastly outweighed French or British, helped by the fall of French defensive centers. The fall of Maubeuge saw 40,000 French soldiers captured.11 The British retreat from Mons resulted in another high prisoner tally. The Germans claimed by December 1914 to have

7

On ‘constructive’ aggression see Siann (1985), p. 4. Scott Brown (1915). 9 Of the British soldiers reported missing in August 1914 almost all would be found to be prisoners of war, unlike the missing of later battles. 10 The National Archives, London, formerly the Public Record Office, London [hereafter PRO], WO 161/82, Statistical Abstract of Information regarding the Armies at Home and Abroad, 1914–1920, June 1920, p. 253. The initial British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium numbered 120,000 men by 22.8.1914. Gilbert (1995), p. 43. 11 Armin (1915), p. 235. 8

encountering the ‘enemy’

137

captured 3,459 French officers and 215,905 French troops together with 492 British officers and 18,824 British troops.12 In addition, by March 1915 Germany had captured over 359,277 Russians.13 Most of Germany’s British prisoners were captured before the shift to trench warfare occurred: between August and October 1914, the German army took 15,313 British prisoners.14 After this period the numbers of British captured dropped off considerably, with only 369 taken prisoner in December 1914, out of total British casualties of 11,079.15 In comparison with Germany’s 1914 tally, the French and British took far fewer prisoners. By September 1914 the French had captured 250 German officers and 13,500 men.16 The battle of the Marne added 25,000 German prisoners to their number.17 By 1 January 1915 the French held 45,700 German prisoners in total.18 If the number of German prisoners held by France was relatively low, the number held by Britain was even smaller. Military and naval prisoners held in the UK in January 1915 amounted to 10,000.19 Despite Germany’s success in capturing more prisoners than France and Britain, Helmut von Moltke, the German Chief of Staff, was disappointed as the numbers did not indicate the imminent collapse of the opposing armies. We have had successes, but we have not yet gained victory. Victory means the annihilation of the enemy’s power of resistance. When million-strong armies confront each other, the victor takes prisoners. Where are our prisoners?20

Interestingly, von Moltke’s expectations of greater numbers of prisoners do not tally with the German propaganda argument that any failings in the German care of prisoners in 1914 were due to the fact that very large numbers of captives were not anticipated. As an

12 Ibid., p. 459. By 10 March 1915 the Germans had captured 3,748 French officers and 230,503 French other ranks, and 506 British officers and 20,031 British other ranks. Doegen (1921), pp. 28–29. 13 Doegen (1921), pp. 28–29. 14 PRO, WO 161/82, Statistical Abstract, 1914–1920, p. 253. 15 Ibid. 16 Cahen-Salvador (1929), p. 30. 17 Ibid., p. 29. 18 Ibid., p. 45. 19 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge (1915), p. 8. 20 Afflerbach (1994), p. 182.

138

chapter four — heather jones

American observer, Daniel McCarthy, pointed out, the Germans always claimed they had been ‘taken by surprise at the number of prisoners taken during the fall of 1914.’21 The disparity in the numbers of prisoners captured had considerable effect. For Germany, under pressure to keep to the rigorous Schlieffen plan, the dispatch and delivery of enemy prisoners presented difficulties for a rail network already heavily burdened by the demands of transporting troops and supplies to the front.22 Moreover, the sheer numbers of prisoners arriving in German cities meant that it was difficult to keep them segregated from the local inhabitants. The prisoner became a highly visible symbol of Germany’s military successes to a greater extent than in France or Britain. The number of prisoners arriving in a country was, therefore, a key factor in their reception and one which differentiated Germany from France or Britain.

The Arrival of German Prisoners of War in France German prisoners captured by France in 1914 were dispersed to eighty-three different prisoner of war camps all across the country.23 Other rank prisoners were transported by rail from the front in 3rd class carriages and in livestock wagons. One German prisoner, Gustav Schubert, recalled how the wagon he traveled in had been used to transport horses and the stench of horse urine hurt the prisoners’ eyes. No one who has not himself experienced it can imagine how awful the five days we spent in the train were. A great number of the prisoners were ill. Some had diarrhea, others vomited, however, no one could leave the wagon and all such waste remained in it. Even answering the call of nature had to take place in the corner of the wagon. [. . .] In some wagons there were wounded prisoners whose wounds began to produce pus and were infested by maggots. [. . .] we were treated worse than livestock.24

21

McCarthy (1917), p. 177. Keegan (1998), pp. 31–37. 23 Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes [hereafter SHA], 7 N 1993, Depôts de Prisonniers. Carte Cantonale de la France par régions et subdivisions de région de corps d’armée, 1914. 24 Schubert (1915), pp. 110–112. 22

encountering the ‘enemy’

139

Schubert’s account was published in 1915 after his repatriation. The first repatriations of prisoners in 1915 provided much of the information in France, Germany and Britain regarding the treatment of prisoners by the enemy during transport, and given the wartime context, they often focused on the worst elements of the journey from the front. Each side accused the other of transporting wounded prisoners in cattle trucks. In fact in both Germany and France other rank prisoners, including wounded prisoners, frequently traveled in cattle trucks, due to a shortage of hospital trains.25 Both countries underestimated the number of wounded prisoners which industrial warfare would cause and the severity of their wounds. Hence the use of dirty cattle trucks to transport wounded men, presenting a real danger of infection and gangrene in the era before antibiotics. France had only seven hospital trains operating during the first week of the war and was forced to improvise additional transport for the wounded.26 The German rail network used the same wagons that had brought German soldiers to the front to transport both prisoners and German walking wounded back to Germany. The large number of Russian prisoners taken at the battle of Tannenberg at the end of August 1914 placed this German system under real pressure.27 In France, Germany and Britain, officer prisoners largely traveled in passenger carriages, although some British officers arriving in Germany traveled in wagons. It is important to remember how long the journey from the front to the prison camp took in 1914: some German prisoners traveled for forty-nine hours across France from the front to Pau. The journey made by British prisoners captured at Cambrai and sent to Torgau took four days. French reactions to the arrival of German prisoners were very diverse. At a government and administration level the principle desire was to avoid public disorder. The French government was kept informed of public opinion in 1914 through Prefects’ Reports sent in from each Département. In the Prefects’ Reports returned to the Ministère de l’Intérieur in August and September 1914, most Départements reported no incidents during the arrival of the first prisoners of war. The reports for seventy-eight Départements were surveyed as a sample

25 26 27

Peschaud (1926), p. 79 and Reichsarchiv (1928), p. 98. Peschaud (1926), p. 98. Gilbert (1995), p. 49.

140

chapter four — heather jones

for this study. Of these, the vast majority do not mention the arrival of military prisoners at all. Only six reported a hostile crowd gathering to harass military prisoners. For example, one Prefect reported that when a convoy of German prisoners arrived at Clermont-Ferrand ‘although precautions had been taken to keep their arrival secret, several hundred people awaited their train and accompanied them from the station [. . .] the crowd shouted angrily at the prisoners and sang the Marseillaise.’28 Thirteen Départements recorded the arrival of prisoners without incident; most officials, such as the Commissaire Spécial at Saint Etienne station, cited the measures that had been taken to avoid any disorder as the reason for the calm.29 In several Départements, such as the Gironde, Allier, Bouches-du-Rhône and Meurthe et Moselle, Prefects reported that German civilians were attacked while prisoner of war convoys arrived without incident. The Prefects played down any mob behavior towards prisoners. Their reports reveal that the French administration disapproved of jeering at prisoners of war. Moreover, the French government was against crowds gathering at stations for any reason during the mobilization period as it tried to preserve a sense of calm and to dispel rumor. Attempts were made to keep the public away from trains carrying wounded, for example. The General Commanding the 10th region prohibited ‘absolutely all contact between the civilian population and the wounded. Stations must be evacuated during the passage of trains carrying wounded.’30 Footbridges over the railways were to be closed.31 In some areas the time of arrival of trains, including those transporting prisoners, was kept secret.32 Furthermore, in the opening months of the war the French administration still held onto certain older chivalrous ideas regarding prisoners, allowing German officers a relative freedom on parole, for example. This is illustrated by the actions of the Prefect of the Ain who responded to ‘several hostile cries these past few days when

28 Archives Nationales, Paris [hereafter AN], F7 12937, Prefect of Puy de Dôme to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 19.8.14. 29 AN, F7 12936, Dossier Loire. Report by the Commissariat Spécial for Saint Etienne station to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 23.9.14. 30 AN, F7 12936, Prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône to the Ministre de L’Intérieur, 7.9.14. 31 AN, F7 12937, Prefect of la Manche to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 8.8.14. 32 AN, F7 12937, Prefect of the Rhône to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 11.8.14.

encountering the ‘enemy’

141

German prisoners passed,’ with a poster campaign calling locals to ‘respect adversaries “taken with arms in hand for the defense of their country”.’33 This campaign was effective and the transport through the town of a German officer took place the following day ‘in total calm.’34 Similarly, the Prefect of Meurthe et Moselle, on 8 August 1914 visited the hospitals where he ‘saluted the German wounded and embraced the French.’35 Yet the recommendations of the French government were not always adhered to at the local level, where crowds frequently interacted with prisoners. According to Gustav Schubert, when he arrived at his destination on 18 September 1914, ‘the population at first acted very hostilely,’ but, after a little while, accepted the prisoners and came to beg souvenirs from them.36 Schubert stated that ‘Germans, [. . .] for an apple or a piece of chocolate or cigarette would offer a button, so a real barter business developed.’37 Hans Rodewald, a wounded German prisoner transported across France on 11–13 September 1914, recalled similar treatment: ‘We stopped at all the important stations where we were given water, and a thin soup with some bread. Everywhere civilians, mostly women, ran to our wagons to beg us for a souvenir. If one did not give them a uniform string or a button they became impertinent and rude. [. . .] the public became more and more aggressive and harassing, especially the old: they waved sticks and canes, cursed us and insulted us.’38 At Carcassonne, a French guard recalled civilians’ outright hostility to arriving prisoners: ‘Gentlemen brandished their canes, ladies threatened with their sun umbrellas, urchins threw stones, and the overexcited pulled out knives and jumped onto the track only to be held back by the sentries.’39 Clearly local wartime attitudes did not always match that of the French administration. This is further revealed by a number of statements gathered by the German Kriegsministerium from German prisoners

33

AN, F7 12937, Prefect of the Ain to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 6.8.14. Ibid. 35 AN, F7 12937, Prefect of Meurthe et Moselle to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 11.8.14. 36 Schubert (1915), p. 114. 37 Ibid. 38 Birnstiel and Cazals (2002), pp. 84–85. 39 Barthas (1997), pp. 20–21. 34

142

chapter four — heather jones

repatriated from France, collected between 1915 and 1918 as part of an investigation into French mistreatment of German prisoners.40 The repatriated prisoners’ statements, reproduced in their entirety as evidence of French mistreatment in prisoner of war camps, provide detailed accounts of a prisoner’s background, capture, and entire captivity experience.41 A survey of thirty of these statements made by prisoners captured in 1914 reveals that seventeen record French civilian crowds behaving violently to prisoners during the period between capture and arrival at their prison camp. Of the seventeen statements that reported violent civilian reaction, sixteen reported that it occurred during the German prisoner’s train journey through France and ten also reported civilian hostility prior to entraining in the north of France. Only six record crowd violence occurring at their final destination. This sample is a limited one. However, it allows for some useful analysis. Twenty-five of the prisoners were wounded when captured and transported. Importantly, most violence towards prisoners in France occurred at stations away from major urban centers in smaller towns such as Le Puy, Tarbes and Vitre. The only exceptions to this were Rouen, Orléans and Limoges. September 1914 had the highest number of prisoners transported (24) and all seventeen incidents of civilian hostility occurred during this month. Only ten prisoners referred to the behavior of the French guards: in five cases the guards sought to protect prisoners from crowd violence, in five they did not intervene or acquiesced. The principal incidents which prisoners recalled were having buttons stolen (9 cases), being spat at (11 cases), verbal abuse (13 incidents) and stone throwing (11 incidents). The statements were made between June 1915 and December 1917. French public reaction stemmed from popular anger at the German invasion, blamed on Germany’s leaders. One prisoner recalled how the crowd’s anger ‘was not only directed at us but also in a very horrid way against our German royal family.’42 Incidents were most violent in the northern areas of France, near to the fighting, where

40 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg [hereafter BMAF], P.H.2.33, Kriegsministerium. Militär- Untersuchungsstelle für verletzungen des Kriegsrechts. Anlagenband II zu der Liste derjenigen franzosen die sich besonders roh und grausam gegen deutsche gefangene gezeigt haben. 41 Ibid. 42 BMAF, P.H.2.33, f.158, Statement by Walter Schicht, 18.10.17.

encountering the ‘enemy’

143

civilians reacted furiously to passing prisoners. A prisoner, Adolf Michael, recounted how on the way to Châlons after capture ‘we came through a town where the inhabitants were so enraged that the guards had to raise their revolvers and threaten to shoot.’43 Crowd incidents that did occur were a spontaneous reaction by the population and not organized. One prisoner, Otto Möhle, recalled At one station a man in civilian clothing climbed into a wagon containing badly wounded Germans. He asked one of them if he wanted something to drink, whereupon he emptied a can of water over the wounded man’s head and spat at him in the face saying “the Germans are all barbarians.”44

Another prisoner recalled how traveling through France ‘we were so threatened and jeered at by civilians that the guards had difficulty keeping the doors of the wagon closed. Stones were thrown at us. I saw a Bavarian soldier with a head injury caused by this.’45 Thus, the arrival of German prisoners of war in France in 1914 reveals diverse wartime cultures in existence within the same country. Clearly, in 1914 mob behavior by French crowds did occur. In northern areas close to the fighting zone, the hatred expressed towards prisoners by civilians was often very violent. In other parts of France passing prisoners were jeered, spat at and verbally insulted. In contrast, in government and administration circles any mob behaviour towards prisoners was regarded as unchivalrous, uncivilized and a threat to public order.

The Arrival of British and French Prisoners of War in Germany In contrast to France or Britain, there was a recent historical precedent in Germany for the arrival of large numbers of prisoners of war in 1914. Germany took 380,000 French prisoners of war in the FrancoPrussian war of 1870, who were welcomed by the local German population in ‘an atmosphere of popular celebration and festivity [. . .] the inhabitants of Munich brought beer, tobacco and sausages for the prisoners and Berliners gave cigars.’46 43 44 45 46

BMAF, P.H.2.33, f. 173, Statement by Adolf Michael, 27.10.17. BMAF, P.H.2.33, f. 6, Statement by Otto Möhle, 13.8.17. BMAF, P.H.2.33, f. 272, Statement by Paul Michaelis, 30.10.17. Benedick (2003), p. 190.

144

chapter four — heather jones

In 1914, the very first prisoners of war were initially welcomed in Germany, like their predecessors of 1870.47 However, those arriving after mid-August 1914 faced more hostile crowds. Mob reaction against Allied prisoners was relatively common in Germany by the beginning of September 1914. As the element of euphoria present in early August wore off, a corresponding hostility appears to have developed towards those seen as responsible for obstructing German victory. The French prisoner, Gaston Riou, recalled ‘what a welcome the citizens of Sarrebruck gave us. My ears still ring from their howls.’48 On 2 September 1914, Riou was transported Across the Rhineland, the Palatinate, Baden, Würtemberg and Bavaria during three days and three nights. In all the stations and even in the countryside, groups of peasants and masses of citizens shouted and booed [. . .] threatened us with their fists, gestured cutting our necks, poking out our eyes. Running children waving flags, were lined along the track [. . .] The sight of a red cross brassard seemed to send them into a sort of epileptic fury: “kill them, kill them, the ambulance men! These are the men who kill our wounded.”49

Lieutenant-Colonel R.C. Bond recalled the hostile reaction of the German civilian population towards British prisoners arriving at Torgau in early September 1914. Bond described how ‘the whole mass of people seemed to be trying to get at the prisoners [. . .] There was one very old woman who distinguished herself by the violence of her denunciations and the directness of her aim [. . .] with three well-delivered spits! Old German women can spit!’50 A French prisoner, Captain Pasqual, who was also transported to Torgau on 11 September 1914, reported An indescribable journey, crammed into third class carriages and cattle wagons which had not been cleaned, surrounded by a population that was over-excited and hostile. The women of the German Red Cross refused us bread and water [. . .] In all the stations we passed the crowd sang; at all the level crossings children, accompanied by their teachers, insulted our old officers, many of whom wore the 1870 medal; the towns were decorated with flags; the bells rang.51

47

Verhey (2000), p. 76. Riou (1916), p. 31. 49 Ibid., pp. 1–2. 50 Bond (1934), pp. 35–41. 51 SHA, 6 N 47, October 1915, Report by Capitaine de Réserve Pasqual, Service de l’État-Major, on his captivity at Torgau-sur-Elbe (Silesia). 48

encountering the ‘enemy’

145

The schoolboy Himmler wrote on 30 August 1914 in his diary describing the station at Landshut: ‘full of curious Landshuters who were crude and almost violent as the severely wounded Frenchmen (who are surely worse off than our wounded in that they are prisoners) were given bread, water.’52 The French prisoner, Léon Blanchin, captured on 27 August 1914, wrote: ‘What to say of that journey? It was monotonous [. . .] it was sad: we traveled into exile. It was very uncomfortable [. . .] In certain stations we were shouted at, and people waved fists at us. In general, however, the population was calm, even sad.’53 Another French prisoner, the ironically named Sergeant Allemand, related how during his journey the German crowd ‘cried at us “Paris capout” accompanying these words with gestures of cutting off our heads.’54 Allemand also recalled that civilian crowds, including schoolchildren brought by their teachers, came to jeer at his prison camp in September-October 1914.55 What do these public reactions to the arriving prisoners tell us about German war cultures in the first weeks of war? Clearly, there was considerable public anger towards prisoners, particularly in German urban centers, and little attempt was made to keep prisoners and civilians apart. In comparison with the German prisoners’ accounts of arriving in France, French and British prisoners recount far less souvenir bartering or stealing by German civilians in stations. There are also references to groups of schoolchildren at German stations, singing or being shown prisoners, which did not occur in the German prisoners’ accounts of their reception in France. In contrast to France, in 1914 Germany had captured prisoners from many countries. This led to a differentiated reaction in Germany to prisoners of different nationalities. While there was some hostility to French prisoners arriving in Germany that manifested against British prisoners was stronger. British and French accounts specifically point

52

Gilbert (1995), p. 63. Blanchin (1916), p. 57. The French prisoner, Edmond Rénault Désiré, captured on 22.8.14 recalled a similar journey. Guéno and Laplume (1998), p. 31. 54 SHA, 6 N 22, Rapport du Sergent Allemand, fait prisonnier à Maubeuge et rentré en France après évasion. Ministère de la Guerre, Direction de l’Aéronautique Militaire. Cabinet du Directeur. 55 Crowds also gathered at prison camps in Britain where some civilians gave German prisoners cigarettes and cake. Brittain (2000), p. 112; McDonagh (1935), p. 26. 53

146

chapter four — heather jones

out that where French and British prisoners traveled together German civilians directed more anger at the British.56 One British prisoner described how ‘the French and Belgians got what they wanted at the stations. There were four unwounded Frenchmen in our horsebox who got food and drink but the guards would not let them give us any.’57 On one occasion British officers were made to travel in unclean cattle wagons with their men while French officers in the train traveled first class.58 The extent of hostility to British prisoners was quite considerable. The British government, recognizing the potential propaganda value of accounts of cruelties against prisoners and seeking evidence for post-war war crimes trials, established an investigation in 1915 headed by The British Government Committee on the Treatment by the Enemy of British Prisoners of War. It interviewed all repatriated, escaped or Swiss-interned British prisoners of war about their treatment. In spring 1918 this committee produced a parliamentary report on the German transport of British prisoners in 1914: Report on the Transport of British Prisoners of War to Germany, August-December 1914. The Report contains seventy-six extracts from interviews with N.C.O.s and other ranks and forty-eight extracts from interviews with British officers. It was later publicized as a pamphlet, The Quality of Mercy. How British Prisoners of War were taken to Germany in 1914, with an introduction by John Keble Bell.59 By matching the extracts published in the report with the original committee interviews they were taken from and reading other unpublished interviews which the committee carried out, it becomes clear that the material cited in the published Parliamentary Report is reliable. The report quotes faithfully from the original interviews and provides a substantial selection of extracts. It also matches evidence from other sources. For

56 PRO, Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 8084 Miscellaneous no. 3 (1918) MF 124.233, Report on the Transport of British Prisoners of War to Germany, August-December 1914. [Hereafter RTBP ] Sergeant Crockett, Maubeuge-Friedrichsfeld, September 1914, p. 38. 57 RTBP, Private C.H. Fussell, Cambrai-Sennelager, September 1914, p. 41. RTBP, Lieutenant H.G. Henderson, Tourcoing-Osnabrück, 12–14 November 1914, p. 25. Exact dates of journeys are cited when stated in the report. 58 RTBP, Lieutenant C.E. Wallis, Laon-Mainz, 30 October–2 November 1914, p. 23. RTBP, Lieutenant R.D. Middleditch, Courtrai-Munster, 12–15 December 1914, p. 29. RTBP, Captain A.S. Fraser, Douai-Paderborn, 30 October–3 November 1914, p. 24. 59 Bell used the pseudonym Keble Howard.

encountering the ‘enemy’

147

example, an Irish prisoner, P. Aylward, exchanged to Holland in 1918, described in a private letter how he was transported in 1914 ‘we left Louvain packed in trucks with just standing room, wounded and all [. . .] jolting along we had occasional stops when the doors were opened and a crowd of civilians gathered round jeering the “Engländer”.’60 The Parliamentary Report describes hostility to British prisoners during their journeys to thirty-eight German cities and towns, including Wittenberg, Brunswick, Frankfurt, Cologne, Mainz, Friedrichsfeld and Hanover. In contrast to civilian reaction to prisoners in France, public hostility to prisoners in Germany occurred in large urban centers. The vast majority of the incidents cited occurred in September and October 1914. The violence towards British prisoners was quite marked. In Aachen, on 2 September 1914, British officer prisoners believed their lives in danger when drunken Uhlans and railway employees attacked their carriage.61 British N.C.O. and other rank prisoners quoted in the report also described hostile German crowd reactions. A British sergeant stated that at Cologne ‘the crowd of soldiers, civilians, women and children amused themselves by throwing buckets of water over us. Any utensil which would hold water was eagerly seized; clean water, dirty water and even urine was used.’62 Private Dodd reported how ‘we went on by train [. . .] The Germans wrote “Engländer” outside in chalk and at every station we were jeered at, especially some Scots in kilts, who were dragged out and insulted, called “Fräulein” and kicked.’63 Another private reported ‘at every station the guard kicked a lot of us out for the populace to see. The people spat in our faces and threw stones and 6-inch nails, &c. at us.’64 Trooper Grassick, who was wounded, described how en route for Bielefeld hospital, the guard opened the doors ‘at the stations [. . .] to show us to civilians, who threw stones at us and hit us with sticks.’65 How can these civilian reactions be explained? German anger at British involvement in the war, and the feeling that British troops 60 National Archives of Ireland, M 6808 Shelf 2/478/9, Letter from P. Aylward, v. Boetzerlaerlaan 187, The Hague, Holland to the Rev. Jackson, 3 March 1918. 61 RTBP, Captain Beaman, Mons-Torgau, 1–4 September 1914, p. 8. 62 RTBP, Sergeant R. Gilling, Mons-Osnabrück, September 1914, p. 42. 63 RTBP, Private J. Dodd, Mons-Sennelager, August 1914, p. 32. 64 RTBP, Private C. Brash, Cambrai-Sennelager, August-September 1914, p. 33. 65 RTBP, Trooper T. Grassick, Mons-Bielefeld, September 1914, p. 36.

148

chapter four — heather jones

were Geldsoldaten [mercenaries], exacerbated by anti-British propaganda, such as that described by Matthew Stibbe in his book on German anglophobia, were partly responsible.66 The rumors of the British use of dum dum bullets further provoked mob passions against British prisoners. These factors help explain the particular animosity towards them. In addition, however, the belief in mutilation by the enemy had an enormous impact in Germany. German propaganda depicted German wounded or prisoners being killed and mutilated by Belgian and French civilians or by colonial troops. One German propaganda pamphlet published a November 1914 report, that German prisoners were decapitated by French colonial troops at a French station.67 British R.A.M.C. officers stated that their clasp-knives were shown to German crowds and described as tools used to mutilate German wounded.68 Such stories fuelled German civilian anger. The Red Cross authorities at Cologne declared that German prisoners were attacked by angry mobs in France while ‘we have seen many, many thousands of French prisoners transported through Cologne and they have not experienced the slightest mistreatment.’69 Stories of dum dum bullets and of German wounded being mutilated probably resulted from the unfamiliar effect of high explosives and shrapnel, stripping and mutilating bodies.70 Their widespread dissemination in 1914 helps explain the negative reaction to Allied prisoners. Other factors also led to popular hostility towards prisoners arriving in Germany. Prisoners arrived in German stations which were crowded with tense soldiers on their way to the front and German civilians mobilized to assist them. As a British prisoner, Major Peebles, described: ‘our guards were loaded with food, cigars, &c, at every stop, everywhere there were enormous crowds of people singing, shouting, spitting, cursing, children drawn up with flags singing “Deutschland über Alles” and “Die Wacht am Rhein”.’71 Such crowds were 66

Stibbe (2001), pp. 10–32. Liste über Fälle, die sich auf planmässige Ermordung und Misshandlung einer grösseren Zahl von deutschen Kriegsgefangenen durch farbige Truppen beziehen (Berlin: Gedruckt in der Reichsdruckerei, 1919), p. 1. 68 RTBP, Major H.B. Kelly, Cambrai-Aachen, 5–7 September 1914, p. 15. 69 ASV, Segretaria di Stato, Guerra, Anno 1914–18, Rubrica 244, Fasc. 132, Folio 37, Report of a meeting of the Kriegshilfe der Vereinigten Vereine vom Roten Kreuz, Cologne, 19.12.15. 70 Horne and Kramer (2001), p. 119. Whalen (1984), p. 50. 71 RTBP, Major Arthur Peebles, Cambrai-Torgau, 31 August 1914, p. 7. 67

encountering the ‘enemy’

149

not necessarily representative of the entire German population. They were often at the station to see their loved ones off to war and were, therefore, more likely to be hostile towards enemy prisoners. In addition, prisoners were often transported in trains alongside German wounded.72 The first sight of large numbers of seriously wounded German troops aroused public emotion, which was then vented on nearby prisoners.73 The prisoners’ trains often appear to have been delayed in sidings at stations in order that German troop trains on the way to the front might pass unobstructed and the congestion of the German rail network at this time meant that they stopped frequently. This led to greater exposure of prisoners to local populations.74 Moreover, as one British prisoner recalled, 1 September 1914 was Sedan day: ‘The engines of the trains were garlanded; branches of evergreen and flowers decorated the carriages [. . .] stations were thronged with seething masses of holiday citizens.’75 The hostile German crowds encountered must be understood in this context. Furthermore, the prisoners’ feelings of suppressed fear, vulnerability and disorientation rendered them particularly sensitive to any show of German hostility and added to the highly vivid nature of their memories of crowd anger. The effects of sleep deprivation, wounds, hunger and cold took their toll. Journeying in a closed train to an unknown destination through a foreign enemy country they viewed as the incarnation of aggression and brutality enhanced their confusion. As the numbing effects of the physical shock of battle wore off, the traumatic realization of capture set in. Prisoners often did not understand the language, either of their captors or the other military and civilian prisoners they traveled with, and found the shouts of German crowds all the more frightening because incomprehensible. This language barrier led to frustration on all sides. One British prisoner described how he saw a German officer ‘strike some of the wounded because they did not understand him and get out of his way.’76 Prisoners easily misinterpreted German actions, such

72 Major R.F. Meiklejohn, for example, describes German wounded and 150 British prisoners traveling together. RTBP, Major R.F. Meiklejohn, Cambrai-Brunswick, 3–6 September 1914, p. 13. 73 Whalen (1984), p. 24. 74 RTBP, Major Arthur Peebles, Cambrai-Torgau, 31 August–3 September 1914, p. 8, and Major R.F. Meiklejohn, Cambrai-Brunswick, 3–6 September 1914, p. 14. 75 Bond (1934), p. 35. 76 RTBP, Major Furness, Mons-Torgau, 1–4 September 1914, p. 9.

chapter four — heather jones

150

as the opening of the wagon doors at train stations, which they believed was in order that they could be stared at, but which was probably also to allow them fresh air, since their accounts describe ventilation in the wagons as very poor.77 For many class-conscious British officers, the fact that they traveled to Germany in third or fourth class carriages added to their disorientation. They were insulted by having to travel alongside ordinary soldiers, having to pay for their own meals, and not being allowed to call a cab to take them to or from train stations. Officers were shocked at having their coats, buttons or personal belongings stolen.78 What the British prisoners found traumatic in 1914 illustrates how much the war that unfolded in August 1914 was at odds with the ‘imagined’ war: the war that troops had expected to fight. These 1914 prisoners believed in the observation of a gentlemanly war culture corresponding with the prewar conventions of Geneva and The Hague. In the British case, the traumatized state of prisoners suffering from wounds, lack of sleep and culture shock, led to them describing incidents in terms of a binary polarization in their statements as follows: Fig. 1. An analysis of descriptive associations made in British prisoners’ statements in the Report on the Transport of British Prisoners of War to Germany, August-December 1914, PRO, Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 8084 Miscellaneous no. 3 (1918) MF 124.233. Germans

British

Disorder Noise, Screams, Cries Spitting of German women

v. v. v.

Healthy, power of violent action Actual German Home Front

v. v.

Order Dignified silence British prisoners polite requests for ‘real’ water to drink Wounded, having no power of violent action Prisoners’ memory and desire for own Home Front

Paradoxically, the arrival of the prisoners into the German Home Front sphere also marked their indefinite separation from their own 77 78

RTBP, Major Vandaleur, Douai-Krefeld, 17–20 Oct. 1914, p. 21. RTBP, Captain Beresford, Cambrai-Mainz, 16–20 October 1914, p. 20.

encountering the ‘enemy’

151

Home Front. The German Home Front by its similarities, yet also by its cultural difference, invoked their own distant home world, adding to the prisoners’ psychological stress. The arrival in a German station was thus a distressing simulation of the prisoners’ own imagined homecoming in France or Britain. This may explain why prisoners found the gaze of the German crowds at train stations so distressing. For battle-hardened men, the gaze of a crowd should not have raised such sentiments of exposure and violation. Arguably, it did cause the prisoners to react in this way because it was the inverse of the collective gaze of the cheering crowds that had sent them off so recently. It reinforced the absence of the home culture, which the prisoners both remembered and desired. All of the above factors help explain why British and French prisoners, including wounded, describe being treated with hostility on many occasions by German civilians. While not all prisoners experienced violence from civilians in 1914, and indeed, some experienced remarkable kindness, the number of accounts that describe hostile crowds, particularly from British prisoners, is significant. The behavior of women when encountering prisoners at stations was another cultural issue that emerged in 1914. Wounded British prisoners claimed that they were treated worse than the German wounded, as they were specifically refused all attention and food by the German Red Cross, particularly by its female members. As one prisoner wrote At all the large stations [there] were German Red Cross Aid Posts. The German wounded were taken out, their wounds dressed and they were given food and drink in abundance. When I asked the Red Cross authorities for food and drink for the British and French wounded it was refused [. . .] At Hanover the Red Cross official I addressed spat on the platform and walked away.79

Private Harvey saw a fellow prisoner ‘wounded in the mouth, go to the German Red Cross at the station to get his wound dressed and the Red Cross woman spat in his face.’80 The German Red Cross was not always hostile to British prisoners: one prisoner said they ‘behaved very decently all the time I had anything to do with them.

79 80

RTBP, Captain G.H. Rees, Cambrai-Doeberitz, 3–8 September 1914, p. 12. RTBP, Private A. Harvey, Journey to Friedrichsfeld, October 1914, p. 49.

152

chapter four — heather jones

They did their best.’81 However, on some occasions it appears they did behave hostilely to prisoners in late August-early September 1914. Of the seventy-six N.C.O.s and other ranks whose interviews are cited in the British Parliamentary Report, forty-eight describe being spat at, hit, insulted or refused aid by the German Red Cross, almost always by a Red Cross woman. In contrast, German prisoners arriving in France hardly ever noted the gender of hostile civilians. On some occasions the German Red Cross incidents were due to British prisoners confusing who was actually in the Red Cross and who was in patriotic volunteer organizations, such as the Vaterländische Frauenverein, which was extremely active in providing refreshments at stations. Other incidents, however, probably resulted from the cultural constraints that controlled how German women could behave towards prisoners. According to Ute Daniel, in August 1914, the first transports of French prisoners arriving in Germany were given a warm reception in many places by women: The friendly tone of which raised a cry of indignation heard in newspaper articles, letters to the editor and petitions. [. . .] In the eyes of the critics the regaling of prisoners with wine and chocolate constituted an unpatriotic act. The orders of the Elberfeld rail commander to the train stations under his jurisdiction provide a good example of this sentiment. As he wrote: “during the transport of prisoners of war German women and girls have sometimes behaved in an undignified manner. I request that station masters intervene in the strongest manner as soon as our national honour is offended by such elements.” Other military officers issued similar announcements and, in some cities, reintroduced the stocks for such women.82

The cultural penalties for German women, who were seen as being too friendly to the enemy were very strong, and this may have led to them acting hostilely towards prisoners in order to avoid social disapprobation. However, such constraints not only applied to German women. In 1914 female behavior became closely associated with ideals of national pride and purity, in both France and Germany, and was scrutinized accordingly. In the Corrèze Département in France, the Prefect reported to the Ministre de l’Intérieur that he had alerted the military authorities to ‘certain totally inappropriate acts by the

81 82

RTBP, Private P. Connolly, Journey to Kassel, November 1914, p. 50. Daniel (1997), pp. 23–24.

encountering the ‘enemy’

153

ladies of the Red Cross under the surveillance of a guarding officer in Brive station, who offered chocolate to prisoners passing through.’83 Similarly, Simone de Beauvoir recalled as a child distributing food to French troops at the local station in September 1914: One day a woman offered a German prisoner a glass of wine. There were murmurs of disapproval from the other women. “Well!” she said. “They’re men, too, like the others.” The sounds of disapproval grew stronger. [. . .] I stared with studied horror at the woman who was known from then on as the “Frau.” In her I beheld at last Evil incarnate.84

The importance of the ritualized acts of giving food and other gifts to parting troops, and refusing prisoners, must be read in terms of a contested mobilization space, with home troops leaving and prisoners arriving simultaneously, in the same stations. The giving of chocolate or cigarettes became an act of national affirmation in the wartime moral economy of sacrifice, binding the home front and fighting troops, civilians and combatants, particularly when carried out by women. The captured diary of a German soldier reveals how widespread this ritualized giving was in Germany in August 1914: 9 August 1914. 1h 30 The battalion left Berlin to scenes of public enthusiasm. At Rathenau [. . .] soup and beef. [. . .] At Stendal coffee. At Gardelegen Tartines and sausage. [. . .] At Lehrte water and postards. At Linden-les-Hanovre [sic] Tartines fourrées, raspberries, cake, chocolate. The world of youth is truly a chic one for us [. . .] 10 August [. . .] coffee, and filled bread. At Hamm coffee, bread rolls and postcards. At Scharnhorst near Dortmund rice and beef. [. . .] I was given cigarettes and a box of matches. Around me pressed all the best young girls of the town, each more beautiful and attractive than the previous. [. . .] pity we can’t take them all with us.85

Departing soldiers received similar gifts in France.86 The act of giving these ‘Liebesgaben’ thus became a mobilizing act of national appropriation of ‘our’ soldiers leaving for the front, and its corollary was

83 AN, F7 12937, Prefect of Corrèze Département to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, 24.8.14. 84 Beauvoir (1959), pp. 26–27. 85 SHA, 5 N 556, Prisonniers de Guerre Allemands. Diaries taken from captured prisoners. Carnet de campagne de Fusilier M. de la 12e Cie du II Régiment de la Garde à Pied. 86 AN, F7 12937, Dossier Haute-Savoie, Prefect of Châlon-sur-Seine to Ministre de l’Intérieur, 19.8.14.

154

chapter four — heather jones

to deny the same gifts to the ‘enemy,’ embodied by the prisoner of war. To shun prisoners had become a form of national and social bonding for patriotic women volunteers in both Germany and France. This new bonding process created new taboos. To give ‘Liebesgaben’ to a prisoner was one of them.

The Médiatisation of the Prisoner Transport Issue In 1914 the arrival of the first prisoners was a heavily publicized event. The prisoners were photographed and sketched. For example, in France the artist, Marcel Eugene Louveau-Rouveyre, produced a series of sketches of German prisoners at train stations.87 Photographs of prisoners arriving were printed on postcards and appeared in newspapers. This process of publicizing the issue soon merged real eyewitness accounts, government propaganda and popular myth, to create a powerful discourse: a process described here using the French term médiatisation, meaning to present an issue through the media. This discourse has its own history, which must be examined alongside the events that actually happened when prisoners of war first arrived in 1914. It was institutionalized within national war histories and publicized in the contemporary press. This process homogenized the different complex factors at play in the early public reactions to prisoners of war into a crudely simplified stereotypical version in which enemy civilians were cruel to helpless prisoners while the home nation’s civilians were disciplined and kind to them. The initial official accusations of mistreatment of prisoners during transport in 1914 were made by the British. Germany, whose propaganda had focused on allegations of mistreatment of German civilians in France and Britain, found itself forced to respond to accusations that British military prisoners had been mistreated by German civilians during transportation. While Germany and France focused upon questions of prisoners being shot or mutilated on the battlefield, the story of the wounded British prisoner mistreated by German civilians achieved notoriety in Britain in December 1914 when an escaped

87 Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine, Hôtel des Invalides, Ref. Or F3 1311–1320.

encountering the ‘enemy’

155

British officer, Major Vandaleur from Krefeld camp, reported his poor treatment during the journey into Germany after capture.88 During 1915–1916, however, the 1914 transport issue became more widely publicized in all three countries as repatriated prisoners’ accounts became available. On 12 March 1915 The Times published a prisoner’s account describing German crowds jeering in train stations in 1914. The Times History of the War in 1916 used photographs to illustrate that German prisoners in Britain were well treated during their journey, and reported, by way of contrast, that for British prisoners in 1914 ‘the journey to captivity was ever terrible.’89 These British accusations had such influence that in June 1915 the German Government made an official response: If the English pretend that they were attended to during the journey only after the French, the reason is to be found in the quite comprehensible bitterness of feeling among the German troops who respected the French on the whole as honourable and decent opponents, whereas the English mercenaries had in their eyes adopted a cunning method of warfare from the very beginning and when taken prisoners bore themselves in an insolent and provocative mien.90

A 1915 German publication on the treatment of Allied prisoners of war, Les Prisonniers de Guerre en Allemagne, attempted to justify the hostile treatment of British prisoners of war during the initial prisoner transports of 1914. One is not surprised by the hostile manifestations of the first days of war towards the English who without any reason had allied themselves with the adversaries of Germany and whose political policies had for years been directed towards isolating and weakening Germany.91

The real events, which some prisoners had experienced, soon elided into crude propaganda such as the following example in Fig. 2. Such pictures popularized the original stories of 1914 prisoners, and homogenized them into a standard mythic image, which may have influenced prisoners’ own later understanding of events.92 88

The Times, 10.4.15, p. 10. The Times History of the War (1916), p. 253. 90 Ibid., pp. 254–256. 91 Backhaus (1915), p. 6. 30,000 copies of this book were produced in German, English, French, Spanish and Russian. 92 Robert Vansittart of the British Foreign Office was a key proponent of this view of German women, even reiterating it in his 1958 memoirs. Vansittart (1958), p. 157. 89

156

chapter four — heather jones

Fig. 2. From Gilbert, S. and Gubar, S.M. No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Vol. II, Sexchanges (New HavenLondon: 1988–1994), p. 289. Trustees of the Imperial War Museum.

encountering the ‘enemy’

157

In France, a similarly simplistic and biased discourse on prisoner transport developed. The French book, Le Régime des Prisonniers de Guerre en Allemagne, published in Paris in 1916, outlined comparatively the treatment of German and French prisoners in 1914.93 For German prisoners taken in France it claimed: The transport of prisoners from the place of capture to that of their internment takes place as far as possible in third class carriages [. . .] It is only in the case of necessity and in the absence of any possible damage to a prisoner’s health that goods wagons, specially adapted for this use, are employed. [. . .] Precautions are taken to protect the prisoners from any crowd demonstrations during stops in stations: lowering the windows or opening the curtains is prohibited; the general public are not allowed to stand on the platforms, and the train is halted on a special track at a distance from the station. [. . .] Almost always, the calm and the dignity of the French crowd have rendered these precautions unnecessary. The popular indignation, vividly expressed on other occasions, is always contained before unarmed enemies, and there is no case where a German prisoner has suffered brutal treatment during the transport.94

In contrast, the book outlined how French prisoners in Germany endured: The inexpressible suffering of a journey of many days in livestock wagons, where in the enormous majority of cases, the prisoners, including sick and wounded, were crammed without food or medicine [. . .] Expressions of hatred [. . .] howling, stone-throwing, bottle-throwing, theft in all the stations of buttons from uniforms and of Képis—were usual in the first months of the war when the majority of prisoners arrived.95

Clearly, the treatment of prisoners of war during transportation had become one of the propaganda war’s signifiers of where a country stood on the wartime civilization-barbarism axis. Brutality towards the defenseless prisoner represented violence at its most unrestrained. If France and Britain were the repositories of legitimate controlled wartime violence, Germany, as the ‘other,’ represented primal, animal, unordered violence. This depiction also reinforced the image of Germany breaching the laws of war, one of the key discourses 93

See also: Christmas (1917), p. 101. Le Régime des Prisonniers de Guerre en France et en Allemagne au regard des conventions internationales 1914–1916 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1916), p. 11. 95 Ibid., p. 15. 94

158

chapter four — heather jones

surrounding the Entente portrayal of the invasion of Belgium which was so important for French and British mobilization. Germany responded to this Entente discourse in a variety of ways. German prisoners’ memoirs recounting poor treatment during their transport in France were published in 1915–16. Albums of photographs showing Allied prisoners arriving in peaceful German towns were widely distributed. Accusations of French mobs mistreating German prisoners were published in German propaganda booklets.96 Both the Franco-British and the German material published on the 1914 transport of prisoners manipulated real events into a wartime cultural framework of simplistic homogeneous moral representations. A useful comparison can be made here with the absence of complaints regarding prisoners’ post-war repatriation journeys. After the Armistice many French prisoners of war traveled to Switzerland in overcrowded, badly heated trains, which according to the International Committee of the Red Cross were unsuitable, particularly for sick prisoners.97 This uncomfortable journey, however, did not correspond to any topography of wartime hatred and prejudice in the way that the 1914 prisoners’ journeys had. Thus, its exigencies were fast forgotten. Moreover, as this example shows, both public and prisoners’ attitudes towards what constituted hardship had altered by the end of 1918. Despite this, the German case against the Allies’ claims of prisoner mistreatment in 1914 continued into the post-war period. Germany felt the need to rebut the Allied accusations in the Reichstag’s inquiry into German conduct during the war. The results of this inquiry, published in the series Völkerrecht im Weltkrieg, accused the Allies of mistreating German prisoners during transport and generally refuted the French claims in Le Régime des Prisonniers de Guerre.98 Interestingly, the allegations made in the British Parliamentary Paper were not referred to. Ultimately, the most important result of this media discourse on the treatment of prisoners of war by civilians in 1914 was the section stating that prisoners should be protected from the public, which was included in the 1929 Geneva Convention that still applies today.99

96 Die Gefangenenmisshandlungen in den Entente Ländern. Noten der Deutschen Regierung an die Neutralen Staaten (Berlin: 1918). 97 Cabanes (2002), p. 435. 98 Meurer (1927), pp. 165–177. 99 The 1929 Geneva Convention states: Part 1, Art. 2, ‘Prisoners of war [. . .]

encountering the ‘enemy’

159

Conclusion What does the transport of prisoners of war tell us about war cultures in 1914? With the available sources it is difficult to make any direct comparison about the scale of violence towards prisoners in both countries. However, the pattern of violence can be analyzed. Clearly, there were similarities between the German and French situations. The patterns of civilian group behavior which emerged were almost identical—spitting, stealing souvenirs, refusing food or water. The means used to transport prisoners were also very similar in both countries and prisoners in both cases were often traumatized witnesses, suffering from wounds, disorientation and culture shock. The civilian attitudes concerning women’s interaction with prisoners were almost identical, although they received more media attention in Germany. However, although the overall trends were in some ways alike, there were differences at a local level. More of the German population encountered prisoners given that Germany had many more prisoners to transport in 1914. German crowds acted more hostilely to particular prisoner nationalities. French and German crowds reacted hostilely to prisoners for different reasons: in the first instance French civilians were largely reacting against the invasion; in the German case stories of mutilation of the wounded were a major cause. Government reaction also differed. Whereas the French government wanted to keep its population calm and feared crowds gathering, German authorities appear to have been less concerned, regarding crowds as positive signs of patriotism and a means of mobilizing the population. There is more evidence of prisoners being deliberately displayed as booty in Germany than in France. German authorities were also prepared to acknowledge that there had been popular anger towards British prisoners during the ensuing propaganda battle on the prisoner transport issue. The French authorities ignored all evidence that any German prisoners had been mistreated by civilians in 1914.

must be treated at all times with humanity and must be protected, particularly against acts of violence, insults and public curiosity [. . .].’ Part 8, Art. 25, states: ‘unless military events render it necessary, sick or wounded prisoners of war shall not be transported if their recovery might be compromised by the journey.’ Rasmussen (1931), p. 108 and pp. 115–116.

160

chapter four — heather jones

Overall, however, the pattern that emerges from the arrival of prisoners is one of remarkably rapid mobilization of collective spontaneous public anger in both Germany and France, which adopted similar mechanisms of expression. There were regional variations and motivations, but the spontaneity of the civilian reaction is telling. It reveals the powerful impact the outbreak of war had upon regionally disparate areas and the rapidity with which civilians entered into a culture of hatred, accepting the stereotype of the ‘enemy’ as a basis for abandoning peacetime moral norms. The strength of this is illustrated by the fact that in many cases German and French civilians were prepared to throw stones at wounded prisoners. Thus different regional war cultures provided a matrix for the development of a larger conflict culture, broadly similar in France and Germany. The transport of prisoners of war in 1914 also illustrates that the relationship between propaganda and event during the First World War was never a stable one. Real prisoners’ eyewitness evidence became part of a fluid media discourse that continued to evolve into the post-war era. Ultimately, the fact that the prisoners themselves shared common expectations of how they should be treated is perhaps the most revealing point of all. It illustrates that in 1914 there was still a widely held expectation that the enemy figure, once taken prisoner, obtained non-combatant status and as such should be exempt from becoming the target of popular hatreds. It was this optimistic belief that a nuanced conception of the enemy figure could be maintained in a culture of total war mobilization that the transport of prisoners in 1914 reveals was one of the first victims of the Great War.

Bibliography Afflerbach, H. (1994) Falkenhayn. Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich (Munich: 1994). Armin, A. ed. (1915) Die Welt in Flammen. Illustrierte Kriegschronik, 1914. Nach amtlichen Berichten und Quellen sowie Beiträgen von militärischen Mitarbeitern und Mitkämpfern (Leipzig: 1915). Audoin-Rouzeau, S. and Becker, A. (2000) 14–18: Retrouver la Guerre (Paris: 2000). Backhaus, Prof. Dr (1915) Les Prisonniers de Guerre en Allemagne (Siegen-LeipzigBerlin: 1915). Barthas, L. (1997) Les carnets de guerre de Louis Barthas, tonnelier, 1914–1918 (Paris: 1997). Beauvoir, S. de (1959) Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (London: 1959).

encountering the ‘enemy’

161

Becker, J.-J. (1977) 1914. Comment les français sont entrés dans la guerre. Contribution à l’étude de l’opinion publique printemps-été 1914 (Paris: 1977). Benedick, R. (2003) ‘Les prisonniers de guerre français en Allemagne durant la guerre de 1870–1871’ in S. Caucanas, R. Cazals and P. Payen, ed. Les Prisonniers de Guerre dans l’Histoire. Contacts entre peuples et cultures (Toulouse: 2003) 183–195. Birnstiel, E. and Cazals, R. (2002) Ennemis fraternels 1914–1915. Hans Rodewald, Antoine Biesse, Fernand Tailhades: carnets de guerre et de captivité (Toulouse: 2002). Blanchin, L. (1916) Chez Eux. Souvenirs de Guerre et de Captivité (Paris: 1916). Bond, R.C. (1934) Prisoners Grave and Gay (Edinburgh-London: 1934). Brittain, V. (2000) Chronicle of Youth. Great War Diary 1913–1917 (London: 2000). Cabanes, B. (2002) Finir la guerre. L’expérience des soldats français (été 1918–printemps 1920) vol. II: Le retour organisé et célébré (Ph.D. University of Paris IPanthéon Sorbonne: 2002). Cahen-Salvador, G. (1929) Les Prisonniers de Guerre (1914–1919) (Paris: 1929). Christmas, Dr de (1917) Le traitement des prisonniers français en Allemagne d’après l’interrogatoire des prisonniers ramenés d’Allemagne en Suisse (Paris: 1917). Comité International de la Croix-Rouge (1915) Documents Publiés à l’Occasion de la Guerre de 1914–1915. Rapports de MM. Ed. Naville, V. Van Berchem, Dr C. de Marval et A. Eugster sur leurs visites aux camps de prisonniers en Angleterre, France et Allemagne (Paris-Geneva: 1915). Daniel, U. (1997) The War from Within. German Working Class Women in the First World War (Oxford-New York: 1997). Die Gefangenenmisshandlungen in den Entente Ländern. Noten der Deutschen Regierung an die Neutralen Staaten (Berlin: 1918). Doegen, W. (1921) Kriegsgefangene Völker. Band 1. Der Kriegsgefangenen Haltung und Schicksal in Deutschland (Berlin: 1921). Gilbert, M. (1995) First World War (London: 1995). Guéno, J.-P. and Laplume, Y. ed. (1998) Paroles de Poilus. Lettres et Carnets du front (1914–1918) (Paris: 1998). H.M.S.O. (1918) The Report on the Transport of British Prisoners of War to Germany, August-December, 1914. Cmd. 8084. Horne, J. and Kramer, A. (2001) German Atrocities, 1914. A history of denial (New Haven-London: 2001). Horne, J. ed. (1997) State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge: 1997). Keegan, J. (1998) The First World War (London: 1998). Le Régime des Prisonniers de Guerre en France et en Allemagne au regard des conventions internationales 1914–1916 (Paris: 1916). Liste über Fälle, die sich auf planmässige Ermordung und Misshandlung einer grösseren Zahl von deutschen Kriegsgefangenen durch farbige Truppen beziehen (Berlin: Gedruckt in der Reichsdruckerei, 1919). McCarthy, D.J. (1917) The Prisoner of War in Germany (London: 1917). McDonagh, M. (1935) In London during the Great War. The Diary of a Journalist (London: 1935). Meurer, Prof. Dr (1927) ‘Verletzungen des Kriegsgefangenenrechts’ in Dr E. Fischer, Dr B. Widmann, Dr J. Bell ed. Völkerrecht im Weltkrieg (Das Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses der verfassunggebenden deutschen Nationalversammlung und des deutschen Reichstages, 1919–1928. Dritter Band, Erster Halbband (Berlin: 1927). Mihaly, J. (1982) Da gibt’s ein Wiedersehn! Kriegstagebuch eines Mädchens 1914–1918 (Freiburg-Heidelberg: 1982) Jo Mihaly was a pseudonym for Piete Kuhr. Peschaud, M. (1926) Politique et Fonctionnement des Transports par Chemin de Fer pendant la Guerre (Paris-New Haven: 1926).

162

chapter four — heather jones

Rasmussen, G. (1931) Code des prisonniers de guerre. Commentaire de la Convention du 27 juillet 1929, relative au traitement des prisonniers de guerre (Copenhagen: 1931). Reichsarchiv (1928) Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918. Die militärischen Operationen zu Lande. Das deutsche Feldeisenbahnwesen. Erster Band (Berlin: 1928). Riou, G. (1916) Journal d’un Simple Soldat. Guerre-Captivité 1914–1916 (Paris: 1916). Schubert, G. (1915) In Frankreich kriegsgefangen (Magdeburg: 1915). Scott Brown, J. ed. (1915) The Hague Conventions and Declarations of 1899 and 1907 (Oxford-Washington DC: 1915). Siann, G. (1985) Accounting for Aggression. Perspectives on Aggression and Violence (Boston-London-Sydney: 1985). Stibbe, M. (2001) German Anglophobia and the Great War 1914–1918 (Cambridge: 2001). Strachan, H. (2001) The First World War, vol. I, To Arms (Oxford: 2001). The Times History of the War (1916) vol. VI (London: 1916). Vansittart, R. (1958) The Mist Procession. The Autobiography of Lord Vansittart (London: 1958). Verhey, J. (2000) The Spirit of 1914. Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: 2000). Whalen, R.W. (1984) Bitter Wounds. German Victims of the Great War, 1914–1939 (London-Ithaca: 1984).

CHAPTER FIVE

MARC SANGNIER’S WAR, 1914–1919: PORTRAIT OF A SOLDIER, CATHOLIC AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST Gearóid Barry

‘It would appear as if Marc Sangnier has conducted himself admirably as a soldier. He has led his men in particularly perilous circumstances and has been named captain. It’s an improvement on his pacifist bleating of yesteryear.’1 The characteristically blunt assessment of Alfred Baudrillart, Rector of the Institut Catholique de Paris, gives an insight into the paradox of Marc Sangnier’s military participation in the First World War.2 Marc Sangnier, 1873–1950, was the pre-eminent Catholic Republican and Christian democrat of the French Third Republic. Le Sillon (meaning ‘the Furrow’), the popular, lay-driven ‘social pietist’ movement he founded in 1898, had placed him in the avant-garde of social Catholicism.3 Through parallel careers as journalist, politician and activist, he had striven to reconcile French Catholics to the Republic and the working classes to the Church.4 Inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) on the plight of labour, Le Sillon represented, in the first decade of the

1 Alfred Baudrillart, Les Carnets du Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 1er août–31 décembre 1918, ed. Paul Christophe (Paris, 1994), p. 185. Entry for 29.5.1915. 2 Mgr. Alfred Baudrillart (1859–1942). An impeccably orthodox churchman, Baudrillart was Rector of the Institut Catholique de Paris from 1907 to 1942, being appointed to eradicate dissenting, ‘Modernist’ doctrine from the ‘Catho’, such as that of the excommunicate theologian Alfred Loisy. As doyen of the conservative Catholic intelligentsia, Baudrillart was approached by Paul Claudel, diplomat and writer, to head a French Catholic Committee for Propaganda Abroad in 1915. He toured abroad and edited pamphlets aimed at neutral Catholic opinion, extolling the justice of the French cause. A cardinal in 1935, he died in 1942, his memory tainted with the accusation of wartime collaborationism. 3 Eugen Weber, Action française. Royalism and reaction in twentieth-century France (Stanford, 1962), p. 66. 4 Sangnier founded a daily newspaper La Démocratie (1910) and a non-confessional political party Ligue de la Jeune République in 1912.

164

chapter five — gearóid barry

twentieth century, a radical and populist strand of progressive political Catholicism in France. The movement, drawing on nineteenthcentury Catholic thinkers such as Père Gratry, author of the treatise La Paix (1861), combined ardent Republican patriotism with a Christian pacifist sensibility.5 Desiring the international arbitration of disputes, the Sillon was alligned to the Catholic pacifist milieu that included Alfred Vanderpol, founder of the Société Gratry pour le maintien de la paix.6 Sangnier disavowed jingoism as repugnant to belief in Christ as the redeemer of all. But there was nothing mealy-mouthed about the Sillon’s patriotism either. Alongside liberal humanitarianism, there co-existed a fierce attachment to the territorial integrity of the Republic and the tradition of the revolutionary levée en masse of 1792, as demonstrated by Sangnier’s fiery speech at the site of the battle of Valmy on Bastille Day 1908.7 As Catholic republicans, the Sillon held Joan of Arc in special regard, actively contesting the attempts of Charles Maurras and the Action française to appropriate her for the cause of monarchist reaction, thus inaugurating a permanent mutual antipathy between the two movements. Clearly, Sangnier, a graduate of the elite military engineers’ academy the École polytéchnique, was no anti-militarist and he answered without demur when recalled to active military service on 3 August 1914, at the age of forty-one. Sangnier’s wartime experience provides an excellent case study of the process of ‘cultural mobilization’ for war, meaning the process of individual and collective identification with the national cause critical to sustaining the war effort psychologically. This theme is addressed under three headings: firstly, Sangnier as soldier; secondly, the Catholic variant of the ‘war culture’ and his relationship to it, and, finally, his work as an Army propaganda lecturer in 1917–18 and his particular endorsement of the war.

5 Alphonse Gratry (1805–72). A priest and prominent Catholic thinker of the Second Empire. Sometime head teacher of Collège Stanislas, where Sangnier first encountered his progressive ideas. See G. Jacquemert (ed.), Catholicisme, vol. 18 (Paris, 1957), pp. 207–9. (Entry on Gratry). 6 Nadine-Josette Chaline, ‘Marc Sangnier, la Jeune-République et la paix’, 14–18 aujourd’hui, 1998, p. 87. 7 Jeanne Caron, Le Sillon et la démocratie chrétienne (Paris, 1966), p. 426.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

165

Marc Sangnier, Combatant Until June 1916, Marc Sangnier served in the 8th Territorial Battalion of the First Regiment of Engineers. He was attached to the Company 4/53T. Under the pressure an extended war, the idea that the Territorials would remain at a remove from critical theatres of war broke down to a great degree, allowing men like Sangnier to be an active participant, witnessing industrialised warfare at close quarters.8 The system of rotation developed in the French army is part of the background to this change.9 Therefore, by January 1915 Sangnier was stationed in the area near Langres in the department of the Haute-Marne, providing logistical support in the construction of trenches.10 Promoted to the rank of captain in March 1915, a citation in the Ordre du jour of his regiment in June 1916 portrayed him as an ‘officer of technical competence and proven courage who has led, with the greatest of zeal, during eighteen months, the organization of defences on the front lines at several points of the front.’11 Sangnier was also a recipient of the Croix de Guerre-Étoile de Bronze.12 However, Sangnier’s real value lay in his ability to command the respect of the men in his company and to motivate them: ‘Noted as a valuable officer since the beginning of the campaign. Very devoted, much loved by his men over whom he has a lot of ascendancy.’13 In addition to his training as a military engineer at ‘X’,14 the Sillon had accustomed him to be more than that; it had indeed bred in him the expectation of being a social engineer through the education of the young. At the front, he also took it upon himself

8 Guy Pedroncini (ed.), Histoire militaire de la France, vol. 3, De 1871 à 1940 (Paris, 1992), p. 180. 9 Rotation, particular to the French army, was in part a response to a long war where troop use was adapted to increasingly mechanised warfare. ‘Le brassage’ was also a means of maintaining discipline by changing men around and preventing any one region feeling it was bearing an unfair burden of military sacrifice. See Pedroncini (ed.), Histoire militaire de la France, vol. 3, pp. 278–83. 10 Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre (Vincennes) [SHAT ], 6Ye 30527, ‘Marc Sangnier—État des Services’. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., Dossier Marc Sangnier, Report of Colonel Commanding Engineers at Langres, January 1915. 14 The nickname of the Ecole Polytéchnique due to distinctive braid of the uniforms.

166

chapter five — gearóid barry

to organise Masses sung by the men.15 The lay apostle was again to the fore, showing his keen liturgical sense. Devotion to the Eucharist nourished the spirituality of Sangnier and provided a theology of redemptive suffering that helped him cope with the omnipresence of death. Liturgy and the unchanging rubrics of the Church provided the men with some sense of the divine but also of union through prayer with the home front. Liturgical singing drew not alone on Latin chants but on the popular hymns Sangnier’s friend Henri Colas had written for the Sillon, such as the Prière matinale.16 Hubert Aubert, a young follower, addressed him as a spiritual mentor: ‘You must be a model company commandant, a real leader and a very affectionate father to the men. I am certain they must be happy to serve under your orders.’17 From June 1916 to January 1917, Sangnier was spirited out of the war and sent on a top-level political mission at the instigation of the French government to visit Pope Benedict XV in the Vatican. Sangnier did not go through Verdun.18 In the spring and early summer of 1917 Sangnier was back in the direct service of the army but not at the front. Instead he served a period as instructor to over 600 conscripts of the class of 1918, formed into the Company 22/28, at the depot of the 1er Génie at Versailles, another experience as social engineer that subsequently prompted him to publish his findings on their level of knowledge.19 Reintegrated, at last, into the regular army, in May 1917 Sangnier was posted to the Seventh Regiment of Engineers as ‘capitaine commandant’ of the Company 15/3T. The company was attached, in 1917, to an infantry division, Division 10A, and 15/3T was cited favourably in the Ordre de l’Armée for continuing their defensive works under incessant enemy attack.20 From May 1917 to January 1918, Company 15/3T was stationed at

15

Madeleine Barthélemy-Madaule, Marc Sangnier 1873–1950 (Paris, 1973), p. 230. Caron, Hénri Colas, pp. 37–49. 17 Institut Marc Sangnier (Paris) [thereafter IMS], Correspondance Générale I, Corresp. Hubert Aubert—Sangnier, 14.4.1915. (A young Silloniste from Aube-Ste. Savine, Marne. Serving in 1915 in the 156th Infantry Division.) 18 This was relatively unusual given the ‘rotation’ system that operated in the French army. 19 Marc Sangnier, Ce que savent les Jeunes Français aujourd’hui. Simple contribution à une enquête sur l’instruction. Examen passé par 661 conscrits de la classe 18 au depot du 1er Génie à Versailles (Paris, La Démocratie, n.d.). 20 SHAT, 26 N 1752, ‘Historique anonyme’—7ème Régiment du Génie: Histoire Sommaire du Régiment (Avignon, 1935), p. 29. 16

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

167

Montdidier in the department of the Somme, equidistant from Amiens (Somme) and Compiègne in the neighbouring Oise. This was about sixty miles from the Chemin des Dames battlefield, recently fought over in an ill-fated French offensive. Sangnier, therefore, was near enough the frontline to have experienced shelling and actual physical danger but faraway enough to have been spared sustained actual combat experience during this period of his service. During the Montdidier period, then, Sangnier was working on the ‘arrière du front’, the vast semi-industrialized zone that sprang up on both sides beside the western front. In late 1917, Sangnier manifested a certain ennui with humdrum engineering work well behind the line. Sangnier suffered from ‘not being able to give [himself ] totally.’21 In order to live fully his own charism, Sangnier actively sought recruitment as an army propaganda lecturer or conférencier de propagande morale. This new propaganda drive within the army was complimentary to the concerted propaganda campaign aimed at ‘remobilizing’ the civilian populations in France and Britain in 1917. In the face of war-weariness it was necessary to postulate once more the absolute necessity of total military victory, a consensus that, by 1917, seemed to be flagging.22 This internal army initiative formed part of the official response to the French Army mutinies in the late spring of 1917. Len Smith has convincingly argued that the mutineers had allowed their ‘political selves’ to be remobilised after restrained but real protest, as, in French republican tradition, ‘the identity of the citizen-soldier was captive to republican ideology.’23 Legitimate parallels may be drawn with the contemporaneous Union des Grandes Associations contre la Propagande Ennemie on the home front, both in terms of themes and of organization. Obviously, this army propaganda drive had an importance comparable to its civilian counterpart in attempting to consolidate the Republican will to victory of the citizen-soldier. Not alone had Marc Sangnier a way with words to recommend him for the post, he also made concerted use of Silloniste contacts to 21 IMS, M.S. 26 Marc Sangnier as Propagandist—Letter Captain Deuil, Cabinet of War Minister—Sangnier, 29.10.1917. 22 John Horne, ‘Remobilizing for “total war”: France and Britain, 1917–1918,’ in John Horne (ed.), State, society and mobilization during the First World War (Cambridge, 1997), p. 195. 23 Leonard V. Smith, ‘Remobilising the citizen-soldier through the French army mutinies of 1917,’ in Horne (ed.), State, society and mobilization, p. 159.

168

chapter five — gearóid barry

lobby for it. Captain Deuil, former Silloniste and official in the War Minister’s cabinet, worked assiduously to free Sangnier from ‘his thankless role.’24 ‘I remain your debtor: I owe you so much’, Deuil wrote, regretting the resistance to Sangnier’s candidacy.25 Thanks to Deuil’s patient work, Sangnier was nominated an Army propaganda lecturer in February 1918. Sangnier’s relationship with wartime cultural mobilisation, though, had begun way back in 1914.

Sangnier and the Catholic ‘War Culture’ The concept of cultural mobilization need not be an anachronistic straightjacket but rather a useful paradigm for the analysis of the ideological and, at times, even religious terms in which participants cast their war effort. ‘War culture’ is a function of such engagement. The ‘mobilization of intellect’ Martha Hanna has written of is certainly part of the complex process.26 But it is broader still. It is, in fact, a set of cultural assumptions about the war, its just nature and necessity, which served to cement national unity in the face of the barbaric enemy. This type of ‘mobilization’, according to Horne, is ‘the engagement of the different belligerent nations in their war efforts both imaginatively . . . and organizationally.’27 Sangnier acknowledged this in April 1918 when he said: ‘It is, in effect, that today’s war resembles in no way previous wars. It’s no longer only armies that are fighting, it is, in truth, entire nations.’28 Clearly, he appreciated the ‘totalizing logic’ of the war.29 Sangnier fought the war on multiple fronts, appealing not just to the physical bravery of men under his command but also, as lay apostle and propagandist, to their minds and souls.

24 IMS, M.S.26 Marc Sangnier as Propagandist—Letter Captain Deuil, Cabinet of War Minister—Sangnier, 29.10.1917. 25 Ibid. Whether this resistance was anticlerical or Catholic conservative or strictly political is not specified by Deuil. 26 Martha Hanna, The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers during the Great War (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), p. 1. 27 Horne, ‘Introduction: mobilizing for “total war”, 1914–1918’ in Horne (ed.), State, society and mobilization, p. 1. 28 IMS, M.S. 26, Typed transcript of speech by Marc Sangnier to troops in April 1918. 29 Horne, ‘Introduction: mobilizing for “total war”’, pp. 1–17.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

169

Such a ‘war culture’ was necessarily heterogeneous, and, while holding fast to some basic tenets—patriotism and hatred of the barbaric enemy—it had to allow for as many variants of the ‘war culture’ as there were strands in society. Put another way, pre-war intra-national tensions were sublimated into the ‘war culture’: ‘The nature of national mobilisation so defined, both generically and in its particular manifestations, was naturally conditioned by the development of political and cultural life in pre-war society.’30 Operating in parallel with the French ‘war culture,’ while not synonymous with it, was the national consensus known as the union sacrée or ‘sacred union’, defined by McMillan as ‘the agreement to bury longstanding political and ideological animosities in response to President Poincaré’s appeal to put national unity first.’31 In this context, then, we can legitimately speak of a Catholic variant of the ‘war culture’. This Catholic war culture was in turn nuanced by pre-war differences of emphasis within Catholicism. In the main, this was a conservative culture, motivated not so much by love for the Republic as by a ‘national Catholic’ patriotism which cast the Church’s Eldest Daughter (France) against Lutheran, barbarous Prussia. Yet, in 1915, Baudrillart brought together a comparatively broad spectrum of Catholics in the Catholic Committee for French Propaganda Abroad, a committee whose publications and composition epitomised both the ‘war culture’ and the union sacrée.32 As Baudrillart put it, in 1914, ‘at the first call, we Catholics fall in behind our worst adversaries.’33 It seemed to symbolise the requirements for new and better relations between Church, State and society in light of the national crisis. In turn, the Comité catholique engaged in a devastating campaign against German behaviour during the invasion of Belgium and France mounting a specifically Catholic defence of French values against those of the enemy.34 While his close collaborator Georges Hoog worked assiduously for the Committee,

30

Ibid., p. 1. James McMillan, ‘French Catholics: Rumeurs Infâmes and the Union Sacrée, 1914–1918’, in Frans Coetzee & Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee (eds.), Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War (Oxford & Providence, 1995), p. 113. 32 Horne, ‘Introduction: mobilizing for “total war”, pp. 2–3. 33 Baudrillart, Les Carnets . . ., p. 30. Entry for 5.8.1914. 34 E.g. Comité catholique’s propaganda publications included: Alfred Baudrillart, (ed.), La Guerre allemande et le catholicisme (Paris, Bloud et Gay, 1915). 31

170

chapter five — gearóid barry

Sangnier himself was beyond the pale, despite the brilliance of Le Sillon’s propaganda methods, his oratory and personal charisma. Even if he had not been otherwise engaged at the front, it is doubtful whether Baudrillart would have made space for him. There were limits to the intra-Catholic union sacrée. Clearly, Catholicism was not monochromatic politically. However, where did Marc Sangnier stand, as a radical social Catholic, in relation to the broad mass of Catholics and their ‘war culture’ in 1914–18? Clearly, the left-wing social and economic radicalism and unequivocal Catholic Republicanism of Sangnier put him at odds with the mainstream conservative Catholic ‘war culture,’ whose social dimensions were defined by paternalistic charity rather than a wish to reorder the social structure radically. Le Sillon, Sangnier’s movement for popular education inspired by radical social Catholicism, had been the object, first, of episcopal opprobrium and later of stern Papal discipline in Pope Pius X’s letter to the French episcopate Notre Charge Apostolique (1910). In this letter, the Pope had warned that ‘there is error and danger in linking, on principle, Catholicism to a form of government’, especially ‘a form of democracy whose doctrines are erroneous.’35 In view of this, Pius requested Sangnier to abstain from all public Catholic activism or lectures indefinitely. It was more of a paternal command than a request but one to which, in his celebrated letter of submission of 25 August 1910, Sangnier submitted with dignity. This vow, alone, prevented Sangnier even entertaining such opportunities for lay Catholic activism such as the Committee and would have made him unacceptable to conservative ultramontanes. Moreover, even in this time of national unity, instances of suspicion of the Sillon still abounded amongst anti-Republican Catholics: ‘Some priests treat us as if we were outside the Church: I have met some on the front who thought I was excommunicated.’36 Equally, Baudrillart, conscious of the sympathies of one of his most gifted propagandists, Francisque Gay, for Sangnier and his movement, fretted that the ‘accusation of Sillonisme’ could be used to discredit the Committee’s work in the eyes of conservative Catholics.37 Even the cordial audience of Sangnier with the Pope in August 1916

35 36 37

Weber, Action française, p. 244. IMS, M.S. 26, Letter Sangnier-Louis Meyer, Rome, 11.8.1916. Baudrillart, Les Carnets . . ., p. 398. Entry for 20.7.1916.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

171

was somewhat marred by the fact that Benedict referred to reports he had received of Sangnier flouting his vow of silence, prompting Sangnier to write exasperatedly: ‘What is this new calumny?’38 In plain terms, Sangnier represented an important albeit minority strand within contemporary French Catholicism and, consequently, within the Catholic ‘war culture’. As we have seen, Marc Sangnier’s departure for Rome in June 1916 represented an extraordinary hiatus in his military service. Sangnier’s son, Jean, has written thus of the mission: ‘In the summer of 1916, Marc Sangnier was sent on an official mission to the Italian Red Cross. In fact, this mission concerned contacts which the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Aristide Briand, wished to make with the Vatican. Marc Sangnier was received by the Holy Father, therefore, on 19 August 1916.’39 As a ruse the Red Cross mission was an elaborate one. Notre Étoile, a wartime paper aimed at Sillonistes in arms, reported a reception by the King at the Quirinal in Rome. After a speech in Padua, Sangnier proceeded to visit sanitary formations at the mountainous front in the north.40 The visit to the Vatican, meanwhile, was the product of the wartime union sacrée. Official, Republican France, in the person of Briand, desired internal unity and attempted to garner the good opinion of neutral Catholics by holding out the hope that the diplomatic rift between France and the Vatican, dating from 1904, might be healed. Briand, conciliator of the Catholics as far back as the Separation of church and state in 1905, had to take great care not to raise anticlerical shackles on the French left. ‘No one believes he [Sangnier] will only be talking about the Red Cross’, wrote papal courtier Mgr. Tiberghien to Rome of this unusual release from regular combatant duties. Tiberghien hoped that ‘his reports can be an arm for those like Briand who, let us hope, already understand the Vatican’s mindset.’41 At the Catho, though, Baudrillart thought it all very odd, mockingly commenting:

38

IMS, M.S. 26, Memo. Marc Sangnier, ‘Audience du Pape le 19 aout 1916.’ Ibid., Memo. by Jean Sangnier (son of Marc Sangnier) of his father’s wartime activities, n.d. 40 ‘La Mission de Marc Sangnier en Italie,’ Notre Étoile, 24.9.1916. 41 Vatican Secret Archives (Rome) [Vatican Archives], Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, Francia 1916, fasc. 658, Corresp. Mgr. Tiberghien-Pacelli, 29.7.1916. (Paris-based, J. Tiberghien was a member of the Papal Chapel, Annuario Pontificio, 1917.) 39

172

chapter five — gearóid barry Briand had Marc Sangnier come to him and said to him: ‘the place of a man like you is not in the trenches’ and he sends him to Rome. His place is not in the trenches and he a former student of Polytéchnique and an artillery captain!42

However, for the sake of the common cause, Baudrillart received Sangnier before the latter left for Rome. Stupefied by the decision, Baudrillart suspected that ‘they are setting a trap for him in order to stab him in the back after the war,’ before noting that ‘he is to see the Pope whom he has previously met. His visit will raise eyebrows.’43 The fraught relationship of Marc Sangnier to the Catholic ‘war culture’ is further revealed in his private account of his audience with Pope Benedict XV of 19 August 1916.44 This may be analysed under three headings. Firstly, there is Sangnier, the devout Catholic, eager to prove his obedience to the Holy See, defending himself against the charges of his Catholic detractors, in order to gain papal approval for his renewed role as a lay Catholic activist. Secondly, in the context of the union sacrée, there is his role as Briand’s emissary, a conduit taking soundings as to better Church-State relations, extending even to the renewal of diplomatic ties between the Vatican and the Republic. Finally, Sangnier, as an exemplar of cultural mobilisation, pleads his country’s moral case before the Holy Father, thereby attempting to influence Vatican policy. In truth, this is almost too neat a distinction as at various points two out of the three strands, or, occasionally, all three, overlap. Given Sangnier’s position in relation to the broad thrust of French Catholicism, and the condemnation of Le Sillon in 1910, it is not surprising that he felt defensive in his dealings with the Holy See. First and foremost, there was the almost Jansenist scrupulosity that Sangnier felt about the manner and wholeheartedness of his submission to the papacy. This deep hurt was very largely assuaged in

42

Baudrillart, Les Carnets . . ., p. 388. Entry for 6 July 1916. Ibid., p. 389. Entry for 7 July 1916; From the general tone of the diaries, we can infer that the cryptic ‘they’ refers to supposedly unscrupulous politicians for whom courting the Pope was but an expedient maneuver. The hapless Sangnier could shoulder the blame for it if relations with the Vatican galvanized post-war political opposition. 44 Sangnier’s detailed account of the audience was kept secret until the publication of Madeleine Barthélemy-Madaule’s official biography in 1973. 43

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

173

the audience, according to Jean Sangnier, son of Marc.45 Judging from his own account, though, the ‘sense of closure’ was not immediate and Marc Sangnier returned again and again to the question of his filial obedience to Rome and the question of a renewed lay apostolate.46 No doubt Sangnier’s defensive instincts had been further honed by the continual goading of ultra-conservative Catholics implacably hostile to the Catholic Republicanism Sangnier represented. Benedict, though, affirmed ‘vigorously’ the compatibility of Republicanism and Catholicism.47 Despite the domestic detractors, Sangnier left the audience with a renewed mandate for religious activism. Sangnier recounted to the Pope the suspicion he encountered in certain quarters. Benedict’s reply was emphatic: ‘“Your attitude was absolutely perfect . . . Yes! Absolutely perfect!” Then we spoke about the condemnation of the Sillon. “Everyone makes mistakes. Even Saint Augustine did”,’ the Pope reassured him.48 As Vicar of Christ, Benedict correctly pointed out that Pius’ paternal if stern call to obedience to the Sillon was not in the same doctrinal league as the encyclicals concerning Modernism. Benedict, ever the diplomat, would pursue the fight against internal heresy more sensitively than his sainted predecessor.49 Somewhat reassured that his submission was viewed as sincere, Sangnier cautiously broached the question of his recommencement of what he had called, in a memo dictated to his secretary Meyer, the ‘moral and religious formation of new generations.’50 In audience with the Pope, Sangnier recalled his ‘scrupulous’ abstention from ‘works of religious and social education’ as nothing short of ‘a cruel privation.’51 Here we reach the heart of the conundrum. In 1910, Pius X had not presumed to silence Sangnier in the civil, political sphere. In the religious sphere, though, beyond Caesar’s sway, Pius ended the experiment of ‘the greater Sillon’ or ‘le plus

45

IMS, M.S. 26 Memo., Jean Sangnier, n.d. Ibid., Memo. Marc Sangnier, ‘Audience du Pape le 19 aout 1916’. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: a history of the Popes (1997; 2nd edition, London & New Haven, 2002), p. 329. 50 Vatican Archives, Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, Francia 1916, fasc. 658. Memorandum Sangnier-Holy See, 15.8.1916. Copy at IMS, M.S. 26, Letter SangnierLouis Meyer, Rome, 11.8.1916. 51 IMS, M.S. 26, Memo. Marc Sangnier, ‘Audience du Pape le 19 aout 1916’. 46

174

chapter five — gearóid barry

grand Sillon’ which from 1906 had led Catholic youth astray with its fusion of lay Catholic activism, radical politics and suspect dialogue with heretics and atheists. In this memorandum, Sangnier regretted how he had been obliged to concentrate on pure politics and his party Jeune République, rather than his true charism of popular education.52 Electoral politics was a pale imitation of the more millenarian task of remaking a Christian youth for France. Benedict was not to disappoint his supplicant. Weeks before, Tiberghien had reassured the Vatican of the visitor’s efforts at amendment of life: ‘He would still wish to work for the good of souls but he no longer sticks to a particular form (or forms) of apostolate undertaken until now.’53 Now Benedict acknowledged the ‘edifying’ nature of Sangnier’s abstinence but felt it was time for it to come to an end and that he should involve himself in ‘Catholic action,’ even organising retreats and religious meetings. Scrupulous to a fault, Sangnier doggedly asked if he would be breaking the vow he had taken in 1910. Each of three times he was reassured not to fear his critics in this regard.54 Benedict’s privately stated intention to officially dispel the sulphurous whiff of heterodoxy around Sangnier undoubtedly reassured the latter. However, of greatest relevance to the mission instigated by Briand was Sangnier’s contention that papal reprimand of the Catholic anti-Republican right would secure the union sacrée and prepare a future resolution of France’s religious quarrels, especially the Church-State one. As he concluded: Now, while France, all pulling together, is seeking to accomplish a unanimous duty and realising the ‘union sacrée’ in an effort which binds us all together, the Pope’s words would be more opportune than ever, without risk of regrettable polemics . . . It would establish peace in hearts while at the same time would prepare the future55

Here was an intersection between Sangnier’s desire for personal vindication and the cause of better Church-State relations Briand had sent him to serve. After all, as Sangnier reminded Benedict at the very outset, he was there also on behalf of Briand who felt that con-

52 Vatican Archives, Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, Francia 1916, fasc. 658. Sangnier-Holy See, 15.8.1916. 53 Ibid., Mgr. Tiberghien-Pacelli, 29.7.1916. 54 IMS, M.S. 26 Memo. Marc Sangnier, ‘Audience du Pape le 19 aout 1916’ 55 Vatican Archives, Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, Francia 1916, fasc. 658. Memo. Sangnier-Holy See, 15.8.1916.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

175

tact with the Holy See could be ‘useful’ for France. Benedict appeared touched by this and, indeed, what hopes the Pontiff expressed for a post-war Church-State reconciliation seem to have been bound up with the figure of Briand, the perceived conciliator. He recalled Briand’s privately conceding to Belgium’s Cardinal Mercier that it would be impossible to expel once more members of French religious orders who had served with such distinction on the front. The Pope seemed willing to leave a bitter legacy of anticlerical excesses and his predecessor’s inflexibility pass into oblivion. If Alsace-Lorraine returned to France, the Pope announced himself to be ‘extremely conciliatory’ and anxious for an understanding on the question of the Napoleonic Concordat which had never been rescinded by the Germans.56 While the desire to assuage his own conscience made Sangnier adopt the tone of a supplicant for most of the audience this did not prevent there being polite disagreement on other topics. This was seen most forcibly when Sangnier, the exemplar of Catholic ‘cultural mobilisation’, attempted to plead France’s moral case before the earthly head of the universal Catholic Church. With equal tenacity, though, Benedict XV desired to remain the common father of warring Catholics and was not going to let himself be used in a propaganda war by either Cain or Abel. To the French, prospective future diplomatic reconciliation between the Republic and the Holy See was all well and good. There were more pressing and immediate concerns though. As the Allies saw it, there was the overriding moral (not to mind political) imperative, to take sides in the clash of German ‘Kultur’ and Allied ‘civilisation.’ If only Catholics in neutral states heard the papacy unequivocally condemn ‘German barbarism,’ the Allied cause would receive a major fillip. The use of such Manichean terms had crystallised, in 1914–15, around the issue of the German violation of Belgian neutrality and German military conduct in 1914. For the very mention of Mercier’s name raised the benighted issue of Catholic Belgium and her fate at the hands of her brutal German aggressors. As Horne and Kramer put it: ‘Faced with this strong pressure, the papacy enunciated the doctrine of imparzialità towards the war in general and the “atrocities” in particular’. Moreover,

56

IMS, M.S. 26, Memo. Marc Sangnier, ‘Audience du Pape le 19 aout 1916’.

176

chapter five — gearóid barry Impartiality was more than diplomatic neutrality. As defined by Gasparri in a key article in L’Osservatore romano,57 it meant a refusal to take sides “in human contests and the bloody conflicts that stem from them”, or to compromise in any way the mission of the church “to bring peace and charity to all the peoples of the earth” . . . this amounted to a declaration that it saw no moral distinction between the two alliances.58

Unsurprisingly, such an apparently relativist position was ‘at loggerheads with the cultural mobilisation of each side’ and was greeted with dismay by Belgian and French Catholics.59 Formidable ecclesiastics like Mercier and, indeed, Baudrillart were at the heart of ecclesiastical-political manoeuvres to get Benedict and the Cardinal Secretary of State to support the Allies morally. Even though the intra-Church war of words continued up to the beginning of 1916, at least, it was to little or no avail for in as much as the papacy was willing to play an active role it was only willing to either engage in charitable relief of human distress in wartime or to make a series of initially discrete attempts to bring about a negotiated peace, beginning in 1915 and culminating in the more public and celebrated Papal Peace Note of August 1917. The discussion of the moral issues at stake in the war between Benedict and Marc Sangnier fits almost perfectly into this schema. Sangnier, therefore, fighting gallantly for the Christian-inspired civilisation of his Republican idyll, found himself obliged, as a patriot and a Catholic, to respectfully but resolutely point out German barbarism and, implicitly, solicit suitably thundering indignation from the righteous Pontiff. To this end, Sangnier met not just the latter but also the Curia’s rising star and future Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli (14 August) and Pietro Gasparri, the Cardinal Secretary of State, on 15 August.60 At the audience with Benedict on 16 August, Sangnier insisted that France was fighting a defensive war, forcing Benedict onto the defensive over the Belgian issue: The Pope affirmed that he loved France and had affirmed the injustice of the violation of Belgium. I remarked to him that . . . as long as the occupation of Belgium continued, they (the Germans) perse-

57 L’Osservatore romano, 8.10.1914. Cited in John Horne & Alan Kramer, German Atrocities 1914. A history of denial (Yale, 2001), pp. 268–69. 58 Horne & Kramer, Atrocities, pp. 268–69. 59 Ibid. 60 IMS, M.S. 26, Sangnier diary, August 1916.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

177

vered in injustice. The Pope replied that I, as a philosopher, ought to understand that the Pope was obliged to treat with the Germans, even in Belgium, as there existed there a de facto power.61

To Sangnier, who, as we shall see elsewhere was extremely exercised by the immorality of the war conducted in Germany’s name, or rather in the name of the Prussian militarism that usurped the true Germany, this papal pronouncement must have jarred as it seemed to acquiesce in the notion that might was right. In light of his subsequent protestations in his speeches to the troops about the perversion of German culture and its barbarous consequences in Belgium and France, it is highly unlikely that he fully agreed with the Pontiff ’s wish that ‘one began to envisage a peace without fighting jusqu’au bout,’ in other words, a negotiated peace, as suggested by the papacy in 1915 and again in 1917. When asked by Sangnier what message he had for Briand, he replied, ‘the Pope is offering himself as mediator.’62 Though Sangnier obligingly concurred that such a role was a singular prerogative of the Papacy, there could be no hiding the polite disagreement as national and cultural mobilisation came up against the trans-national Catholicism attempting to uphold some semblance of unity in the face of war. As so often during the First World War, the Eldest Daughter, intimately wedded to the French national cause at the altar of the ‘sacred union’, had to agree to disagree with her Holy Father! Sangnier’s visit to the Vatican did not go unnoticed at home. Neither was it without ramifications within the contemporary Catholic ‘war culture.’ Baudrillart exemplified the suspicion of many when he noted crisply in the Carnets: ‘the Pope has received Marc Sangnier . . . But the Pope shall not go back on what Pius X did.’63 Julien de Narfon, meanwhile, a liberal Catholic and religious affairs correspondent of Le Figaro, extolled Sangnier’s humanitarian mission, one he described as widely reported in Italy.64 Indiscreetly, though, de Narfon effectively blew the cover of Sangnier’s philanthropic mission, saying how Catholics would be grateful to Briand for sending ‘one of their own,’ for reasons that had nothing to do with the Red

61 62 63 64

IMS, M.S. 26 Memo., Marc Sangnier, ‘Audience du Pape le 19 aout 1916’. Ibid. Baudrillart, Les Carnets . . ., p. 414. Entry for 22.8.1916. Julien de Narfon , ‘La Mission du capitaine Marc Sangnier,’ Le Figaro, 26.9.1916.

178

chapter five — gearóid barry

Cross. With the decorated Catholic officer as representative, de Narfon concluded, ‘one can expect some results from this choice . . . where religious interests and the national interest coincide.’65 Such a bald statement of Catholic interests being indulged in the context of the union sacrée was awkward given the anticlerical disposition of many on the left. Certainly, it would appear to have compromised Marc Sangnier’s position and prompted the ‘brusque and definitive interruption of my mission.’66 Mgr. Henry Chapon, bishop of Nice, an old friend of the Sillon, wrote to Sangnier of how aggrieved he was at the carelessness of ‘that unbearable Narfon, master blunderer’ which had sabotaged a mission that could have helped enormously in the task of rapprochement.67 Mgr. Chapon, as one of the few members of the episcopate who had spoken up for Le Sillon in 1909–10, was well placed to remind Sangnier how the Roman welcome given to him would ‘reawaken the malevolence’ of his enemies. Chapon informed Sangnier of at least one written protest from a bishop to Cardinal Gasparri.68 Bishop Tissier of Châlons had written to Rome for clarification of the audience’s import, fearing an ‘impertinent’ exaggeration of the Pope’s receptivity to Sangnier’s democratic social Catholicism. Union sacrée or not, Tissier was still using the language of the Modernist crisis when he stated forebodingly that ‘the Sillon is a subtle doctrine which insinuates itself by the least of open doors’.69 In this case, Rome was not about to bolt the door. Pacelli, as head of the Second Section of the Secretariat of State, the so-called Affari Straordinari, refused to entertain such complaints in his response. ‘The August Pontiff wished to encourage him in popular and social action, for the especial benefit of the working class,’ in all particulars faithful to the Holy See and the bishops, ‘which M. Marc Sangnier accepted perfectly.’70 The pope personally told Cardinal Amette, the Archbishop of Paris, of his ‘benevolent’ attitude towards Sangnier in a meeting that December. Benedict intimated his surprise at the rumblings of discontent. Why

65

Ibid. IMS, M.S. 26 Letter Sangnier-War Ministry, 13.11.1916. 67 Ibid., Letter Chapon-Sangnier, 26.12.1916. 68 Ibid. 69 Vatican Archives, Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, Francia 1916, fasc. 658 Letter Bishop Tissier of Châlons-Gasparri, Cardinal Sec. Of State, 9.10.1916. 70 Ibid., Pacelli-Tissier, 16.10.1916. 66

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

179

did bishops, like Tissier of Châlons, overlook the safeguard of episcopal supervision, as laid down Pius X and affirmed by him? He simply did not want ‘Sangnier and his friends to have their hands tied’ in the matter of social action.71 That Christmas, Chapon, though encouraged, wrote to Sangnier to say that the manifestation of private warmth by Benedict had to be followed up with some public gesture or statement. Chapon would meet soon with his old friend della Chiesa (as he knew him before he was elected Pope) and would attempt to nudge him in that direction. This was no mere ecclesiastical-political favour that Chapon sought on the layman’s behalf but rather a missionary imperative as he implored God to ‘deliver you back soon, victorious and in peace, to the great work He destines for you . . . in the regeneration of our Christian France.’72 A subordinate but very important point about Sangnier’s relationship to the Catholic ‘war culture’ is the manner in which Le Sillon survived as a ‘spirit’ and even as a network within that ‘culture.’ Sangnier remained a father figure for his Silloniste comrades. The umpteen letters addressed from the front to ‘notre Marc’ confirm this. The newspaper premises at La Maison de la Démocratie were shut and another part of the adjacent residence on boulevard Raspail was given over by Sangnier’s mother as an auxiliary hospital but Jean Sangnier recalls the gatherings of dispersed comrades on leave in the family apartment where ‘one served, as well as one could, a wartime meal.’73 The Silloniste spirit survived, certainly, but did the Sillon persist as a network? Certainly, through impromptu wartime newsletters such as Notre Étoile (1916–17), received with joy in the trenches by anciens militants (former activists).74 Two other publications of note were Lettres à un soldat (1915–19), and Nos Annales de Guerre (1918–19). All three bore Hoog’s fingerprints. Typical of the patriotic fare in their column was the Easter message in les Lettres in 1915 that fused dramatically the themes of nation and redemption: ‘Christian Passover, festival of the resurrection of the Christ who loves the Franks! Patriotic Passover, festival of French resurrection!’75 71 Archives Historiques de l’Archévêché de Paris (Paris) [AHAP], 1 D XI, 13, Papers of Cardinal Amette, Notes sur audiences pontificales (1906–09), folio 32. 72 IMS, M.S. 26 Letter Chapon-Sangnier, 26.12.1916. 73 IMS, M.S. 26 Memo., Jean Sangnier, n.d. 74 Robert Cornilleau, ‘Les Républicains-Démocrates (Histoire et Souvenirs)— XVIII. Les Républicains-Démocrates et la Guerre’, Le Petit Démocrate, 11.10.1925. 75 Georges Hoog, ‘Les Pâques de la patrie,’ Lettres à un soldat, 4.4.1915.

180

chapter five — gearóid barry

Nos Annales de Guerre, meanwhile, had begun under the title Nouvelles de nos amis with Hubert Aubert as editor, he being replaced with Hoog in March 1918. The preservation of comradeship was often a melancholy task with the paper often resembling an extended obituaries column. Poignant in their own right, these portraits of dead men in the livre d’or reminded the reader of the Sillon’s distinctive ideological contribution to the ‘war culture,’ now written in blood. Here Nos Annales equated military effort with ideological commitment. The tribute to Captain Maurice Lestien, of the pre-war Sillon in the Nord, typifies this, stressing how this young father, whose wife was expecting their second child, offered his blood ‘for the life of la patrie.’76 The Sillon had never promised shortcuts to redemption. Lestien, the devoted Mass-goer, knew this and displayed in his barracks quarters the Sillon’s treasured symbol of a sheaf of wheat bound in a blood-red band. The via Crucis was unavoidable. Suffering, even the shedding of one’s blood, might well have to precede growth and the harvest. Affliction and salvation had to be central themes in any Catholic ‘war culture’ but the specificity of the Sillon response was to give the redemptive process a distinctively Catholic-Republican resonance.

Sangnier, Propagandist Already, in spring 1917, Sangnier had shown his skill at the indoctrination of others during his period as commander and instructor of Company 22/28 at Versailles. Once again, Sangnier revelled in the role of technical and moral instructor. The class of 1918 called to serve in the Ier Génie was regionally and socially mixed including twenty-one complete illiterates.77 Ever energetic, he took it upon himself to organise an entrance exam on the basis of which the contingent was streamed. Having tested their general level of education—functional, civic and moral—the new master taught a curriculum covering French, history, geography and mental arithmetic. But even exercises in dictation had a didactic purpose: ‘France fights now not alone for her independence; she fights also for the liberty of the

76 77

Nos Annales de Guerre, 24.3.1918. Sangnier, Ce que savent les Jeunes Français aujourd’hui . . ., pp. 3, 6.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

181

world.’78 Though shocked at the number of unintelligible scripts, he decided to see the lighter side of their ‘comic’ historical revisionism: ‘Louis XIV, king of France and Gambetta his minister.’79 Geography allowed for less levity with ‘even the most ignorant knowing exactly the invaded départements . . . there is knowledge that the German injury has engraved in the most uncultivated minds.’80 French composition was full of earnest patriotism. As with his later propaganda post, Sangnier used both ‘classes’ and individual chats as means of illumination so that the pupils were well primed on how to write on the duties of a French soldier. Some wrote stirringly on the citizenin-arms as ‘a soldier par excellence of the free and democratic people,’ others more prosaically on the good soldier who ‘leaves others sleep, doesn’t waste food and doesn’t get drunk.’81 Throughout, he was genuinely moved by the generous sentiments of ‘my poor little poilus.’ The examiner’s compassionate paternalism meant that ‘from the first day, upon first contact, we understood and loved one another.’82 Sangnier became a conférencier de propagande morale or propaganda lecturer in February 1918, charged initially with conferences in the departments of the Meuse and the Marne, along with, from May 1918, the Aisne and the Oise as well.83 Jean Sangnier recalls his father’s ‘mission’: A psychological action one would say nowadays, in order to maintain the troop’s morale. Lectures, slideshows, cinema. His brief allowed him to circulate along the whole of the front, bringing with him his propagandist material.84

The modalities of the conferences were similar to those of the instituteurs on the home front on behalf of the UGAPE.85 Large meetings were supplemented by causeries intimes, or small group sessions, methods tried and tested since Sillon days and suited to Sangnier’s personal charm. Seven speaking tours between March 1918 and April

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., pp. 9–10. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 14, 16. Ibid., p. 19. IMS, M.S. 26, Gen. Conneau—General D.E. du GAN, 13.5.1918. IMS, M.S. 26, Memo., Jean Sangnier, n.d. Horne, ‘Remobilizing for “total war”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’, p. 205.

182

chapter five — gearóid barry

1919 gave some 106 lectures in all.86 Similarly, in his private diary, Sangnier wrote of a conference from the first tour in March 1918: ‘Improvised lecture—the best of all—Veritable study circle (cercle d’études).’87 Cannily aware of new propaganda techniques, he used cinema (such as films of German-inflicted destruction,) the slide projector, pamphleteering and even a sing along!88 Through this ‘passionate moral action . . . new vocations were awakened around him.’89 Given his early and sincere adhesion to the process of ‘cultural demobilisation’ and Franco-German reconciliation in the 1920s, was there evidence in Marc Sangnier’s wartime lectures of a conception of the war that more easily allowed for deconstruction of the category of ‘enemy’? Having considered Sangnier in relation to the Catholic ‘war culture,’ what was his relationship to ‘cultural remobilization’ in the army in 1918? Given the Sillon’s pride in links with pre-war German social Catholicism, how would their internationalism translate into support for a war jusqu’au bout against the Boche? Marshal Foch had wanted these same conferences to encourage ‘hatred of the Germans,’ anathematic to Sangnier.90 This lecturer distinguished clearly between the German people, particularly German republicans, Catholics and democrats, and the perceived institutional brutality of the Prussian military apparatus. That did not stop him, though, from taking a ferociously anti-German stance on the issue of German war ethics, atrocities in particular and the aberration of German ‘Kultur’ generally. Inviting his audience of poilus to draw their own conclusions, he normally launched into a scathing critique of ‘this German theory of force . . . [its] doctrines culminating in the crime which covers the world in blood today.’91 The heroic martyrdom of Belgium was the first result of this war of German aggression: ‘Even if the body of Belgium was to suffer the hardest of martyrdoms, was it not first of all necessary to save her soul?’92 Sangnier bemoaned Germany’s contempt for the Hague and Geneva

86

IMS, M.S. 26, Propaganda Conferences—Reports to War Ministry, 1918–19. (Sangnier submitted official reports to the War Ministry after each of these tours.) 87 IMS, M.S. 26, diary, 25.3.1918. 88 Horne, ‘Remobilizing for “total war”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’, p. 206. 89 IMS, M.S. 26, Memo., Jean Sangnier, n.d. 90 IMS, M.S. 26, Circular—Marshal Foch on conferences, n.d. but 1917. 91 Ibid., Propaganda Conferences—Memo. of conference, first tour, March–April 1918, p. 7. 92 Ibid., p. 13.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

183

conventions on the conduct of war: ‘What is become of all that under the odious effort of German brutality? The world has been brusquely brought back to the times when, wolf like, man preyed upon man.’ Sangnier went on to catalogue German transgressions of the moral code of civilisation: ‘Have I any need to recall the bombardment of open cities, the torpedoing of commercial shipping, even neutral . . . the arbitrary condemnations, the massacres of civilians?’ Warming to the theme, Sangnier explicitly invoked Christian martyrdom when he referred to the killing of Good Friday worshippers at the Church of St. Gervais in Paris as ‘a sort of sacrilegious irony at the very moment when Christ was shedding his blood so that men might learn to love one another.’ Equally appalling was the shelling of the maternity ward of the city’s Hôpital Cochin, the spilling of blood on ‘white and innocent cradles.’93 Both incidents took place during the Ludendorff offensive of that spring, a fact that lent weight to these lectures. In the first half of 1918 the issue of German barbarity dominated pubic discourse with an intensity not experienced since the first months of the war, and in his treatment of these, Sangnier slotted perfectly into the classic denunciation of enemy inhumanity so typical of the mainstream ‘war culture.’ Another article of the ‘war culture’ creed to which Sangnier wholeheartedly subscribed was that of the defensive war. France was merely defending herself (and, consequently, civilisation) in this conflict. Any Allied reprisals were consequently relativized. Neither France nor her allies, Sangnier insisted, could have even conceived of such a war. Even if the exigencies of defence—the ‘offensive’ is not even mentioned—led to purely military reprisals, was it not still the instigator of this odious system who remained responsible?94 It is fair to say that the later conferences of 1918 were predicated on the assumption of Allied victory and therefore looked forward very self-consciously to the shape of the peace to come. Throughout the conferences, though, Sangnier stressed the importance of fighting the war ‘to the bitter end’ in order to rid Germany of the Prussian militarist menace. His diary records a recurring theme, that of the necessity of ‘two victories’: military victory over the enemy and a moral victory,

93 94

Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 18.

184

chapter five — gearóid barry

maintaining after military victory the love of peace, justice and the fraternity of all.’95 If the war had a moral purpose then integral, absolutist pacifism was not acceptable. The love of peace was legitimate and Christian. To opt out of the war for idealistic reasons, or out of self-interest, was little more than cowardice. In this light, Sangnier records his opinion of the Bolshevik armistice with Germany as a deeply cynical act. But Germany was not intrinsically bad. She was but the victim of a militarist virus whose ‘germs’ were not confined to the Reich. This is the clear demarcation line between Sangnier’s ‘war culture’ and hatemongering written of by Foch. He left open the possibility that Germany was not uniquely to blame for 1914, a view of war responsibility far different from the moral statement made in the Treaty of Versailles. His thought, of course, was as yet far from mature, but it was consistent for someone who, from 1920, sought a minimalist application of that treaty’s more egregious stipulations. In seeing Germany as capable of redemption from militarism, the way was left open for dialogue and ‘cultural demobilisation,’ even, whose time had not yet come. The internationalist heritage of the Sillon no doubt predisposed Sangnier to embrace the Wilsonian vision of a League of Nations and peaceful arbitration of disputes. In this sense, Sangnier saw the war in quasi-millenarian terms, the last best chance to establish the kingdom of God on earth. He told the troops of his admiration for Woodrow Wilson, ‘patient and true in his search for the truth.’96 However, such views, coupled with his rejection of a punitive peace, meant he generally met with coolness from the officer corps. For instance, his diary records a dinner with a general where the pair disagreed over the appropriateness of employing Wilson’s strictures against ‘the feeble language of hatred and vengeance.’97 After all, General Gourand felt, ‘it’s necessary to develop hatred of the Germans amongst the poilus.’98 What starker clash of ‘war cultures’ than this? Indeed, in the conferences, Sangnier made even bolder statements

95 IMS, M.S. 26, Propaganda Conferences—Marc Sangnier’s private diary—Entry for 23.9. 1918. 96 IMS, M.S. 26, Propaganda Conferences—Memo. of conference, first tour of conferences, March-April 1918, pp. 36–7 97 IMS, M.S. 26, Propaganda Conferences—Notes, 1918. 98 Ibid., Diary—Entry for 10.6.1918.

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

185

than his hero in the White House, putting the moral onus for change of heart back on the Allies. For example, just before the Armistice, he spoke of Ireland and ‘the moral dangers of victory. I say we must sort out injustices that can be found on the Allied side before we have the right to demand the resolution of those that are found on the side of our enemies.’99 Sangnier’s sense of urgency about the need to secure and win the peace is seen nowhere better than in his speech at Épernay in January 1919. In his dairy, at this time, he reflected that, on the home front, peace meant perpetuating the union sacrée through ‘endurance, discipline, fraternity—profound reform of society . . . in a spirit of justice and of love.’100 At Epernay, in front of an audience of local schoolchildren and their parents, Sangnier played on the emotions in his pleas for the Wilsonian settlement. The supreme lesson of the war was that no such conflict should ever happen again. The interest of the speech is heightened by the cautious, pragmatic hope he placed in the infant German republic. As for their own land, he warned of the threat posed to France by alcohol and depopulation.101 As Réveil de la Marne reported, ‘the Commandant evoked the horror of war . . . and of this one in particular,’ drawing this moral: Victory should give us a new world statute which will prevent a return to war . . . [And he] affirmed that if more than a million and a half men had offered the sacrifice of their lives, they knew themselves to be not just fighting a war like any other but rather to be making war on war.102

Marc Sangnier had experienced the war both as a participant and a witness. The engineering works at the front line in 1915 had made him a participant. The reflection on the national cause entailed in the mission to Rome in 1916 and the propaganda lectures of 1918–19 had given him the opportunity to evaluate his own combatant experience and speak as a thoughtful witness, who spoke ‘en connaissance des choses.’ He was the epitome of both military and cultural mobilisation. After the war, his extended mourning for lost comrades

99

Ibid., Entry for 6.11.1918. Ibid., Entry for 17.1.1919. 101 IMS, M.S. 26. René Maublanc, ‘Epernay: Une Conférence de M. Sangnier,’ Réveil de la Marne, n.d. but 31.1.1919. 102 Ibid. 100

186

chapter five — gearóid barry

formed the backdrop to his attempts to rehumanise the enemy in the 1920s. As for the war’s impact on Sangnier’s relationship with the papacy, it had certainly made the paths of Pope and penitent cross but it was the peace that brought definitive absolution. In the context of a diplomatic thaw between France and the Holy See, Mgr. Chapon finally got a public endorsement of Sangnier from Rome when the layman came to Nice in February 1920 to re-launch its Catholic patronages (youth clubs), decimated by the war.103 The circle was closing as Sangnier, representative of a particular variant of the Catholic war culture, moved literally centre-stage to ‘bind up’ the wounded hearts that war had left behind. A pragmatic supporter of Versailles in 1919, Sangnier warned survivors not to lose ‘victory’s prize’—peace. If not, ‘who could dare accept the criminal responsibility for such a miscarriage?’104 Treaties were not enough. Rapidly disillusioned with the hard-line foreign policy of Poincaré and the Bloc national on whose ticket he had been elected in 1919, Deputy Sangnier opposed the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. In 1921, Georges Hoog, his right-hand man, spoke for both men in saying that ‘even before disarming soldiers, it’s necessary to disarm hatred.’105 From that year on, the Sangnierled Democratic International, a loose coalition of left wing and Christian irenical opinion, organised some twelve Congresses for International Democratic Peace between 1921 and 1932.106 Wherever held, their leitmotiv was meeting the enemy and deconstructing the ‘war culture.’ This ‘cultural demobilisation’ was pursued for the sake of a common humanity. The ex-combatant told French and German youths in Paris in 1929 that when he and his men saw the ‘poor

103 Vatican Archives, Segretaria di Stato, 1920, rubrica 14, fasc. 4, folio 51, Letter Gasparri-Chapon, 15.2.1920. 104 La Démocratie, 22.6.1919. 105 Compte-rendu complet du Ier Congrès démocratique international de la paix, Paris, 4–11 décembre 1921, (Paris, La Démocratie, 1922), p. 235. 106 The first congress was held audaciously in Paris in December 1921. Germany hosted two—Freiburg (1923) and Würzburg (1927). Their apotheosis was the Bierville congress of August 1926, held at Sangnier’s country estate in the Seine-et-Oise, brimming over with the Locarno spirit and attracting some 3,000 German delegates. Abandoning the congresses and electoral politics in 1932, Sangnier concentrated on youth-focused pacifist propaganda throughout the 1930s. On the 1926 congress see; La paix par la jeunesse. Le Mois International de Bierville, Août 1926. VI e Congrès Démocratique International pour la Paix, 17–22 Août 1926 (Paris, La Démocratie, 1926).

marc sangnier’s war, 1914‒1919

187

German soldier’ coming over the top into the wasteland of barbed wire, ‘we hadn’t a word of hatred for him. The poor French poilu saw in him a victim of the same misery.’107 Long before the ‘Locarno honeymoon’, then, even in midst of combat and propagandizing, Sangnier had already posited the millenarian task of reconciliation with the foe whose resolution lay in the future.

Bibliography Archive Sources Institut Marc Sangnier, Paris [IMS] M.S. 26 Marc Sangnier as Propagandist (including Propaganda Conferences— Reports to War Ministry, 1918–19 & Memo. Marc Sangnier, ‘Audience du Pape le 19 aout 1916’). Correspondance Générale I, Corresp. Hubert Aubert—Sangnier, 14.4.1915. Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes [SHAT] 6Ye 30527, ‘Marc Sangnier—État des Services.’ SHAT, 26 N 1752, ‘Historique anonyme’—7ème Régiment du Génie: Histoire Sommaire du Régiment (Avignon, 1935). Vatican Secret Archives, Rome [Vatican Archives] Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, Francia 1916, fasc. 658, Corresp. Mgr. TiberghienPacelli, 29.7.1916. Segretaria di Stato, 1920, rubrica 14, fasc. 4, folio 51, Letter Gasparri-Chapon, 15.2.1920. Archives Historiques de l’Archévêché de Paris, Paris [AHAP] 1 D XI, 13, Papers of Cardinal Amette, Notes sur audiences pontificales (1906–09). Published Primary Sources Newspapers and periodicals Le Figaro Lettres à un soldat Nos Annales de Guerre Notre Étoile Le Petit Démocrate Réveil de la Marne Published manuscript sources Baudrillart, Alfred, Les Carnets du Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, 1er août–31 décembre 1918, ed. Paul Christophe (Paris, 1994).

107 Croisade de la Jeunesse (Août-Septembre 1929). IX è Congrès démocratique internationale pour la paix (Paris, La Démocratie, 1929), p. 238.

188

chapter five — gearóid barry

Books, pamphlets and articles Compte-rendu complet du Ier Congrès démocratique international de la paix, Paris, 4–11 décembre 1921, (Paris, La Démocratie, 1922). Le Mois International de Bierville, Août 1926. VI e Congrès Démocratique International pour la Paix,17–22 Août 1926 (Paris, La Démocratie, 1926). Croisade de la Jeunesse (Août-Septembre 1929). IX è Congrès démocratique internationale pour la paix (Paris, La Démocratie, 1929). Sangnier, Marc, Ce que savent les Jeunes Français aujourd’hui. Simple contribution à une enquête sur l’instruction. Examen passé par 661 conscrits de la classe 18 au depot du 1er Génie à Versailles (Paris, La Démocratie, n.d.). Secondary Literature Barthélemy-Madaule, Madeleine, Marc Sangnier 1873–1950 (Paris, 1973). Caron, Jeanne, Hénri Colas 1879–1968 (Le Mans, n.d.). ——, Le Sillon et la démocratie chrétienne (Paris, 1966). Chaline, Nadine-Josette, ‘Marc Sangnier, la Jeune-République et la paix’, 14–18 aujourd’hui, 1998, pp. 86–99. Duffy, Eamon, Saints and Sinners: a history of the Popes (1997; 2nd edition, London & New Haven, 2002). Hanna, Martha, The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers during the Great War (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). Horne, John (ed.), State, society and mobilization during the First World War (Cambridge, 1997). Horne, John & Alan Kramer, German Atrocities 1914. A history of denial (New Haven and London, 2001). Jacquemert, G. (ed.), Catholicisme, vol. 18 (Paris, 1957), pp. 207–9. (Entry on Alphonse Gratry). McMillan, James, ‘French Catholics: Rumeurs Infâmes and the Union Sacrée, 1914–1918’ in Frans Coetzee & Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee (eds.), Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War (Oxford & Providence, 1995), pp. 113–32. Pedroncini, Guy (ed.), Histoire militaire de la France, vol. 3, De 1871 à 1940 (Paris, 1992). Weber, Eugen, Action française. Royalism and reaction in twentieth-century France (Stanford, 1962).

CHAPTER SIX

FROM LIBERALISM TO LABOUR: JOSIAH C. WEDGWOOD AND ENGLISH LIBERALISM DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR Paul Mulvey

Introduction Josiah Clement Wedgwood (a great-great-grandson of the famous potter), born in 1872, had initially worked as a naval architect, before enlisting to fight in the South African war, after which he remained in the Transvaal as one of Milner’s Resident Magistrates. Shortly after his return to England, he entered Parliament as Liberal M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1906 and soon made a name for himself as an outspoken and independently minded Radical. In particular, he became a staunch champion of the land taxing ideas of Henry George and a keen defender of individual rights against the growing power of the state. While he often had doctrinal disputes with other progressive Liberals and with their sometime allies in the Labour party, he was nonetheless a typical Radical in that he believed firmly in the primacy of ideas in politics, and self-consciously followed the Radical tradition that stretched back via Bright and Cobden to Payne and beyond. It was a heritage shared not only by Radical Liberals, but also by their pre-war progressive allies and rivals, the London based Fabians and ILP-ers, such as the Webbs, MacDonald and Snowden. Wedgwood also had, unlike some of his more cerebral contemporaries (for example, Charles Masterman), a finely tuned instinct for constituency politics and if, ultimately, he thought that it was ideas that counted, he was also aware that timing was important, and that a politician who lost his seat was of little use as an ideologue. He was, therefore, a political survivor. Indeed, of the three ex-Liberal Radicals who sat in the first Labour Cabinet in 1924, he was the only one who had remained an MP continuously since 1906. As such he was a unique witness to the era when modern British politics was formed.

190

chapter six — paul mulvey

Wedgwood had not expected the Great War, although when it came he became a war hero and, from a political point of view, demonstrated a surer touch and a finer feeling for shifts in public mood than he had done as a somewhat eccentric Single Tax enthusiast before the war.1 Here, ironically, was a politician reaching maturity just as his party was disintegrating. Within days of the start of the war, he reversed his initial anti-war stance and enlisted, soon seeing action in Belgium, and later at Gallipoli. Surprisingly, given his pre-war views on individual liberty, he became one of the earliest Liberal advocates for conscription, which he considered a lesser evil than German militarism. By doing so, he split decisively from his closest pre-war colleagues—men like Charles Trevelyan, E.D. Morel and Leonard Outhwaite, who were either out-and-out pacifists, or who believed that Germany was no guiltier of starting the war than anyone else. It was more than two years later, with the Liberal party coming apart and the war dragging bloodily on with no end in sight, before he reunited with the majority of his Radical colleagues in looking to a new saviour to impose a Liberal peace— Woodrow Wilson. Wedgwood’s overriding aim throughout the war was to smash ‘Kaiserism’, but beneath that moved a variety of aims, both noble and base, high-minded and practical, which shifted with British military prospects, the international situation, and political developments at home. He started out with aims that were essentially reactive— to stop German aggression and restore Belgium and Serbia. Then, in 1915, he became annexationist—Alsace-Lorraine for France, Constantinople for Russia, Britain keeping German colonies and swathes of the Middle East. From mid-1916, as the war dragged expensively along, more idealistic, he came to favour a League of Nations and a peace based on self-determination. His views on war aims also became inextricably linked with his views on the future of the British Empire, especially in East Africa and India. In this chapter, however, we shall largely confine ourselves to the wartime activ-

1 The ‘Single Taxers’, following the populist American economist Henry George, held that the value of land was created by the whole community and could rightfully be reclaimed by the community by a tax for up to the full value of the land, not including buildings or improvements to it. This, they believed, would also encourage the most productive use of land and so cure unemployment and housing shortages. They were a noisy constituent of pre-1914 Radical Liberalism.

from liberalism to labour

191

ities of Wedgwood that related directly to the fate of the Liberal party. We shall thus consider how that party was shaken apart by the decisions forced upon it by the war and how, as British politics coalesced around a new axis, it was to be the Labour party, reinforced with Radical Liberals and a Radical foreign policy, that would become, rather than the Liberals, the most likely alternative party of government to the Conservatives.

Liberalism and Patriotism Wedgwood had not believed that a major European war was possible, not least because the workers of Europe would not allow it, and on 3 August 1914, speaking after Sir Edward Grey in the Commons, he argued that Britain had no obligation to go to war and cautioned that to do so would soon bring economic ruin.2 The speech was what one might have expected from a Radical whose pre-war foreign policy views drew heavily from E.D. Morel, H.N. Brailsford and Norman Angell, and who was a member of the seventy-seven strong Foreign Affairs Group of Radical MPs. He, like they, believed that war was irrational and almost always morally wrong, that it was promoted by vested interests, and that more democracy, free trade and public diplomacy would be sufficient to prevent it. Many other Radicals, along with Labour politicians such as Ramsay MacDonald and Keir Hardie, also spoke out against British involvement in the impending war on or shortly before 3 August.3 Wedgwood’s close friend, Charles Trevelyan, actually resigned from the Government over the issue. For men like Trevelyan, Morel, Ponsonby, Angell and MacDonald the advent of war came as proof of their warnings of the dangers of secret diplomacy. It was the anti-German machinations of Grey’s Foreign Office that had brought Britain to this dangerous position, not German aggression, and they quickly set up an organisation, the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), to explain this and ensure that it never happened again. It seemed so obvious that Wedgwood would be sympathetic to

2 3

Hansard, 5th series, vol. 65, 1836, 3 August 1914. Harris (1996, 25–7).

192

chapter six — paul mulvey

the UDC that Morel initially suggested him as a possible member of its General Committee.4 Wedgwood did not, however, become actively involved with the UDC, and quickly assumed a different position from that of his erstwhile Radical colleagues. For Wedgwood, unlike the founders of the UDC, had no doubt that it was the German government that was responsible for the war and, as early as 6 August, in voting for war credits, he prayed that the war would lead to the smashing of the Hohenzollerns. Unless, he argued, Germany’s people could be separated from her leaders, the war would be a long one—perhaps two and a half years, and, he predicted, it might require at some stage the conscription of all men aged between sixteen and sixty.5 By mid-August, his about turn was complete, and when Churchill, recognising the toughness and leadership qualities of Wedgwood and Trevelyan, offered them both commissions,6 Wedgwood accepted at once. Trevelyan, unsurprisingly, declined. It was a symbolic illustration of the differences that were to separate these long-time Radical colleagues for the next two years. Explaining his actions, Wedgwood told his constituents that this was a war for a liberty more elementary than the economic liberty of the workers that he had hitherto struggled for, and that unless Britain won, democracy was doomed and hope lost for ever.7 An unexpectedly large majority of Radicals, Socialists and Syndicalists thought likewise,8 and the only significant group on the Left that remained anti-war, the Independent Labour Party (ILP), lost one third of its members within a month.9 On the Liberal side, while Burns and Morley resigned, no one equivalent to MacDonald stepped forward to lead anti-war sentiment and Trevelyan was the only exMinister who actively promoted dissent. The man who many Radicals looked to as the natural leader of the anti-war forces, Lloyd George was, like Wedgwood, by September 1914 portraying the war as a crusade.10 It was a remarkable show of unity for a party as traditionally fractious as the Liberals, and a unity that would not be seri-

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Morel Papers, F 6/2, Morel to C.P. Trevelyan, 17 September 1914. Hansard, 5th series, vol. 65, 2092–4, 6 August 1914. Morris (1977, 130–1). Staffordshire Sentinel, letters to the editor, 15 & 16 September 1914. Wilson (1966, 32). Cline (1963, 9). Swartz (1971, 37).

from liberalism to labour

193

ously threatened until the nature and prospective length of the war became much clearer. By the end of September, Wedgwood was on active service in Belgium, in charge of a squad of armoured cars, returning to England the following month. In April 1915 he took part in the Gallipoli landings, for which he was later awarded the DSO for rallying retreating British troops in the face of enemy fire. After twelve days at the front he was wounded in the groin by shrapnel and sent home to recuperate. Less than a month after his return to England, however, he was back in the House of Commons, albeit limping heavily. At the end of the year, on the suggestion of fellow Liberal MP, Freddy Guest, he went to East Africa with Guest to join General SmithDorrien’s staff. The general, however, was invalided out even before he took up his post, leaving Wedgwood with little to do except catch malaria. In June 1916, ill and bored, he retired from the Army and returned home.11 While Wedgwood was away fighting, the full impact of the war was gradually dawning on British politicians. Although the economy did not collapse, the war was turning out be a long and costly matter, and despite the unprecedented size of the army no victory was in sight. If anything, rather the opposite was feared and to many, Wedgwood included, it seemed that much greater efforts were needed to avoid defeat—and that meant conscription. Wedgwood, Churchill and assorted Conservative backbenchers had mentioned the possibility of its introduction as early as 1914, but it was not until after the formation of the first coalition government in May 1915 that the debate became serious.12 Over the following months support for military conscription grew. Lloyd George, in his first speech as Minister of Munitions, conceded that it might be necessary.13 By the end of June, with the introduction of the National Registration Bill, the debate grew louder and more polarised. Front benchers took sides— Long and Curzon for, McKenna and Runciman against.14 On the back benches, the debate was not strictly on party lines, at least not for the Liberals or Labour. Freddy Guest led the call for conscription from the Liberal benches and was supported by others—Ellis 11 12 13 14

Wedgwood (1940, 90–114). Hansard, 5th series, vol. 65, 2092–4, 6 August 1914; Adams (1987, 65). Adams (1987), 88 & 85; Little (1997, 405). Adams (1986, 248).

194

chapter six — paul mulvey

Griffith, Chiozza Money and Wedgwood, who made the point that Liberal sentiments were worthless if Britain lost the war.15 Other Liberals, however, with Richard Lambert to the fore, adamantly opposed conscription, seeing in it a first step towards the Prussianism that Britain was fighting against.16 The issue of conscription went to the heart of the debate about what the war was for, and how it should be fought. For Wedgwood and those like him, who saw in a German victory an end to all the freedoms they cherished, conscription was an essential sacrifice in a war that Britain might very easily lose. For those who opposed conscription, on the other hand, there were two questions to answer. Firstly, was conscription necessary in order to win the war? Some, like Charles Masterman, argued initially that the answer was ‘no,’ that schemes like Lord Derby’s would raise sufficient men.17 Such hopes were soon disappointed. Another version of this argument, one put by Richard Lambert, was that conscription was a misdirection of Britain’s war effort from its most effective path.18 Men sent off to die in the trenches would better serve the overall war effort by staying at home and producing the financial resources that the Allies needed to win the war. It was an argument which echoed the Government’s original war aims of August 1914, and it was one that did not go away with the introduction of conscription but reappeared, more strongly supported, in 1917 when the newly raised armies failed, at great cost in lives, to win the war and the generals came back looking for more men. For anti-conscriptionists who conceded that conscription might be necessary to win the war, but that it was a price too high to pay, the second question was how to end the war if not with a victory. Few, if any, countenanced surrender, although that would be the implication of an outright pacifist stance. For most (and the UDC was the focal point for this view) the menace of German militarism was not so bad that Britain could not countenance reaching an accommodation with it. Such a view presupposed that German war aims were reasonable and that Germany was also prepared to make a compromise peace.

15

Adams (1987, 99). Lambert (1917, 7). 17 Wedgwood Papers, Imperial War Museum PP/MCR/104, JCW/3, 1915 Correspondence, C.F.G. Masterman to JCW, 9 November 1915. 18 Lambert (1917, iv). 16

from liberalism to labour

195

Lambert claimed that about forty MPs opposed conscription throughout, while Michael Bentley thinks that most Liberals were strongly opposed to it, although this only makes sense if he means opposed in principle at some level, but prepared to accept it in practice.19 Most Liberals, in fact, fitted into this category—not defiantly anti, nor keenly pro-conscription, but rather reluctant supporters of it. They were, as Asquith told Balfour, men who would accept conscription, “with wry faces and sore hearts”.20 Then there were the ‘whole-hoggers’—the fifty or so Liberal MPs who actively campaigned for conscription and who saw the war as a titanic struggle between good and evil that demanded every sacrifice to win it. This group did not think conscription alone was enough—they also wanted strong and streamlined leadership, although they were not initially agreed on who the leader should be, Wedgwood, for instance, favoured Churchill, who he knew well through the Parliamentary dining society, the Other Club, and whose idiosyncratic dynamism strongly appealed to one similarly minded. Gradually, however, Lloyd George emerged as the unchallenged alternative to Asquith, and as early as January 1916, the conscriptionist Liberal MPs had formed the unofficial Liberal War Committee to promote the Welshman as Prime Minister.21 Liberal unity, which had more or less survived Britain’s entry to the war, did not so easily survive the strains imposed by the conscription debate, and the underlying argument about the purpose of the war. By 1916, the original foreign policy dissenters were already working with the ILP, through the UDC, on their own policies for the war and its aftermath, and the pro-conscriptionists were largely lining up behind Lloyd George in a push for a yet greater commitment to military victory, and in the process were becoming more closely aligned with the Unionists. Most Liberal MPs were still sitting, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, behind Asquith and a policy of supporting the war fully, while not wishing to militarise the country any quicker than they felt it was essential to do so. The problem for this group was that as the war dragged on there were more crucial decision points about what to do next—redouble the commitment to victory, or try to find a way out, and each of these

19 20 21

Lambert (1917, iii); Bentley (1977, 26). Scally (1975, 268). Wilson (1966, 78–79).

chapter six — paul mulvey

196

turning points had a strong fissile effect. The longer the war lasted, and the more such decision points there were, the more the Liberal centre would be winnowed by events between the UDC Radicals and the Lloyd Georgites.

President Wilson and the British Left While Wedgwood had been off fighting the war, other pre-war Radicals, those who were sympathetic to the UDC, were looking to America for help in establishing a moderate peace, and throughout 1915 and 1916 they kept up a dialogue with President Wilson via his foreign policy advisor, ‘Colonel’ Edward House and other informal channels such as the Bryce Group,—a committee of Liberals and UDC-ers chaired by an ex-US ambassador to Britain.22 The Radicals encouraged Wilson to intervene to re-establish the rule of international law, and they assured him that the pro-war attitude of the British public was much exaggerated in the press and that in reality there would be substantial support in Britain for moderate peace proposals emanating from America.23 In fact, there was little evidence to support this assertion, and the British Government made it clear that they were not prepared to accept compromise terms from Wilson unless he was prepared to join the Entente and force Germany to accept them as well. Wilson’s response was to appeal directly to European public opinion with a speech in May 1916 in which he blamed the conflict on ‘secret counsels’ and called for a new code of international morality, to be policed by a League of Nations, with American participation.24 The UDC Radicals were delighted, although the British Government was unmoved.25 Wilson tried again on 18 December, when he publicly asked the belligerents to state their peace terms. Germany did not reply, and the Allies said nothing until 10 January 1917. Before then, however, Wedgwood had made his contribution to the cause of world peace. The bloody battles of 1916 had led Wedgwood to believe that

22 23 24 25

Swartz Martin Martin Martin

(1971, (1959, (1958, (1958,

97). 501–4). 108). 68–9).

from liberalism to labour

197

Britain could not win the war in the field before incompetent generals allowed a generation to be butchered. Conscription, far from shortening the war, seemed only to be leading to higher casualties. At current rates of loss, he predicted, the army would be annihilated by the spring of 1917.26 Such fears led him to the position held by many of his old Radical and Labour colleagues—that outside help was needed to end the struggle favourably, and that in particular, if President Wilson laid out peace terms drawn up on liberal lines, and promised to guarantee them, then sooner or later both sides would have to agree.27 To help the Americans along, Wedgwood drafted a peace plan for them.28 He then consulted Walter Runciman and Lord Robert Cecil about it, who to his surprise, gave their private blessings and urged him to go to America at once.29 He sailed to New York in mid-December and presented his paper to Colonel House, who reported back to Wedgwood that the President found his suggestions ‘interesting’, and was particularly impressed that the Englishman thought only he, Wilson, could lay down acceptable terms.30 Wedgwood was prepared to put the fate of Britain in the hands of President Wilson because, unlike most Britons, he had realised that by 1916 the baton of world leadership had passed across the Atlantic.31 His memo to Wilson started by stating that the United States was the ‘dominating power in the world.’32 England was now drained, and America must take up the burden of leadership on the road to progress by stating terms to end the war and demonstrating a willingness to police them via a League of Nations, and that if she did, public opinion in England, France and Germany would inevitably force their governments to comply. Wedgwood presented the Americans with a rather ad hoc list of peace terms.33 They were a mixture of the idealistic and the practical, 26

Lloyd George Papers, LG E/4/2/4, JCW to Lloyd George, 11 October 1916. Imperial War Museum, Wedgwood Papers, PP/MCR/104, JCW/1, 21. 28 Wedgwood (1951, 120). 29 Wedgwood (1940, 118–19). 30 House Papers, 466/117/4122, JCW to Col. E. House, 26 December 1916; Martin (1958, 121). 31 Burk (1985, 1). 32 House Papers, 466/117/4122, JCW memo ‘America governs the world’, undated. 33 Wedgwood Papers, Imperial War Museum, PP/MCR/104, JCW/5, 1917 Correspondence, ‘America and Peace’, hand-written memorandum, January 1917; Wedgwood (1940, 123). 27

198

chapter six — paul mulvey

of ways to create a less belligerent world and to tie the Americans into ensuring that it remained so. Many reflected ideas about open diplomacy and self determination that were, by December 1916, already well established amongst the UDC and its fellow travellers, others mirror more closely the personal obsessions of their author, although here too, particularly in the case of the Middle East and Africa, there were ideas that were soon to have a dramatically wider circulation. Among other things, Wedgwood called for a free Poland, ballots to decide the fate of other disputed European territories, the abolition of the right to capture and destroy private property at sea and the re-enactment of all most favoured nation treaties. Outside of Europe, in order to prevent the sort of imperialist scramble which the Left thought had contributed to causing the war, he wanted the Ottoman Empire to become largely an American protectorate, while an International Commission under American chairmanship should administer tropical Africa. These ideas were, of course, only suggestions. What mattered to Wedgwood was that America should propose a set of terms on an all or nothing basis, with an assurance that America would guarantee them, otherwise the combatants would never be brought to agreement. With these terms, he somewhat prematurely noted on his return, “America gives up her isolation, and takes control of the civilised world.”34 Wedgwood felt that his ideas had been well received by Wilson, as House told him that the President had spent a whole evening going through his memo, and that his visit to America, “had been the most useful one we have had during this war”.35 But then, as A.J.P. Taylor pointed out, many men were misled by their dealings with Colonel House, who left all he saw with the impression of being an especial favourite.36 Nevertheless, while House may have flattered Wedgwood, he also took the time to ask for his views and Wilson did take comfort from the encouragement of Wedgwood and other British Radicals to lay out his ideas for a peace.37 At the same time that Wedgwood was forwarding his proposals via House, Wilson had begun work on the speech that he finally gave to the Senate on

34 Wedgwood Papers, Imperial War Museum, PP/MCR/104, JCW/5, 1917 Correspondence, fragment of a hand-written memorandum, January 1917. 35 Wedgwood Papers, Imperial War Museum, PP/MCR/104, JCW/1, 24–5. 36 Taylor (1957, 157). 37 Martin (1958, 129) and Martin (1959, 511).

from liberalism to labour

199

22 January 1917. The speech, calling for ‘peace without victory’, was long on general principles and short on specifics, although it did include two clauses contained in Wedgwood’s suggested terms— those relating to Poland and freedom of the seas—and Wedgwood certainly thought he had influenced the President, “he has even embodied one of my sentences”, he told Runciman.38 In any event, he eagerly supported Wilson, writing letters of praise to several newspapers pointing out that Wilson was prepared to sacrifice American isolation and safety for an ideal.39 Such idealism—Wilson’s claim that there were greater loyalties than to the nation state, that he was, “speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every programme of liberty,”40 strongly appealed to Wedgwood who, along with many other British Liberals, now found a new hero and an alternative focus for their political loyalties, which over the following two-and-half years only added to the fissile tendencies that were already all too apparent in their party.41 For Lloyd George, on the other hand, having just become Prime Minister so that he could ‘win the war’, Wilson’s new proactive policy was understandingly irritating, and his initial reaction to the President’s call for the belligerents to state their terms was an inclination to refuse and a suspicion that the move had been inspired by the Germans.42 However, thinking it politic not to upset one’s chief source of finance and supplies, the British soon changed their mind and decided to participate in ‘megaphone diplomacy’ after all. In a reply to Wilson on 10 January 1917, the Allies approved of a League of Nations, but only once the war had ended satisfactorily and the Central Powers had returned all conquered territories. Germany was even less serious about discussions—even as Wilson spoke on 22 January, U-boats were on their way to resume unrestricted submarine warfare.

Domestic Politics and War Aims, December 1916 to May 1918 Just before Wedgwood’s trip to New York, of course, political events had taken a dramatic turn at home, and on 4 December 1916, with 38 39 40 41 42

Runciman Papers, WR 161, JCW to Walter Runciman, [24] January 1917. The Times, Daily News and Daily Chronicle, 24 January 1917. President Wilson to the Senate, 22 January 1917. Swartz (1971, 140). Swartz (1971, 132).

200

chapter six — paul mulvey

the crisis over Asquith’s premiership at its height, Wedgwood had written to Lloyd George offering his “enthusiastic support”, and his own services as a potential under-secretary at the Colonial Office. As his Secretary of State, he suggested Lewis Harcourt, who could probably be bribed to join the government with this position if Lloyd George was ‘in need of Liberals.’43 The letter was at one level a piece of unsuccessful careerist opportunism, but at another it reflected two conflicting dilemmas that go far in explaining this most crucial stage in the Liberal party’s dissolution. The first of these was leadership, and here the ‘sleepiness of Mr. A,’ as Wedgwood later termed it, had by late 1916 become a matter of concern not only to Conservative MPs, but also to many Liberals.44 The war was not going well and since its mishandling of the Irish uprising earlier in the year, the Government no longer had a majority without Conservative support. As the sense of drift became more pervasive, even Liberals who distrusted Lloyd George were prepared to swallow hard and accept as Prime Minister the man who had shown so much dynamism as Minister of Munitions.45 The other dilemma for Liberals like Wedgwood was that they did not trust Lloyd George not to abandon his remaining Liberal principles and effectively head a Tory administration,46 hence the importance of getting some Liberals into the new government to keep the true flame burning. Wedgwood was to be disappointed, as no senior Liberal Ministers stayed in office, and over the following year he came to regret his decision to support Lloyd George, as he realised, “that Conservative management of policy would be far more obnoxious than mere somnolence.”47 At the end of 1916 the nature of the Liberal rift was not immediately apparent however, and on 8 December, Wedgwood attended a meeting of Liberal MPs at the Reform Club which confirmed Asquith as party leader whilst simultaneously pledging full support to the new Government.48 It was an awkward compromise, but one

43 Lloyd George Papers, LG F/94/1/1, JCW to Lloyd George, 4 December 1916. 44 Wedgwood Papers, Imperial War Museum, PP/MCR/104, JCW/1, 20; Wilson (1966, 39). 45 Turner (1992, 150). 46 Wilson (1966, 40–1). 47 Wedgwood Papers, Imperial War Museum, PP/MCR/104, JCW/1, 20. 48 Wilson (1966, 100).

from liberalism to labour

201

that seemed possible amid a general mood that political partisanship would be unpatriotic. By the late spring of 1917, however, such attempts at Liberal unity were seriously strained when newly democratic Russia, in desperate straits militarily and economically, called for a negotiated end to the war and proposed a war aims conference to the Allies. When the call was ignored, the Provisional Government suggested that a conference of European Socialists should meet in Stockholm instead. The fate of the conference, and the British response to the Russian Socialists’ call for a peace with ‘no annexations and no indemnities’ was a defining moment in the reformation of British politics. From the disparity and confusion that had categorised the approach of the old Liberal and Labour Progressives since 1914 there began to emerge a distinctive Left-wing political consensus, which identified with a particular type of peace—one along the lines favoured by the UDC, and that sympathised with those heroes of the people—the Russian Revolutionaries. In mid1917, this consensus was not yet identified with a single political party. By the end of the year, however, with Asquith refusing to align his Liberals with it, while the Labour party formally adopted a UDC promulgated set of war aims, political structures did become aligned with the political divide on war aims. Wedgwood was at the heart of this process, beginning in March and April 1917 as events solved problems for him at several levels. First and foremost, the prospects of beating Germany were decisively raised by the addition of American strength to the Allies, and secondly, Wedgwood’s balancing act between principle and pragmatism was made much less awkward with the removal of Tsarist Russia as an ally. The war could now be seen as one of democracy against tyranny, and one furthermore where two of the four leading allies were now urging liberal, Wilsonian war aims with every chance of persuading their two more intransigent partners, Britain and France, of the benefits of doing likewise. Thirdly, with the Tsarist bogeyman gone, Russian claims to Constantinople renounced and the American position resolved, Wedgwood could make his peace with his erstwhile Radical colleagues, now in the UDC. The Russian Revolution of March 1917 seemed to be a victory for Liberalism and a vindication of the arguments of the foreign policy dissenters, whose popularity was increased by Russia’s new war aims, just as they had been in January 1917 by Wilson’s call for a

202

chapter six — paul mulvey

‘peace without victory’.49 Wedgwood, therefore, took the opportunity presented by the Revolution to realign himself with the Liberal and Labour Radicals by speaking at a packed Albert Hall meeting of 31 March 1917, which brought together “all that is most advanced in the Trade Union, Labour, Socialist and Radical movements,” to congratulate the Russian people on their new found freedom and demand the same for the people of this country.50 His speech went down well, although only after he had put up with some barracking because of his pro-war views.51 A few days later, in the Commons, he called for a reconsideration of war aims.52 Britain should, he thought, bypass the Kaiser by making a direct appeal to the German people for a negotiated peace that brought less than total victory, as long as it was along the lines laid down by President Wilson, that is, based on democracy and the rights of small nations. Wedgwood now considered that Britain had a moral duty to adopt the Russian call for a peace without annexations or indemnities, which would, he hoped, also persuade a majority of the German Socialists to push for serious negotiations, whilst discouraging Russia from making a separate peace.53 By 14 July 1917, when another version of Wedgwood’s peace plan, this time co-signed by Noel Buxton, was published in the Manchester Guardian, the authors downplayed the considerable extensions of British and American areas of influence and stressed instead support for Wilson’s call for a League of Nations to settle international disputes by arbitration.54 While Wedgwood was becoming more closely aligned with the emerging Progressive consensus on peace terms, albeit with imperialist additions of his own, the people with the power to make peace were not. MacDonald was denied a passport to go to Stockholm, and Henderson left the Cabinet over the issue, having concluded, like Wedgwood, that the Russians would leave the war unless the other Allies moderated their war aims. The issue had, however, closed up the breach that had split the Labour party since August 1914. The Government’s decision in the autumn of 1917 to imprison

49 50 51 52 53 54

Freeden (1986, 26). Lansbury (1917). Daily Herald, 7 April 1917. Hansard, 5th series, vol. 92, 1450–6, 4 April 1917. Hansard, 5th series, vol. 93, 1679–82, 16 May 1917. Manchester Guardian, 14 July 1917.

from liberalism to labour

203

E.D. Morel on trivial charges was a symbolic confirmation of the gulf that now divided those who supported the Coalition from those that supported the UDC and the Labour leadership, and Wedgwood, for one, spoke out passionately in the House of Commons on Morel’s behalf.55 Throughout the summer of 1917 the Government ignored calls from the Radicals to make a statement of war aims56 and with the Government seemingly immune to their pleas, Wedgwood and Noel Buxton decided to push Asquith to make war aims a party political issue between Liberals and the Coalition. They circulated a letter to Liberal MPs demanding from Asquith a statement of aims and principles distinct from the Government, warning that in its absence, “a considerable section of the most active Liberals, feeling the want of material for the exercise of party loyalty and enthusiasm are tending to sever their party ties.”57 Asquith, they argued, must choose between the Tory aim of humiliating Germany or the Liberal one of effectively returning to the status quo ante, where Germany would not keep her gains, but neither would she, nor Austria, be broken up or discriminated against. The great majority of Liberal MPs refused to sign.58 A few weeks later, following the publication of Lord Lansdowne’s famous letter in the Daily Telegraph, Wedgwood and Buxton again urged Liberal backbenchers to make support for a negotiated peace the issue with which to re-unite the party.59 As the Evening Standard reported—“it is suspected, however, that in approaching Mr. Asquith their object has been to remind him that he is still regarded as their leader, and that there is a party which requires leading.”60 McKenna led senior Liberals in urging the same to Asquith. The ex-Premier, however, refused to make war aims a party matter, perhaps because he realised, like Philip Kerr, that there could be no better issue with which to split the party.61 Consequently, the

55

Hansard, 5th series, vol. 98, 1570–3, 31 October 1917. See, for example, The Nation, 4 August 1917. 57 Pringle Papers, film 2:56, ‘War Aims Circular from Noel Buxton and J.C. Wedgwood’, 1 December 1917. 58 Westminster Gazette, 6 November 1917. 59 The former Foreign Secretary and War Cabinet member (1915–16) had written to the newspaper calling for a negotiated end to the war before European civilisation was destroyed. 60 Evening Standard, 18 December 1917. 61 Turner (1992, 250). 56

204

chapter six — paul mulvey

realignment of the Left continued, one manifestation of which was the founding of a political dining club—the 1917 Club—which wanted a more democratic post-war Britain and supported a negotiated peace, and whose membership included Wedgwood, who presided at the inaugural dinner, Trevelyan, J.A. Hobson, Bertrand Russell, MacDonald, H.G. Wells and a young Oswald Mosley.62 While Wedgwood and other Liberal back-benchers, urged on by sections of the Liberal press,63 urged the Government to agree a set of war aims with its Allies in line with Wilson’s terms and then fight on until they were achieved,64 the Labour party produced their own definition—the Memorandum on War Aims, largely written by Ramsay MacDonald, which advocated aims essentially indistinguishable from those favoured by the UDC.65 If Asquith’s political antennae were somewhat blunted, Lloyd George’s were not, and he responded to Labour’s memorandum with a war aims statement of his own— delivered, not by coincidence, to the T.U.C. on 5 January 1918, in which, although he mentioned reparations, the possibility of antiGerman trade preference and the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, the tone was very much that which Wedgwood, the Radicals and Labour wanted to hear. Lloyd George’s change of heart was partly an effort to maintain British morale in the ever harder struggle by conciliating the growing Left-wing consensus on war aims, partly to show that Allied aims were reasonable in the light of the Bolsheviks’ decision to sue for peace, and partly an attempt to pre-empt the impression that Wilson was ‘calling the tune’. And if Lloyd George had gone a long way to satisfy the Radicals, Wilson delighted them three days later with his ‘Fourteen Points’ speech, which spoke directly of the ‘compelling’ voice of the Russian people and promised the Germans even-handed treatment after the war. The Radicals had got what they were calling for—a more or less commonly agreed set of war aims, laid out principally by President Wilson that followed the agenda they had set. Whether Lloyd George was sincere or not, however, he was certainly at least in part the captive of a Conservative party who did

62

Cline (1963), 17; Manchester Guardian, 15 December 1917. For example, The Daily Chronicle, 20 December 1917; Westminster Gazette, 22 December 1917. 64 Hansard, 5th series, vol. 100, 2019–24, 19 December 1917. 65 Swartz (1971, 165–9); Cline (1963, 20). 63

from liberalism to labour

205

not subscribe to the foreign policy liberalism of Wilson or the UDC. Thus, it was essential that Asquith give a lead to those Liberals, like Wedgwood, who wanted to act as a ‘loyal opposition’ to keep the Government on the Wilsonian path. What they did not get, however, was active leadership from the Opposition Front Bench, and when Asquith finally did take up the cudgels against the Government, it was on a singularly inappropriate issue. For, by attacking the Government over the Maurice affair, Asquith was siding with the generals against the politicians, and aligning himself with the Unionist back-benches. Wedgwood, who spoke last in the Debate, expressed the dilemma this created for Liberal MPs, for he could not decide which way to vote, as although he had little confidence in the Government, he did not want to back the ‘red tabs’ against the ‘civilians’.66 Even on this issue, however, the Liberal leader failed to press the attack and Lloyd George escaped unscathed.67 Perhaps Asquith hoped, as Trevor Wilson has suggested, to keep Liberal heads down until the war was out of the way.68 If so, it was a disastrous tactic. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, Wedgwood now decided to publicly distance himself from Asquith, which he did in two ways. He placed an anonymous article in the Staffordshire Sentinel, stating that he had been neutral over Maurice and begging himself to concentrate on constituency affairs,69 and he formed a group, the Radical Committee, with other Left-wing Liberals, whose aim was to discuss, “the best course to be adopted by advanced Radicals in view of the new Labour movement”.70 It is not clear how many were in the group, which was not confined to MPs, although the Press mentioned a dozen or so prominent Radicals by name. While sympathetic to the Labour party, the Group never came to a decision about how to work best with it, and whether this would involve a merger or simply co-operation. In any case, at this time many of the Radicals held positions, particularly as regards the war, that were well in advance of those held by most Labour members, and this led several of them, including Charles Trevelyan, to consider setting up a separate Radical party in early 1918. They

66 67 68 69 70

Hansard, 5th series, vol. 105, 2400–02, 9 May 1918. Gooch (1968, 227). Wilson (1966, 125). Staffordshire Sentinel, 18 May 1918. White (1980, 296).

206

chapter six — paul mulvey

seem to have concluded that it was not feasible, as potential Radical popular support was too diffused to bring electoral success.71

The Un-ravelling of the Liberals By the autumn of 1918 the Liberal party’s split was wider than ever—one part in close alliance with the Tories, the other with ineffectual leadership, while Labour was emerging as a well-funded and newly independent force. Before the war, the idea of a Labour government within ten years would have seemed fantastic,72 but now the balance of the arguments was different. Labour had its own foreign policy—one not only conducive to, but largely constructed by, Radical Liberals. While Asquith’s failure to take a clear stand in the debate between the ‘imperialists’ or ‘jingoes’ and the ‘Wilsonians’ over war aims made Labour the natural centre of opposition to the Government on matters relating to the running and settlement of the war. Labour’s decision to campaign in its own right and to encourage a mass personal membership presented both a threat and an opportunity to Radicals, especially those like Wedgwood who had seats in areas where old-style Lib-Labism had been strong. They might face a Labour challenge, or they might become the Labour challenge— although neither option looked particularly attractive from an electoral point of view. Henderson’s newly organised Labour Party were, however, certainly keen to gain the support of Radicals. Wedgwood, for instance, was invited to a Labour party dinner at the House of Commons—he supposed, he told the Staffordshire Sentinel, because of his friendship with Macdonald, Snowden and Jowett, but also because “he was in favour of continuing the war to make the world really safe for democracy”. A statement which, if it reveals nothing else, betrays the ambiguity of Labour’s stance.73 He saw himself as lying perhaps half-way between the Liberals and Labour, although he thought that ideology was not that significant in the party divide, as Labour represented all types of political opinion, from, as he cate-

71 72 73

White (1980, 326). Wrigley (1996, 139). Staffordshire Sentinel, 17 June 1918.

from liberalism to labour

207

gorised them, revolutionary Socialists like Robert Smillie, through evolutionary Socialists like Snowden and Radicals like George Barnes, to some like George Roberts, who were more or less Conservative in their views. The attraction of the Labour party to disillusioned Radicals was further enhanced by the prominence and funds that the rapidly expanding trade union movement provided. Wedgwood’s pre-1914 view that the future for Progressive politics lay in a combination of Radical leadership and trade union might now become reality, as union membership grew by fifty-seven percent during the war to over thirty-eight percent of the whole workforce. With greater membership came greater resources, as union political funds rose from £7,000 in 1913 to £133,000 in 1918.74 Liberals from outside the House of Commons, including E.D. Morel, were joining Labour in increasing numbers as 1918 progressed,75 and Charles Trevelyan summed up the new situation cogently in a letter to The Nation: Hitherto the British Labour Party has played a secondary part as a force of discontent driving Government into progressive courses. It has now become a directing force, stepping in to divert the world from ruin . . . The Liberal Party today has no voice except through its leaders. But in this tremendous crisis they have been conspicuously unable either to prevent the world conflagration, to conduct the war successfully, or to prepare the way for an honourable democratic peace . . . Many Radicals are already openly joining the Labour Party. Others are hesitating, uncertain whether the reconstruction of the Labour Party means only a finer electioneering machine for registering discontent and class irritation in Parliament, or a much bigger thing—i.e., the force, which, utilising the best intellect of the country, will rally men of all classes to a broad policy of internationalism and economic revolution through law.76

Other Radicals thought likewise. Wedgwood may not have liked all of Labour’s more collectivist policies, but at least the party seemed to have a future, as he wrote to a friend in May 1918: I am sorely tempted to see if the Labour Party would ask me to stand for them at Newcastle; tempted to accept. Any Liberal Government

74 75 76

Wrigley (1996, 141, 157). Swartz (1971, 209). Reprinted in Land Values, March 1918, 54–5.

208

chapter six — paul mulvey will always consider me too extreme to consult; and I might have more effect among the others. One doesn’t like to be called ‘traitor’ however.77

So he flirted with Labour, skirting the problem of their avowed socialism by defining that word to mean the just allocation of economic resources on the basis that a man should get the reward of his labour.78 This interpretation might not have stood up to rigorous analysis, but it was vague enough to salve Wedgwood’s individualist conscience and broad enough to make the taxation of land values a socialist measure, which the Labour Conference had indeed endorsed as early as January 1917.79 For Wedgwood, of course, the trick was to know when to jump horses with the least risk of falling off, and that was a choice that he deftly managed to avoid making in December 1918.

The ‘Coupon’ Election Wedgwood, who expected Lloyd George to call an election in November 1918 as head of a continuing coalition, had secret talks in early October with Conservative leaders in his constituency, and they, reluctant to stand against a war hero, agreed not to oppose him at the election if he ran as a Coalition Liberal, or even as an Independent. It was a clever move, as it saved Wedgwood from having to choose between Lloyd George’s Tory dominated coalition and a weak Asquithian rump, and it avoided the risk of a moral backlash at the polls if news of his forthcoming divorce trial leaked out before the election.80 His local political analysis also proved correct— the local Tories did not stand against a popular MP who was also a war hero, the Liberals were happy to swear fealty to their sitting member and, as a local ILP-er explained to Wedgwood’s daughter, they did not have the money to run a candidate, and in any case, approved of her father.81 It was fair to say, as the Staffordshire Sentinel

77 Kinloch Papers 1/29, Correspondence 1903–60, JCW to J.L. Kinloch, 28 May 1918. 78 Staffordshire Sentinel, 17 June 1918. 79 Land Values, February 1917, p. 265. 80 Wedgwood Papers, Keele, Sam Walker to JCW, 13 October 1918. 81 Wedgwood Papers, Keele, John McEllin to Helen Wedgwood, 16 November 1918.

from liberalism to labour

209

did, that “‘Jos’ has about as ‘safe’ a seat as any member of the House of Commons.”82 Once Lloyd George had called the anticipated election Labour left the Coalition to fight alone, and within a few days the Coalition leaders began issuing ‘coupons’ to their favoured candidates. Wedgwood, perhaps surprisingly, was given one despite his frequent criticisms of the Government. Perhaps, as Wedgwood later claimed, it was a personal favour from Freddy Guest, although, as Trevor Wilson has demonstrated, recipients of the coupon were not necessarily loyal Government supporters, and Wedgwood’s war record and deal with his local Tories is probably reason enough to explain his place on the list.83 Although it did not harm Wedgwood’s political prospects, Lloyd George’s decision to carry on as Prime Minister in coalition with the Conservatives was fatally divisive for the Liberal Party generally, as almost half the Party’s MPs were dropped as approved candidates as the price of a deal with Bonar Law. The Liberals in the Coalition were now tied to a dominant Conservative Party, while the non-Lloyd George Liberals were left stranded. They were not formally opposed to the Government, yet it was opposed to them, while their old progressive allies in the Labour Party were now determined to fight alone and on a new, ostensibly socialist platform. With the Liberals split, there was now an opportunity for Labour to fill the gap, and on a number of occasions during the campaign, Wedgwood predicted that there would be a Labour Government within five years, as the ‘Squiffites’ would fail to win many seats, and the Conservatives dominated and gradually absorbed the Lloyd George Liberals, leaving Labour to be elected as the new upholders of the principles of Liberalism, which were, “justice for every man and freedom for the whole community.”84 The campaign itself began with much Wilsonian talk of a new and hopeful start for the world, of a dawning of the age of brotherhood and peace. Within a few weeks, however, all this had changed, as calls for reparations and the hanging of the Kaiser filled the air at meetings and the front pages of the press. The expulsion of

82 83 84

Staffordshire Sentinel, 2 November 1918. Wilson (1964, 32). Staffordshire Sentinel, 27 November 1918 and Daily News, 28 November 1918.

210

chapter six — paul mulvey

Germans, reparation claims, and trying the Kaiser became major election issues, and those who advocated harsh measures had an electoral triumph, as Government supporters won approximately three-quarters of the seats in the House of Commons, while Labour, in its first full-scale general election campaign, made a respectable advance to sixty-three MPs and 22.2 percent of the votes cast. For the Asquithians, however, with only twenty-eight seats, the election was a disaster.85 Candidates who had questioned the Government’s conduct of the war, whether Liberal or Labour, did even worse, and Trevelyan, Morel, Outhwaite, MacDonald, and Snowden—in fact all of Wedgwood’s closest pre-war Radical and Labour colleagues— lost their seats. With the Conservatives dominant, the Liberals broken and the Radicals scattered, the pre-war pattern of British politics had been destroyed. For Wedgwood, who had deftly survived the political carnage, the question now was how best to exploit the new situation. On 3 February 1919, the non-Coalition Liberals met to discuss their future. They spent a heated three hours deciding to form an independent Free Liberal Party, with Sir Donald Maclean as chairman. After the meeting it was announced that, “the sense of the meeting was distinctly hostile to the Asquithian group being merged in the Coalition”, although they would send a delegation to speak with the Coalition Liberals, which would report back about ways of promoting unity.86 Wedgwood had argued at the meeting that the new group should have nothing to do with the Coalition Liberals,87 and saw the delegation as the first move towards joining the Coalition, which he felt would be a great mistake, for with Liberalism in the country now irrevocably split, the party could only be saved if it took a firm and Radical stance against the Government. He wrote to the Manchester Guardian that the men who used to vote and canvas Liberal have given up hope and ‘gone Labour’.88 They had left behind the older Liberals of the clubs and the more prosperous of the chapel-goers, who were consequently leaderless. They had taken with them ‘the fire of faith’, leaving behind only the semblance of

85 86 87 88

Wilson (1966, 176). Daily Express, 7 February 1919. Wilson (1966, 189). Manchester Guardian, 7 February 1919.

from liberalism to labour

211

a ‘party’. They had realised that voting Labour was now the safest way to ‘keep out the Tory’, which was ‘a most uncomfortable change of shoes’ for the Liberals. The only way to regain these supporters was by “a vigorous and honestly critical opposition to the present Government”, for, as he added, “after all, a Labour Party that gets all the curses for these pestilent strikes is not a popular body to belong to.” The Liberal Party, he thought, had now split along the old Whig— Radical divide, with the Whigs sitting on the Coalition benches, ‘angling for Liberal unity’, and the Radicals reduced to a handful of MPs. Wedgwood was not ready to quit the Liberals yet, but along with Hogge and Arnold, he wanted an alliance with Labour rather than closer co-operation with the Coalitionists.89 In reality, Wedgwood’s hopes for an alliance of some sort between Labour and the ‘Wee Frees’ were illusory, as the Asquithian Liberals were not coterminous with the Radicals—on whatever basis the latter were defined. Almost all the Liberals who had considered such a policy were already gone—from Parliament if not necessarily yet from the Party.90 In any event, the election had left the Asquithian Liberals in complete disarray, and their leader’s failure to take a firm position only strengthened the feeling of drift and decay, with Herbert Gladstone, for example, deploring Asquith’s failure to rouse the party’s candidates at their gathering at the Connaught Rooms on 11 April 1919.91 While Wedgwood was similarly frustrated with Asquith’s apparent apathy, it was the ex-Premier’s attitude to land taxes that proved more decisive to his political loyalties. The war had been disastrous for the Land Tax campaign—the land valuation initiated by Lloyd George’s 1909 Budget was halted, and land taxes were shunned, despite the Government’s desperate need to raise revenues, while the Land-Taxers themselves split in every way possible over their approach to the war.92 After the 1918 election there were only about eight committed Land-Taxers left in the Commons, and two of them supported the Government.93 Furthermore, by February 1919, two of Wedgwood’s closest land taxing colleagues, Trevelyan and Outhwaite,

89 90 91 92 93

Westminster Gazette, 9 February 1919. White (1980, 303, 387–93). Wilson (1966, 211); Bealey (1965, 73). Douglas (1976, 169). Land Values, October 1918, 191; January 1919.

212

chapter six — paul mulvey

had already joined the ILP.94 When Asquith disavowed a tax on land values at the Connaught Rooms meeting, therefore, it proved the final straw for Wedgwood’s tenuous membership of the Liberal party. Remaining with the Liberals became a pointless exercise for him and his fellow Single-Taxers, who now saw Labour as the only party that might implement their preferred policy.95

Conclusion Wedgwood, unlike the Liberal party, had survived the war in one piece. He had matured as a politician, and was a popular and wellknown figure. His party however, was both politically and ideologically shattered. It had been winnowed by a series of unprecedented decisions that the war had prompted—whether to go to war in the first place, whether and when to introduce conscription, what style of leadership the Government should have, what British war aims should be, to list just the major ones. Some Liberals, like the founders of the UDC, had had more or less consistent answers to these questions from the start. Others, including Lloyd George, had been just as consistent, but in the opposite direction. For most Liberals, however, Wedgwood included, their opinions had ebbed and flowed with the fortunes of war. For some, again including Wedgwood, President Wilson’s intervention and the Russian Revolution provided points around which the left could unite in favour of a moderate and liberal peace, albeit that all the prominent politicians who did so, except Wedgwood, lost their seats in 1918. After that, Lloyd George and his Liberal adherents acted within a largely Conservative coalition which had just been elected to ‘hang the Kaiser’ and impose a vengeful peace, while Asquith, otherwise so unlike Achilles, sulked in his tent. Both Liberal factions had disowned land taxes, and the LloydGeorgites at least were also weak on free trade. Labour, which before the war had been a potential electoral nuisance—costing Liberals essential votes in marginal seats—was now a well funded and organised political party who seemed set to overtake the Liberals as the chief opposition to the Tories. The great irony for Wedgwood and

94 95

Land Values, February 1919, 37. Wedgwood (1940, 144); Douglas (1976, 174).

from liberalism to labour

213

like-minded Radicals was that Labour’s rise seemed in no small part due to that party’s continued adherence to Radical values in foreign policy, trade and the land. If the Radicals could no longer hope to use organised labour as allies to further their policies within the Liberal party, perhaps they could now join the Labour party and carry on the old fight from there. For Wedgwood in particular the 1918 electoral failure of his pre-war progressive friends and rivals, both Radical and Labour, meant that he now had a wonderful opportunity to establish himself as a senior Opposition politician.

Bibliography Adams, R.J.Q. (1986) “Asquith’s Choice: The May Coalition and the Coming of Conscription, 1915–16”, Journal of British Studies 25(3) (1986) 243–263. Adams, R.J.Q. and Poirier, P.P. (1987) The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain, 1900–1918 (Basingstoke, 1987). Bealey, F., Blondel, J. and McCann, W. (1965) Constituency Politics: A Study of Newcastleunder-Lyme (London, 1965). Bentley, M. (1977) The Liberal Mind, 1914–1929 (Cambridge, 1977). Burk, K. (1985) Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914–1918 (London, 1985). Cline, C. (1963) Recruits to Labour: The British Labour Party 1914–31 (Syracuse, 1963). Douglas, R. (1974) “Labour in Decline, 1910–14”, in Essays in Anti-Labour History: Responses to the Rise of Labour in Britain, ed. K.D. Brown (London, 1974). ——. (1976) Land, People and Politics a history of the land question in the United Kingdom, 1878–1952, (London, 1976). Freeden, M. (1986) Liberalism Divided: A Study of British Political Thought, 1914–1939 (Oxford, 1986). Gooch, J. (1968) “The Maurice Debate, 1918”, Journal of Contemporary History 3(4) (1968) 211–228. Harcourt, L. papers, Bodleian Library. Harris, J. (1996) Out of Control: British Foreign Policy and the Union of Democratic Control, 1914–1918 (Hull, 1996). House, E. papers, Yale University Library. Kinloch, J.L. papers, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Lambert, R.C. (1917) The Parliamentary History of Conscription in Great Britain (London, 1917). Lansbury, G. (1917) Russia Free! Ten Speeches Delivered at the Albert Hall, London on 31 March 1917 (London, 1917). Little, J.G. (1997) “H.H. Asquith and Britain’s Manpower Problem, 1914–1915”, History 82(267) (1997) 397–409. Lloyd George, D. papers, House of Lords Record Office. Martin, L.W. (1958) Peace Without Victory: Woodrow Wilson and the British Liberals (New Haven, 1958). ——. (1959) “Woodrow Wilson’s Appeals to the People of Europe: British Radical Influence on the President’s Strategy”, Political Science Quarterly 74(4) (1959) 498–515. Morel, E.D. papers, British Library of Political and Economic Science. Morgan, K.O. (1970) “Lloyd George’s Premiership: ‘A study in Prime Ministerial Government’”, The Historical Journal 13(1) (1970) 130–157. Morris, A.J.A. (1977) C.P. Trevelyan 1870–1958: Portrait of a Radical (Belfast, 1977).

214

chapter six — paul mulvey

Pringle, W. papers, House of Lords Record Office. Runciman, W. papers, Newcastle upon Tyne University Library. Scally, R.J. (1975) The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition: The Politics of Social Imperialism, 1900–1918 (Princeton, 1975). Stevenson, D. (1988) The First World War and International Politics (Oxford, 1988). Swartz, M. (1971) The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics During the First World War (Oxford, 1971). Tanner, D. (1990) Political Change and the Labour Party (Cambridge, 1990). Taylor, A.J.P. (1957) The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792–1939 (London, 1957). Turner, J. (1992) British Politics and the Great War (New Haven, 1992). Wedgwood, C.V. (1951) The Last of the Radicals (London, 1951). Wedgwood, J.C. (1940) Memoirs of a Fighting Life (London, 1940). ——. papers, Hanley Library, Stoke-on-Trent. ——. papers, Imperial War Museum. ——. papers, Keele University Library. White, A.D. (1980) “Radical Liberals and Liberal Politics, 1906–c. 1924” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, (Kent, 1980). Wilson, T. (1964) “The Coupon and the British General Election of 1918”, Journal of Modern History 36(1) (1964) 28–42. ——. (1966) The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935 (London, 1966). Wrigley, C. (1996) “The Impact of the First World War on the Labour Movement”, in Strategy and Intelligence: British Policy during the First World War, eds. Dockrill M. and French, D. (London, 1996).

CHAPTER SEVEN

PROTEST AND DISABILITY: A NEW LOOK AT AFRICAN AMERICAN SOLDIERS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR Jennifer D. Keene

In 1919, W.E.B. Du Bois penned an editorial for The Crisis entitled “Returning Soldiers” in which he urged black veterans of the First World War to make their dismal encounters with unrelenting racism in the wartime army count by taking up the cause of civil rights. “We return, We return from fighting, We return fighting,” Du Bois wrote.1 Nearly every discussion of black soldiers’ experiences uses Du Bois’s exhortation to explain the mood of this disillusioned generation of black veterans who injected a more insistent and militant tone into the postwar civil rights movement. This widely accepted narrative connects the individual wartime suffering of soldiers in a racist American army to veterans’ postwar collective political activism. Examination of black soldiers’ political agitation within the army and their struggles with disability afterwards suggests that this traditional account offers too limited a view of African American soldiers’ experiences and the significance of the war for the civil right movement. Rather than waiting until they left the army to begin their fight for civil rights, many of the 380,000 African American soldiers who served during the First World War engaged in that struggle from the moment that they put on the uniform.2 Black soldiers staged work slowdowns, ignored orders restricting their contact with French civilians, challenged white authority openly, wrote individual letters of protest, and signed petitions in collective efforts to better their

1

Du Bois (May 1919). For examples, see Barbeau and Henri (1974), Ellis (2001), Schneider (2002). The one exception to this trend is analysis of the mutiny by black regular army troops in Houston in August, 1917 which recognizes the determination of these uniformed troops to take a stand against Jim Crow. Haynes (1976). 2

Fig. 3. “The End of the War: Starting Home”, Horace Pippin, 1930–33. Philadelphia Museum of Art (Gift of Robert Carlen, 1941).

216 chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

protest and disability

217

conditions within the military.3 The bulk of letters went to Emmett J. Scott (the secretary of Tuskegee Institute who served as a special assistant to the secretary of war during the war), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and various black newspapers. President Woodrow Wilson, General John J. Pershing, and Secretary of War Newton E. Baker also received notes from troops in the field. The poor spelling and grammar revealed the grade-school education of many who wrote. The army had expected little complaint from these African Americans, many of them life-long southerners accustomed to Jim Crow and manual labor. Yet instead of accepting the unbroken thread of discrimination and prejudice that connected their civilian and military lives, these soldiers chose to take a stand against white supremacy. In the army, southern sharecroppers discovered a chance to join northern factory workers and college-educated professionals in the fight for equal rights. Scott’s normal practice was to forward the letters of complaint that he received from stateside troops to the Military Intelligence Division (MID) for investigation. MID sometimes instructed camp authorities to handle the investigation themselves and report their findings to Washington, D.C. Other times, MID sent their only black investigator, Major Walter Loving, to gather a firsthand account of the situation. One MID official warned Scott that “there is a possible danger here, in that the individual may receive rather harsh treatment from some of his superior officers when they discover that he has been writing letters of complaint to Washington.” After all, this official continued, “one can understand that an officer might feel some resentment in such a case.”4 Many soldiers understood the risk that they were taking by complaining, and consequently the vast majority sent their letters anonymously, used aliases, or asked their correspondents to protect their identities. Private Nelson Dukes decided to sign his second letter to the NAACP, but asked the secretary to send any reply in a plain envelope.5 “I know I am taking chances in signing my name here,” Private Harold W. Coleman wrote in his

3 For a complete discussion of work slowdowns and African American soldiers’ relationships with the French, see Keene (2001a, 53, 126–30) and Keene (2001b). 4 Perkins (September 26, 1918). 5 Dukes (March 16, 1919).

218

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

letter, “yet I believe it is for a good cause.”6 In Camp Alexander, Virginia, authorities resolved to squash the flow of embarrassing revelations making their way to Washington by taking handwriting samples from all the literate men in one battalion and comparing them with the letters of complaint. Investigators could only clearly identify one man, and were pleased to report that the man denied writing a letter and “states that he has no complaint to make, that he never had better treatment, never lived better, nor never ate better than since he has been in the Army.”7 Escaping discovery may have protected the letter-writer, but army authorities often conveniently concluded that they could take no action without a specific witness to interrogate. Overseas, soldiers also found ways to voice their discontent, and often paid a price for protesting openly. “Colonel [Glendie] Young, tried, rather unsuccessfully, to keep colored officers from going to the town of Bar-le-Duc for serious drinking and womanizing,” First Lieutenant Rayford Logan recalled, one of 1200 blacks holding commissions during the war.8 Upon hearing that Young “had drafted an order to the French people telling them that the [French] women were not to associate with us,” Logan decided to take the most serious step of writing a letter to General John J. Pershing to complain that Young was unfit to command and to ask for a transfer.9 “One of my old friends at Regimental Headquarters told me that Colonel Young’s endorsement [on the letter] to be forwarded to General Pershing labeled me a ‘troublemaker, agitator,’ as I was indeed,” Logan proudly recalled.10 When it came time to reassign Logan after he suffered a head injury in battle, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) General Headquarters (GHQ ) punished him for writing this letter by assigning him to the quartermaster corps near Bordeaux rather than returning him to his unit along the front. Logan now left the ranks of the 38,000 blacks who served in overseas combatant units to share the fate of the rest of the 200,000 black soldiers in France who spent the war working, not fighting. Overall, black troops made up approximately 1/3rd of the wartime

6 7 8 9 10

Coleman (undated). Taylor (December 22, 1918). Logan (undated) Autobiography. Logan ( June 19, 1943). Logan (undated) Autobiography.

protest and disability

219

army’s laboring units at home and 3% of its combat forces, although they were 13% of the entire army population.11 Black soldiers who protested in person, rather than through the mail, had no way to shield their identity, and risked arrests or beatings from military police, demotions, and company punishments for challenging discriminatory policies. When Sergeant Harrison Washington complained to the camp commander about the “Whites Only” signs outside latrines in Camp Upton, New York, the signs were removed but Sergeant Washington was demoted for disobeying his company commander’s order to take his complaint first to the camp detachment adjutant.12 A sergeant in Camp Alexander, Virginia who reported a white officer for yelling racial obscenities at his men was arrested for trying to incite mutiny among black troops.13 There were, therefore, repercussions for soldiers who complained to authorities. At the same time, however, black soldiers faced fewer risks than black civilians who violated the racial status quo. Unless black soldiers actually took the lives of whites, as during the Houston soldiers’ mutiny in August, 1917, they were in a better position than southern black civilians to question or test the rules of acceptable conduct established by white America. First Lieutenant Charles Houston, for example, recalled a night in Vannes, France when four white officers and a group of white enlisted men arrived at the town square determined to lynch him and three other black officers. Houston wrote, The officer who led the mob began to yelp about ‘niggers’ forgetting themselves just because they had a uniform on, and it was time to put ‘a few in their places,’ otherwise the United States would not be a safe place to live in after they get back. The enlisted men were milling around us. None offered us any violence, possibility because it is a most serious offense in the Army for an enlisted man to strike an officer, and these men were not sure they could get away with it.14

Houston and his comrades took advantage of their hesitation to argue that as officers they would not have anything to do with the enlisted

11 12 13 14

Keene (2002). Memorandum for Scott (April 30, 1919). Henderson (December 18, 1918). Houston (September 28, 1940).

220

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

men, but if the officers wanted a fair fight of four against four, they were game. The exchange grew more heated with the whites claiming they would not lower themselves by fighting “niggers” and the blacks countering that the white officers were cowards. A white captain from the military police finally arrived to lecture the officers “on disgracing the uniform in a public brawl and ordered us back to our hotels,” Houston recalled. It is hard to imagine a group of aroused working-class whites hesitating to attack middle-class black professional men because they feared serious repercussions from the civilian criminal justice system. Civilian lynch mobs during the war killed 36 and 60 African Americans in 1917 and 1918, respectively, including several black soldiers home on leave. Only one charge of an intra-military lynching, however, ever surfaced. During a postwar Congressional investigation into alleged executions without trial by military authorities in France (an action that Pershing had authorized if needed to maintain order during battle) Philip Bell stepped forward to make an unsubstantiated charge that marines had lynched a black man for having a white French girlfriend.15 In this particular case, Bell, who was himself returning from a date with a French woman, testified that he never reported to incident out of fear that he might “git [sic] the same thing.” The Senate and, it appears, even the NAACP had serious doubts about the veracity of Bell’s claim. At a time when the NAACP was organizing a massive publicity campaign to support federal anti-lynching legislation, Bell’s assertion went unmentioned or investigated by the organization. Even if Bell’s claim was true, the record of one known intra-military lynching as compared to 96 civilian mob killings suggests that the military was a safer place than civilian society to challenge the racial status quo. Confrontations with white soldiers, letter-writing, and filing formal complaints did little to change segregationist army policies, however. Yet through their protests black soldiers preserved their self-respect and manhood, laid the groundwork for postwar activism and succeeded in keeping army officials on edge throughout the war. White authorities were keenly aware of the detrimental effect that racial

15 Special Committee on Alleged Executions Without Trial in France (1923). For Pershing’s policy on battlefield executions, see Keene (2001a).

protest and disability

221

unrest could have on the war effort. Most only wanted to keep black soldiers from causing trouble and ordered black soldiers again and again to ignore violations of their civil rights. General Charles Ballou, who commanded the Fort Des Moines Officers Training Camp held for black volunteers in the summer of 1917 and the all-black 92nd combat division, found occasion to warn each group to stay out of public establishments where they were not wanted. In the summer of 1917, a group of officer candidates refused to leave a Chinese restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa. Despite the fact that Iowa had a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in public restaurants, Ballou told the men the next day that “he expected us to vindicate our friends and justify the decision to make the experiment of training Negroes as officers by staying out of any place where our presence, right or wrong, might cause friction,” one officer candidate reported.16 Months later, Ballou issued an even stronger warning to members of the 92nd Division when a black sergeant demanded admittance to a white-owned movie theater near Fort Funston, Kansas. “White men made the division,” Ballou thundered. “And they can break it just as easily if it becomes a troublemaker.”17 Other white commanders issued similar orders. While stationed in Newport News, Virginia, Rayford Logan witnessed black soldiers from the 370th Regiment disregard the town’s practice of segregating streetcars.18 Logan, a first lieutenant in the 372nd Regiment, recalled that his commanding officer “sternly ordered us to obey local laws and warned that we would be held responsible for violations by the soldiers under our command.” After this meeting, Logan lost his zeal for bayoneting dummies of German soldiers in training camp exercises, and began instead to burn with the desire to strike back against white America. “When black officers taught black men bayonet practice they usually substituted the picture of the rabid white southerner for that of the Hun,” claimed the ex-servicemen editors of the radical newspaper The Messenger after the war. “This method often inspired the soldier with the necessary dash and form,” The Messenger asserted.19 Like countless other soldiers, Logan waged his own private war

16 17 18 19

Houston ( July 27, 1940). Keene (2001a, 66). Logan (undated, Autobiography, 5). The Messenger (August 1919).

222

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

against prejudice, even though it would have often been easier to simply ignore the insults. After hearing a white officer berate a black stevedore for mishandling some supplies, Logan threatened to prefer charges against the officer for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. On several other occasions, Logan interrupted racially offensive conversations overheard in camps or hospitals with curse-laden tirades of his own. “Soon after my arrival in the Bordeaux area, it was bruited about that there was a colored officer who made enlisted men salute them. When they saw me approaching, they turned to gaze in the display windows of stores or looked up at to view an airplane that generally was not there. I would stop and look in the windows or up in the air. Sheepishly, they saluted me,” Logan recalled.20 Because of his actions, Logan “became very popular with the colored soldiers,” who began to ask Logan to defend them in courts martial.21 Finding the strength to protest did not just depend, however, on individual resolve. Many soldiers discovered the possibility and effectiveness of collective action during the war. Thrust together from morning to night, exposed to an army culture that placed a premium on physical expressions of masculinity and surrounded by the wartime rhetoric of democracy, these young and hardy young men turned their units into places where daily racial insults were rehashed and proposals for a united stand bore fruit. When the men training as officers in Fort Des Moines heard that their graduation would be delayed for a month because the army was not sure what to do with them, they quickly formed an association that sent two representatives to meet with Secretary of War Baker, organized a letter-writing campaign to Washington, and worked with the NAACP to keep the pressure on the War Department to graduate and commission them.22 On the ship carrying them to France, Logan’s commanding officer told his black officers that he expected them to sit separately from white officers at an evening concert. “I assembled a group of colored officers on deck and told them that any one who attended the show was a damn fool and ought to be thrown overboard,” Logan later recalled. One of the enlisted men performing for the

20 21 22

Logan (undated, Autobiography, 31). Logan ( June 18, 1943). Gregory (1917).

protest and disability

223

officers that night “told me some years later that they were delighted by the absence of the vast majority.”23 It was little surprise that black officers, having already defied white America by attending college and preparing to lead men in battle, immediately mobilized their ranks to attack discriminatory policies. For working class blacks, however, especially those from the south, military service may have offered a unique opportunity to engage in collective political action. “Most of them,” wrote one correspondent in describing the soldiers in his unit to Scott, “are illiterates and inclined to be afraid of speaking up for their rights but grumble among themselves.”24 This grumbling was given direction by this soldier from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who got the men to sign statements about their poor treatment and convinced them to offer to pay the expenses for an investigator to come and inspect conditions in Camp Humphreys, Virginia. The continuous stream of letters that “are all to the same effect” from certain camps indicated to Emmett Scott that “there must be something radically wrong with conditions at a camp where the men so uniformly complain of harsh and brutal treatment.”25 The similarity of these complaints may also, however, reveal organized letter-writing campaigns among the troops in which soldiers resolved to use whatever political clout they could muster to replace their officers, improve their material conditions, or secure transfers from labor to combatant organizations. Many letters from black soldiers complained about poor food and inadequate housing, but Secretary of War Baker was particularly struck by the “continued complaints coming to the War Department with reference to a number of colored soldiers who have been bodily assaulted by their superior officers.”26 Indeed, the behavior and demeanor of their white non-commissioned officers and officers often determined what being in the army meant for black soldiers. “We were drafted and given an understanding from our Local Boards that we were to be soldiers to help to win the war,” Private George Canada wrote from Waco, Texas. Instead, black soldiers were “taken

23

Logan (undated, Autobiography, 7–8). Unsigned letter (September 3, 1918). 25 Memorandum for General E.L. Munson (November 23, 1918). Camp Humphreys, Va. (undated). 26 Baker ( July 25, 1918). 24

224

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

out to work under gun just like we are convicts.”27 Another soldier stationed in Camp Jackson, South Carolina wrote Scott, “the lieut [sic] and Capt. walk about on the drill field with a whip in his hand like the boys were convicts on state farm.”28 For these troops, working on labor details and drilling resembled life on a chain gang. Other soldiers complained that in some southern camps white officers had resumed the role of plantation overseers.29 “Green white men who is [sic] vastly inferior to some of our own negro boys are broght [sic] in and placed over them, not in the capacity of soldier sear gents [sic] but as slave drivers . . .,” one soldier wrote to Scott from Camp Jackson, South Carolina. “Willingly will we sacrifice our lives for our country as thousands of our brothers are doing on the Flanders battle fields [sic], But in return We ask for a mans chance not to be led about by white sear gents [sic] as if we were slaves.”30 Another group of men from the same camp signed a letter of protest proclaiming “we came into this army to defend our country and its people, and not to be use as slave[s].”31 The allusion to slavery was everywhere. A soldier from Camp Devens, Massachusetts began his letter to Scott by asking, is it “the intention of the War Department to make slaves of us or Soldiers?”32 Another enlisted man echoed the feelings of his comrades when he wondered in a letter to the NAACP “why is it that we can not be treated like men if not soldiers.”33 Few black soldiers went beyond writing letters of complaints about their officers, because, as Houston observed, attacking an officer was a serious offense in the army. Individual brawls, street fighting and outright rioting between white and black enlisted troops, however, was common.34 Unsure of how safe they were in the presence of racist white troops and armed military police, some black soldiers resolved to defend themselves with arms if necessary. Black soldiers stationed at Langley Field, Virginia, for instance, carried illegal arms

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Canada (November 25, 1918). Anonymous letter (October 20, 1918). Anonymous letter (November 26, 1918). Soldier (August 27, 1918). Letters from soldiers of the 19th Regiment (November, 1918). Anonymous letter (September 28, 1918). Anonymous letter (November 14, 1918). Keene (2001a, 89–98).

protest and disability

225

“for their own protection.”35 White authorities in Bordeaux regularly searched the barracks and belongings of black stevedores for weapons. Despite these precautions, “some of our soldiers had retained guns that they had purchased in Bordeaux,” a black officer recalled. One evening, a white entertainer uttered the word “nigger” during a theater performance staged for black soldiers, prompting the audience to rise to its feet shouting “everybody out.” In the ensuing melee, a rock hit a military policeman who responded by firing into the crowd, but instead of scattering to their barracks, black troops “returned the fire.”36 According to Logan, the troops were not punished for this incident, perhaps out of concern of provoking an even more violent response from secretly armed black troops. In a few instances, black combatant troops received the support of their white officers to fight back. In Camp Meade, Maryland, the 351st Field Artillery heard that white troops were planning to attack them because the under-supplied black troops had helped themselves to some of the white unit’s coal. “That afternoon Colonel Cole of the 351st paraded his men and told them he expected them to stay in their area but that if anybody attacked them he expected them to defend themselves,” veteran Charles Houston recalled. “The white troops never showed up, the incident blew over; but the men of the 351st never forgot that Colonel Cole had stood by them,” Houston noted.37 In Camp Whitman, New York, the 369th Regiment encountered an Alabama regiment that chafed at the presence of black combatant troops in their midst. “Early one afternoon, I learned that the Alabamians intended to attack us during the night,” Captain Hamilton Fish recalled in his memoirs. “For our defense, I had to borrow ammunition from another New York regiment, as we had none. After arming our soldiers, I and my fellow officers told them that if they were attacked, they were to fight back; if they were fired on, they were to fire back.”38 When a bugle sounded at midnight to alert the men that the Alabama regiment was approaching, Fish ran out to warn the unit’s officers that his men were armed, information that persuaded them to call off the attack. The combative

35 36 37 38

Intelligence Office Headquarters (November 5, 1918). Logan (undated, Autobiography, 36). Houston (August 10, 1940). Fish H. (1991, 26–27).

226

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

spirit of the 369th continued when they got to France. In their old age, some veterans of the 369th Infantry Regiment claimed that after white Marines in St. Nazaire killed some members of their unit, they retaliated by taking the lives of the murderers. Official records do not corroborate this tale of bloodletting between white and black American troops, citing only disease as the cause of death for the few members of the 369th who died in St. Nazaire.39 Even if only apocryphal, these stories of retaliatory vengeance reveal that black troops considered fighting back the only honorable course of action when confronted with overt physical threats to their safety. For many, these stands against racism and discrimination within the military served as a crucial launch pad for a lifetime of activism. After the war, Logan stayed in France and helped arrange several postwar Pan-African conferences. Later, upon his return to the United States, he became a scholar of black history and helped organize voter registration drives and A. Philip Randolph’s aborted March on Washington in 1941. Charles Houston would go on to spearhead the NAACP’s legal campaign against segregation in public schools.40 Houston’s decision to dedicate his life to the civil rights movement came after a general court martial wrongly convicted a black sergeant of fighting on a train when he had actually been the one who broke up the fight. “The Colonel was not interested in evidence, he wanted to teach the regiment a lesson out of this affair,” Houston later wrote. Watching the once-proud man shuffle through the camp in blue work overalls under a white guard as he served his sentence of hard labor, Houston decided “that if luck was with me and I got through this war, I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.”41 Houston now believed that “my battleground was America, not France.”42 Ex-servicemen like Houston

39

Harris (2003, 160). In 1941 on the eve of the American entry into World War II, A. Philip Randolph organized a march on Washington, D.C. to protest racial discrimination in the defense industry and the armed forces that promised to send nearly 25,000 African Americans to the nation’s capital. To avoid this political embarrassment, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the week before the scheduled march negotiated with Randolph to call off the planned demonstration in return for a presidential directive banning discrimination in wartime defense industries and establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee to investigate complaints. 41 Houston (September 7, 1940). 42 Houston (August 24, 1940). 40

protest and disability

227

flocked to join the NAACP, which saw its membership rolls explode from 9,200 members in 1918 to over 62,000 in 1919.43 Other veterans returned with less faith in exacting change through the existing legal or political system and joined radical organizations like Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist United Negro Improvement Association or took to the streets in postwar racial riots. The rhetoric or act of fighting back was nothing new for these men, but instead represented a continuation of their determination from the opening days of the war to stand up for their rights. New, short-lived organizations and newspapers established for black veterans, such as the League for Democracy and its paper, The Commoner, actively encouraged black veterans to “fight. Be proud. Be aggressive. Fight.”44 Even in the south, examples of militant action or collective organizing by veterans were widespread in 1919. In July, 1919, ex-servicemen put their military training to good use when they fought back with guns against a rampaging white mob in Washington, D.C. In Birmingham, Alabama, a streetcar conductor murdered a black sergeant, and his fellow veterans offered a $250 reward for the arrest of the conductor.45 Former black soldiers also actively participated in a grassroots effort to organize a sharecroppers union in Phillips County, Arkansas, a movement that federal troops and white vigilantes brutally suppressed in a massacre that left 250 sharecroppers dead.46 The Veteran, a paper published by the radical National Colored Soldiers and Citizens Council, kept veterans informed of racial abuses throughout the country, taking special aim at the south. “This paper [is] virtually an agent for ‘direct action’ against the oppressors of the negroes in the South,” wrote Robert A. Bowen, urging that the Postmaster General ban the publication from the mails under the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917.47 Bowen was not far off the mark. In one story about the brutal beating by a southern landowner of two sharecroppers, The Veteran quoted a returned soldier as remarking, “We offered our lives to save this country and we are willing to give our lives for our rights. We hope this will not be necessary. We do not want war. But they are beating Colored women and

43 44 45 46 47

Schneider (2002, 17). Ellis (2001, 225). Schneider (2002, 35). Reich (1996). Bowen ( June 26, 1919).

228

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

children every day and if something isn’t done about it we shall be forced to fight.”48 The collision between postwar black assertiveness and white hostility to any collective or individual effort to challenge the racial status quo unleashed a wave of racial violence in the second part of 1919 that included 25 racial riots and an upsurge in lynching. Violent suppression of the southern civil rights movement accelerated in the early twenties, fueled partly by widespread fears that well-trained and militant black veterans were making good on their threat to fight back against prejudice and discrimination. From a 1919 high of 7,700 members in its Texas branch, NAACP rolls dropped to fewer than 1,100 by 1921 after state-sponsored intimidation and harassment forced most branches to disband or go underground.49 The same pattern was repeated in Georgia and Mississippi. This worsening racial environment limited opportunities for southern veterans to join civil rights organizations or express their dissatisfaction through non-violent means. Veterans continued to fight back sporadically, most notably during the Tulsa race riot of 1921 when black ex-servicemen put on their old army uniforms in a heroic attempt to defend the black town of Greenwood against a deputized mob and the National Guard.50 Although most of Greenwood burned to the ground and many lost their lives, veterans’ willingness to fight back was one factor that contributed to a decline in lynching throughout the twenties.51 In Tulsa, veterans faced the predicament eloquently articulated by the poet Claude McKay, “If we must die, let it not be like hogs, Hunted and penned in an inglorious sport. Like men we’ll face the murderous pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back.”52 Countless other veterans faced a somewhat different dilemma. Throughout the history of the civil rights movement, many activists discovered that their involvement was episodic, dependent on a host of

48

The Veteran ( June 28, 1919). Reich (1996). 50 Brophy (2002, 32, 41–42, 50–51). 51 Schneider (2002, 192) also traces the decline of lynching to continued northern migration of needed workers, a stable economic climate that decreased confrontations between tenants and landlords, the growing availability of radio that provided alternative means of mass entertainment, and the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign that publicized the crime’s horrors. 52 McKay (1973, 124). 49

protest and disability

229

personal and political factors converging at the right historical and individual moment. For some black soldiers, this moment no doubt came during the war. Afterwards, they could not, as Houston noted, strike back without enormous risk to themselves and their families. It is therefore conceivable that the most sustained period of political activism in the lives of some veterans came while they were in the army, not after they returned home. Regardless of whether circumstances in the civilian world forced individuals to mute their protests against discrimination, the war continued to influence the lives of African American veterans in a myriad of other ways. Many African American soldiers came home with permanent reminders of the war in the form of battle wounds or in a weakened state after falling victim to one of the contagious diseases that swept through the army at home and overseas. Whether told through the stories of prominent individuals or the unknown, the saga of the disabled African American veteran reveals the personal and lingering toll that the war took. The risks combatants faced on the Western Front were never far from the thoughts of those with relatives or acquaintances in the army. Families of servicemen agonized over the veracity of rumors that the army was using black troops as front-line shock troops, failing to notify relatives of severely injured or dead soldiers, and leaving wounded black men to die on the battlefield. Families praying for the safe return of loved ones also heard disturbing reports that the Germans were shooting black prisoners of war or returning them to American lines with their eyes gouged out and arms cut off and that black units were being “cut to pieces in France.”53 Blaming these stories on German propagandists, the War Department called upon Pershing to send a publishable statement refuting these claims.54 Besides reflecting distrust of the wartime army’s use and treatment of black soldiers, these rumors also revealed a realistic understanding that the war meant death and disfigurement for many of those who fought it.

53 Loving ( June 30, 1918). For the sustained governmental effort to investigate and combat these rumors see, Hall (September 28, 1918), Memorandum for Major Spingarn ( July 1, 1918), Stratton ( July 19, 1918), Fosdick (March 23, 1919) Amsterdam News (April 19, 1918), Loving ( June 10, 1918). 54 Memorandum for the Adjutant General of the Army ( June 1918) and Pershing ( June 20, 1918).

230

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

The four regiments of the provisional 93rd Division, which served and fought with the French Army, are rightly heralded for their magnificent performance in battle. The record of the 369th Regiment was especially noteworthy because it was in the front lines for 191 days, the longest of any American regiment during the war. These units clearly deserve ample praise for demonstrating to the world that black soldiers could serve with distinction in elite combat regiments. Their illustrious battlefield performance played an important role in the postwar civil rights movement by giving activists the ability to refute army claims that black soldiers were only suited for noncombatant roles. Discussing the experiences of the 93rd Division only in celebratory terms, however, diminishes appreciation for the physical and emotional toll that fighting for long stretches in the horrific conditions existing along the Western Front had on these troops.55 Corporal Horace Pippin’s experiences demonstrate just how terrible the fighting could be and how hard the return home was for many veterans of the famed 369th.56 Pippin was a self-taught artist who carried a sketchbook with him throughout the war. Like other members of the 369th, Pippin’s life revolved around the routine of twenty days in the trenches followed by ten days in the rear. At the front, Pippin manned listening posts, participated in numerous nighttime raids and fought hand-to-hand duals with German soldiers. Soon, he was a seasoned veteran who “had seen men die in all forms and shapes.”57 Pippin’s war came to an end during the 369th’s assault on Séchault in late September 1918. As his unit waited to go over the top at dawn, the artillery fired the first salvos of the assault. The noise was so intense “you would have thought the world was coming to an end,” Pippin later recalled, although his artistic sensibility made it impossible for him to ignore that “those shells bursting in the night was a pretty sight.” After advancing slowly throughout the first day, Pippin and his comrades spent the night lying along the crest of a hill to avoid sweeping German machine gun fire. When they resumed their advance the following day, Pippin

55 Nearly every account of African American soldiers celebrates the achievements of the 369th Regiment, including Barbeau and Henri (1974), Nalty (1986) and Harris (2003). Buckley (2001) makes brief mention of one veteran’s postwar difficulties. 56 Works on Horace Pippin include Stein (1993), Rodman (1947), May, (1998). 57 Pippin (1947, 79–80).

protest and disability

231

agonized over leaving the dead and wounded behind. “We wished we could help the wounded but we couldn’t. We had to leave them there and keep advancing, ducking from shell hole to shell hole all day.”58 The next day, Pippin joined their ranks when he was hit in the shoulder as he dove for cover into a shell hole.59 Another solder bound his wound before leaving Pippin there to fend for himself. Pippin tried several times to climb out of the hole and head for the rear, but each time shots from a German sniper drove him back down. Finally, Pippin was too weak to do anything more than wait for help to arrive. The first sign of hope came later in the day when a passing French sniper discovered Pippin. But before Pippin could warn him to stay down, the German sniper shot the French soldier through the head without even knocking off his helmet. “He stood there for at least ten seconds before he slipped down and when he did, [he] slid down on top of me. I had lost so much blood by this time I couldn’t even move him,” Pippin remembered. Pippin lay immobilized with the dead French soldier over him for several hours, although he was thankful for the water and bread that the man carried.60 Finally, a rescue party arrived and put him on a stretcher by the side of the road. Pippin waited in a steady, cold rain for another twelve hours before an ambulance transported him to a field hospital. Returning home with a steel plate in his shoulder and a nearly useless right arm, Pippin only worked sporadically after the war. His family survived on his $22.50 a month disability allowance and his wife’s work as a laundress. Pippin was not a recluse, however. He took an active interest in his community and served as commander of his local black American Legion post in West Chester, Pennsylvania for several years. Yet despite his normal outward appearance, Pippin

58

Ibid. In his memoirs, Pippin gives more detail about his wounding. Once the sniper had trapped Pippin and another soldier in a shell hole, they came up with the following plan: “I said to my comrade, you go one way, and I’ll go the other, and one of us can get him, for we could not see him from where we were at for he were back of a rock now it were to get him in sight and to do that we hat[sic] to take a chance of one to get it. Both of us left the shell hole at the same time. I got near the shell hole that I had picked out when he let me have it. I went down in the shell hole. He clipped my neck and got me throw my shoulder and right arm.” Pippin (undated memoir). 60 Pippin (undated memoir). 59

232

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

experienced bouts of depression and was haunted by his memories of combat. He tried writing and sketching about his experiences, but was unhappy with the results. He finally decided to try painting, using his left hand to guide his right. His first effort was “The End of The War: Starting Home” (1931). Pippin spent three years working on “The End of the War”, trying to get right the image that he had been carrying around in his head since returning home. In these early years, his friends and family were supportive of what they saw as nothing more than a harmless hobby and Pippin sometimes managed to use his paintings to settle outstanding bills. In 1937, however, Pippin was discovered by the Philadelphia art community and soon received national recognition as a true primitive much like his better-known contemporaries Jacob Lawrence and Grandma Moses. Although this rags-to-riches tale seemingly provided a happy ending to Pippin’s story, his physical pain, taste for alcohol, and mounting family problems made this success bittersweet. The war was never far from his thoughts. In recounting his life story to a journalist in 1940, Pippin only devoted a few paragraphs to his preand postwar years, while taking pages to relate his service overseas. In 1946, Pippin died of a stroke. The war, Pippin wrote, “brought out all of the art in me.”61 Pippin’s paintings offer an unflinching glimpse of the harsh, brutal, and sometimes poetic aspects of modern warfare. Pippin painted the terrifying moment when mustard and nerve gas descended on troops scrambling for their gas masks, the desolate terrain left lifeless by constant artillery bombardments, the fearless feats of aerial pilots engaged in a dogfight, the isolation that each man felt even while surrounded by his comrades, and the final moment when German soldiers came out of their holes in the ground to surrender. Memories of segregation within the military and the ghosts of lost comrades informed a host of paintings completed during the Second World War. Pippin documented the emotional and physical toll of the war’s carnage on African American soldiers, who in his paintings represent all the Allied soldiers who fought in the war. Pippin’s paintings transcended the racial barriers of contemporary civilian life by depicting the horrors experienced by combatants, regardless of skin color

61

Pippin (undated letter).

protest and disability

233

or nationality. For Pippin, combat in the First World War was the defining moment of his life, and his paintings are among the best, if not the best, by any American artist of the conflict. In contrast to Pippin who became famous well after the war, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts received immediate acclaim for their heroic deeds in combat, only to fall on hard times later on. Johnson and Roberts became the most celebrated African American soldiers of the war when they fought off a German raiding party.62 Sitting in an isolated listening post in No Man’s Land on the night of May 14, 1918, Roberts and Johnson were part of a party of five on the lookout for an enemy attack. Noticing movement outside their post, the two discovered an enemy patrol and gave the alert. “The Germans cut us off from retreating and we had to fight. It was 25 against us 2,” Roberts wrote in a letter home. “Having thrown all my grenades, I was wounded and put out of the fight. But my comrade Johnson resisted and drove them away all alone.”63 When two Germans attempted to enter their shelter, Johnson fired his rifle into the enemy soldier leading the assault. His three shots gone, Johnson had no choice but to club down the second German with his rifle butt. Glancing behind him, Johnson saw another two Germans carrying Roberts off as a prisoner. With the Germans on his front subdued, Johnson turned and jumped onto the soldier holding Roberts’s shoulders. “As Johnson sprang, he unsheathed his bolo knife, and as his knees landed upon the shoulders of that ill-fated Boche, the blade of the knife was buried to the hilt through the crown of the German’s head,” his commanding officer, Captain Arthur Little attested.64 Johnson was not in the clear yet. The soldier he had clubbed with his rifle had risen and was bearing down on him, pistol drawn. The German shot and wounded Johnston, who nonetheless managed to plunge his knife into the enemy soldier’s abdomen and turn it. “The enemy patrol was in a panic. The dead and wounded were piled upon stretchers and carried away,” Little reported.65 Johnson was

62 Little (1936). Nearly every book devoted to the black soldiers’ experiences during the First World War discussed the exploits of Johnson and Roberts. Little’s had the distinction of being a firsthand account. 63 Controle postal (May 26–June 1, 1918). 64 Little (1936, 195). 65 Little (1936, 196).

234

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

now critically injured and losing blood, but he nonetheless continued to harass the retreating Germans with grenades. Little concluded at the end of his investigation that Roberts and Johnson had killed four of the Germans who attacked them that night. “I saw them when they brought them back. Neither one of them could walk . . . they had two guys carrying Johnson, and Johnson, his legs was gone, his legs was [sic] hanging,” James Jones recalled.66 The two returned to acclaim, but experienced tremendous difficulty readjusting to postwar life. Roberts would eventually die in a mental hospital. Johnson returned to an adoring public, riding to general acclaim when the 369th marched down Fifth Avenue in a victory parade. He spent a few months traveling the lecture circuit to tell his story, and basked in the adulation of well-wishers who freely offered him drinks and money. “If I was a white man, I would be the next Governor of New York,” Johnson told one crowd. On his lecture tour, Johnson angered whites when he gave a well-publicized speech in St. Louis in which he accused a white lieutenant of fleeing in battle and reportedly claimed that black soldiers had won the war. The next morning, a group of marines descended on Johnson’s hotel, but he managed to elude them and return to Albany, New York without incident. Lost in the ensuing controversy were Johnson’s comments about what he had really seen and felt along the Western Front. “Yes, I saw dead piled all around and they didn’t separate the dead over there. Whites and black were put in the closest hole together,” Johnson recalled.67 After public interest in his feats died down, Johnson struggled to maintain a tranquil family life. Due to a clerical error on his discharge certificate that made no mention of his injuries, Johnson was denied a disability allowance even though his painful war wounds made it increasingly difficult for him to hold a job. Within a few years of his return, he and his wife divorced and an alcoholic Johnson was living the life of an unemployed vagrant.68 He died under mysterious circumstances in 1929 and was buried in Arlington Cemetery. 66

Jones (1997). “Negroes Did Heavy Fighting, Declares Real War Hero in Speech Before 5000 Here”, (March 29, 1919). 68 Johnson’s grave in Arlington Cemetery was not discovered until 2002. Until then, it was assumed that he was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Albany, New York. Arlington Cemetery press releases ( January 11, 2002, February 10, 2002, and March 19, 2002) and DiSanto (1997). 67

protest and disability

235

Pippin, Johnson, and Roberts were publicly celebrated for their achievements. Their struggles with readjustment and lingering wartime injuries remained intensely personal and private affairs. They were not alone, however. Other veterans of the 369th also faced gasrelated pulmonary illnesses, life without the full use of arms and limbs, and crippling pain after the war.69 As the child of one 369th veteran sadly concluded, “Some of them come back and they were of no use to their families, mentally and physically.”70 The NAACP received numerous letters from disabled veterans seeking help with their claims for disability ratings, allowances, and hospitalization. These letters from those struggling to provide for themselves and their families provide a vivid window into the lives of disabled veterans. “On account of the poor condition of my health and my inability to carry on, all my hopes for doing something in life worth while have been blasted,” one veteran lamented.71 New civil rights struggles for these veterans included fighting for admittance into vocational re-education courses outside of the traditionally accepted occupations for black men and striving to obtain appropriate disability ratings. A continuum of racism and discrimination connected the wartime and postwar experiences of disabled black soldiers, but so did the proclivity of these veterans to fight back and protest when possible. As one disabled veteran put it, “I know my rights.”72 Both white and black disabled veterans often felt that the financial and physical burden of their war injuries went unappreciated by the government officials and doctors who determined the amount of their monthly disability allowance and their eligibility to receive care in a government hospital. African American veterans faced an additional obstacle, however, because in the decentralized Veterans Bureau system these decisions were usually made by unsympathetic southern bureaucrats and doctors. “Since the war, some of the Southern crackers are using different means to keep we [sic] colored soldiers out of the hospitals and from getting vocational training. Their reason for keeping us out of training is to rate us in compensation as

69 70 71 72

Thompson (April 10, 1922) and King (September 4, 1930). Nickson (1997). Marrs (December 28, 1932). Dill (May 9, 1922).

236

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

low as possible,” Joel Moore charged in a letter to the NAACP in 1924.73 Only veterans with complaints wrote to the NAACP, therefore, these letters paint a uniformly dim picture. The Veterans Bureau countered that many black veterans received timely and beneficial treatment in government hospitals. Yet even if a veteran obtained appropriate care, he usually received it in a segregated ward that he often reached by traveling in a Jim Crow train car.74 Seeking care for service-related injuries in the poisonous racial climate of the 1920’s also inflicted additional stress on already ill veterans. Did racism and discrimination affect the psychological wellbeing of black servicemen and veterans? Rayford Logan suggested in his memoir that the shell shock he suffered while in France was only partly due to the shell blast that knocked him unconscious. “My [battle] fatigue resulted from overwork and the trauma of my encounters with Colonel Young [his white commanding officer],” Logan concluded years later.75 Logan attributed his rapid recovery to French doctors who let him unburden his pent-up anger against white Americans.76 In the 1920’s, some black doctors agreed with Logan’s suspicion that a racially hostile climate had a detrimental effect on the health of black ex-servicemen. How would ill veterans fare in the all-black Tuskegee Veterans Hospital located in Alabama when “environment is certainly an important factor in their care and cure,” Dr. W.G. Alexander wondered in a letter to the Journal of the National Medical Association.77 Anecdotal evidence supported this doctor’s fear. One veteran’s wife concluded that a New York veteran hospital’s practice of bringing white patients into the black ward to die “has worked against her husband’s health more so than his illness” and described him “as a mental wreck.”78 Nick Wallace, committed to the Marion Military Home in Indianapolis, related how supervisors kept the black patients confined, while white veterans had free use of the grounds. “Now this place is suppose [sic] to be a mental

73

Moore (December 29, 1923). For ill veterans who were told to wait until a bed in a colored ward was available, see Martin and White (1925), Verner (1930), King (1930) The White file also refers to the hardships of riding in Jim Crow cars, as does Snell ( July 2, 1923). 75 Logan (undated, Autobiography, 24). 76 Logan harbored a visceral hatred of American whites that prevented him from returning to the United States until 1924. Logan (undated, Autobiography, 1). 77 Alexander W.G. (February, 1933). 78 Davis W.F. (April 14, 1931). 74

protest and disability

237

place . . . lots of them if they would be given a chance I believe they would regain their health but instead of giving them a chance they keep them locked up,” Wallace complained. Furthermore, Wallace wrote, “if you hold up for your wrights [sic] you are thrown” into solitary confinement in annex reserved for violent patients, where “they will try to run you insane” with systematic beatings.79 Thus, the war continued for black veterans in more ways than one. In a time of renewed struggle for civil rights, black soldiers’ wartime agitation attested to their desire to engage in collective action when circumstances allowed. After the war, ample numbers of college-educated and working-class veterans joined the civil rights movement and helped infuse it with an angrier and more militant tone. Many other veterans, however, returned to find a new wave of racial terror sweeping the south. It was therefore perhaps during, rather than after, the war, that some of these veterans made the strongest stand of their lifetime against prejudice and discrimination. Whether fleeting or sustained, however, soldiers’ protests made a substantial contribution to the civil rights movement and created a valuable legacy for the next wartime generation. The personal impact of the war on individual soldiers was as profound. Pressing for the full range of benefits that the law made available to them, some disabled veterans enlisted the aid of the NAACP to help them obtain care and thus continued their wartime struggle for equal rights in a new domain. Whether their injuries remained a private burden or gave rise to political agitation, the wounds of war kept the Great War alive in many black households well after the guns fell silent on the Western Front.

Bibliography Alexander, W.G. (February, 1933), letter to the editor, Journal of the National Medical Association 25 no. 1 (February, 1933) 33–34. Clipping in “Military, General 1933, Jan.–Oct.” folder, box C-376, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Amsterdam News (April 19, 1918) clipping in File # 10218–116(23), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Anonymous letter (September 28, 1918) to Scott, E. File # 10218–239(13), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md.

79

Wallace (April 22, 1922).

238

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

—— (October 20, 1918) to Scott, E. File # 310218–201 (7w), Entry 65, Record Group165, National Archives, College Park. Md. —— (November 14, 1918) to NAACP in “Military, General, 1918, folder, box C-374, Series I, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. —— (November 26, 1918) to Scott, E. File # 10218–268(1), Entry 65, Record Group165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Arlington Cemetery press releases ( January 11, 2002, February 10, 2002, and March 19, 2002). http://www.arlingtoncemetery.com/henry-johnson.htm Baker, N. ( July 25, 1918) Memorandum for the Adjutant General, July 25, 1918. File # 293–1, Entry 588, Record Group 120; National Archives, College Park, Md. Barbeau, A.E. and Henri, F. (1974) The Unknown Soldiers: African-American Troops in World War 1 (Philadelphia: 1974). Bowen, R.A. ( June 26, 1919) letter to Lamar, W.H. File # B-397, Box 69, Entry 40, Record Group 28, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Brophy, A.L. (2002) Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations and Reconciliation (New York: 2002). Buckley, G. (2001) American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm (New York: 2001). Camp Humphreys, Va. (undated). File # 10218–221(9), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park, Md. Canada, G. (November 25, 1918) to Baker, N. File # 10218–267(1), Entry 65, Record Group165, National Archives, College Park, Md. Coleman, H.W. (Undated) to Shilady J., “Military, Camp Devens, 1919” folder, box C-777, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Contrôle postal (May 26–June 1, 1918) IV armée, Rapport de la Correspondance de ou pour l’étranger du 26 Mai au 1 juin 1918, 16N 1409, Service historique de l’Armée de terre, Château de Vincennes, Paris. Davis, W.F. (April 14, 1931) letter to Walter White, Secretary, NAACP, “Military, General, 1931, Jan.–Oct.” folder, box C-375, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Dill, A.G. (May 9, 1922) letter to NAACP, “Military General, 1922, Jan.-June” folder, box C-374, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. DiSanto, V.J. (1997) “Henry Johnson’s Paradox: A Soldier’s Story”, Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 21 no. 2 (1997) 7–18. Dukes, N. (March 16, 1919) to NAACP, “Military-Camp Devens, 1919) folder, box C-777, Series I, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1919) “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis (May 1919): 13–14. Ellis, M. (2001) Race, War and Surveillance: African Americans and the United States Government during World War 1 (Bloomington, Ind.: 2001) 225. Fish, H. (1991) Memoir of an American Patriot (Washington, D.C.: 1991). Fosdick, R. (March 23, 1919) “Note for Dr. Keppel”, File # 10218–116(1), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Harris, S.L. (2003) Harlem’s Hell Fighters: The African-American 369th Infantry in World War I (Washington, D.C.) 160. Haynes, R.V. (1976) A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge, La.: 1976). Henderson, B.O. (December 18, 1918) to Du Bois W.E.B., “Military, General, 1918,” box C-374, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Houston, C.H. ( July 27, 1940) “Saving the World For Democracy”, The Pittsburgh Courier, July 27, 1940. Clipping in folder 21, box 163–17, Charles H. Houston Papers. Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. ——. (August 10, 1940) “Saving the World for Democracy”, draft for Pittsburgh

protest and disability

239

Courier article, folder 18, box 163–17, Charles H. Houston Papers. Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. ——. (August 24, 1940) “Saving the World for Democracy,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 24, 1940, folder 21, box 163–17, Charles H. Houston Papers. Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. ——. (September 7, 1940) “Saving the World of Democracy”, Pittsburgh Courier, September 7, 1940, folder 22, box 163–17, Charles H. Houston Papers. Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. ——. (September 28, 1940) “Saving the World for Democracy”, The Pittsburgh Courier, September 28, 1940. Clipping in folder 22, box 163–17, Charles H. Houston Papers. Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. Gregory, T. (1917) Correspondence in the Thomas Gregory Papers, folder 8, box 37–1. Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingam Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. Hall, Q.E. (September 28, 1918) letter to Taylor, H.A. File # 10218–286(1), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Intelligence Office Headquarters (November 5, 1918) Newport News, Va. File # 10218–258(1), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Jones, J. (1997). Interview in Harlem Hellfighters, film by George Merlis and Roscoe Lee Browne (New Video Group: 1997). Keene, J.D. (2001a) Doughboys, the Great War and the Remaking of America (Baltimore, Md.: 2001) 53, 66, 89–98, 126–130. ——. (2001b) “French and American Racial Stereotypes during the First World War”, in National Stereotypes in Perspective: Americans in France, Frenchmen in America, ed. W.L. Chew (Amsterdam: 2001) 261–281. ——. (2002) “A Comparative Study of White and Black American soldiers during the First World War,” Annales de Démographie Historique 1 (2002) 71–85. King, W. (September 4, 1930) letter to NAACP, “Military, General, 1930, Jan.Dec.” folder, box C-375, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. ——. (1930) Case correspondence in “Military Gen’l, 1930, Jan.-Dec.” folder, box C-375, Series I, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Letters from soldiers of the 19th Regiment (November 1918) to I.F. Simmons. File # 10218–201(29), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Little, A.W. (1936) From Harlem to the Rhine: The Story of New York’s Colored Volunteers (New York: 1936) 195–196. Logan, R. ( June 18, 1943). Diary, Rayford Logan Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ——. (Undated) “Woodrow Wilson’s War and Logan’s War” chapter VI, unpublished autobiography, 5, 7–8,15–16, 24, 31, 36. Rayford Logan Papers, folder 3, box 166–32, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. Loving, W.H. ( June 10, 1918) memo to Chief, MID. File # 10218–154(3), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. ——. ( June 30, 1918) to Chief, Military Intelligence Branch. File # 10218–415(1), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Marrs, E.P. (December 28, 1932) letter to NAACP, “Military, Gen’l, 1933, Jan.Oct.” folder, box C-376, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Martin, I. and White, T.A. (1925) Case correspondence in “Military, Gen’l 1925, Jan.-May” folder, box C-375, Series I, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. May, S. (1998) “World War I Veteran Horace Pippin Used Art to Purge Himself of the Horrors of the Trenches”, Military History 14 (February 1998) 14–18, 80.

240

chapter seven — jennifer d. keene

McKay, C. (1973) “If We Must Die”, in The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Prose and Poetry, ed. W.F. Cooper (New York: 1973). Memorandum for the Adjutant General of the Army ( June, 1918). File # 10218–154(5), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Memorandum for General E.L. Munson (November 23, 1918). File # 10218–201(31), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Memorandum for Major Spingarn ( July 1, 1918) File # 10218–443(8), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Memorandum for Mr. Emmett Scott (April 30, 1919) File # 10218–163(8), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. The Messenger (August 1919). Excerpt from File # B-398, box 69, Entry 40, Record Group 28, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Moore, J. (December 29, 1923) letter to NAACP, “Military, Gen’l, 1924, Jan.-Dec.” folder, box C-375, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Nalty, B.C. (1986) Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military (New York: 1986). “Negroes Did Heavy Fighting, Declares Real War Hero in Speech Before 5000 Here”, (March 29, 1919) St. Louis Republic. Clipping and details of St. Louis speech and aftermath in file # 10218–323, Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, Md. Nickson, K. (1997) Interview in Harlem Hellfighters, film by George Merlis and Roscoe Lee Browne (New Video Group: 1997). Perkins, G.P. (September 26, 1918) to Scott, E.J., File # 10218–229(4), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park, Md. Pershing, J. ( June 20, 1918) cable to War Department, File # 10218–154(124), Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Pippin, H. (1947) “My Life’s Story,” in S. Rodman, Horace Pippin; A Negro Painter in America (New York, 1947) 79–80. ——. (undated memoir). Unpublished war memoir, 52–54. Reel 138, Horace Pippin War Memoirs, Letters and Photographs, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. ——. (undated letter) to ‘My Dear Friends.” Reel 138, Horace Pippin War Memoirs, Letters and Photographs, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Reich, S.A. (1996) “Soldiers of Democracy: Black Texans and the Fight for Citizenship, 1917–1921”, The Journal of American History 82 (March 1996) 1501. Rodman, S. (1947) Horace Pippin: A Negro Painter in America (New York: 1947). Schneider, M.R. (2002) ‘We Return Fighting,’ The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age (Boston: 2002) 17, 35, 192. Snell, J. ( July 2, 1923) letter to NAACP, “Military Gen’l, 1923, Jan.-Dec.” folder, box C-375, Series I, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Soldier (August 27, 1918) letter to Scott, E. File # 10218–201(9), Entry 65, Record Group165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Special Committee on Alleged Executions Without Trial in France (1923) Alleged Executions Without Trial in France, 67th Congress, 4th Session (Washington, D.C.: 1923) 914–918. Stratton, H.C. ( July 19, 1918) to Spingarn J.E. File # 10218–56, Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Stein, J.E., ed. (1993) I Tell My Heart. The Art of Horace Pippin (Philadelphia: 1993). Taylor, H.A. (December 22, 1918) to Port Inspector, File # 10218–275(6); Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park, Md. Thompson, J.H. (April 10, 1922) letter to NAACP, “Military, General, 1922, Jan.June” folder, box C-374, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Unsigned letter (September 3, 1918) Camp Humphreys, Va., September 3, 1918.

protest and disability

241

File # 10218–221(6). Entry 65, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park. Md. Verner, W.W. (October 1, 1930) New York Regional Office, United States Veterans Bureau to W.T. Andrews, Special Legal Counsel, NAACP. The Veteran ( June 28, 1919) File # B-397, box 69, Entry 40, Record Group 28, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Wallace, N. (April 22, 1922) letter to NAACP, “Military, General, 1925, Jan.-May” folder, box C-375, Series 1, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HUTS, DEMOBILISATION AND THE QUEST FOR AN ASSOCIATIONAL LIFE IN RURAL COMMUNITIES IN ENGLAND AFTER THE GREAT WAR Keith Grieves*

In April 1920 Nugent Harris, chief organizer of the Village Clubs Association, reported that he had visited a rural community in Cornwall and encountered restive ex-servicemen. They had led contented lives before the war. However, while serving in the army of occupation in Germany they had attended entertainments and lectures and noted a vigorous social life in the villages. A former sergeant told Nugent, Now that we are back in our own village, we find all these things absent and have no place to meet in. On a fine night we meet on the roadside, on a wet night we have either to go to the public house or the stable. I said “What do you mean?” He said, “What I mean is, we light a hurricane lamp and we sit round it on dry straw in the stable and talk—that is our village club”. I asked, “What do you discuss?” “If people”, he replied “in authority could only hear what we discuss and what we are thinking they would be a little uneasy.”

Nugent concluded that ex-servicemen were ‘coming back with new ideals and new ideas.’1 He often found these conditions on his visits to villages to encourage the formation of clubs and the building of halls. In a deputation from Oxfordshire villages a farmer’s wife noted, ‘“I gave five boys to the war, thank God they have all come back, but now that they are back I have far more anxiety about them than I had all the time they were fighting.”’ On being asked

* I would like to thank Gail Braybon, as discussant, and participants of the 2nd European Conference in First World War Studies at the Maison Française, University of Oxford in June 2003 for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1 PRO T161/57 Village Clubs Association (hereafter VCA) handbook containing report of the executive committee, presented to the general meeting, 15 April 1920.

244

chapter eight — keith grieves

why, she replied “Because in the evenings they have nowhere to go, except the roadside or the public-house, and they are rapidly going to pieces.” The absence of meeting places in rural communities for expressions of male sociability beyond the workplace drew the observation, ‘Sweet fields, pure air, the joy of country sunshine and the peace of country darkness are as nothing to them in comparison.’2 In towns the working men’s clubs and public houses facilitated informal associationalism, namely drinking and talking away from the family and contact with the principles of mutuality and rational recreation.3 In villages working class associational life was fragile and narrowly-focused and meeting spaces beyond denominational control were sparse. The Village Clubs Association (hereafter VCA) originated in a meeting of progressively-minded rural experts at the Agricultural Club in June 1918. In 1919 it received grant aid from the Rural Development Commission for urgent propaganda work to promote clubs and halls ‘under the full control of the village community on the most democratic basis and kept entirely free from any connection with creed, party, or class distinction.’4 Model rules for village clubs were designed, with accompanying information leaflets, which encouraged the formation of self-governing undenominational meeting-places. It recommended that control was vested in an elected committee drawn from the membership, which might comprise all men and women of wage-earning age. The VCA proposed that in agricultural districts life might be more than toil and ‘free time’ should be ‘brighter.’5 It noted that ex-servicemen might not be satisfied by pre-war social amenities in their villages, where they existed. New social centers should be free from outside patronage and open to all inhabitants. As a reconstructionist vision, this remarkable manifesto for more democratized village halls was a challenging political statement in

2 PRO T161/57 Report on the work of the VCA 1920–21, R.H.Rew, 30 September 1921, quotations from p. 3 & p. 2. 3 McKibbin, R. (1998, 182, 184, 185). 4 PRO T1/12556 Establishment and organisation of the VCA, 18 March 1919; PRO T161/57 Model Rules for Village Clubs, attached to the report of the executive committee, 15 April 1920. 5 Horsham Library (hereafter HL) West Sussex County Times 12 April 1919. On the ‘brightening’ of rural life see Jekyll, G. (1925, 5).

huts, demobilisation and the quest

245

many localities, especially where hierarchical rural social relations inhibited a ‘new atmosphere.’ Morris has drawn attention to the adaptive qualities of voluntary associations. His remarks on the state’s purpose in subsidizing the VCA were apposite. In turbulent postwar conditions where organizational infrastructures were barely visible, ‘The state needed associations to relate to, to mediate with the mosaic of groups that make up civil society.’6 Perhaps, the possibility arose in some localities of exploring values which might be shared by men for whom ‘the brotherhood of the trenches’ conveyed some meaning. Dullness and monotony survived in many rural communities. The quest for a village hall or clubroom, as the home of the associational life of the district, encountered antagonistic sectional interests which brought schism and disharmony, especially where utilitarian schemes were contemplated as war memorials. The VCA recommended that ‘the establishment of a Village Club is an admirable form of war memorial.’7 Lawrence Weaver, architectural correspondent of Country Life, was an influential voice in promoting the curative power of village industries after the Great War for wounded soldiers. He emphasized that common meeting places would be fitting tributes to the fallen as part of the structure of building Jerusalem. Weaver stated that the renewal of village life by constructing halls “takes some of its vigour from the desire to set up worthy memorials to those who gave up their lives that the sanctity of their villages, no less than the safety of the nation, might be kept whole and undefiled.”8 The club movement sought facilities for concerts, lectures, plays, the cinematograph, dances, libraries and whist drives. Where school rooms and institutes were used, small cribbed and confined spaces stifled recreational activities in the winter evenings, excepting the ubiquitous lantern slide shows which illustrated tales of journeys by the educated social elite. Opportunities for open dances beyond the regulated norms of the manorial hall or the rectory garden were

6 PRO T161/57 Report on the work of the VCA 1920–21, R.H.Rew, 30 September 1921, p. 3; Morris, R.J. (1990, 440). Morris further argued that the Great War damaged many organisations but mainly emphasised the loss of sponsorship from manufacturers in urban associations (p. 422). In rural areas the quest for village halls did not end with the war memorial proceedings in the early 1920s. 7 PRO T1/12556 R.H.Rew to the Development Fund, 21 September 1920. 8 See the preface to Weaver, L. (1920).

246

chapter eight — keith grieves

few. Indeed, the request for self-governing social amenities became a contentious element of the wide-ranging cultural disruptions which arose from the Great War. In small ‘close’ villages this proposal offended the residual notion of an obedient and grateful laboring people who were accorded elements of social betterment as gifts from rural social leaders. The possibility that demobilized soldiers and sailors might demand ‘social gains’ and take collective social action to enhance their well-being sometimes caused fracture at a dissonant moment in the history of parish governance.9 Their moral authority, forged by participation in war, brought new perspectives to the vexed issue of enlarging the sociability ‘landscape’ and changing the bonds of communality, hitherto determined by the actions of the self elected elite at the manor house or the rectory.10 Traditional social elites in some rural communities remained disproportionately evident on war memorial committees in 1919 as if the locally-determined commemorative process was another episode in the long continuity of manorial paternalistic social action. However, some committees knew little of the ‘clubbism’ and ‘hut culture’ experienced by soldiers at training camps in Britain and behind the front line in France. Consequently, they were unprepared for the profound local pressures for undenominational meeting places to facilitate physical and mental recreation in gendered spaces beyond the workplace in the countryside. Before the war the ‘well-run country parish’ contained a schoolroom and a parish room.11 On the initiative of the incumbent, or an influential landowner, the construction of rooms after 1850 facilitated vestry meetings, Sunday school and confirmation classes. These denominational meeting-places were accessed through the churchyard and often contained an endowed library. The cost of erecting and maintaining the room, or institute, was subsidized by wealthy church people who subscribed and organized bazaars and officiated at management meetings. Events in these spaces did not embrace the

9

On the threat to social stability posed by a politicised ex-servicemen’s movement see Englander, D. (1994, 321); Ward, S.R. (1975, 11–13); Bushaway, B. (1992, 137). On utilitarian war memorials see Inglis, K.S. (1992, 10). 10 This point is influenced by the discussion of ‘moral economy’ behaviour in Snell, K.D.M. (1985, 102–103). See also Hill, J. (2002, 132). 11 Chadwick, O. (1972, 194).

huts, demobilisation and the quest

247

diminishing oral traditions of self-contained village life and depended on expressions of drawing room culture from national narratives which originated beyond the parish. New professionals from ‘outside’ such as elementary school teachers felt obliged to manage institute accounts. For example, Robert Saunders, head teacher of Fletching National School in Sussex, fulfilled the role of treasurer of the village reading room until his retirement in 1919. He noted ‘I couldn’t very well refuse.’12 At Westcott, near Dorking, three daughters of the lord of the manor founded and funded the reading room in 1873, with caretaker’s cottage. The two rooms were for the men and boys of the parish and women were not entitled to membership.13 At Poling, near Arundel, the Duke of Norfolk built a reading room, with billiard table, lit by two oil lamps, where dinners were provided for the laborers each month by local farmers. It was managed by the incumbent.14 At Elmdon in Essex, the Reading Room was built in 1905 by the squire’s daughter. It provided a meeting place for the Mothers Union and, in due course, the scout troop and remained under ecclesiastical control until the 1960s.15 The Burwash Parish Institute, opened in 1903, had separate spaces for billiards, concerts, reading and church meetings. In comparison, the spacious secular village hall managed by Pitsford Parish Council, in Northamptonshire, was exceptional before 1914.16 During the raising of Kitchener’s New Armies the pressure on philanthropic organizations to provide soldier’s clubs as ‘civilian’ encroachments on military land knew no bounds. At the Roffey training camp, near Horsham, volunteer lady helpers undertook mending and darning free for men, and billiards, bagatelle, ping-pong and other table games were played in the locally-funded recreation hut.17 The YMCA Red Triangle Clubs provided homely facilities for uniformed men. They depended on ministering womanhood and provided opportunities for informal religious observance in a righteous war. In January 1916 the YMCA Hut flag-day appeal sought £250,000

12 Imperial War Museum (hereafter IWM) Ms. 79/15/1, R. Saunders, letters to his son in Canada, 25 November 1918; Rose, J. (2002, 27). 13 Westcott Local History Group (2000, 46–47). 14 Somers, P. (1993, 16). 15 Strathern, M. (1981, 31). 16 Weaver, L. (1920, 40). 17 HL West Sussex County Times 11 November 1916.

248

chapter eight — keith grieves

to build 10,000 huts.18 In France there were 1,269 Red Triangle ladies at the war’s end and general officers recognized the beneficial effects on troop morale of centers, apparently beyond the military sphere, which conveyed homeliness.19 Amusements and devotional work co-existed. Warm recreation huts, lit by electricity, provided opportunities for reading illustrated newspapers, writing letters home, drinking tea, cocoa and malted milk, eating buns, and playing draughts in an atmosphere thick with tobacco smoke. A piano might be available on a narrow platform. These ordered scenes of rational recreation surprised observers, ‘A pianist has taken possession of it. He has been selected by no one in authority, elected by no committee. He has occurred, emerged from the mass of men.’20 ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ might be sung followed by a monologue on the ‘Canteen VC’, suggestive of taking turns in a music hall billing. At Seaford Agnes Carter recorded, ‘Occasionally entertainments were given by amateurs, but as a rule men were quite happy talking, reading, writing, playing billiards, chess, draughts and card-games.’21 The ‘hut habit’ grew to encompass concerts, lectures and educational classes. Wooden huts acquired extensions and became more spatially sophisticated in the incorporation of ‘homely’ facilities. In 1917 the plan for a YMCA hut at the military convalescent hospital at Squires Gate, Blackpool contained a raised inglenook, recreation and writing room, a counter for cigarettes and stamps and a quiet reading room with cozy corner. At the Dyke Road Hospital, Brighton a local philanthropist furnished the hut in the style of a ‘well to do’ parlor, festooned with royal portraits, which conveyed homeliness through flowers, pictures and readily available refreshments. The Red Triangle clubs delivered ‘the peace of home in the camps of war’, free of the moral peril of intoxicant liquor.22

18 HL West Sussex County Times 22 January 1916 & 25 March 1916. See the YMCA Advertisement ‘If they knocked at your door tonight’ The Studio Vol. 67, No. 276, March 1916. 19 Chapman-Huston, D. Rutter, O. (1924, 249–250). 20 Bermingham, G. (1916) ‘Sweet Lavender’ in A.K. Yapp, ed., Told in the Huts. The YMCA Gift Book (London: 1916, 20). 21 Carter, A. ‘A Canteen in a Canadian Camp (1917)’ [Seaford] Sussex County Magazine Vol. 8, 3, (March 1934), 164–6. 22 Russell, G.W.E. ‘Comradeship’ in A.K. Yapp, ed., Told in the Huts. The YMCA Gift Book (London: 1916, 158).

huts, demobilisation and the quest

249

The Rev. George Duncan, Haig’s chaplain, described a contradictory otherness at the Scottish Church Hut at GHQ on the Western Front. Peaceful intimations of home existed in a crowded room in a war zone; ‘One has only to open the door and peep in to realize that here one has stumbled on a little bit of home. Especially is this so in the evening when once the little red-bordered curtains are drawn and the tiny lamps with their colored shades adorn the tables. There is scarcely room such is the crowd to get a seat for one’s cup of tea. Yet still the men throng in.’23 In this hut in the evenings all noise was literally ‘out of place.’ There was a ‘natural stillness.’ The Soldiers Recreation Room provided by the Lewes Road Congregational Church, Brighton had an average nightly attendance of 150 men from nearby Preston barracks. Writing materials were provided and refreshments were available at cost price. The games available included chess, draughts, billiards and bagatelle. Sunday evening ‘sing songs’ were well-attended.24 More than officially organized divisional concerts, inter-battalion sports and patriarchal officer-other men relations, the ‘civilian’ provision of facilities for rest and recreation gave practical expression, in a citizen army, to the principle that troop morale required private moments in which the men entertained themselves in a club atmosphere. On the eve of going ‘up the line’ temporarily uniformed men needed time for themselves. In the battles of endurance on the Western Front comforts and consolatory intimations of home brought civilian signs of reassurance amid the attritional war machine. It remains an understated factor in understanding the resilience of the British soldier in the third and fourth years of attritional war. Bright, warm clubs appeared to exist ‘outside’ the army in the great base camps and elsewhere. Lady Angela Forbes was safely escorted out of Etaples camp by rioting troops in 1917 out of respect for her aristocratic canteen work at ‘Angelina’s’ Soldier’s Buffet.’25 She depended on the padre for advice on what the troops might need

23

Duncan, G.S., Rev. Diary entry, 11 December 1916, in DeGroot, G.J. (1997,

307). 24 IWM Womens Work Collection (hereafter WWC) L.R. 64/1/6 Lewes Road Congregational Church Brighton Soldiers Recreation Room [statement of activity 1919]. 25 Forbes, A. Memories and Base Details (London: n.d., 207–224).

250

chapter eight — keith grieves

and established her first buffet in Boulogne for leave men, after buying canteen stores worth eight pounds from Fortnum and Mason. During the Great War the enlisted man at the front or in training camps, in thought or physical action, was never very far from home. Siegfried Sassoon knew the importance of ‘civilian’ amenities near the front. During the advance on 14 June 1918 he noted with anxiety the men’s morale because ‘when their day’s work is ended they have about four hours left with nothing to do, nowhere to go. Not so much as a cinema or a YMCA hut.’26 Battalion war diaries indicate that the ‘litmus test’ of a well-established battalion presence in a locality near the front was the opening of the canteen and recreation room, as at Sailly-au-Bois by 5th (Cinque Port) Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment on 8 October 1915.27 Providers of recreation huts played a vital part in providing contemplative homely shelters to ameliorate the wartime experiences of abnormality and strangeness. Additionally, they looked forward to the continuation of their work after the war. At the opening of the Roffey hut in November 1916 the West Sussex County Times reported ‘There are also to be Village centers where the soldier lads shall be able to continue their association with the YMCA in the happy days of peace.’28 Similarly, the Soldiers Clubs Association (hereafter SCA) was founded in 1915 as a ‘great experiment.’ It proposed that the development of an associational life or ‘clubbism’ at training camps in war would be a ‘foundation stone’ for permanent facilities in every village, where opportunities for healthy social recreation did not exist. The SCA publicized the new view, apprehended by patrons with military interests, that recreation was most beneficial where it was provided and organized by Private John Thomas Atkins. One visitor to the Crowborough Soldier’s Club wrote in the Pall Mall Gazette ‘I never expected to drink a penny cup of tea out of a willowpattern china cup. But I did at the “Crowborough Carlton” and excellent tea it was.’29 Touches of ‘refinement’, such as the avoidance

26

Sassoon, S. (1983, 267) entry 14 June 1918. PRO WO 95/2751 Official war diary of 5th (Cinque Ports) Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, 8 October 1915. 28 HL West Sussex County Times 11 November 1916. 29 IWM WWC B.O. 4/3/3 Booklet ‘Soldiers Clubs’ (Soldiers Clubs Association, n.d.) pp. 7–8. See also IWM WWC B.O. 4/3/12 A Visit to the Crowborough Soldiers’ Club, n.d. 27

huts, demobilisation and the quest

251

of mugs, were imitative of orderly homes managed by mothers, sisters and wives. In a comfortable well-built wooden structure, heated by acetylene stoves, there were no organizers or helpers. A steward was employed by a committee, none of whom was above the rank of a non-commissioned officer, for ‘government by the Club for the Club is the foundation on which our work rests.’30 In this instance the notion of self-supporting soldiers clubs in training camps should be qualified. Fund raising to erect and equip huts was organized by an aristocratic-dominated central committee, whose patron was the Duke of Connaught. A moral tone specified the avoidance of ‘songs of the low-down vulgar stuff.’ Typically, the Mansion House meeting in July 1915 and the ensuing subscription list used deferential social relationships and networks to fund the initiative. Nonetheless, the committee recognized the emergence of selfgoverning non-sectarian, non-political clubs, which would be managed quite differently from the pre-war regimental institutes. Similarly, ‘Cheltenham Ladies’ funded a refreshment hut, but despite the social gulf soon learned of the soldier’s wishes. Mrs. Vickers told a fund raising meeting at Great Leighs in Essex, “The ladies took turns in waiting at supper. After a few days the lady in chief charge asked a group of the soldiers whether they had any complaint. They hummed and hawed, and required some pressure to make them speak out what was in their minds. They had two requests: (a) We want spittoons; (b) We would like our own girls to wait on us, and not any of them toffs.”31 The soldiers’ requirements were conceded. During the formation of the New Armies in 1914–15 existing canteens were heavily criticized in letters home from citizen soldiers. As the army became the nation, cups and saucers, armchairs with cushions and white cloths on tables in an independently-managed amenity space were necessary if the protracted and unforeseen deprivations of military life were to be alleviated. In the New Armies soldiers clubs emerged ‘where the fighting man is master.’32 For men with little beyond their pay, free time required a place of their own, in

30 IWM WWC B.O. 4/3/3 Booklet ‘Soldiers Clubs’ (Soldiers Clubs Association, n.d.) p. 10. See also IWM WWC B.O. 4/3/9, First Annual Report, Soldiers Clubs Association, 21 February 1917. 31 Clark, A. Rev. (1988, 56) 16 April 1915. 32 IWM WWC B.O. 4/3/4 ‘Soldiers’ Clubs. Where the Fighting Man is Master’, Pall Mall Gazette n.d.

252

chapter eight — keith grieves

which suggestions of overt benevolence were minimized. These clubs became ‘just a bit of home to us—away from home.’33 These initiatives in ‘clubbism’ might in some cases have been provided to pacify a soldierly mutuality at home and abroad, within a temperance tradition. However, the apparent endorsement of an associational life of wide-ranging content ‘from above,’ had freely acknowledged implications for facilitating organizational activity for discharged and demobilized men in post-war society. In emphasis, the wartime social amenities were not provided by philanthropic endeavor as a temporary expedient.34 In the last two years of the war the importance of recreation huts was reflected in their ‘special dispensation’ as the shortage of labor and materials led to the cancellation of non-essential building projects. In April 1917 the War Office decided to forbid the local construction of huts, where it could be shown that work of national importance was hindered, such as in the construction of aerodromes. However, many new aerodromes quickly required recreation huts. The officer commanding School of Technical Training at the Royal Flying Corps camp, Halton, argued, ‘I recommend the proposal as I consider that everything tending to increase the facilities for recreation under shelter should be given encouragement, especially during the winter months.’35 At Elmswell camp the absence of social amenities nearby was particularly noteworthy, ‘This is an extremely isolated camp and the nearest town Bury St. Edmunds, being 12 miles distant, and I consider that the erection of a YMCA hut would be of the greatest possible benefit to the men stationed there.’36 The Church of England Temperance Society obtained special dispensation and offered a hut to No. 1 Military Hospital at Canterbury for Rest, Recreation and Devotion. Building restrictions were overridden as the immense value of recreation huts ensured that they became emblematic structures of total war. By 1918 the imperatives of recreation and refreshment, within the rhetoric of a home away from

33 IWM WWC B.O. 4/3/5 Booklet ‘A bit of home—away from home’ (Soldiers Clubs Association, Arden Press, n.d.). 34 IWM WWC B.O. 4/3/3 C.R. Openshaw to A. Conway, 27 June 1919. 35 PRO WO 32/20461 J.M. Banham-Carter to Headquarters, Eastern Command, 7 November 1917. 36 PRO WO 32/20461 F.C. Stalahan to Headquarters, Eastern Command, 16 October 1917.

huts, demobilisation and the quest

253

home, had emerged as an entitlement for the uniformed man. This principle distanced the conscript army from the customary practices of military discipline in the pre-war regular army. These spaces for informal socials at military camps contrasted with the absence of events to enhance sociability in villages during the war. At Shamley Green, near Guildford, the village social dance at the Arbuthnot Institute was ‘abandoned’ during the years of war and revived in January 1919, when 135 people attended.37 At Cobham, in Surrey, the village club was in virtual abeyance during the war. Early in 1919 dances and whist drives were urgently held to re-establish the club so that, as a generous subscriber aptly put it, ‘the “boys” will not have a “lame horse” to ride when they return.’38 At the end of the war the availability and purchase of huts through the Disposal Board became a political question. It vexed Colonel Wilfrid Ashley MP, founder of the conservative ex-servicemen’s organization, Comrades of the Great War. As building costs rose sharply, he reminded the government of the needs of his membership in country districts. In vain he sought concessionary rates for the purchase of huts, which were ‘rotting away.’ He wrote that the men ‘have not much of this world’s goods. Many have not very pleasant homes and if the Government can see its way to allow these huts to be sold at a cheaper price, and so give these ex-Service men the benefit, after their past work.’39 In Surrey an appeal for funds to build club-rooms for each branch or post of Comrades of the Great War drew a list of subscribers which mirrored the county’s landed elite. The government was deeply suspicious of any measure which would extend the influence of fractious ex-servicemen’s organizations in the transition to peace, but it was also determined to encourage collective and quiescent social action through the local disposal of the accumulated profits of the expeditionary force canteens. The United Services Fund offered grants for the erection of village halls and clubs where ex-servicemen had a share in the control and management of premises which would be free from outside patronage.

37

Surrey History Centre (hereafter SHC) Surrey Advertiser 11 January 1919. SHC Surrey Advertiser 11 January 1919. 39 Parliamentary Debates. Commons, Vol. 120 (1919) Col. 1274. On the Comrades of the Great War see also Woolton, G. (1963, 65–69, 86–89, 100–104, 169); Ashley, W. ‘The Foundation of the Comrades’ The Comrades Journal Vol. 1, No. 4, February 1919, p. 4. 38

254

chapter eight — keith grieves

Grants were dependent on ‘a canvass of ALL ex-servicemen in the village,’ which accorded with the agreement secured by the Fund from the VCA, the Federation of Women’s Institutes and the SCA. At the VCA Nugent Harris hoped that ‘something will be done to get for the villages some of the army huts which I see rotting in different places, even as temporary meeting places.’40 Beyond stimulating recreation, sociability and social action in isolated and, sometimes, impecunious districts in secularizing conditions, the government needed mediating voluntary organizations in the immediate post-war era to reduce discontent. Morris has argued that ‘Voluntary societies have an enormous potential for enabling a society experiencing rapid and disturbing change to adapt to that change, to experiment with and devise new values.’41 However, it is important to note that voluntary associations, such as sports clubs and societies, cannot be described as conducive to social integration in twentieth century British society as their operation have more often mirrored the ‘overriding’ effects of local social differentiation. The availability of army huts at auction sales, even as temporary meeting places, in lieu of constructing costly brick institutes, with decorative buttressing, had an energizing and democratizing effect on local war memorial debates, which was more significant than the deployment of funds and governmental interventions. The acceptance of a persistent comradely spirit from the trenches, even if it was much overstated, sometimes found expression in local elite acquiescence in the erection of a village hall by ex-servicemen who came forward to organize the process. At North Chapel, near Petworth, residents critical of the pace of deliberations by the self-elected war memorial committee, wrote in January 1920, ‘We the undersigned residents, desire to draw your attention to the present moment as most opportune for the purchase of one of the many army buildings now being sold at Witley, for the use of a Recreation & Games Room for which the parishioners are so desirous to possess.’ They

40 West Sussex Record Office (hereafter WSRO) PAR 142/4/5 Grant from the United Services Fund for the erection of village halls or clubs, December 1919; Williams, J. (1983, 263–5); Woolton, G. (1963, 92–3); PRO T161/57 Report on the work of the VCA 1920–21, R.H.Rew, 30 September 1921. 41 Morris, R.J. (1990, 400); Hill drew attention to the ‘neglected field of voluntary associations’ in the history of sport and leisure, see Hill, J. (2002, 135, 137, 144).

huts, demobilisation and the quest

255

were prompted by news of the last sale and noted ‘There need be no fear of its being made attractive in appearance after re-erection.’ The critical and social distance of the ‘residents’ from the official war memorial committee was expressed in the observation that a ‘fine opportunity [existed] of acquiring that which the village has wanted so long.’42 In this instance the men had the support of the chief landowner, Lord Leconfield, who granted a piece of land for the purpose of erecting a club room. More generally, E.J. Moyle noted in The Comrades Journal, ‘The war revealed the British soldier as an unexpectedly clever craftsman, capable of making “something out of nothing.”’43 By 1920 twentyone new village halls in Montgomeryshire were re-erected army huts. Shoreham camp started to go under the hammer in January 1920, when the first auction sale of 200 huts took place. Huts at 190 feet long cost £400 and electrical fittings, stoves and hot water boilers were available in separate lots.44 The Vicar of Horsham was offered a hut, with ten radiators, electric light and a good floor, from the camp by the diocese. The cost of transporting and erecting the hall was £1,000 and inhabitants were urged to go and see it. Although it was offered to the town and surrounding district as a church hall, he specifically conceded that it would be available for all public purposes and ‘an outstanding age-long reproach that Horsham has no large hall will be wiped away.’45 In the dispersal of huts local consideration was sometimes given to the establishment of YMCA premises with a paid organizer, but not on the scale which the organization had contemplated in war. Publicity for the YMCA ‘Hut week’ in February 1919 assumed that its beneficent work in the armies of occupation and demobilization dispersal units would extend to opportunities to promote ‘the future welfare and training of our young manhood in all that is noblest and best’ in towns and villages after the war.46 The YMCA Assistant National Secretary stated that ‘If they could transplant a YMCA hut with all its activities into the villages they could change the face of

42

WSRO PAR 142/4/5 James Smith and others to the chairman, memorial committee, North Chapel, 31 January 1920. 43 The Comrades Journal Vol. 1 No. 2, October 1919, p. 6. 44 Worthing Library (hereafter WL) Sussex Daily News 22 January 1920. 45 HL West Sussex County Times 18 September 1920. 46 SHC Surrey Advertiser 11 January 1919.

256

chapter eight — keith grieves

rural England, and make the villages centers of life and interest and bring into unity and fellowship the forces that had too long been separated.’47 The YMCA appeal exuded the moral authority of establishing 4,000 social centers in seven operational theatres in four years, which had enabled millions of letters to be written home on freely available stationery in relative comfort. It looked forward to winning the peace by establishing Red triangle centers, which would provide for the body, mind and soul of young manhood in peacetime. Informal religious observance would be conducted through the combination of the bible and billiards. Blue triangle clubs for young women were also envisaged by the Young Women’s Christian Association, which had opened 140 clubs in munition centers. The importance and convenience of these facilities were recognized by rural social leaders, but church people often feared their impact on denominational life and parish organization. At Hindhead in Surrey the YMCA was offered free use of a site at Beacon Hill for the erection of a hut from a nearby army camp as a recreational centre. At Westcott the hut was opened by Princess Marie Louise on 15 December 1919. Unusually, this Red Triangle Club allowed women into the building, but into separate rooms. Primarily, it was intended as a place of recreation for ex-servicemen and remains the ‘Hut’ today. The Reading Room continued to serve its different function. Although the YMCA worked with local benefactors and promoted selfsupporting clubs the role of the paid worker from outside the village reflected national and religious policy imperatives rather than knowledge of local conditions and its associational life. Princess Helena Victoria was reported as noting ‘that by starting these clubs they could do more to steady things down than by anything else.’48 In Haywards Heath the war memorial committee debated the acquisition of a Red Triangle Hut managed by the YMCA. At £500

47

SHC Surrey Advertiser 18 January 1919. SHC Surrey Advertiser 15 February 1919; Surrey Advertiser 3 May 1919. George Chapman from YMCA headquarters noted at a public meeting in support of establishing Red and Blue triangle clubs in the Egham district that ‘It was up to all of them to do something to make the social life of England other than it had been. The refining influence of the women must be brought into the clubs. Marriages made under the Red and Blue Triangles were not going to turn out any worse than those which were the product of the country lane or the street corner’ Surrey Advertiser 14 June 1919. 48

huts, demobilisation and the quest

257

it was two-thirds of the cost of independently erecting and managing a surplus YMCA hut, which was available for collection at Brighton. However, the war memorial committee wanted to independently manage the social centre, so it decided to purchase a recreation room.49 Similarly, at Laira, near Plymouth, Nancy Astor received deputations for funds for a hall and social club for the district because the use of the schoolroom as a venue for socials was no longer acceptable to the community. She initially replied ‘I can’t possibly build a hut for Laira and I never promised to.’ But Nancy Astor reluctantly extended her patronage to this project after being told ‘The feeling in Laira village is that a public hall for social purposes is badly required, and should be free either from the YMCA or any other particular section, and they were under the impression that you would generously help them in that direction.’50 The sectional interests were at ‘loggerheads’ in Laira but it was agreed that a YMCA worker was not wanted, especially as a room was needed for the contentious activity of dancing.51 In the local debates on the acquisition of huts there was much evidence of the continuing influence of religious patronage and wealthy subscribers, but also of a more perceptible reaction to the role of customary elite influences among demobilized men in their localities. At Barcombe, near Lewes, W.W. Grantham, a member of the most prominent landowning family in the district wrote, ‘On principle I object to giving to a hall in memory of the Dead in which dancing is to take place.’52 However, at the first of many well-attended public meetings ‘Mr Theodore Bourdillon spoke as one of the demobilized—and pleaded for a building as a Social Centre for the parish.’ The eventual printed appeal for funds noted that the hall ‘is intended to be the Home of the Intellectual and Social activities of the parish; thus rendering fruitful the Peace for which our men have died and helping to brighten the lives of their comrades which have returned.’53

49

WL Sussex Daily News 21 May 1920. Reading University Library (hereafter RUL) Astor Mss. 1416/2/21 C. Briggs to Mrs. Astor, 27 August 1919. 51 RUL Astor Mss. 1416/2/21 C. Briggs to Mrs. Astor, 29 August 1919. 52 East Sussex Record Office (hereafter ESRO) PAR 235/10/5/6 S. Grantham to Mr. Bourdillon, 15 October 1920. 53 ESRO PAR 235/10/5/4 Barcombe war memorial committee, printed sheet, n.d. 50

258

chapter eight — keith grieves

Under considerable pressure, W.W. Grantham, whose family had originally provided the parish room, sought advice from the SCA, which was actively promoting village social centers in 1919. The YMCA was also contacted. In April 1920 he agreed to substantially fund the transformation of the parish room into a memorial hall to avoid the construction of separate buildings for different clubs. As a condition the Grantham family would provide one of the trustees of the village hall for as long as it owned property in the parish.54 This evidence of paternalistic social action took place in gratitude to the ‘courage and constancy’ of the survivors, but still conveyed a sense of the social distance between official parochial opinion and less deferential demobilized men. Some progress was made towards an enlarged meeting place with a widened range of social functions, which in this instance would not be undenominational or self-governing. The cost of the undertaking, involving further land acquisition, required the active involvement of the squire, who customarily aligned his social action to the requirements of the parish church. Institutes and parish rooms were rebuilt and renamed in some villages as if the declared quest of ‘brightening’ village life had made some prewar spatial dimensions anachronistic. At Balcombe, near Crawley, Lord and Lady Denman supported the proposition that the working men’s institute should be transformed into the Victory Hall as a social centre for all clubs and associations. They made a gift of £250 towards the total cost of £1,200. The future welfare and happiness of the village was a defining feature of the memorial proceedings. It opened in 1924 and stands as a monument to the notion that fellowship without servility might emerge in Balcombe under the aegis of the Women’s Institute and the Men’s Club, both of which had equal representation on the hall management committee. At the public meeting the vicar had sought support for the construction of a Parish Church Room. The proposition was barely discussed and its implementation was substantially delayed into the 1930s.55 The overriding support among landowners and residents for an undenominational self-governing hall arose from their recognition of permanently altered social relations in this Wealden village. Its peace mural even

54 ESRO PAR 235/10/5/1 Sub-committee meeting, Barcombe war memorial, 19 April 1920. 55 WL Sussex Daily News 27 December 1919.

huts, demobilisation and the quest

259

presented the prospect of class conciliation and a redefinition of local patriotism towards sovietic or, at least, anti-feudal ‘clubbism’, in a tacit subversion of hierarchical social norms. The artist Capt. Neville Lytton believed in the ‘power to run clubs and village organizations without the help of the squire or parson or anyone else.’56 In Wadhurst, near Crowborough, land was given to ex-servicemen who became trustees of the improved institute because they had fought for the nation and presented their aspirations as a united, democratic comradeship.57 At Ashtead, near Epsom, the parish council agreed that fund-raising for the Peace Memorial Hall would not allow any one man to exercise control over how the hall should be used.58 At Molesey, in Surrey, St. Andrews Hall was used as recreation room for soldiers during the war and the vicar agreed that its use might be extended, from its denominational origins, to become a village social centre as one of the war memorial schemes in the locality.59 At Woking village the recreation club took the form of the patented Tarrant portable hut, conceived by the eponymous builders of Byfleet, comprising rooms for billiards, cards, reading and a bar, entirely managed by working men. Holders of one pound shares were entitled to vote and the club was registered under the Industrial Provident Societies Act. In contrast the village club at nearby St. Johns, Woking, drew much more heavily on paternalistic social relations and was completely different in organization and control. It originated as a Kitchener Club for soldiers early in the war. The committee explicitly wished to sustain the lessons of social unity into peace. Its ambition lay far beyond the financial resources of the soldiers, who paid one penny each time on entry and girls two pence. Members were selected by the executive on the introduction of two ‘responsible’ members of the community. It was a mixed club on Sundays (choral and orchestra class), Mondays (whist drive), Wednesdays and Fridays (dances). Meetings for women took place on Thursdays, on Saturdays for juvenile organizations and on Tuesdays it was closed. There were two paid kitchen helpers and ‘well to do neighbours’ were asked to subscribe (and subsidize the venture) as honorary

56 57 58 59

Lytton, N. (1924,136). WL Sussex Daily News 20 January 1919. SHC Surrey Advertiser 8 March 1919. SHC Surrey Advertiser 11 January 1919.

260

chapter eight — keith grieves

members.60 The committee was intent on maintaining beneficent work and was resistant to the diffuse sense of mutual helpfulness, originating from wartime brotherhood, which impelled demobilized men to demand self-governing social centers. This local context of continuity of philanthropic endeavor in pre-determined ways was very different from the popular suggestion at Weybridge that one war memorial scheme should be the conversion of a historic meeting place, with a new hall attached, to meet the needs of ‘clubbism’ in the village. Of Vigs House Mr. E.A. Jemmett proposed, ‘It had been the very home and centre of local work for the war and the wounded. If retained it could be turned into a public free reading room, together with apartments for the use of the many clubs that formed such an integral part of the village life, and two fair-sized rooms for the holding of meetings.’61 The demands for halls and club rooms was evident immediately after the war, but they arose from complex and highly localized commemorative and social processes which require extensive deconstruction at the micro level of community.62 The legitimized ‘moral economy’ behavior of ex-servicemen demanded and, sometimes, secured recognition of their (military) service to the state from village elites, whose disposition to the erection of amenities for the men and lads of the parish for the long winter evenings varied enormously.63 In January 1919 the desire for a war memorial hall in Lavant, near Chichester, was communicated to the owner of the ‘close’ village, the Duke of Richmond. His solicitor drew up plans for land to be given for the purpose and noted ‘I don’t think the people will be contented now-a-days without a room where they can meet, and one is badly wanted for entertainments and meetings, especially as the women have so many meetings now, and the Public house is not desirable.’64 A hall was duly erected in the centre of the village. In North Chapel Laura Pemberton noted that the exact spatial dimensions of the social centre was known to those for whom

60

SHC Surrey Advertiser 15 February 1919 and 22 March 1919. SHC Surrey Advertiser 5 April 1919. 62 The Comrades Journal Vol. 11, No. 8, June 1920, p. 15. 63 A different emphasis to that available in King, A. (1998, 102). 64 WSRO Goodwood Ms. 1370, Thomas Roley to the Duke of Richmond, 16 January 1919. On the separation of great landowners from ‘their’ communities see Howkins, A. (1991, 289). 61

huts, demobilisation and the quest

261

it had most meaning, ‘The men know what they want themselves— one good sized room, a smaller one & adjuncts.’65 The recreation room was very specifically linked to the matches and games on the village green. It was a space of masculinity and erected by the men’s spontaneous free effort. In wartime the Women’s Institute had already acquired premises. In this local debate there was no indication that the hall would be supervised by the incumbent or come under his sphere of denominational influence. Potentially discontented ex-servicemen sought practical expressions of ‘cheerfulness’ in country districts and incurred responses from rural social leaders, of wide variation, including hostility, grudging acceptance and constructive support, occasionally with the full coverage of the heavy costs incurred. The hegemony of landowners through the customary expressions of parochial welfare committees and social obligation, especially in villages tending towards ‘closeness’, was constrained and even, unexpectedly, diminished by new more participative definitions of social harmony and a revised sense of ‘belonging’ in some rural districts. The construction of halls at Lavant and North Chapel reflected the moral imperative of allowing permanent club premises in estate villages. In some instances initiatives by individual benefactors encouraged local recognition of the impact of war, especially where personal experience sanctified a new location of communal interest. In Slinfold, near Horsham, Mary Cumming informed the vicar that she intended to obtain a Church Army hut so that she might continue the work in memory of her husband, Chief Commandant of the Church Army in France. She added, ‘I shall hope soon to have a meeting of the men to arrange for the Working of the club.’66 This plan took place quite separately from the war memorial schemes in the village. It assumed that the club would be largely self-governing. Inevitably, some paternalistic control survived in relation to the negotiations for land, which took place beyond the purview of the management committee. The extension of a ‘hut culture’ from training camps and base camps in France to isolated small communities in rural districts, as

65 WSRO PAR 142/4/5 Laura Pemberton to Mr. Bright, n.d. The envisaged facility was described by Lord Leconfield as North Chapel Club Room, PAR 142/4/5, Lord Leconfield to Mr. Bright, 31 July 1920. 66 WSRO PAR 176/4/9 Mary Cumming to Rev. Hughes, n.d.

262

chapter eight — keith grieves

a limited reconstructionist vision for social betterment after the war, found widespread expression. Where it became a demand not far short of an entitlement, returning soldiers challenged powerfully embedded social norms in some villages. In a limited way, and without reversing the flight from the land during the 1920s, the evenings of laboring men were ‘brightened’ in some villages. In halls warmed by ‘Valor’ oil heaters and lit by the Petter plant in the shed adjoining the hall, next to the fire-hose cart, refreshments prepared in the kitchen were served at ‘socials.’ Wood-block flooring and a whitewashed wall proved vital ingredients for dances and the mobile cinema. The need for social gatherings was urgent and unremitting. Classes of first aid, upholstery and the wireless interspersed the whist drives and the improving lectures on household economy. Book boxes from the county library stock nestled against the glass case of Roman coins found locally. In the vestibule the list of names who served in the Great War, perhaps with captured trophies of war and emblems of service, bore testimony to the fallen of the locality whose associational activities often lacked a meeting place before the war. These lists of men and women who served sanctified a tangible social gain, which might be located at the angle corner of the village green. In her plans for comfortable homes for disabled men after the war, Viscountess Barrington ensured that the institute would be part of her settlement scheme.67 However, the cost and shortages of building materials, alongside the triumph of monument over amenity in many war memorial debates in villages, also constrained the development of self-supporting social centers despite the ubiquitous ‘hut culture.’ In the cultural history of war, conclusions on the interplay and juxtaposition of continuity and change are becoming more nuanced as grand overarching narratives of the histories of nations and empires are deconstructed and compared. Total war was locally experienced whether within identifiable military units in theatres of war or in settlements on the home front with all the attendant variables arising from their form and fabric. At the intermediate level between the family and the state commemorative processes were richly textured

67 IWM WWC B.O. 8/23/3 Village Homes for Disabled Soldiers and Sailors [Statement of work] Viscountess Barrington, 14 February 1919. See also leaflet IWM WWC B.O. 8/23/4.

huts, demobilisation and the quest

263

in local encounters and debates. Expectations of time honored customary practices sometimes held sway while adherents of disruptive social ‘gains’ made progress elsewhere. In some localities they coalesced to produce some change in the existing provision of a meeting place, perhaps by extending the premises or allowing some degree of self-government. ‘Clubbism’ ameliorated strain in the years of war and the provision of amenities for beleaguered rural workers became a critical issue at the intersection of remembering and reconstruction. Consequently, in small incremental ways village halls ‘fit for heroes,’ which closely resembled wartime soldier clubs, were sometimes erected in rural parishes where churches and chapels no longer determined the availability of common meeting places. In the horror of war, and amid the ambiguous rhetoric of the brotherhood of the trenches, localities embraced new facilities for an associational life but only after acknowledging government-funded initiatives and challenging the persistence of the old regime at a turbulent moment in the transition to peace. ‘Hut culture’ was conceded but remained contentious. The diffuse sense of wartime social unity met rate-paying resistance, especially where charity, exhortation and social distance was sustained by self elected elites who doubted whether the ‘brightening’ of village life should be discussed by war memorial committees. After 1918 it was remarkable in some villages that amenities for the evening ‘free time’ of the men and lads were discussed at all.

Bibliography Bushaway B. (1992) “Name upon Name: The Great War and Remembrance” in The Myths of the English, ed. R. Porter (Oxford: 1992). Chadwick O. (1972) The Victorian Church. Part II 1860–1901 (London: 1972, 2nd ed.). Chapman-Huston D., Rutter O. (1924) General Sir John Cowans: The Quarter Master General of the Great War. Vol. II (London: 1924). Clark A. Rev. (1988) Echoes of the Great War. The Diary of the Rev. Andrew Clark edited by J. Munson (Oxford: 1988). DeGroot G.J. (1997) Military Miscellany I. The Reverend George S. Duncan at GHQ , 1916–1918 (Stroud: 1997). Englander D. (1994) “Soldiers and Social Reform in the First and Second World Wars”, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research Vol. 67, 164 (1994). Hill J. (2002) Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth Century Britain (London: 2002). Howkins A. (1991) Reshaping Rural England. A Social History 1850 –1925 (London: 1991). Inglis K.S. (1992) “War Memorials: Ten Questions for Historians”, Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporains 167 (1992). Jekyll G. (1925) Old English Household Life (London: 1975, 1st ed. 1925). King A. (1998) Memorials of the Great War in Britain (Oxford: 1998).

264

chapter eight — keith grieves

Lytton N. (1924) The English Country Gentleman (London: 1924). McKibbin R. (1998) Classes and Cultures England 1918–1951 (Oxford: 1998). Morris R.J. (1990) “Clubs, societies and associations” in The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950, Vol. 3 Social agencies and institutions, ed. F.M.L. Thompson (Cambridge: 1990). Rose J. (2002) The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, CT: 2002). Sassoon S. (1983) Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915–1918 edited by R. Hart-Davis (London: 1983). Snell K.D.M. (1985) Annals of the Labouring Poor. Social Change and Agrarian England 1660–1900 (Cambridge: 1985). Somers P. (1993) A Time there was. Memories of Rural Life in Sussex (Stroud: 1993). Strathern M. (1981) Kinship at the Core: An Anthropology of Elmdon: A Village in NorthWest Essex in the 1960s (Cambridge: 1981). Ward S.R. (1975) “Great Britain. Land Fit for Heroes lost” in The War Generation. Veterans of the First World War, ed. S.R. Ward (New York: 1975). Weaver L. (1920) Village Halls and Clubs (London: 1920). Westcott Local History Group (2000) The History of Westcott and Milton (Westcott: 2000). Williams J. (1983) Byng of Vimy. General and Governor General (London: 1983). Woolton G. (1963) The Politics of Influence. British ex-servicemen, Cabinet decisions and culture change (1917–57) (London: 1963).

CHAPTER NINE

AN AMERICAN GEOGRAPHER BETWEEN SCIENCE AND DIPLOMACY: THE MISSION OF DOUGLAS W. JOHNSON IN EUROPE, MAY-NOVEMBER 1918 Nicolas Ginsburger

With the First World War, the United States1 took on a new and original role in international competition between great powers. This arose both from its growth and political power and from the consequences of the war for their European competitors. Seen from within, the comparison between the Old and the New World, on either side of the North Atlantic, increasingly favoured Wilson’s republic, for example at the economic level (the United States strengthened its place as the world’s leading economic power) or at a cultural level. Externally, Wilson, already inclined to pursue Theodore Roosevelt’s international policy through other means,2 abandoned American isolationism and in April 1917 engaged his nation— victim of German aggression—in Europe; then, victorious, bringing the United States into a dominant position in the Paris Peace Conference, entering into dialogue on equal terms with the Europeans, but above all taking the initiative and partially imposing its own concept of a new diplomatic system. As an example, but also as a symbol, the evolution of the discipline of Geography in the United States is an interesting but somewhat overlooked aspect of this transformation.2a

1 For the situation of the United States during the Great War, see among other references: Kennedy D.M. (1980); Marwick A. (1974); Venzon A.C. (1995). 2 Cf. Cooper J.M. (1983). For recent historiography on the continuity of American diplomacy: LaFeber W. (1993); Iriye A. (1993). 2a Cf. Smith Neil (2003).

266

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger American Geographers in 1914

In 1914, the American school of geography was sufficient well established to sustain comparison with its European equivalents.3 Recognition as an accepted academic discipline came slowly but was virtually complete in 1914, based partly on the French4 and German5 schools and partly on the circumstances of the American move to professionalisation which affected all social levels and in particular all university disciplines. Specialised professional cadres were created (competing with or complementary to university departments, scientific journals, associations of geographical societies, the descendants of 19th century institutions), reflecting a specific conceptual corpus focussing on an environmentalist concept of space, and a body of recognised professionals organised into national and international networks under the tutelary direction of the great Harvard professor William Morris Davis (1850–1934). The American geographers, however, were still conscious of a certain scientific backwardness in relation to European schools, in particular the German school of Friedrich Ratzel (1844– 1904) and Alfred Hettner (1859–1941)6 which had been losing impetus since the beginning of the 20th century but was still held in high regard, and above all the French school of Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918) and Emmanuel de Martonne (1873–1955). The latter, a Sorbonne professor invited to lecture in New York shortly before the war,7 was strongly in favour of developing American thinking, a useful competitor for the German approach which was increasingly challenged.8 American geographers played an important role during the First World War, first as intellectuals with frequent experience of travel in Europe, well versed in the political circumstances of the Old World, ‘cultural passeurs,’ who passed on knowledge in line with their public opinion, and then as experts useful to the Federal government against the background of the United States’ war effort, ‘scholars on active service’ engaged to serve their nation.9 While some 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. Cf. On

Martin G.J., James P.E. (1993). Berdoulay V. (1995). Schultz H.D. (1980). Beck H. (1982). Charle C. (1994). Broc N. (1978); Delfosse C. (2001). the emergence of expertise in human sciences: Dumoulin O. (2003).

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 267 were particularly involved in establishments of further education or training camps for soldiers preparing to leave for Europe, others took on the production of maps or reports for government and military use within various federal and local institutions, and in particular a think tank called The Inquiry.10 This organization set up by President Wilson under an umbrella of close collaborators that included the director of the American Geographical Society of New York (the AGS ), Isaiah Bowman (1878–1950). Besides, geographers contributed to the activities of bodies of public information and propaganda or the press, or again within private organisations designed to educate public opinion, such as the geographical societies which were very active from 1914 onwards. The action of geographers was not restricted to the organisation and direction of the American war effort: The Inquiry and its members (the geographers especially) took a very direct part, alongside specialists from the other victorious nations, in the Paris Peace Conference negotiations which led to the treaties of Versailles, SaintGermain and Trianon.11 Contributing actively to the establishment of the new map of Europe and the World arising from the war, to the implication—conclusive, no matter how brief—of the United States in world affairs, and to the elaboration of an American school of thought of the world order,12 through the creation of new institutions of geopolitical thinking in Washington, Boston or Chicago, American geographers acquired a dominant position in the international field of geography, particularly among the other victorious nations, the French as well as the British.

The Career and Personality of Douglas W. Johnson In this respect the case of the geographer Douglas W. Johnson is both representative and distinctive as an example of these war years. Born in 1878 at Parkersburg (West Virginia), he attended Denison University (Ohio) from 1896 to 1898, then the University of New Mexico where he undertook many field studies. Elected Fellow at

10 11 12

Cf. Gelfand L.E. (1995). Cf. Seymour C. (1951). Cf. Schulten S. (2001).

268

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

the University of Columbia in New York, he gained his doctorate of Philosophy there in 1903. The Cerillos Hills near Santa Fé in New Mexico formed the subject of his geology thesis. On leaving Columbia he became geology instructor at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and then, after two years, Assistant Professor. He also took advanced courses in Physical Geography at Harvard, where he became assistant professor in 1907 and was influenced by Professor Davis.13 At the same time he took part in the U.S. Geological Survey for three successive summers, travelling widely in his own country and in Europe. Recognised as a theoretician on the teaching of geography and cartography in schools, assistant on the New Jersey Geological Survey in 1911, director of the Shaler Mountain Memorial expedition in 1911–12, he was appointed associate professor of physical Geography in 1912 at Columbia, at the age of 34. Johnson’s younger years offer several elements worth recalling. His professional training lay between the Midwest school14 and that of the East Coast and his specialisation in geomorphology was undertaken under Davis’s guidance, offering him the hope of a fine university career. His early establishment—no doubt under the powerful patronage of the Harvard professor—in official expeditions and geographical institutions is a perfect example of American geographers of the second generation, at the moment when posts were proliferating in universities, above all on the East Coast, and when the school of American geology began to produce results recognised throughout the world. Linked to his personal and professional life, two supplementary elements should be noted that render Johnson even more representative of his professional milieu and his nation: on the one hand his great francophilia and a certain element of germanophobia, on the other hand his strong religious and nationalist

13 Of whose work he published in 1909 a collection of articles, Geographical Essays (reissued in 1954). On Davis’s death in 1934 he published a study of his work. 14 Johnson knew the state of New Mexico very well. This was where, before Frederick Jackson Turner, a geographical school of thought was developed on the subject of ‘the frontier’, of a regionalist and environmentalist style. Cf. Livingstone D.N. (1981). The official end of the frontier formed a powerful phsycological turning point for Americans, of whom Johnson is representative: the will to find a new frontier elsewhere, possibly through a broader external policy than one concentrated only on Central America. Cf. Wrobel D.M. (1993). In addition, New Mexico was close to the frontier with Mexico, still active and strongly militarised. Cf. Meinig D.W. (1999).

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 269 feeling, in the name of the ‘Manifest Destiny’ concept that in many respects he shared with President Wilson.15 His feelings towards Germany were ambiguous. Brought up within the temperance movement, strongly Protestant and traditionally antiGerman, Johnson none the less lived in an environment strongly impregnated with the German culture: through his family, in a region which at the turn of the century underwent a large wave of German immigration; and through his profession in view of the significance, at least historic, of German universities and geography, and its relative influence on the American school of geography and universities.16 By 1914, however, Johnson declared himself hostile to the Reich and favourably inclined towards the United States’ entry into the war at the sides of the Allies, in the name of democracy. Among his propaganda publications designed for the American public, the geographer, operating as both a public intellectual and geopolitician, published in 1917 The Peril of Prussianism.17 He wrote that: America has decided that splendid isolation is no longer possible in a world rendered wondrous small by the swift steamship and express train, the telegraph and telephone, the cable and wireless telegraphy. We are our brother’s keeper and have entered on a policy of international cooperation, first to compel a just peace, and then to preserve it undisturbed from future assaults by autocratic militarism. We have pledged our faith and must fight a good fight to make the world safe for democracy (. . .) The Prussian ideal must perish, the American ideal must live. (. . .) As Christ died to make men holy, let us die to make men free; for God is marching on.18

Douglas W. Johnson is therefore both representative of a generation of young geographers who rose swiftly to university posts and typical of a certain category of Americans, hesitating between Germany and France as opposing models of European culture, and more or less precociously convinced that the United States henceforward held a moral, quasi-religious duty to intervene in the conflict between the two powers to save justice and democracy.19

15

Cf. Zorgbibe C. (1998); Becker A. (1994). Cf. Brocke B. vom (1991). 17 Cf for an analysis of this text: Heffernan M. (1999). 18 Johnson D. (1917), iv; 49; 53. 19 This does not mean, of course, that all Americans and all geographers made the same choice in 1914 on the war and the French side. Cf. MacKay E.A. (1996); Gruber C.S. (1976). 16

270

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

It was in this rather bellicose spirit that Johnson took up the cause of his nation in 1917. He extended his range of activities and his field of specialisation as well as his national and international fame. For the young geography professor the conflict was undoubtedly in this respect an outstanding professional catalyst, and for American geography a considerable change of direction.20 First he pursued his career as professor and researcher at Columbia. He offered the usual lectures in the Department of Geology between 1914 and 1919 before a significant change in 1920: from that date he taught Human Geography, and not merely geology, map-reading or topography.21 These new functions can be interpreted as the birth of geography in American universities, a discipline seen as purely scientific and descriptive, part of the Natural Sciences, within a prospective and political discipline, a Human Science. From Johnson’s point of view, this was evidence of his widening capacities. His publications advanced from The Nature and Origin of Fiords in 1915 to Topography and Strategy in the War in 1917. His new specialisation in the domain of military geography was rooted in a powerful tradition dating from the Civil War but Johnson took this discipline out of the setting of the military academy and into the civilian world and university. He was therefore invited in 1917 to give lectures in military geography at the AGS.22 This distinction between the civil and military worlds should however be looked at carefully, first because many American universities were turned into training centres for reserve officers, in which Johnson’s work was used as a manual, next because Johnson was himself a major with the American army’s Intelligence Division, and finally because this work was one of many forms of the American ‘war culture’ in addition to speeches or dinner-debates in geographical societies, a sign of the partial militarization of American social life comparable with that in European cultures as part of its late but relatively enthusiastic entry into the world conflict.23 An intellectual

20 Beyond and within the same movement as the process of professionalisation and institutionalisation of American geography, enabling the development of career perspectives in 1915 that were considerably greater than those of 1890, for example: cf. Dunbar G.S. (1981). 21 Columbia University Bulletin of Information: Announcements 1917–1921, Columbia University Archives. 22 Letter from I. Bowman to Johnson, 20 September 1917: reply from Johnson to Bowman, 3 October 1917, Archives of The American Geographical Society, New York. 23 Cf. Audoin-Rouzeau S., Becker A. (1997, 2000).

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 271 engaged in favour of the war from 1914, but above all from 1917, Johnson worked particularly as an expert in the service of the federal nation. Author of several reports for The Inquiry, he was considered as one of the specialists on Italy during the Paris Peace Congress after taking part in drawing up its frontier with Yugoslavia.24 Johnson was however mobilised in the Military Intelligence division of the Department of State, then attached to The Inquiry as cartographer, and as such sent on mission in Europe between May and November 1918. It was this very distinctive voyage which we will consider here, using as our main sources Johnson’s reports and letters, written during the actual visit.25

A Study Mission in Europe What was an American geologist to do in the Old World at war? In one sense, Johnson was not going to take a direct part in the fighting but was setting out on a journey of ‘professional tourism’. His official mission was precise: ‘[His] written instructions refer only to [his] special work in military geography’.26 Above all, Johnson was 24

Cf. Floto I. (1973), 101. Two reports are used here: the confidential report of 1 May 1918 from Major Johnson to Colonel House on the arrangements made by the British government for gathering data for the peace conference, 26 pages (report of 1 May); report from Major Johnson to The Inquiry on the suggestions for a stricter plan of cooperation between the different commissions engaged in the gathering of data for the peace conference, 25 July 1918, 10 pages (report of 25 July). Johnson drew up these long reports after informal conversations with the British representatives and reported along the way to his hierarchy. It is a case therefore of taking these sources for what they are: the critical report of oral descriptions, often at second hand, and direct visual observations, often undertaken very quickly, but efficiently by a true practitioner of geography. It is thus clear that these decriptions must be filled out from other written sources. The report of 25 July is the most interesting, at least for this present purpose. We will use eight other letters from Johnson or directly concerning his voyage: letter from Johnson to Mezes, London 12 May 1918, 7 pages (letter of 12 May); telegram from Mezes to Johnson, 11 June 1918, 1 page (telegram of 11 june); personal letter from Johnson to Bowman, 9 May 1918, London, 15 pages (letter of 9 May); letter from Johnson to Bowman, 24 May 1918, Paris, 7 pages (letter of 24 May); letter from Johnson to Mezes, 3 June 1918, Paris, 1 page (letter of 3 June); letter from Bowman to Colonel Dunn, 30 October 1918, 1 page (letter of 30 October); letter from Mr. Churchill to Johnson, 2 November 1918, 1 page (letter of 2 November); letter from Johnson to Bowman, 12 November 1918, 1 page (letter of 12 November). These documents are all held in the archives of The Inquiry at Yale University (New Haven). 26 Letter of 12 May, 4. 25

272

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

sent to the Allies to undertake scientific research in the service of his government. After consulting geographical documents that the authorities on site would kindly show him, he was to undertake direct observation of the terrain and conditions of battles in which the Allied forces, in particular the Americans, were engaged. In London he quickly made contact with the American representatives: After seeing the Ambassador I called on our Military Attaché, Colonel Slocum. (. . .) When I tried a block-diagram of Alsace-Lorraine on him, he waxed enthusiastic, called up Colonel Hedley who is the chief of the Geographic Section of the General Staff of the War Office, making an appointment for me to see him and show him the diagrams. (. . .) Colonel Slocum offered me office room (. . .) to arrange for my visit to the British front, and to see that I got all the maps necessary for my work.27

Johnson therefore compared maps and data, material available to the United States that he had brought with him, often of high quality thanks to the work of The Inquiry and the AGS, and further material which could additionally be made available to him to prepare his visit to the front; he also made contact with the local authorities to discuss and exchange documents and data with them. In fact, the mission of military geography took upon itself the task of obtaining and sending to New York and Washington maps, strategic opinions and items of information from amongst those whom it talked with— military or geographical experts, diplomats or intellectuals. Johnson specifies that [his] time has been employed in collecting the material, selecting the maps,28 going through official reports and diaries on the war operations, discussing strategic problems with various officials, etc. (. . .) The government offices here [have put] at my disposal anything I wanted, including the confidential reports of their officers in the field.29

Johnson therefore also had a task to inform, to observe the work of the European allies on behalf of Washington and New York. The special envoyé of The Inquiry was thus operating in both the military and strategic fields in discussions, but above all as a qualified geographer in his field, as a particularly capable interlocutor deal-

27 28 29

Letter of 9 May, 2–3. Johnson also specifies that he took these maps out on the ground. Letter of 12 May, 6.

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 273 ing with the other allied armies, perhaps even more so than other American officers: he had not received their military academy training, but he had scientific qualifications and an official legitimacy which exceeded those of other officers. Major Johnson was accompanied by Lieutenant Knight, charged with making copies of reports and maps and to act as his secretary. The two men were originally due to pass through London, Paris and Rome before travelling to the front lines.30 Leaving New York on 12 April 1918, they experienced a somewhat difficult Atlantic crossing in this period of blockade and submarine warfare.31 The mission could not expect to continue for a long period, perhaps for budgetary reasons (it was underwritten by The Inquiry and by the National Research Council) or because The Inquiry urgently needed Johnson’s capacity and all the information he could gather, information that he could not summarise fully and send back to his superiors while still on his travels.32 This may explain why the visit to Rome, firmly planned for 11 June, did not take place;33 front-line conditions and the end of fighting in November 1918 may have persuaded the American geographer to return to the United States earlier than expected, to make definite preparations for the peace negotiations. To make up for this cancellation, Johnson sought out Italians in London, such as Lieutenant-Colonel De Filippo, the author of geographical articles on the Italian front in the Geographical Journal, with whom he discussed problems of the front line and the Italian frontiers with Austria and on the Adriatic, and who found specific Italian maps for him; or General Mola, the Italian military attaché in London who gave him letters of recommendation to military geography specialists in the Italian armies which Johnson was due to visit. In fact, the initial mission was still operational. At the end of the trip, the management of the Inquiry noted as follows: [ Johnson] visited the Balkan front, the Italian front and the French and British fronts as well as many officers and civilians in Paris and London with whom we wish to establish cordial relationships.34 30

Letter of 12 May, 5. Letter of 9 May, 1: Johnson and Knight’s vessel had to deal with three attacks from German submarines. In London, Johnson’s first night was marked by an aerial attack on the capital. 32 Letter of 12 May, 6 33 Telegram of 11 June. 34 Letter of 30 October. 31

274

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

This inquiry on the terrain at the front, authorised by the European military authorities, led to the writing of a memorandum on the new Romanian fronter following the Treaty of Bucharest,35 then to the later writing of a significant work of military geography36 that was acclaimed by his peers37 and also in military and civilian circles after demobilisation. Johnson’s six months were therefore fruitful.

The Allies’ Inquiries In his search for maps and interviews with representatives of the allies, Johnson had to establish contacts with the Allied organisations which played the same role as The Inquiry. He therefore drew up a detailed plan of the way in which the English and French gathered geographical information for the current war and future peace. His official aim was to establish shared working relationships concerning the world’s problems of strategy and reconstruction after the war. The geographer’s description and view of his European colleagues are therefore interesting to observe: they were based on the American model of The Inquiry, a paradigm for an organisation created on the occasion of the war, charged by the political powers to gather information (geographical or otherwise) specifically destined for future negotiators. Such an institution existed in all three nations, with very varied patterns of chronology, style and logic. The American, British and French governments had all felt the need of such an institution, in some cases as early as 1914, but at least from 1917, the date of definite belief in the approaching end of the war, whatever the final outcome might be. Comparative description of the three Allied Inquiries is therefore possible through Johnson’s observations, according to a

35 Memorandum to The Inquiry dated 27 July 1918 on the strategic and geographical nature of the new fronter imposed on Rumania by the Treaty of Bucharest, 8 pages + maps. 36 Johnson D. (1921). The preface to this work gives valuable indications of the permissions that Johnson had to obtain (particularly from Marshal Joffre) to gain access to the front lines, on the forms of professional geographical and military help that he received there, the nature of his work, and the duration of his observations. 37 For this book he received the prestigious Elisha Kent Kane Gold Medal from the Geographical Society of Philadelphia. His analysis of battle terrain in Lorraine was taken up and completed in 1930 by Liddell Hart. B.H. (1930). Cf. O’Sullivan P., Miller J.W., Jr. (1983).

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 275 typology combining various criteria such as the initiative and date of initial establishment, its location, the links with military and political worlds, their staff, modes of organisation and operation, and the texts produced. The American Inquiry was the latest, because of the United States’ late entry into the war.38 A planning commission was set up in October 1917, designed to define the American war aims and also to study and recommend a concrete American programme for the peace to come. Other administrative organizations were occupied with diplomacy and military geography, but the Inquiry had certain specific features. First, it was directly linked to the White House. State geography, now foreseeable and diplomatic, lay outside the supervision of Congress39 and of the Department of State (even though Wilson took this decision after discussions with Lansing, the Secretary of State). Colonel House, the President’s privileged collaborator,40 was nominated to lead the commission, financed by funds already made available and therefore not subject to vote in Congress. The correspondence between The Inquiry and the President was intense and the organisation’s reports were systematically passed to him. In December 1917, for example, two memoranda were sent to Wilson and directly served the elaboration of his speech known as the Fourteen Points. Next, The Inquiry was in the hands of civilian experts. Wilson, a former progressive professor at Princeton, wished it to be universitybased to guarantee its seriousness and independence.41 The White House used academics as advisers to grasp and explain the complexity of non-European situations which the President himself often failed entirely to dominate. The institution’s directoral team was representative in this respect: the director, Meyes, was a philosopher of religions and president of the City College of New York; the secretary, Walter Lippmann, was the young editor of a newly-founded liberal journal, the New Republic; the treasurer, David Hunter Miller, was an academic lawyer, and the director of research, James T. Shotwell,

38 This work was to be taken up, analysed and completed with new sources in the classical study of L.E. Gelfand (1963). 39 Cf. Cheever D.S., Haviland H.F. Jr (1961); Livermore S.W. (1966). 40 Cf. George A. and J. (1956). 41 Cf. Link A.S. (1954, 1960, 1965).

276

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

was Professor of European History at Columbia. Further, it was decided that the staff of The Inquiry should consist of well-known or promising researchers for whom it would therefore be an opportunity to develop their range and fresh ideas, and then to see a level of scientific and social advance otherwise unexpected in their career. At its highest level, The Inquiry had 150 members, coming above all from East Coast and Midwest faculties of Human Sciences and History—geographers, historians, sociologists and political scientists. The highly productive organisation supplied complete reports on the widest possible range of problems, using specialists from all disciplines but emphasizing geographical methods. It thereby raised the question of this new institutionalisation of geography, no longer simply academic but state-directed and pragmatic. Finally, The Inquiry was separate from Washington, the administrative capital, and closely linked to civilian geography mobilised for war. Colonel House nominated Isaiah Bowman as Deputy Chairman of the organisation. By the end of October 1917 its office was established first in the New York Public Library and then in the premises of the AGS, in order to make full use of its cartographic and geographical documentary archives.42 The correspondence between Isaiah Bowman and Emmanuel de Martonne offers further details on the project: I am not surprised to learn that your Society [the AGS] operated at the full extent of its powers in support of the war organisation. You are probably able to undertake over there greater services than the Geographical Society of Paris here, for you do not have an American Geographical Society prepared for war (. . .) Johnson recently sent me a long letter in which he spoke of a project to organise with you a sort of Office of Military Geography, of which you would be the head in New York and he the director in Paris. Tell him that I am in the course of studying the matter.43

This letter shows simultaneously the role the American executive power wanted geographers to play in the organisation of geographical knowledge to mobilise the Nation, the closeness between American and French geographers, and Wilson’s determination to decentralise

42

Cf. Wright J.K. (1952). Letter from E. de Martonne to I. Bowman, 22 July 1917, Paris, 1–2. Archives of the American Geographical Society (New York). 43

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 277 (to New York and even Paris, in order not to depend on Washington). This independence of The Inquiry vis-à-vis the federal administration was, however, not complete. In fact, on the one hand the recruitment of competent personnel was not simple, for academics were frequently unable to obtain paid leaves from their professorial duties, even to undertake an important public service in a time of war, and exemption for military service was not automatic for the members of The Inquiry. On the other hand, as the need for specialists became more urgent at the end of the war, members of other governmental agencies, including the department of State, the Central Bureau for Statistics and the Geological Survey were called on to prepare reports on various topics which, in directorial eyes, were expected to be important during the Peace Conference. Overall, this system of gathering information was effective. The Inquiry’s work covered the political world as a whole, the institution’s staff being skilled in the history, economy and geography of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Pacific islands, all liable to receive attention during peace discussions at any future conference. During its existence The Inquiry produced more than three thousand reports, a considerable number in view of the organisation’s relatively short existence, although the reports were very often partial, including many on Latin America and none at all on the future League of Nations. As such, the creation of The Inquiry bespoke the United States’ commitment to the world’s affairs. It was a concrete response to the secret treaties between Great Britain, France (the Sykes-Picot Agreements on Arabian Asia in 1916), Italy (the Treaty of London in 1915), Russia and Japan, organising the division of the territories of the Central Powers and their allies44 and looking ahead to the Allied victory; it also looked at preliminary and unilateral planning research already undertaken, particularly by Great Britain. The British model in fact emerged earlier but its result was more complex. The Wilsonian Inquiry did not follow the example set by the British; the Americans, who initially remained neutral, were probably unaware that such an information organisation existed in London.45 44

Cf. Zorgbibe C. Wilson, op. cit. 236. But the Americans were aware of the enormous power of English diplomacy. According to Charles Zorgbibe, it was moreover in order to challenge the British lead in matters of geographical information, a lead no doubt gained by the Royal 45

278

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

Even when actually on site, Johnson himself had difficulty in understanding its general structure. He mentioned the absence of a genuine created structure, in contrast to The Inquiry. He deplored a situation of semi-anarchy, fraught with personal squabbles, bureaucratic burdens and errors. However, he recognised the organic links that existed between the British state and geography, due in particular to imperial governance, and noted that an effort of systematisation had been made shortly before his arrival. At the beginning of the war each department muddled along on its own to gather the information it needed—frequently, moreover, very effectively. However, as early as 1914 a Professor of Geography at University College, Reading, H.N. Dickson, proposed that a geography office be set up to gather and publish data intended for the British authorities and forces. His project was accepted. The organisation was established at the Admiralty, while the other departments continued to gather the information necessary for their functioning. At the beginning of 1918 the British government46 asked the experts of various departments to take part in the peace discussions, for example on Turkey. A few weeks before Johnson’s visit, the British government finally organised at the Foreign Office the systematicand centralised collection of data for the peace conference. The precise reasons for this decision are various: imitation of the American organisation judged to be effective, the will to prepare British diplomacy for future German demands, of which the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had shown the precision and power, the will to exchange more secret information with the new American ally. However, the other sources of geographical information were retained: Dickson’s team, several sections of the War Office’s Department of Military Intelligence and the venerable Royal Geographical Society (the RGS), the centre of geographical information referred to by Johnson as ‘indirect’, commissioned to prepare large thematic and coloured maps of Europe and the Near East, Africa and Asia.

Geographical Society and British scientists from the direction of the British Empire, that Wilson had created the Inquiry: ‘The Europeans were not lacking in experts: had not Lord Balfour been a young secretary at the Berlin conference [in 1885] at the side of his uncle, Lord Salisbury? In this domain, the Americans in an inferior position: the Department of State had only summary documentation on the peace conferences held in Europe; and Wilson was excluded from the experienced advice that could be spread by the European chancelleries’. 46 Cf. Burk K. (1982).

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 279 Clearly, then, the British circumstances in 1918 as described by Johnson were very complex: apart from the classic organisations for geographical information (the RGS or the War Office), two institutions vied for overall leadership in State geographical information: Dickson’s organisation, relatively independent, and the Foreign Office, with one section specifically charged with preparing for peace. This was headed by three people: William Tyrrell, a career diplomat, private secretary to Edward Grey in 1914, who briefly retired during the war because of his ‘germanophilia’ but was recalled as head of the Foreign Office’s Department of Political Intelligence. His direct superior was the minister Balfour, a fact which made him one of the most influential individuals in British diplomacy; Tyrell’s subordinate, Alwyn Parker, the Foreign Office librarian, was in charge of the Office’s printed documents and secret archives after a diplomatic career in St Petersburg. A specialist in Mesopotamian affairs,47 he edited reports on this highly sensitive region; George W. Prothero, the editor in chief of the confidential reports, also edited the Quarterly Review. Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh, and head of the History section of the Foreign Office, he was entrusted with the final edition of reports, the duplication of statistics and the compilation of economic, historical and geographical data from the various departments as well as with the historical introductions to confidential reports. According to Johnson, the Foreign Office reports never dealt with military, geographical or strategic problems, considered too confidential to be allowed into print. In this respect, the officers of the Department of Military Intelligence were in sole control. The American felt obliged to specify that these reports did not give the definitive orientations of the most influential members and experts of the British government, but were the recommendations and personal conclusions of a specialist on the region and the problem.48 Johnson saw the work of Dickson’s team as of high scientific level, but he stated clearly that it would be without significance in the peace negotiations: first because

47

He had led the negotiations with von Kühlmann on the Portuguese colonies in Africa and then the negotiations on the Baghdad railway, of which the contents appeared in the Quarterly Review in October 1917. 48 The reports of the New York Inquiry were equally consultative and informative, if not as partial, as those of Tyrells team, although with a superior confidence in political power (Wilson) in the options specified.

280

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

it took place in the setting of the Admiralty, outside the War Office, the Foreign Office, or the RGS—which explains the distance of the Foreign Office representatives, even though Dickson officially depended on them; then because [Dickson] is a professor, and has not accomplished pratical achievements sufficient to divest him of the reputation for lack of pratical ideas and common sense from which the profession as a whole enjoys,

which was not the case with other professors associated with the work of the Peace Conference, according to Johnson, who was clearly thinking of himself; and also because Johnson encountered in London the same opinion as ‘in some quarters in our own Government [Washington]’ (without being more precise), that is, that geography is an elementary detail to which a small space must be given in any report because it has long been customary to have a section entitled ‘geography’; but that no negotiator will ever read it, and that therefore the less space given to it, the better.49

It was thus a matter of prejudice against geography in the setting of diplomatic negotiations, as useless and excessively theoretical knowledge; finally, because Dickson’s reports were altogether too wordy and detailed, too general and too long, and would indeed take too long to be read in full. A member of the Department of Intelligence on war trade, charged with economic information, was therefore charged with compiling Dickson’s geographical information. The problem of this London structure of geographical information is thus threefold in Johnson’s concept of The Inquiry: a strong dependance on the administration, which ruled out any independence from traditional diplomacy; Dickson’s relative inefficiency, at least in making his work intelligible to the higher powers, requiring a duplication of his work; a detrimental separation from the London geographical ‘powers’, in particular the RGS. The tribulations of Dickson’s bureau testified to this: it was because the War Office was too burdened and confused to take on its organisation that it was then established at the Admiralty, sometimes in conflict with the RGS, even though it was for a while established in its offices. The structure’s increased activities forced it to move into its own offices, in an art gallery which normally housed the Wallace Collection. But 49

Report of 1 May, 15.

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 281 the English system had its advantages: Dickson tried for instance to bring contrasting opinions together in order to avoid biassed reports, in particular favouring the Reich, and employing numerous translators to make use of foreign reports. The organisation of the Foreign Office and its use of individuals from all the nations of Europe also produced extremely rich comparative reports.50 The scattering of sources of geographical information across the British capital can be seen in the typical structure of a report supplied by Tyrrell, as described by Johnson. Three different sections are identified: the first geographical, the information coming from the Intelligence Departments of the Admiralty (Dickson), the War Office, and the Ministry for the Blockade; the second economic, depending on the Department for Intelligence of War Trade, taking its data from British and American consular reports, or from information gathered from London volunteers, experts in different regions, wounded officers or ‘informed travellers’ (which left considerable scope for non-professional geographers and amateur observers); the last political and historical, describing ‘present conditions’ given to Prothero. Between 125 and 150 reports or books had thus been written and published at the time of Johnson’s visit. The work of Dickson’s team was itself much more unified, even though much less used: the preparation and publication of geographical handbooks;51 preparation of more detailed manuals of certain difficult regions such as Belgium or Schleswig-Holstein, accompanied by an atlas of thematic maps;52 condensed reports on different problems and areas,

50

For example, Prothero gave Johnson the names of his ten chief collaborators— Romanian, Serbian, specialists in Italy, Poland, the Baltic provinces. Thus for the problem of Schleswig-Holstein, a report was written from the Danish point of view, another German and a third neutral, reports assembled into one by Prothero. 51 With, among other elements, descriptions of climate, topography, history and economic resources, the main network of communcation for soldiers required to get there, perhaps with one or several books of maps. These manuals amounted to twenty-one in number at the time of Johnson’s writing, with twenty others in production and other volumes in preparation. 52 These manuals enabled a reevaluation of knowledge on these regions. Johnson followed the example of Schleswig-Holstein: Dickson had apparently obseved that British historians had made too much use of German information and none at all of the Danish, for they could not speak the language; with translations, the question was evident in all its complexity. Johnson here shows his distrust of German science, very biased in his view. A manual for eastern Siberia, strongly demanded by military departments, in a fresh context of conflict with the Russian communist régime, was, according Johnson, in preparation.

282

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

immediately available for use by negotiators (for Johnson’s visit, the preparations of these reports had none the less been transferred to the Foreign Office); various maps, in particular connecting languages and topography, religions and hydrography, maps requested and used in particular by Lloyd George, meteorological work on air-related influences on land and sea (pressure, densities, winds, etc.) for the North Sea and the British front. The British system was thus, according to Johnson, both scientifically remarkable—a consequence of the great Empire tradition of amateur and military geography53—and highly complex, verging on chaotic, and in any case apparently wasteful of energy. On the French side, Johnson described an organisation that was far simpler and more effective, one moreover with which he was better acquainted thanks to his friendship, and that of Bowman, with Emmanuel de Martonne. Two organisations existed in 1918: one military, the Service Géographique de l’Armée, already long established in 1914 and directed during the war by General Emile Bourgeois;54 and one civilian, set up under parliamentary initiative. In order to specify what the French position would be after the victory, at the time of the peace negotiations,55 Deputy Louis Marin, an active member of the Chamber,56 asked Baron Hulot, secretary of the Société de Géographie de Paris, to establish four commissions charged with studying the problem of the future frontier with Germany, central and east Europe’s future frontiers, France’s possible annexation of German colonies and possible territorial claims in Asia, in particular in the Middle East.57 The two commissions dealing with European frontiers soon vanished, to be replaced by a study committee directed by Ernest Lavisse and organised by Benoist at the request of President Poincaré and Minister Briand; its secretary was Vidal de la Blache, replaced by Martonne at the moment of Johnson’s arrival in Paris. General Bourgeois was a member by right.58 This committee employed 45 members of the Société de Géographie de Paris, including Lucien Gallois (1857–1941) and Jovan Cvijic

53 54 55 56 57 58

Cf. Godlewska A., Smith N. (1994); Bell M., Butlin R., Heffernan M. (1995). Cf. Boulanger P. (2002). Cf. Heffernan M.J. (1994). Cf. Bock F. (2002), 189. Cf. Claval P. (1998), 150–151. Report of 25 July, 9.

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 283 (1865–1927), a francophone Serbian geographer.59 For the army’s geographical service, Johnson noted, (. . .) calls to the front have deprived the Service of many of its team (de Martonne often speaks of how short handed the Service is).60

Despite this problem Johnson noted, The Service Géographique is a much larger establishment than I had realized, and is doing admirable work (. . .) Major (. . .) Alexander, in charge of map work at Headquarters, has just asked for a series of models for parts of the American front on a scale of 1 to 5,000, and the Service is going to provide them.

The Service Géographique also produced confidential handbooks for the use of officers in the French armies. The French organisation for gathering information was thus well advanced, in symbiosis with the political and military power as well as with Parisian geographers, thanks notably to Emmanuel de Martonne’s unparalleled organizational skills. The Paris example particularly impressed Johnson. The phenomenon of The Inquiry in the allied nations thus evolved in the same way everywhere: entry into the war led the political authorities to create a specialised body commissioned to gather geographical information to carry out the war, sometimes identifying the aims (as in the case of the United States) and to prepare for the peace negotiations which, it was hoped, would come soon. This institution was as far as possible independent of the administrative authorities, often indeed concealed from them,61 and worked in direct contact with the executive and in collaboration with the military power. It called on experts, so young as to be mobilized, or geographers who often held a recently recognised institutional position. It was effective in overall terms, even if cases of systematic redundancy were frequent

59 Bowman also asked him to travel to New York and give some lectures in the middle of 1918. As a specialist on the Balkans, Cvijic did much, during the peace negotiations, for the creation of Yugoslavia. Cf. Kitsikès D. (1972); Ter Minassian T. (1997). 60 Letter of 24 May, 3. 61 Johnson stressed the difficulty that he encountered in England in gathering information for his reports, and in meeting the competent staff, since few people were aware, even at the heart of the Admiralty, the Foreign Office or the War Office, of the existence of such organisations whose work was morever in the course of operations and not published in May 1918. Cf. Letter of 9 May, 4.

284

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

since services already made up from administrations and armies, were retained during the war, and often worked more in competition than in collaboration with the new structure. Promotion of geographers at the diplomatic, military and political level thus often occurred at the expense of other geography professionals, not academically recognised as such (for example in English-speaking countries) or for their benefit when the institutionalisation of geography was sufficiently long-established to avoid resistance (as in Third Republic France). It would be interesting to extend this model to the other belligerent nations (notably Italy, Russia, Germany or Austro-Hungary), which also possessed strong geographical and military traditions.62 It is in any case important to note that this model had a very strong national dimension which made effective inter-allied collaboration more difficult—an aspect which Johnson was also meant to improve.

The Inquiries, Secret Instruments of War The organisations charged with preparing for war and peace were everywhere kept as secret as possible. On his arrival in London, for example, Johnson met the American ambassador: He felt quite sure that there was nothing being done in England similar to the work of The Inquiry.63

As instruments of diplomatic independence, they remained hidden from foreign nations, even allies. Johnson noted: In London, I found that the British representatives were entirely ignorant of the work being done at Paris. Many expressed the belief that the French had no organization and were doing no work (. . .) At Paris, I found equal ignorance as to the work being done in London. Members of the Comité d’Etudes have told me that they had no knowledge of any British organization similar to theirs, and no knowledge of any studies in progress or reports published.64

This ignorance on each side of the Channel in 1918, almost amounting to indifference and disdain, did not date from the beginning of

62 63 64

Cf. for all these nations: Dunbar G.S. (ed.) (1991). Letter of 9 May, 2. Report of 25 July, 1–2.

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 285 the war but was the result of a specific and quite mysterious episode in Franco-British relations: a certain Hugues LeRoux visited London, stated that he was charged by the French government with preparations for the peace conference, and secured all the data he could about British preparations. (. . .) On his return to Paris he failed to make good his promise to keep them informed as to work in progress there. It is very evident that Mr. LeRoux made a bad impression, and that suspicions as the good faith of the French were not lacking—some thinking that the French were trying to profit by British labors while doing nothing themselves, others that the French were working in secret while trying to gain information as to labors of other nations. (. . .) I also found that Mr. LeRoux is not in any way connected with the Comité d’Etudes, that he apparently acted without proper authority in his representations to the British workers, and that he could not have communicated the French reports to the British if he had desired to do so, as he had not access to them. His requests for certain of the confidential documents I have forwarded to the Inquiry have been refused by the proper Government department.65

The identity of this mysterious person remains to be established, as do the actual consequences of his efforts, ambiguous to say the least, that might have been an attempt at espionage. At any rate, it led to the disruption of the collaboration between the English and French services. Johnson remarked: There is a distinct attitude of suspicion and distrust in certain circles in both London and Paris regarding the work being done in the neighboring capital.66

Thus, when Johnson arranged for Mezes to receive the notices of the Service géographique de l’Armée, he specified: The French military authorities emphasize the importance of regarding as confidential that these volumes have been transmitted to the Inquiry. I may say that they are anxious that the fact should not come to the attention of the military authorities of certain other countries.67

The United States’ entry in the war changed the situation. The Americans were initially seen as reliable guarantors of balanced relationships in the exchange of information, people of integrity capable of limiting abuses on either side. Johnson remarks: 65 66 67

Report of 25 July, 1–2. Report of 25 July, 3. Letter of 3 June.

286

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger There is a desire on the part of the British to know what work the French representatives are doing, and the French equally desire to know what studies the British have in progress. Representatives of both organizations have on several occasions asked me direct questions as to what work the others were prosecuting. In each instance I made it evident, as delicately as I could, that it was impossible for the representative of a third commission to be the medium of communicating to one commission confidential information given to him by another. Under the conditions at present existing, our own Inquiry occupies an unique position in possessing fairly detailed information as to the organization, methods of work, and published results of other similar organizations.68

Thereafter the Americans were welcomed as rescuers by the European powers, and benefited as to the exchange of information from a favourable bias since the Europeans considered that they had everything to learn about their future battlefield. Along with his reports and through the intermediary of the British ambassador, Johnson sent maps and material to New York as examples of the English work. It thus complemented the handbooks and various books already sent by London to Washington and demonstrated clearly that, despite the submarine war, collaboration to prepare American operations had already been established for many months. The gathering of geographical information was aided by the American geographers’s acquaintance with sociability network and the responsibility structure among among their allied counterparts. According to Johnson, he had access to British maps for copying through the RGS all the more easily69 that the AGS was fundamentally linked to The Inquiry. In Paris, Johnson was thoroughly familiar with the functioning of the Comité d’Etudes through his informal and professional direct contacts with the Paris Société de Géographie.70 However, here too the exchange proved unequal for the Europeans, for the Americans arrived late and appeared still to be relatively ill-prepared for the European complexity. Johnson notes:

68

Report of 25 July, 2–3. Johnson told Bowman of his meetings with his RGS colleagues, in particular an informal dinner with the director and the secretary of the organisation, during which the question arose of the concept of ‘natural frontiers’ in Europe and the Near East. Cf. Letter of 9 May, 8–9. 70 At the time, Douglas Johnson was an honorary member of the geographical societies of Paris, London, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Belgium, Serbia, and China. 69

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 287 The fact that we have not published reports necessarily leaves both the British and French representatives at a disadvantage as compared with ourselves.71

Further, the Americans had specific needs for their military operations which forced the French services to devote time and effort to them, which Johnson deplored: It seems a pity that special American demands for geographic work should not be handled by a geographic service of our own, leaving the diminished French staff to concentrate on their own needs.72

This shows both the French insistence on dealing with their own territory, even in relation to their allies, and the determination of the Americans to be independent in the information and production of tools designed for their troops.73 The exchange of military information, and even more of diplomatic information, was thus still considered a matter of national independence in May 1918, above all in the general expectation of a peace that the whole world expected and from which each nation hoped to gain the maximum of profit. The Inquiries were equally confidential in terms of the nations’ internal mobilisation, through a systematic compartmentalization of the administrative services and through great discretion relating to public opinion. Reflecting on the possibility of combining the different national commissions, Johnson considered that it was necessary to work [with] the same care (. . .) to avoid giving publicity to the work of the committee, as has been taken in the case of the work of the separate Inquiries.74

Such institutions indeed lacked legitimacy, above all in the United States, against a background of general mobilisation and open diplomacy. Thus when the existence of The Inquiry emerged by chance in the newspapers, accusations of treason led to investigations, which resulted in some people being unable to receive wages while others, who had already received emoluments, suffered instant dismissal.

71

Report of 25 July, 3. Letter of 24 May, 3. 73 Cf. in an impressive bibliography on the American intervention in Europe: Kaspi A. (1976); Weigley R.F. (2000). 74 Report of 25 July, 9. 72

288

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

According to Johnson, this distrust and disorganisation among the Allies were highly prejudiciable, particularly in view of the future peace negotiations: There is, however, a still more serious disadvantage arising from present conditions. At London, Paris and New York and possibly elsewhere, different students are working independently on the same problems (. . .) [without] always reach[ing] concordant results (. . .) Even where the same statistics are used as a basis, different interpretations of the figures lead to notably different results. Similarly, different weights accorded to the same facts by different investigators have resulted in material discrepancies in the conclusions reached, for example at London and at Paris. This means that in the absence of any plan for correlating and harmonizing the results of studies prosecuted by the several commissions in question, British, French, Italian and American negotiators will arrive at the conference provided with conflicting statements as to the facts in important controversies. It is to be feared that the enemy will come with but one point of view,—the German view (. . .) In the conference hall, as on the battle field, unity is of the essence of victory.75

This citation shows on the one hand the existence of peace projects in all the Allied capitals (including Rome), and on the other hand the generalised fear that Germany would arrive at the Peace Congress with a unified and prepared series of demands, to be met by division among the Allies if nothing were done to make the various demands coincide in the direction of right and justice. For his part, Martonne wrote to Bowman: We were not ready for war, and this must not happen for the peace. The Germans, who were so well prepared for war, are preparing themselves no less systematically for the congress which will have to settle the most delicate and most tangled questions. We must not expose ourselves to being duped by people of bad faith, masters of trickery. Whatever the end of actual fighting (. . .) it will need long negotiations to put everything in order. Watch out for traps.76

This no doubt gave much credit to German geographers who would have their government’s ear before and during the war. The allied geographers’ conviction of the German danger could be seen as illustrating an international rumour, professional in nature, spread throughout the ruling circles. This fear demonstrated the image of Germanic 75

Report of 25 July, 3–4. Letter from Martonne to Bowman, 7 September 1917, Paris, 2. Archives of the AGS. 76

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 289 science in the eyes of the Allies and had been reinforced by the strong impression made on the chancelleries by the German diplomatic success at Brest-Litovsk in dealing with revolutionary Russia. Later, at Versailles, Germany, defeated and disorganised, suffered diplomatic and territorial setbacks comparable to those of Russia, confronted with the more or less united front of the victors of the Great War. Thus the existence (or the use) of such geographical organisations in Germany did not become apparent in the peace negotiations—which does not mean that they had not one day operated effectively.

A Project to Unify the Inquiries Faced with the dangers of Allied disorganisation in future peace negotiations, Major Johnson was also commissioned to envisage the coordination of the various institutions and territorial commissions to come. A few months before the end of the war, the Americans thus wished to obtain agreements on future territorial demands, or at least a discussion, outside the secret diplomacy that characterised the first part of the war and unilateral national efforts. Johnson specifies that Parker was commissioned by the British government to look at the mechanisms of the peace congress, the gathering of data, their compilation in such a way as to make them immediately available for use by the negotiators, the selection of the latter and the nations’ official choices on certain thorny problems; and also future secretaries, the archiving of daily reports, reproduction of maps, or protection against dangers of espionage, with explicit reference to the Congress of Vienna. In Johnson’s eyes, therefore, as far as diplomatic relations were concerned, the British point of reference was 1815—an approach that the Americans could only reject. Johnson thus proposed to his European interlocutors and his own hierarchy that the Allies’ demands should be combined by unifying the Inquiries, through the establishment of a central committee in London or in Paris consisting of commissions of two or three representatives from each Inquiry to discuss the main European problems, compare maps and reports, find points of convergence or divergence, discuss official interpretations and opinions and to pass them on to delegations from the conquered countries during negotiations. This arrangement would make it possible to suppress mutual distrust and to reach positions of common accord while retaining confidentiality of information. Further,

290

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger It would be extremely difficult for the representatives of any inquiry to manipulate facts and make specious arguments, in face of the friendly but frank analysis of their contentions by the whole committee; and it would be equally difficult for the negotiators representing any nation at the peace conference to make unjust demands and support them by an improper statement of facts, knowing that his representatives on the committee had, in concert with the other representatives, agreed upon a different statement of facts. The moral pressure in favor of frankness, honesty, and fair dealing would be very real, and might be very great. It would constitute an important step in the direction of that open diplomacy which President Wilson has so wisely insisted upon as essential to future good will and confidence among the nations.77

In this way Johnson thus hoped to operate within the framework of the Wilsonian ‘new diplomacy’, following the Fourteen Points of January 1918 that The Inquiry had already inspired. However, he indicated a reservation that might appear in directorial circles, over a peace congress held, on the one hand between specialists—that is, people neither elected nor officially selected by their State—and prematurely on the other, when the outcome of the conflict was still not certain. He was aware of these caveats, but this does not seem to have presented him with any problems except practical ones, as with his French colleagues. M. Lavisse and M. Benoist thought there might be some hesitation in official circles, but seemed of the opinion that the plan could be achieved, and that it would be of great advantage to all concerned. They expressed doubt as to what attitude the British would take. While I did not raise this special question with any British representative, several of them expressed to me their desire to cooperate, not only with the Americans, but also with the French and the Italians. (. . .) If the idea commends itself to the Inquiry, the initiative in carrying it into effect should come from America. Our evident disinterestedness and desire for frankness and sincerity in international dealings frees us from any suspicion which might attach to a similar suggestion coming from another source. British, French, and Italians would be more likely to cooperate in a plan proposed by Americans than a plan proposed by any one of themselves.78

The concept of the United States as indispensable intermediaries and arbitrators in European relations marked by the conflicting instincts of the Allies is here confirmed as manifest and indispensable in estab77 78

Report of 25 July, 7. Report of 25 July, 9–10.

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 291 lishing the international organisation charged with regulation of the peace.79 Johnson was thus in the position of a recognised but not officially authorised representative of the United States. As his arrival in London coincided with the end of the great Italo-Yugoslavian conference in Rome, he had many discussions (sometimes four in a day, according to his records) with diplomats, English politicians and specialists in international and national affairs, published authors and with influence on governmental decisions. He also met representatives of the Italian army and newspapers, seeking information on morale, propaganda and troop movements in the Italian army. In the style of an official diplomat, Johnson spoke with many important individuals, both in the military and political circles, as well as with members of civil society who were able to give him indications on the nation’s public opinion (thus to some extent on its political future): H.G. Wells, to whom I had a letter from M. Lippmann, asked me to lunch with him, but at a time when I had a previous engagement. However, I spent a very pleasant hour in his study, listening to his account of the growth of sentiment in England in favor of the league of nations idea.80

In addition to his idea of summoning a technical conference of specialists, Johnson thus operated as a source of information and provisional ambassador, a special envoy from Washington in Europe, although with limitations. Johnson recounts how Both Mr. Lloyd George’s private secretary and Ambassador Page offered to arrange a conference with Mr. Balfour (. . .) but I have hesitated to take advantage of the offer (. . .). I have been in doubt as to how far the verbal instructions received from you and Mr. Lippmann authorized me to go. While I am anxious to render the Inquiry every service within my power I do not wish to encroach on undertakings which may have been reserved for others better qualified to perform them. Your further instructions along this line would be welcome.81

Johnson thus seemed caught between a position as an expert close to federal power and a mission of education rather than diplomacy. 79 It was moreover the traditional manner of intervention for the United States in the affairs of the European powers before 1917, for example during the RussoJapanese war in 1905 or in 1907 with the second Conference of The Hague. 80 Letter of 9 May, 11. 81 Letter of 12 May, 4.

292

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

In this he represented the hybrid or even contradictory status of the American Inquiry, strained between the most objective scientific knowledge possible, linked to the Wilsonian idea, and the strictest confidentiality, taking part in the manoeuvres and preliminary dealings between great powers, apart from Congress, the American public opinion and the European nations.

Conclusion Thus, the voyage of Major Douglas W. Johnson partly illuminates what was at stake in the First World War: the place of the United States and its representatives in the Allied camp, its position in the discussions over war and peace and its efforts to coordinate war efforts in order to ensure the emergence from the conflict of a new world order in close conformity with the Wilsonian ideal; the dissensions between Allies and their difficulties of agreement, and also their comparable approach to the German enemy; the transformation of American geographers, recognised as experts by the State and as full equals by their European colleagues despite the their nation’s late entry into the conflict. Johnson undoubtedly led his survey of the terrain to good effect on the various European fronts, but, faced with lack of time and Allied reservations, he was unable to combine the gathering of information or to harmonise projects of territorial regulation of the war. The Allies arrived separately at Versailles and argued over the new European frontiers, but the former Central Powers were in no position to resist.82 Johnson however continued with a career in line with his effectiveness and his hopes, representing the status of geographers (and of veterans of the war)83 in American and French society of the inter-war years. His activity during the Great War and towards the victory won him powerful professional recognition in New York84 and Washington,85 but also an undeniable international

82 Cf. Dockrill M.L., Fischer J. (2001); Krumeich G. (ed.) (2001); Marston F.S. (1944); Renouvin P. (1969); Walworth A. (1986). 83 Cf. Keene J.D. (2001). 84 His scientific advice as Professor of Geology at Columbia in 1919, then Director of the Department of Geology in 1937, was earnestly listened to by local authorities, for example at the time when the city suffered great geological fears in the 1920s. 85 Head of the division of Geography of Frontiers at the American Peace Commission at Versailles in 1919, then geographical counsellor for the department

an american geographer between science and diplomacy 293 aura, due both to his participation in the Paris conference and to the progressive international institutionalisation of geography. On his death in 1944 he was chairman of the American committee of the International Geographical Union, having been Chairman of the physical geographical section at the international geographical conference in Paris in 1931.86 In 1924 France awarded him the Legion of Honour after a triumphal series of speeches, and in 1933 he received the order of the Cross of St. Sava for his services on behalf of Yugoslavia at Versailles. Fifteen years after the Armistice, this gives an idea of his reputation and of the image of the American school of geography between 1918 and 1944, as one of its most eminent representatives, despite the refusal of the American Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.

Bibliography Bell M., Butlin R., Heffernan, M. (eds.) (1995) Geography and Imperialism, 1820–1940 (Manchester-New York: 1995). Boulanger P. (2002) La géographie militaire française (1871–1939) (Paris: 2002). Charle C. (1994) La République des universitaires (Paris: 1994). Claval P. (1998) Histoire de la Géographie française de 1870 à nos jours (Paris: 1998). Delfosse C. (2001) ‘Emmanuel de Martonne, tisseur de réseaux internationaux de géographes’ in Baudelle G., Robic M.-C. (ed.) Géographes en pratiques (1870–1945), Le terrain, le livre, la Cité (Rennes: 2001) 189–206. Dickinson R.E. (ed.) (1976) Regional Concept. The Anglo-American Leaders (London: 1976). Dunbar G.S. (1981) ‘Credentialism and Careerism in American Geography, 1890–1915’ in Blouet B. (ed.) The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States (Hamden, Conn.: 1981), 71–88. —— (1991) (ed.) Modern Geography: An Enclyclopedic Survey (New York-London: 1991). —— (1992) A Biographical Dictionary of American Geography in the Twentieth Century (Baton Rouge: 1992). Floto I. (1973) Colonel House in Paris, A Study of American Policy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 (Copenhagen: 1973). Gelfand L.E. (1963) The Inquiry: American Preparation for Peace, 1917–1919 (New Haven: 1963).

of State, in 1935 he received the Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society and was named editor of the Journal of Geomorphoology from 1938. Chairman of the Association of American Geographers in 1928, chairman of the American Geological Society in 1942, member of the National Academy of Sciencees and the American Philosophical Society, overwhelmed with honours, he intervened again on several occasions as intellectual, notably in 1937 in a booklet on the annulment by the Supreme Court of the United States of part of Roosevelt’s New Deal measures; then in 1939, against American neutrality. Cf. Dickinson R.E. (1976); Dunbar G.S. (1992). 86 Cf. Robic M.-C., Briend A.-M., Rossler M. (1996).

294

chapter nine — nicolas ginsburger

—— (1995) ‘The Inquiry’, in Venzon A.C. (ed.), The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopaedia, Military History of the United States, vol. 3 (New YorkLondon: 1995), 301–302. Godlewska A., Smith N. (eds.) (1994) Geography and Empire (Oxford-Cambridge, Mass.: 1994). Gruber C.S. (1976) Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of Higher Learning in America (Baton Rouge: 1976). Heffernan M. (1999) ‘Inaugurating the American Century: «New World» Perspectives on the «Old» in the Early Twentieth Century’ in Slater D., Taylor P.J. (eds.) The American Century. Consensus and Coercion in the Projection of American Power (OxfordMalden, Mass.: 1999), 117–135. Kitsikès D. (1972) Le rôle des experts à la conférence de la Paix de 1919 (Ottawa: 1972). Livingstone D.N. (1981) ‘Environment and Inheritance: Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the American Frontier’ in Blouet B. (ed.), The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States, (Hamden, Conn.: 1981), 123–149. Martin G.J., James P.E. (1993) All Possible Worlds. A History of Geographical Ideas (New York: 1993). Meinig D.W. (1999) The Shaping of America. A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 2 (New Haven: 1999). O’Sullivan, P., Miller, J.W., Jr., (1983) The Geography of Warfare (London-Canberra: 1983). Robic M.-C., Briend A.-M. Rossler M. (eds.) (1996) Géographes face au monde. L’Union géographique internationale et les Congrès internationaux de géographie (Montréal-Paris: 1996). Schulten S. (2001) The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880–1950 (Chicago-London: 2001). Seymour C. (1951) Geography, Justice and Politics at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (New York: 1951). Smith, N. (2003) American Empire: Roosevelt’s geographer and the prelude to globalization (Berkeley: 2003). Ter Minassian T. (1997) ‘Les géographes français et la délimitation des frontières balkaniques à la conférence de la paix en 1919’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 1997, 44 (1), 252–286. Weigley R.F. (2000) ‘Strategy and Total War in the United States: Pershing and the American Military Tradition’, in Chickering R., Förster S., (eds.) Great War, Total War, Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Washington, D.C.-Cambridge: 2000), 327–345. Wright J.K. (1952) Geography in the Making: the American Geographical Society 1851–1951 (New York: 1952).

CHAPTER TEN

THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN SCHOLARSHIP: ACADEMIC RESPONSES TO WAR IN PARIS AND LONDON Elizabeth Fordham

Until now the history of academic responses to the Great War has been written from a Bendian perspective. Like Julien Benda in La Trahison des clercs, historians have set out to perform an ‘inquest’ into the ‘serious lapses of scholarly standards’ that they find manifestly apparent in the public pronouncements of academics during the war years.1 This essay adopts a different approach. Rather than judging academics for failing to subscribe to standards of absolute objectivity that they neither believed in nor held as desirable, it sets out to investigate what academics themselves understood by their wartime actions. Instead of looking exclusively at academic propaganda, which was in fact only one small part of scholarly activity during the war, this essay attempts to give a sense of the variety of academic engagements. It will do so by exploring three features of academic life: the role of scholars as political advisors; the creation of new courses and university departments in subjects related to the war effort; and the initiatives taken to expand and strengthen international academic relations. In drawing attention to these themes the aim is not only to open up inquiry into a subject that has become too narrowly focused upon criticizing the propagandistic sins of scholars; it is also to rethink the conceptual framework by means of which these and other dimensions of the cultural history of the Great War are understood. Notions of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ have heavily structured interpretations of cultural activity during the First World War. In the case of French and British academics emphasis has been placed on

1 Wallace (1988, v). In his introduction Wallace laments the absence of any British study to compare with Benda’s scathing critique of French academics.

296

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

the conservative nature of scholarly engagement, reference being made here not just to the fact that the overwhelming majority of scholars were uncritical supporters of the war, but to the narrowminded, intellectually-shallow and self-righteously moralistic ways in which these men gave their support.2 However important this argument is, and however many examples may be given of the lack of moral and intellectual integrity shown by academics during 1914–1918, the history of scholarly engagement cannot be reduced to an explosion of national chauvinism. As the examples developed in this essay suggest, some scholars saw war, not as an excuse for retrenchment, but as an opportunity for reform, and in their internationalism, their encouragement of new areas of study, and their conception of the role of scholarship within society, they were leaders of educational progress. Whilst occasional reference has been made to such themes in the secondary literature, there has been no attempt to address their larger meaning, what they reveal about academic identity in the early twentieth century, for instance, or the link between war and university reform. One explanation for this oversight is that historians have looked solely at academic production during the war, ignoring questions of intention and consciousness. Another—more fundamental—reason why such themes have been ignored is conceptual, and relates to the failure to think in an historically sensitive way about the modernity of wartime culture. In recent years historians have analysed with increasing subtlety the deluge of traditional cultural forms precipitated by the experience of war.3 Understanding of the cultural modernity of war, however, has not advanced far beyond the paradigm of ‘modernism’. This paradigm defines modern culture in terms of irrationality, alienation and the absurd,4 and whilst its inadequacy for capturing the ‘mass’ cultural experience of war has been well argued,5 what has not been recognized is its inappropriateness for understanding many sections of ‘elite’ culture as well, and in particular the culture of academics. This is not because academics were exceptionally conservative

2 This is the conclusion drawn by the two main works on scholars and the war, Wallace (1988) and Hanna (1996). 3 See the pioneering study by Winter (1995). 4 See Fussell (1975). Fussell’s argument has been reformulated by later critics but not significantly revised. 5 Winter (1996).

the great war and modern scholarship

297

and refused to face the radical challenges brought by war, but, on the contrary, because academics had developed their own ways of looking at and responding to the problems of contemporary civilization. There were, in other words, many ‘moderns’ in pre-war Europe, and that of academics did not signify a sense of existential despair, but an awareness of the social potential of education, a new concern about the methods of acquiring knowledge, and a gradual shift of interest towards more physical and more contemporary problems.6 To be a modern academic in 1914 was to use knowledge, methodically acquired, to try to make the world a better place, and it is by reference to these standards—however modest, however vague—that academic activities at war should be studied.

Speaking Truth to Power Although it is well known that French and British academics were engaged in government service during the war years, little attention has been paid to how they imagined their role, what they thought to achieve, or the degree to which their actions during 1914–1918 may have reflected pre-war concerns. These questions are not pertinent for all academics that served in office. On entering Whitehall or the Quai d’Orsay many scholars abandoned their professional concerns and sought simply to do their job, with no independent agenda in mind. Others, however, worked not just to serve power but also to influence it. This is the case for the two attempts by academics to direct government action that will be looked at here. Historians of the New Europe: R.W. Seton-Watson and Ernest Denis The campaigns led by R.W. Seton-Watson and Ernest Denis on behalf of the oppressed nations of Austro-Hungary reveal all the difficulties faced by academics in their dealings with power. Both men had started their careers as historians of Germany, but within the increasingly anti-German climate of the early 1900s their scholarly interests had migrated towards the subject groups of Central

6 The best introduction to higher educational developments in France remains G. Weiss (1983). For England an interesting discussion is given by Rothblatt (1997).

298

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

Europe. For both historians, political concerns about the need to check the growth of German power went hand in hand with a rather idealistic belief in national rights to self-determination and a profound sense of the moral responsibility of democratic nations to help small nations to liberty. Before 1914 both Seton and Denis had lived and travelled extensively in Central and Eastern Europe, they both spoke several Slavonic languages, had developed personal ties with the nationalist movements in the area, and through specialist societies, journals, and the general press had been active in spreading awareness of Slav nationalism in England and France. At a time when Slavonic studies were only weakly developed in France, and virtually inexistent in England, the knowledge Seton and Denis had acquired of the national problems of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as their deep—if selective—appreciation of the historical roots of these problems, were invaluable. However when, after the outbreak of war, the two historians sought to use their unique expertise to advise the policies of allied governments on Central Europe, they met with only very partial success. It took Seton nearly three years to gain a position in government office, and even after May 1917, when he joined the Intelligence Bureau of the newly created Department of Information, his influence remained limited. In the first days of August Seton had used family connections to inform the Foreign Office of his qualifications and his wish to be of service (without remuneration) in the war effort, but his offer, while politely noted, was not accepted. It is probable that those in power who had read Seton’s Racial Problems of Hungary viewed the passionate champion of ‘semi-barbarous’ national groups like the Slovaks and the Serbs as a dangerous ally. This was certainly the case after August when Seton, devoid of formal contact with government officials, sought to shape Britain’s war policy by mobilising public sympathy for the subject peoples of Eastern Europe, a task that—through his friendship with Henry Wickham Steed at The Times, his place within numerous academic lecturing circuits, his membership of a whole host of émigré societies, committees and relief groups, and above all his foundation in October 1916 of New Europe, a Weekly Review of Foreign Politics7—he was in a particularly 7 Focused during the war on the emancipation of the subject races of the Habsburg Empire, New Europe also looked more boldly ahead to a new European order based on co-operation, open diplomacy and disarmament. See Hanak (1961) and Goldstein (1998).

the great war and modern scholarship

299

strong position to achieve.8 The outcome of this activism was ambiguous, however, as can be seen from the response to Seton’s second attempt to enter government service in mid 1916.9 For if by now there could be no doubt either of Seton’s skill as a propagandist or of his close familiarity with the politics of Austro-Hungary, questions were raised about Seton’s single-minded commitment to national self-determination as an alternative to monarchy, and in particular to his support for a South Slav state, including Croat claims to Dalmatia.10 It was only after an entire year’s wrangling—and several private appeals to the Prime Minister—that Seton’s application was accepted. Between May 1917 and November 1918 Seton held two posts, first in the Intelligence Bureau of the Department of Information, and then in the Enemy Propaganda Department.11 The first post brought little influence. The Bureau operated upon a distinction between intelligence and policy, which meant that Seton composed general reports for unknown purposes with scarcely more information at his disposal than he had had when outside of office. The second post was more promising, and it is revealing both of Seton’s journalistic successes and his political ambition, that in early 1918 when other academics were moved from the Intelligence Bureau to the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, Seton was transferred to the Department of Enemy Propaganda at Crewe House. It has been argued that in the last year of war Seton, together with Steed, ‘manoeuvred the government into a major psychological offensive that hastened the defeat of the armies of Austro-Hungary and helped prepare the way for the break up of the Habsburg Empire’.12 Based on Steed’s characteristically self-glorifying memoirs,

8 On all these activities see: Seton-Watson and Seton-Watson (1981) and SetonWatson (1978). 9 The immediate reason for this second attempt was the government plan to introduce conscription. Medically unfit for active service, Seton had no desire to spend the rest of the war in some backwater of army administration. 10 Details on the debate that followed his application for office are given in SetonWatson and Seton-Watson (1981, 173–174, 187–188, 203–207). 11 A good introduction to the roles these new departments were supposed to fulfil is provided by Sanders and Taylor (1982). Eight out of ten of Seton’s colleagues in the Intelligence Bureau contributed to New Europe. 12 Messinger (1992, 6). Steed was foreign editor of The Times and a close friend of Lord Northcliffe, owner of the newspaper and head of the new Department. As director of the Austro-Hungarian section Steed had been responsible for bringing Seton in as co-director. See Steed (1924, vol. 2).

300

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

this claim is certainly inflated. Under Lord Northcliffe Crewe House did link intelligence with propaganda, and the combined talents of Seton and Steed may well have played a role in weakening the morale of Habsburg troops. But the attempts by Seton and Steed to force the government to clarify its war aims were less forthcoming. The problem here came less from differences over these aims,13 than over the means by which they should be achieved, for what Seton and Steed demanded the government make was an open call for the break-up of Austro-Hungary and a public statement of support for the creation of independent Yugoslav and Czechoslovak states. This, of course, was impossible, and it is a sign of Lloyd George’s refusal to have his hand forced by Seton and Steed that Crewe House was closed in November 1918. Northcliffe’s men were cut off from any direct role in the formulation of a peace policy; not a single member of Crewe House was invited to join the official British delegation to the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. The reasons why Seton was always kept at an arm’s length of power are obvious. Although Seton showed a rare sensitivity to the complexities of nationalist politics within Austro-Hungary, his passionately idealistic commitment to bringing justice to the oppressed nations of the Habsburg Empire prevented him from recognizing the practical difficulties that limited the freedom of Allied governments to act in this area. The important question, however, is not why Seton failed to influence power, but why he was so fervently committed to freeing the subject peoples of Central Europe in the first place. The answer, I would suggest, lies in Seton’s understanding of his vocation as an historian. As for many other historians in the early twentiethcentury, this understanding, whilst perhaps more methodologically aware and scientifically based than that of a generation before, remained both profoundly moral and public in focus.14 In the open-

13 In early 1918 there were signs that the British government, frustrated in its attempts to detach Austria from Germany, was moving towards a policy of support for the oppressed nationalities of the Habsburg Empire. See Seton-Watson and Seton-Watson (1981, 277–280). 14 For a succinct discussion of the ambiguity of early twentieth-century conceptions of the historical vocation see Collini (1991, 116–222). In the case of Seton, the ambiguity of a vocation that lay somewhere between the professional scholar and the public moralist is nicely captured by the two figures that influenced his historical writing: Leopold von Ranke and Herbert A.L. Fisher.

the great war and modern scholarship

301

ing edition of New Europe Seton underlined the obligation academics had, ‘to help towards the formation of a sane and well-informed body of public opinion upon all subjects affecting the future of Europe’. Seton’s vision of the future of Europe—‘permanent peace’, ‘the reduction of armaments’, ‘the fulfilment of solemn pledges assumed by statesmen towards our smaller allies’, ‘the vindication of national rights and public law’—was unambiguously ethical.15 It was also increasingly at odds with the realities of twentieth-century politics, and the degree to which such high-minded idealism prevented academics from exercising any real influence on government policy can be seen particularly well in the example of Ernest Denis. Ernest Denis’s political career was no more successful than that of Seton, although at first sight there were grounds on which it might have been. For one, the French government appeared more sympathetic to the plight of small nations, and also more willing to act on their behalf, as was seen—to the embarrassment of Seton—in the case of the Serbian refugee crisis. Moreover, Denis was in a better position to influence policy, for where Seton was an independent academic whose scientific credibility was marred in the eyes of many by his journalistic activities, Denis was a respected member of the University of Paris and a recognized authority on both Slavonic history and modern Germany.16 It was on this authority that Denis was invited in February 1917 to join the newly formed Comité d’études, a body largely composed of academics that had been created by Raymond Poincaré and Aristide Briand with the purpose of formulating a plan for post-war Europe.17 Despite these advantages, however, Denis’s attempts to shape political policy, both at home and abroad, met repeatedly with failure. After the outbreak of war Denis, too old at 65 to fight at the front, voluntarily engaged his intellectual might at home. Throughout

15

New Europe, 1, 19 October 1916. As well as a series of three works on Germany (L’Allemagne de 1789 à 1810; L’Allemagne de 1810 à 1851; La Fondation de l’Empire allemand ), Denis had published the (in Seton view) ‘classical history of Bohemia’ (La Fin de l’indépendance bohême and La Bohême depuis la Montagne blanche). On Denis’s academic career see Mares (1995). 17 There have been a number of works on the Comité. The most recent study, which draws on the other main works, is Dumoulin (2003). Twelve of the sixteen members were academics, and nine of the twelve historians. They included Alphone Aulard, Émile Haumant, Camille Jullian, Ernest Lavisse, Christian Pfister and Charles Seignobos. 16

302

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

1914–1918 he waged with tireless energy two, related, campaigns. The first was against Germany. Though more violent after the outbreak of open hostilities, and more bitter after the death of his son Jacques in action, this was a battle that Denis had been engaged in ever since he had suffered personally the defeat of 1870.18 The second campaign was for the Slavs; and whilst here there is again continuity with his activities before the war, after 1914 Denis’s interest in the Slavonic peoples of Europe became more intense, more organized and also more focused. Though Denis still spoke out in sympathy for all the national subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in 1916 published a bold defence of La Grande Serbie, as the war progressed Denis became increasingly closely engaged in the cause of Czech nationalism. In early 1915 he founded and took up the directorship of the review La nation tchèque. In May 1915, on the 500th anniversary of the martyrdom of Hus,19 Denis orchestrated a huge demonstration in Geneva where, to an audience of over 1,200 people, Thomas Masaryk pleaded publicly for the first time for the creation of a Czechoslovak state. Already a friend of Masaryk, Denis became a close ally of Eduard Bene“ when the latter took up exile in Paris in September 1915, and at the end of that year Denis even touched up the Czechoslovak declaration of independence. At around this time Denis also began to press the Sorbonne to give its patronage to a series of conferences on Slavonic politics. The University accepted, and for the winter terms of 1916 and 1917 the vast Richelieu amphitheatre was a site for public learning and debate on the problems of the Slavonic world. These conferences formed the embryo of the Institut d’études slaves, which was opened after the war, in a house adjoined to Denis’s own.

18 Denis’s best-known anti-German tract was Qui a voulu la guerre? (1915). The text was written with Émile Durkhiem and published under the aegis of the Commission des études et documents sur la guerre, of which both authors were members. In 1870 Denis had engaged voluntarily to defend the French capital from Prussian toops, and after the defeat he felt, like many young republicans in 1970, both shame and a desire to rebuild French power. On the role of Germanistes during the war, and the importance of the defeat of 1870 to French historical perceptions of Germany, see Michell (1967). 19 A date that Seton also used for political effect: he organized a lecture at King’s, a public meeting at Aeolian Hall, and collected the signature of about 30 prominent Oxford Dons for a letter to The Times expressing sympathy ‘from the Land of Wycliffe to the land of Hus’. Jan Hus was Czech reformer, greatly influenced by Wycliffe.

the great war and modern scholarship

303

Denis’s support for the Czechoslovak nation can in part be explained by his anti-Germanism,20 but it also had a more positive, and more mystical, source. Denis believed in the spiritual unity between the Slavs and the French. Since his thesis on Hus, Denis—a Protestant and a Republican—had been interested in tracing the great movement of liberation that linked the Reformation with the Revolution. In the context of war Denis came to believe ever more fervently that the future of Europe lay in the solidarity between these two heroic peoples of liberty.21 In the long-term Denis’s activities gained him praise. Denis was welcomed as a hero when he visited Prague for the last time in 1921, just before he died. A few months later, in his obituarial address to the Sorbonne, the Dean of the Faculté des Lettres praised ‘this saint of the Czech nation—he belonged to this superior category of men whose thought became action’.22 However, in the short term—during the war—Denis’s activities were less well appreciated. In the eyes of many Czech nationalists, Denis’s belief in the solidarity of the Slav peoples corresponded ill with their territorial ambitions, and within a year Denis was forced to withdraw from La nation tchèque that he had inspired.23 More seriously perhaps, in the eyes of his contemporaries in France, Denis’s passionate public campaigns had undermined his reputation as a scholar. The intellectual discredit into which Denis had fallen by the end of the war is well illustrated by the marginal position he held within the Comité d’études, for although Denis was the main expert within the group on Slavonic history and politics, his opinions were kept forcibly out of any question relating to the future of Eastern Europe. But what is particularly interesting here, is not Denis’s

20 For example, Denis used his preface to his history of the Slovaks—La Question d’Autriche: les Slovaques (1917)—to institute a long attack on the atavistic defaults of the German people. 21 This mystical dimension to Denis’s interest in the Slavs is brought out in Eisenmann’s obituary, Eisenmann (1921). 22 Ferdinand Brunot in the annual bulletin of the Académie de Paris. Archives Nationales, Paris (AN) AJ/16/2640, 180. 23 Eisenmann (1921), 140. This was not the only occasion when Denis found his ideals betrayed by political reality. In the autumn of 1917, high on the hope that a new democracy was being born in the East, Denis launched Le Monde slave. The review was to be the voice of the great Slav federation that would rise up from the defeat of German imperialism. It collapsed when Russia signed a separate peace.

304

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

personal failure, but the extent to which his political career during the war was representative of so many other historians—including Denis’s critics within the Comité d’études. As Olivier Dumoulin has shown, the understanding historians had of their scholarly vocation clashed openly with the French government’s ideas on the role that the Comité d’études should play.24 As with the Intelligence Bureau in England, the Comité was to supply information not policy. The members of the Comité had been assembled for their scientific expertise, not for their political opinions, or their moral convictions, and still less for their skills—that many of them had shown—at popularizing their historical knowledge. This role was unacceptable to many historians for whom the scientific content of their work was inseparable from its public and moral value. Denis was arguing an extreme point of view when he said that there was no such thing as objective history, and that the importance of an historical work lay in the moral rigor of the author and in his capacity to sense the essential purpose behind human existence.25 Denis was however typical of most historians in his refusal to abandon the more vatic pretensions of his profession, and it was this refusal that undermined the authority of the Comité, as it also prevented Seton and Denis from fully exercising any real political power.

Lessons of War The government demand for intelligence, and the political idealism of certain academics, had an impact not solely on the careers of individual men, but also on the internal structure of university colleges and institutes. This may be seen in a number of domains, but it was perhaps the sector of modern languages that underwent the greatest reform under the pressures of war. Knowledge of modern languages was indispensable to governments at war, but in educational systems still dominated—as both England and France’s were—

24

Dumoulin (2003), 201–216. Denis gives a clear exposition of his ideas on history in the preface to, La Fondation de l’Empire allemand 1852–1871 (1906). To place these ideas within the context of the larger historical community at the time, see Keylor (1975) and Charle (1994a, 125–152). 25

the great war and modern scholarship

305

by Ancient Greek and Latin, such knowledge was difficult to acquire. The response of university men to this language deficit may be studied from various different angles. One is in terms of the intense struggles that resulted between those who attempted to provide more amply for modern language teaching and those who defended the established classical curriculum.26 Another angle—and that which will be adopted here—is to trace the factors that in the end permitted the successful creation of new courses and institutes. What this angle of approach brings into view are the ways in which the demands of war were refracted when they entered the academic context. For during the war scholars translated the need for courses in modern languages into far more ambitious projects. The institutions that appeared after 1914 aimed way beyond the supply of linguistic skill; they represented academic intentions to reconfigure the map of Europe. Before looking to the creation of new courses and departments it is important to draw attention to the extremely difficult conditions within which all institutions of higher education were forced to operate during the war.27 Within a context where most students and many professors had been lost to military service, where funds had been drastically cut, buildings requisitioned, and all expansion formally forbidden by academic authorities, the introduction of a single course in a new subject marked an immense achievement. Moreover, the material impoverishment of universities during the war meant that academics committed to reform became increasingly dependent on private funding. The new chairs in modern languages were in large part financed by foreign government subsidies, and this—as shall be shown below—constrained the freedom of academic action ever further. Finally, the different degrees of material hardship suffered by the universities of Paris and London, and the different rates of mobilization within the two allied nations, meant that whilst academics in London did manage to realize some of their ambitions during the war, in Paris the creation of new courses and faculties took place in the main after 1918.

26 On the so-called ‘quarrel of the ancients and the moderns’, see Stray (1998) and Hanna (1996, 26–49). 27 On this see Fordham and Beaupré, Demm (forthcoming).

306

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

King’s College, London During the war King’s College established four new departments in (following the chronological order of their creation) Slavonic studies, Spanish, Portuguese, and Modern Greek. One impetus behind this expansion was the need for language expertise. Language training was demanded from many quarters, from the commercial to the military, and the weight of these demands fell on King’s, both because the college was in London, and because before the war it had been one of the first institutes of higher education to introduce permanent lectureships in modern languages. But the development of language teaching at King’s went much further than the needs of army officers or businessmen required. The new language departments did not simply provide rudimentary courses on how to speak Spanish or Russian; they offered lectures on the literature, history and psychology of the Spanish and Russian peoples. In order to explain why such a broad syllabus was introduced, it is necessary to look beyond the demands of war to the academic context within which these demands were received. Particularly important here was the Principal of the college, Ronald Burrows, a driving force in the creation of all four of the new departments. Seton provides a nice introduction to Burrows’ ambitions as principal of King’s: ‘he was eager that the Universities should take the lead in providing a new atmosphere of knowledge, sound learning and friendly intercourse among the nations’.28 What Burrows set out to achieve at King’s was an international atmosphere for study that would resolve the ruinous flaw in English education—its insularity. Burrows’ commitment to internationalism did have a scientific justification: university teaching on modern European—not to mention world—languages, literature and history was drastically inadequate. His commitment was also based on firm political and moral beliefs. Burrows was convinced that the only way to remove the injustices which in his mind were the root cause of war was through greater knowledge and understanding. He considered that it was his obligation as Principal of King’s to create an elite of internationally

28 R.W. Seton-Watson, ‘Ronald Burrows’, New Europe, 20 May 1920. Seton had been a friend of Burrows since before the war, and from 1915 collaborated with Burrows in the creation of the School of Slavonic Studies. See Glasgow (1924).

the great war and modern scholarship

307

minded men that would be able to guide English policy in a crusade for international justice.29 These views were quite common within London’s academic community. Not all scholars would have agreed with the strong Christian and socialist principles that lay behind Burrows’ devotion to international understanding, but many did share his belief that academics had a responsibility to use their knowledge to improve the relationship between nations. Before the war this belief was manifest in such bodies as the East-West Society at King’s and the AngloHellenic League, and in more formal academic gatherings like the Imperial Studies Committee.30 After 1914, whilst many academics did turn their attentions homewards, for others concerns about the need for international support and understanding became even more pressing. The number of lectures devoted by London colleges to the wider European and Imperial dimensions of the war bear testimony to this, as do the expansion of foreign societies, and the extraordinary success of a review like Seton’s New Europe, which stood at the avant-garde of most of the above initiatives.31 In wartime London there were a growing number of scholars with an interest in stimulating a broader public understanding of international affairs. As well as Burrows’ idealism, and the general groundswell of internationalism, there were three other factors that helped Burrows in his plans for academic expansion. The first was his personal qualities. Enthusiastic, sincere and tireless in well-doing, Burrows was, on the accounts of all who met him, an extremely likeable man.32 Second, and in part because of these qualities, Burrows had friends in high places. With regards to the creation of the School of Slavonic Studies, for instance, Burrows not only secured official approbation and a small financial contribution from the government towards the School’s

29 On his belief in the ‘vital connection between the Universities and the great public Services’ see Burrows’s letter to Lord Milner of 27 May 1918. King’s College London College Archives, KAP/BUR, File 132. 30 Founded just two months before the war, the Committee played an active role in organizing public lectures in London. It was during the first lecture series, on ‘The Spirit of Allied Nations’, that Seton and Burrows began to discuss the possibility of founding a School in Slavonic Studies. After the war the Committee was able to found, thanks to a donation by the Rhodes Trust, a permanent university chair in Imperial History. 31 Cf. Passerini (1999, 53–54). 32 Glasgow (1924).

308

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

establishment, he also persuaded the Prime Minister, Asquith, to chair the Inaugural Lecture. Finally, and again in large part because of his amiability, Burrows had extensive contacts with London’s émigré community. Hearnshaw remembers that during the war Burrows’ drawing room was open to ‘a vast multitude from every nation, kindred, people and tongue’.33 Burrows was particularly sympathetic to the Greeks and the Serbs, and it was his close friendship with political exiles from both countries that enabled him to raise the funds necessary for the foundation of the lectureships in Modern Greek and Slavonic studies. However, as Hearnshaw also points out, foreign government grants carried grave disadvantages, and the very connections that permitted Burrows to create the new departments also threatened their existence. The crisis of the Koreas Chair in Modern Greek has already been studied in detail,34 but the conflicts that lay behind the creation of the School of Slavonic Studies still need to be explored. On the one hand, the foundation of the School was an immense achievement. Together Seton and Burrows had founded the first serious scientific base for Slavonic studies in Britain. Within a year of opening the School could boast lecturers in Serbian (Serge Tu‘iÆ), Russian (Michael Trofimov), Slavonic Literature and Sociology (Thomas Masaryk),35 and East European History (Seton), as well as the rudiments of a permanent post in Polish studies. The School could also claim a high political profile. After Masaryk’s widely publicized Inaugural Lecture on ‘The Problem of Small Nations in the European Crisis’ King’s College was marked out as a powerhouse of academic propaganda in favour of national self-determination for the peoples of Eastern Europe. It also became one of the headquarters for Czech and Southern Slav exiles. In these achievements, however, lay not only the strengths of the School, but also its weaknesses. The new lectureships stood on a fragile financial footing. Funding for the Russian chair came to an end with the Revolution,36 while quarrels between Polish exile groups

33

Hearnshaw (1979, 465). Clogg (1986). 35 Seton recounts in some detail how he succeeded in interesting Masaryk in the scheme, Seton-Watson (1943). 36 The chair was re-founded after the war by the London County Council and occupied by Bernard Pares. 34

the great war and modern scholarship

309

and difficulties in obtaining financial support from Polish sources in Russia, meant that Polish studies had no stable source of income after the war. The only solid financial commitment came from Serbia, but it came with two conditions—that the lectureship be used for purely Serbian teaching and that only a Serb could occupy the post— which threatened to transform the broadly based Slavonic School that Seton and Burrows imagined into a seat for Serb nationalism. The generosity of vision that inspired the two founding fathers was also not without problems. Serge Tu‘iÆ, the lecturer in Serbian, was a dramatist, and he had a particular interest in Serb and Bulgarian unity that appealed to Seton and Burrows. However, in 1916 when Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, Seton had to cancel the performance of Tu‘iÆ’s The Liberators. The effect of this moving plea for the fraternal unity between Serb and Bulgar ‘would have been altogether too poignant’.37 So much could also be said of the opening lecture Masaryk had given the preceding October. Masaryk’s passionate appeal to Britain to cast off her insularity and recognize the troubles of the small nations of Europe was poignant to say the least at the very moment when Serbia was abandoned to German troops. The School of Slavonic Studies, created to provide a meeting point for East and West Europe, was beginning to appear as a point of conflict between irreconcilable national interests. It is easy to criticise the naivety of Seton and Burrows’ vision. Their belief that learning would bring understanding, contact, and friendliness, was generous but impossibly simplistic. Moreover, whilst it would be an exaggeration to argue, as Hearnshaw does, that the institutions they created were compromised by the mere fact that they were subsidized by foreign governments, nonetheless the dangers inherent in these arrangements were real, as Seton and Burrows would learn. This said, however, there is a need also to recognize the contribution of these two men, and King’s more generally, to the teaching of foreign languages and history at university level. King’s at least was less insular after the war; and many of the men who had enjoyed the international atmosphere of the college during 1914–1918 would later go on to contribute to the development of foreign studies in Britain. King’s men played a role, for instance, in the creation of the (later Royal) Institute of International Affairs

37

Seton-Watson (1939).

310

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

(Chatham House), and in the foundation of the first university chairs in international relations.38 The Sorbonne The stimulus given by the Great War to modern language teaching was felt later in Paris. In October 1914 the University Council took the decision not to make any changes to the organization of the Faculté des Lettres whilst hostilities continued, and although there was talk in the Council after that date about the need to introduce new courses in foreign languages, only minor readjustments were made before 1918. It was in the first academic year of peace that reconstruction really began apace, with chairs founded in Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian studies and Russian, and plans introduced for courses in Portuguese and a lectureship in Modern Greek. However, what shall be looked at here are not these major post-war developments, which in many respects speak for themselves, but two of the minor changes that took place during the conflict. Although small, these changes shed interesting new light on the nature of academic nationalism, and internationalism, in wartime Paris. In October 1915 Louis Liard, rector of the Sorbonne, put before the Council his plans to close the University course in Hungarian.39 The logic behind the plan for closure, and the debate that ensued, is not quite what may be expected, for the motivating factor behind Liard’s suggestion was not political but financial, and the actual political opinions that came to be voiced in the affair did not express academic nationalism so much as concerns on how to manage the international profile of the Sorbonne in the context of national strife. The decision to end Hungarian courses was sparked by the Hungarian government’s decision to withdraw its subvention, and with it the principal means of paying Louis Eisenmann40 who had taught the 38 The first chair was created in Aberystwyth in April 1919. It was occupied by Alfred Zimmern who before the war had been a fellow of Oxford and the LSE, and a member of the Imperial Studies Committee, and who during the war, whilst working in various government ministries, had been an ardent supporter of Seton and New Europe. Zimmern later moved on to be the first Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford. 39 The question of Hungarian was debated in two consecutive Council meetings, 25 October and 11 December 1915. AN, AJ/16/2589, p. 431 and pp. 456–458. 40 Mobilized in the political services of the GQG with the job of analysing AustroHungarian newspapers, Eisenmann was supported by an officer’s salary. In 1914

the great war and modern scholarship

311

subject for the last two years. Arguing that in the current financial crisis the University could not alone support Eisenmann, the Council resolved that the teaching of Hungarian would have to be stopped until the end of the war, when the question would be reviewed again. However, the willingness of Eisenmann to continue teaching without pay moved the debate away from questions of finance to politics. Here, the university was cautious but not conservative, and whilst a couple of academics supported Paul Appell in his warning that public opinion would not tolerate the teaching of an enemy language, the majority of the Council seemed to agree with Lanson, Lavisse and Durkheim when they argued that the role of the university was not to follow public opinion but to guide it, and that in the context of world war what was required was not a closure towards other nations but an increased understanding of their language and history. Men like Eisenmann, they went on, who had travelled abroad, learnt a new language and returned home to spread their knowledge to others, should be encouraged. After all, Lavisse added, ‘Germany sent professors abroad in their hundreds, with one sole aim: German hegemony’—why should not France do the same?41 It was ruled that the course in Hungarian would be maintained. The second development regards Ernest Denis’s successful attempt to coordinate a series of conferences on Slavonic politics and religion. Michel Espagne has argued that this initiative should be interpreted as a defensive struggle against German intellectual and political imperialism.42 This argument is important, but it alone cannot account for Denis’s desire to establish Slavonic studies at the Sorbonne during the war. This is in part because, as we have seen, Denis’s sympathy for the Slavs cannot be reduced to a hatred for Germans. But this is also because: first, in 1916, when Denis petitioned the University Council to host the conferences, his concern was not with Germany

Eisenmann’s field of speciality was Hungarian, but his experience at the end of the war (he was political advisor to the military mission of General Pellé), the new political situation in Central Europe, and the teaching possibilities opened up by the foundation of new institutes (the Institut d’Études slaves in Paris, and the Institut français Ernest Denis in Prague) gradually led him towards Slavonic and in particular Czech studies. See Legras (1937). 41 AN, AJ/16/2589, 11 December 1915, p. 456. 42 Espagne (1993). Indeed, according to Espagne every chair in foreign literature created in France during the 19th and early 20th centuries should be interpreted in light of Franco-German antagonism.

312

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

but England—as Denis warned the Council, ‘a few months ago a School opened at the University of London. It could seriously challenge France’s traditional influence in the Slavonic world’;43 and second, because Denis did not want simply to defend French influence abroad, he wanted, like Lavisse, to assure its hegemony. The imperial ambition that these two examples suggest can be seen more clearly in the foreign policy of the Sorbonne. The latter also reveals a number differences between French and English approaches to international affairs, differences that relate not only to quarrels over intellectual influence, but also to contrasts in national styles of academic politics.

Foreign Policy It is a common assumption that the Great War fractured the international academic community from top to bottom and that after 1914 the relations that had been built up so carefully since the late nineteenth century were irreparably broken.44 This argument needs to be nuanced in two ways. For one, the extent to which international ties were broken varied geographically. If German academics were plunged into virtual isolation after 1914, and if the ‘Manifesto of the 93’ would severely undermine the international standing of German scholarship for decades to come,45 this experience was not shared by academics from allied countries. For both England and France the loosening of ties with Germany brought other international relations into prominence, and the overall impression for the war years is not that academics of the two countries were cut off from the wider world of scholarship but rather that they opened up to an unprecedented degree both to each other and to the scholars of foreign nations. Secondly, this pattern of international relations had already begun to take shape well before 1914. Doubts about the scientific value of German scholarship, and interests in strengthening the international appeal of indigenous academic traditions,

43

AN, AJ/16/2589, p. 473. Minutes of the University Council, 7 February 1916. Cf. Prochasson and Rasmussen (1996, 186). 45 The most catastrophic reading of the impact of the war on German scholarship is given by Ringer (1969). For a more subtle account see Schroeder-Gudehus (1978). 44

the great war and modern scholarship

313

were beginning to be formulated in England and France from the late nineteenth century. The self-consciously imperial character of the new colleges of London University, and the rapid expansion of exchange programs between the Sorbonne and foreign universities in the pre-war decades, may be taken as two signs of the increasing importance accorded by French and English academics to international prestige.46 The impact of war on the international community appears less one of rupture, therefore, than of the strengthening of trends already apparent. The Conquest of America The most striking development in Sorbonne foreign policy during the war was the expansion of ties with America. From the first meeting of the University Council after the outbreak of hostilities the importance of strengthening relations between the universities of France and the US was underlined. For 1914–1918 Council records refer more to French ties with America than to any other subject. Exchange programs, lecture tours, new institutes, visiting students: they are all reported, commented upon, and—the hope of the Council—improved. After 1914 a whole host of new private bodies were also created with the express purpose of facilitating the rapprochement between French and American universities.47 Certainly, one objective of this was to win over American support for the French war effort. The first public declaration of the Sorbonne— ‘Les universités françaises aux universités des pays neutres’—was an attempt to convince academics from neutral nations of the justice of the allied cause, and throughout the war the Council cited almost ritualistically in its meetings the declarations of sympathy that it had received from Italy, Greece, Romania, Ireland and America.48 However, the 46 The importance of the imperial dimension to London University remains to be studied. The exceptionally pro-active foreign policy of the Université de Paris has been looked at in detail by Charle (1994b, 343–395). Charle insists—perhaps a little too strongly—that, ‘toutes ces relations nouées à la veille du premier conflit mondial se comprennent en fonction de la rivalité franco-allemande’. Ibid. 349. 47 They included the Office national des universités et écoles françaises à l’étranger, the Cercle international des étudiantes des nations alliées et amies de la France, the review La vie universitaire, and the Agence d’informations universitaires to which the latter review gave voice. 48 The manifesto was issued in response to the ‘Manifesto of the 93’ at the end of October 1914.

314

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

foreign policy of the Sorbonne went far beyond the needs of simple propaganda. What the grand overtures towards America and other neutral nations represent is a positive and increasingly aggressive program to capitalize on the discredit brought to German scholarship by the ‘Manifesto of the 93’ and to strengthen the position of French universities abroad. In this the Sorbonne both continued and significantly extended pre-war strategies of academic imperialism. This imperialism can be illustrated in many ways, but a particularly telling example are the initiatives set afoot, under the direction of Émile Durkheim, to attract American students to the Sorbonne. Parisian academics agreed that the surest way to secure American interest in France was through the young minds she sent to study there, and in March 1916, on suggestions made by Gilbert Chinard,49 the University Council appointed Durkheim to head a Commission to look into the needs of young Americans.50 Two months later Durkheim came back with a detailed report on the measures that the Sorbonne should adopt to attract American students and to ensure that their stay in France was impressive. Several of his broad ranging suggestions were put into practice. In 1918, for instance, a dozen leading Parisian scholars published an impressive volume introducing La Vie universitaire à Paris to an American audience.51 By that date many attempts had been made to make this life more attractive to foreigners. Courses in French had been introduced to facilitate the progress of Americans within the Sorbonne, and contacts made with home universities to secure that the courses followed there would count towards examinations on their return. Steps had been taken to improve the material and social conditions of student life, such as food and lodgings— student restaurants and the Cité universitaire, for example, have their origins in attempts to provide for American students in Paris. At the end of the war some French professors were still complaining that Parisian faculties were ‘cramped, rigid, airless’, that student life was ‘narrow, closed, unhealthy’, and that there was a drastic lack of sports and cultural centres in the capital.52 Many of these criticisms 49 Chinard was director at the time of the French Department at the University of San Francisco. Chinard was the pioneer and doyen of American studies in France. 50 AN AJ/16/2590, 6 March, 29 May and 30 October 1916. 51 Authors included Maurice Caullery, Alfred and Maurice Croiset, Durkheim, Larnaude and Lavisse. 52 Celestin Bouglé in the Revue de Paris, cited in the Revue universitaire, February 1919, p. 153.

the great war and modern scholarship

315

were doubtless true. But conditions had improved, and at least some of the two thousand or so American students inscribed at the Sorbonne at the end of the war may have returned home with a positive impression of university life in Paris.53 The results of Durkheim’s work, as well as of other initiatives to stimulate relations between the Sorbonne and American universities, were far reaching. Laying aside the question of whether they may have had an impact on the political relations between the two countries—though given the esteem in which Wilson (a university man himself ) held French thought, and given the fact that it was a philosopher (Henri Bergson) who was chosen by the French government to present Allied war aims before the President, there are grounds to believe that this impact was not negligible54—these initiatives had a visible impact on the University of Paris itself. Not only did the number of foreign students and professors coming to study and teach at the Sorbonne increase dramatically, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the war, but the actual character of the institution was also subtly changed. The creation in 1918 of the first chair in American Literature and Civilization was an important landmark. It showed that French academics were—finally—beginning to take American culture seriously. It also presented a sign of the larger intellectual appreciation that French academics had by the end of the war developed of foreign academic cultures. Prochasson and Rasmussen have argued that French scholars that travelled abroad were less defensively nationalistic than those who remained in France.55 It is possible to go even further, and suggest that of the increasing numbers of French academics that travelled abroad during the war many returned with the active intention of creating a more international atmosphere at home. It is telling that two of the major attempts to organize international gatherings during the war—Antoine Meillet’s plans for an organization of academics from allied nations, and the project launched by Maurice Caullery for a ‘déjeuner de guerre’ where French and foreign professors in Paris could meet and

53

The massive presence of American ex-servicemen in Paris at the end of the war was also the result of policies undertaken by American authorities concerned by the lack of support amongst troops for their French ally. See Keene (2001, 105–131). 54 On why Bergson, who had lectured in America before the war, was chosen for the task, see Soulez (1988). 55 Prochasson and Rasmussen (1996, 213).

316

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

get to know each other56—were led by academics who had visited America and had been inspired by their experience there. It is important, whilst recognizing this new generosity of spirit, not to forget that openness in one direction often brought closure in another. Indeed the former was often dependent on the latter. At the same time as the Academic Council ruled, in October 1914, that publications and theses from the University of Paris were no longer to be sent to German universities, it was also declared that spare copies could now be forwarded to universities in Belgium, England, America and Russia. Money saved on buying German books for the faculties of the Sorbonne was now spent on furnishing libraries in American literature. The places opened for American and English scholars at French conferences and society meetings were those that before the war had been occupied by German academics. Still, what remains nonetheless true is that during 1914–1918 Parisian academics had far broader interests than vilifying their peers across the Rhine. The overtures made towards America were also made, on a smaller scale, to other neutral nations. During the war the Sorbonne paid special courtship to academics in the Latin counties of Southern Europe and in the nascent states of the East, and where possible more formal signs of friendship were created.57 Taken together what these actions suggest is that for at least an important section of the Parisian academic community the war provided the occasion for an ambitious program of intellectual expansion.

Entente Cordiale? The relations that the Sorbonne entertained with English universities during the war marked more of a departure from pre-war habits.

56 On Meillet’s plan see Guy-Loë (1996), 517–518. On Caullery, see: AN AJ/16/2590, 57, 30 October 1916; and H. Hauvette, ‘Appel aux intellectuels. Un projet de cercle à Paris’, Revue bleue, 12–19 May 1917. Caullery was inspired by more than American sociability during his stay at Harvard in 1916. On his return to Paris Caullery also engaged in a campaign for greater funding for scientific research, which eventually ended in the creation of the CNRS and other scientific foundations and institutes. He was accompanied in this by Émile Borel and Jean Perrin, who before 1914 had also visited America. See Telkes (1993, 159–192); and Charle (1994b, 362). 57 Institutes were founded in Prague (1921), Sofia (1922) and Warsaw (1925).

the great war and modern scholarship

317

These relations were also more problematic. Before the war French academics had shown an increasing interest in English education, but while a number of examples may be given of individual French scholars who had close links with England—Élie Halévy being the most obvious—the were no formal ties between Paris and English universities. The war did, to a degree, improve this situation. During the war allied academics exchanged gestures of friendship and support. At the height of the German offensive of autumn 1914 the Provost of UCL, Gregory Forster, offered the hospitality of his college to 60 Parisian students and professors.58 In the spring of 1916 sixteen French professors arrived in England with the aim of strengthening bonds of friendship between allied academics, and on many accounts their visit met with success: ‘the welcome given to our professors has left a deep impression [. . .] one could feel a truly fraternal sympathy, expressed through just the right words, the subtlest attentions, and touching guestures’.59 Many other signs of fraternal sympathy could be given, but what are more difficult to find are examples of intellectual sympathy between French and British academics. There were a couple of somewhat isolated and utopian suggestions on how to strengthen relations between France and England, such as that by the Garton Foundation to equalize degrees and diplomas in the two countries.60 However, there were few practical possibilities for intellectual cooperation, and those that did exist had a tendency to deteriorate into outright competition. This has already been seen with regards to Eastern Europe, where a potential situation for allied collaboration resulted instead in the creation of two rival institutes of Slavonic studies. The same is also evident in the controversy that surrounded the foundation in 1919 of the Marshal Foch Chair of French Literature at Oxford. According to the terms of Sir Basil Zaharoff’s generous endowment the new post was to be occupied by a French man, and the Faculté des Lettres paid considerable attention to finding the right

During the war considerable attempts were made to keep the French Institutes running in Florence and Madrid. 58 AN, AJ/16/2589, 26 October 1914. 59 M. Joubin, rector of the Academy of Lyon, cited in A. Balz, ‘Une misssion française dans le Royaume-Uni’, Revue universitaire, July 1916, 158. 60 The Garton Foundation had been set up before the war to promote the ideas of Norman Angell and during the war spearheaded a number of attempts to makes educational relations between France and England more intimate.

318

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

person to occupy such a potentially influential chair.61 Indeed, the French government even intervened to press on the selectors a candidate of suitably politically correct views to represent French culture in one of England’s most prestigious seats of learning.62 Oxford, however, had other ideas. The University vetoed all eight of the French candidates on the grounds that they were ‘unsuitable’ for the post, and against the conditions of endowment elected to the Chair a fellow of the University of London. Whatever commitment Oxford may have made at the end of the war to the study of the cultures of allied nations, this study was going to be carried out by an English scholar in an English way. Competition for influence was one hindrance to French and English academic relations. Another was the different conception French and English academics had of the role they could—or should—play in international affairs. The type of aggressive petitioning in which the University of Paris engaged in the run up to the election for the Foch Chair was uncommon in England, even during the war. After 1914 English universities did become increasingly proactive internationally. More academics did travel abroad, in particular to America, and greater attempts were made to attract foreign students to England. The introduction of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1917 may be understood in part as an attempt to attract foreign students to England (rather than to Germany). However, the whole set of programs, societies and reviews that the University of Paris sponsored or created with a view to strengthening its international ties cannot be seen in any English university, not even London. One explanation for this absence may well lie in the confidence that foreign students and professors would come to London anyway. From its origins as an examining institution London University had set the standards for higher education across the Empire, and as it developed into a site of learning its constituent colleges easily attracted foreign students to their low-cost professionally-orientated courses. Moreover,

61 See Lanson’s report to the Academic Council, 1 December, 341–343. Lanson had been sent to Oxford during the election ‘to defend the dignity of the University of Paris’. Sir Basil was an enormously wealthy arms magnate who had already contributed to funding the Koreas Chair and the Chair of Aviation at Imperial College London. 62 See the letter of Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the Minister of Public Instruction, 5 October 1919. AN, AJ/16/2560, 343.

the great war and modern scholarship

319

for Americans at least, education in England was easier, not only for language reasons, but also because they found there a similar culture of student sociability. But there is a further reason for the absence of such an aggressive foreign policy within English universities during the war, and it relates to the understanding that English academics had of their public role. What links French and English academics—and perhaps separates them from their counterparts in Germany—is their deep sense of the responsibilities they have to guide public opinion. What is unique to French academics is the belief that in some way this public intellectual action supplants the political power of the state. English academics did not entertain such a conceit. This does not mean that they did not consider education to have a political role—as has been shown, English academics saw in teaching a powerful tool for social and political reform. Rather, it is that English academics did not think that this tool excluded the need for others. French academics however—maybe because other political forces held less respect, maybe because republican ideology placed such a heavy emphasis on education—seemed to conceive their political role, both nationally and internationally, not only as important, but as determinant of the future of France.

Conclusion The conclusions of this essay are limited by the aim adopted at the start. That aim was to explore unstudied features of academic wartime culture from the perspective of their modernity. It was not to give a comprehensive account of academic life and thought during 1914–18, and therefore certain fundamental dimensions of academic activity— such as propaganda and the question of conservatism—have been left out from the analysis. This essay is also limited by its geographical focus. For whilst the themes developed here are important for understanding the experience of academics in Paris and London, they would be less helpful for getting to grips with the dynamics of academic life in Oxbridge or Berlin. The examples given in this essay require more sustained investigation. They also need to be enlarged. The rather pessimistic picture given of academic relations to power, for instance, needs to be balanced by a discussion of the success that certain social scientists— such as those associated with the Webbs and the London School of

320

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

Economics, or with Albert Thomas and the École normale supérieure— enjoyed in their cooperation with government offices. With regards to the changes that the war brought to the internal structure of universities, no study would be complete without an investigation of the developments that took place in the field of science and technology. This in turn would require an explanation of the different ways in which academics in the humanities and the sciences understood their scholarly vocation, and of the different meanings of modernity within different fields of expertise. More generally, in order to accurately assess the relationship between war and university reform, a larger chronological framework would be required, taking into account the pre-war reform movements within which many academics active during the war first formulated their educational ambitions, and the question of how these ambitions survived not just the war itself but also its consequences, and in particular the intellectual pessimism that was one of the defining features of post-war culture. However, whatever the limitations of this essay, at least one conclusion may be drawn with confidence. The war encouraged the growth of an international consciousness within the academic community. This growth may only have affected a minority, and historians are probably right when they argue that generally the war encouraged a mood of retreat, a return to ‘English’ themes of home and privacy, or to ‘French’ themes of mesure, harmony and culture générale.63 However, alongside this general reaction there remained some academics committed to expanding the cultural horizons of their nation. These academics were driven in their work by values of civic responsibility and moral duty that in the 21st century may seem conservative. They were also motivated by concerns of national prestige and international influence that place their thought closer to colonialism than to the discourses of cooperation and integration of today. But the vision these academics had of the world was broad and inclusive and that, for their time, and in the context of war, was modern.

63 Cf. Stapelton (2000) and Winter (1996). On France see the conclusion to Hanna (1996, 209–242).

the great war and modern scholarship

321

Bibliography Clogg, R. (1986) Politics and the Academy. Arnold Toynbee and the Koreas Chair (London: 1986). Collini, S. (1991) Public Moralists. Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850–1930 (Oxford: 1991). Charle, C. (1994a) Paris fin de siècle (Paris: 1994). Charle, C. (1994b) La République des universitaires, 1870–1940, (Paris: 1994). Dumoulin, O. (2003) Le Rôle social de l’historien. De la chaire au prétoire (Paris: 2003). Eisenmann, L. (1921) ‘Ernest Denis (1849–1921)’, Revue des études slaves 1, 1921, 140–141. M. Espagne (1993) Le Paradigme de l’étranger. Les chaires de littérature au XIXe siècle, (Paris: 1993). Fordham, E. and Beaupré, N., Demm, E. (forthcoming), ‘Universities’, eds. J. Winter and J.-L. Robert, Capital Cities at War. Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1919, Vol. II. Fussell, P. (1924) The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: 1975). Glasgow, G. Ronald Burrows (1924) A Memoir (London: 1924). Goldstein, E. (1998) ‘The Round Table and the New Europe’, The Round Table 346, 1998, 177–190. Guy-Loë, H. (1996) Élie Halévy: Correspondance (1891–1937) (Paris: 1996). Hanak, H. (1961) ‘The New Europe, 1916–1920’, The Slavonic and East European Review 29, 1961, 369–399. Hanna, M. (1996) The Mobilization of Intellect. French Scholars and Writers during the Great War (Cambridge, Mass.: 1996). Hearnshaw, F.J.C. (1979) A Centenary History of King’s College London (London: 1979). Keene, J.D. (2001) Doughboys: the Great War and the Remaking of America (Baltimore: 2001). Keylor, W.R. (1975) Academy and Community. The Foundation of the French Historical Profession (Cambridge, Mass.: 1975). Legras, J. (1937) ‘Louis Eisenmann et les slaves’, Revue historique, April-June, 1937, 246–248. Mares, A. (1995) ‘Louis Léger et Ernest Denis. Profil de deux bohémisants français au XIXe siècle’, ed. B. Ferencuhova, La France et l’Europe centrale, special edition of Slovanski studii, (Bratislava: 1995), 63–82. Messinger, G.S. (1992) British Propaganda and the State in the First World War (Manchester: 1992). Michell, A. (1967) ‘German History in France after 1870’, Journal of Contemporary History 3, 1967, 81–100. Passerini, L. (1999) Europe in Love, Love in Europe. Imagination and Politics in Britain between the Wars (London: 1999). Prochasson, C. and Rasmussen, A. (1996) Au nom de la patrie. Les intellectuels et la première guerre mondiale (1910–1919), (Paris: 1996). Ringer, F. (1969) The Decline of the German Mandarins (Cambridge, Mass.: 1969). Rothblatt, S. (1997) The Modern University and its Discontents. The Fate of Newman’s Legacy in Britain and America (Cambridge: 1997). Sanders, M.L. and Taylor, P.M. (1982) British Propaganda during the First World War (London: 1982). Schroeder-Gudehus, B. (1978) Les Scientifiques et la paix. La communauté internationale au cours des années 20 (Montreal: 1978). Seton-Watson, H. and Seton-Watson, C. (1981) The Making of a New Europe: R.W. Seton-Watson and the Last Years of Austria-Hungary (London: 1981). Seton-Watson, R.W. (1939) ‘The Origins of the School of Slavonic Studies’, The Slavonic and East European Review, January 1939, pp. 360–371. Seton-Watson, R.W. (1943) Masaryk in England (Cambridge: 1943).

322

chapter ten — elizabeth fordham

Seton-Watson, R.W. (1978) R.W. Seton-Watson i Jugoslaveni: Korospondencija 1906–1941, (Zagreb-London: 1978, 2 vols). Soulez, P. (1988) ‘Les missions de Bergson ou les paradoxes du philosophe véridique et trompeur’, dir. P. Soulez (ed.) Les Philosophes et la Guerre de 14 (Saint-Denis: 1988). Stapleton, J. (2000) ‘Political thought and national identity, 1850–1950’, in S. Collini, B. Young and S. Whatmore, British Intellectual History. History, Religion and Culture, (Cambridge: 2000). Stray, C. (1998) Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830–1960, (Oxford: 1998). Telkes, E. ed. (1993) M. Caullery, un biologiste au quotidien (Lyon: 1993). Wallace, S. (1988) War and the Image of Germany. British Academics 1914–1918, (Edinburgh: 1988). Weiss, G. (1983) The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 1863–1914, (Princeton: 1983). Steed, H.W. (1924) Through Thirty Years (London: 1924, 2 vols). Winter, J. (1996a), ‘Catastrophe and Culture: Recent Trends in the Historiography of the First World War’, Journal of Modern History, September, 1996, 525–532. Winter, J. (1996b) ‘British national identity and the First World War’, S.J.D. Green and R.C. Whiting (eds.) The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain (Cambridge: 1996). Winter, J. (1995) Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: 1995).

CHAPTER ELEVEN

NEW WRITERS, NEW LITERARY GENRES (1914–1918): THE CONTRIBUTION OF HISTORICAL COMPARATISM (FRANCE, GERMANY) Nicolas Beaupré

From the opening of the war and in all the combatant nations, a wave of writing from the front line swept through social cultures.1 During the war, this surge of material written from the experience of warfare itself became part of a much broader movement, which affected all genres—literary2 or otherwise—and very many writers, in uniform or otherwise, came to take the war as the central theme of their material. Legitimised by the experience from which it arose, the literature of soldier-writers3 never became entirely subsumed into the mass of texts produced during the war period. In verse or prose, it had the a priori benefit of authenticity, which made it unique. In the public arena, this literature had a triple function: to bear witness to the reality of war as lived at the front line, to carry on

1 Unpublished article in English. This article is based on a History thesis entitled: Les écrivains combattants français et allemands de la Grande Guerre (1914–1918). Essai d’histoire comparée. History thesis typescript, Paris-X-Nanterre, 2002. A much shorter version appeared in French in the Revue européenne d’histoire sociale, no. 8, 2003. 2 For the theatre, see in particular Baumeister (2004). 3 One of the difficulties in the comparison of cultural history arises in the selection of taxonomy (cf. below). This is all the greater when translation is involved. Thus it would be tempting to translate the French concept of ‘écrivain combattant’ or the German ‘Frontdichter’, both of which were widespread from 1914 onwards in these nations, by the expression ‘war poet’, which is the natural phrase in the English-speaking world. Although for the historian the phrases are equivalent, their cultural connotations make this word-for-word transfer impossible. Author and translator are thus forced into a compromise which is frequently unsatisfactory. In the case of the general situation (in the two nations in question here), of writers who were active combatants, we will use the generic expression—which is in many ways unsatisfactory, particularly when it concerns officers—of ‘soldier-writers’ and we will retain the French and German terms in their original language when we discuss the French or the German in more detailed and specific ways, in order to avoid any confusion.

324

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

the struggle in another way and to interpret and give fresh and immediate meaning to the conflict.4 In its essential immediacy, writing rose to meet the need to leave some personal trace in a war which eliminated humans more than any previous conflict; writing also served to fight back psychologically against the violence experienced, and sustained a link with those at the rear to whom they were closest.5 We will neither look here at the functions of the different types of literature, nor at the literary means utilized to speak of the forms of violence and suffering of war.6 We will also leave aside the much-studied question of the contribution of war literatures to the development of collective memories of the First World War,7 or the ethical role of the ‘witness of war,’8 We will, rather, attempt to question the effects of the war on the literary field, and their social and symbolic repercussions in terms of the legitimation of new kinds of writers and the generation of a—possibly—new literary genre ‘born of the war’. Alongside this fundamental questioning, we will reflect on our approach: does the comparative study of these literary productions in France and in Germany, for example, make it possible to answer a certain number of questions that would be inaccessible without the comparative approach? But even more fundamentally, the comparison of two bodies of work—in this case, the German and the French corpus—in fact makes it possible to examine aspects which could not otherwise have been open to study, such as the existence of networks of soldier writers identified through shared representations within specific social groups as, here, literary circles that transcend national differences. Gaps, silences, the absences of a phenomenon in a specific culture, are thus only revealed by the presence of the phenomenon in another country.9 This contribution is therefore intended to be a reflection on the topic as much as on the method. First, then, we will examine a comparative response to a question posed to the two bodies of work: that of the emergence, or other-

4 On the social and cultural functions of war literature, see Beaupré (2004). In the case of France, see Lindner-Wirsching (2004). 5 Trevisan (2003). 6 See, for example, Loez (2004). 7 Fussell (1975). 8 Winter (2003). 9 On comparative history and its contributions, see Kaelble H. (1999)

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

325

wise, of new types of writer and new literary genres specific to the war, and then the contributions, difficulties and limits of the comparative approach in studies of cultural representations closely linked to national histories, in order, finally, to seek to show the subsequent contribution of comparison in terms of historical questioning. In brief, what questions can be put to one of these two bodies of work on the basis of familiarity with the other? The articulation of these two approaches should make it possible to refine reflection on the emergence of war cultures by questioning the presence of similar practices in literary milieux at war, and of the possible corpus of shared representations (image of the ‘other’, construction of new combatant identities, representations of violence and suffering, etc.) borne by German and French works written by soldier-writers, beyond national differences.10

Preliminary Comparison: ‘Écrivains Combattants’, ‘Frontdichter’ and the Taxonomy of a New Genre In both countries, literary circles were at first disorganised—shaken out of their accustomed habits—by the launch into war. In France, for example, reviews as prestigious as the Nouvelle Revue Française or the Mercure de France disappeared in August 1914. Some, like the NRF, remained silent permanently while others reappeared after a few months. In Germany (and, to a lesser degree, in France)11 the disturbance to literary life in 1914 took on a distinctive aspect: newspapers were overwhelmed by war poems written by combatants or non-combatants. The powerful tradition of Kriegsdichtung, poetry about the war, born in the Napoleonic wars with writers such as Ernst Moritz Arndt or Theodor Körner, was revived to a hitherto unprecedented level. This poetic explosion was so great that the critic Julius Bab defined it as ‘poetic mobilisation’. He and his colleague Carl Busse estimated that more than a million and a half poems were sent to newspapers in the month of August 1914 alone.12 Although this poetic

10 A question also posed, for a subject close to our own—the comparison between the ‘semantics of war’ in Germany and in Great Britain—in Reimann (2000). 11 This aspect was none the less very substantial, for E. Willard (1949) has calculated 2,120 writers who published war poems. 12 Bab (1914–1918), Bab (1920).

326

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

flowering declined later it was disseminated, as in France, through the publication of prose works about the war, and notably through combatants’ narratives and newspapers. Thus the Marquis de Ségur, member of the French Academy, observed: But, at least, we have one consolation in noting that one of the most unexpected results of this war will have been to inspire a galaxy of writers, a galaxy of thinkers who, on the eve of war, did not themselves know that they existed as such, and whom the vast drama has suddenly revealed.13

Comparison of the corpus of German and French texts published between 1914 and 1920 and written with immediacy during the war14 has demonstrated that although poetry held a more substantial position in Germany than in France, as a result of this more established literary tradition, the genre that dominated in both countries remains the war narrative by a writer bearing witness to the war at the front. From September 1915, in fact, the publication of prose works overtook collections of poems in German bookshop catalogues.15 In France, after the war, the critic and war veteran Jean Norton Cru gave these writers the title of ‘witnesses,’ following here a taxonomy which had emerged during the war and notably in series titles from publishers such as that from Berger-Levrault entitled ‘La Guerre—récits des témoins’ (‘The War—eye-witness descriptions’). Yet, during the war, this denomination was far from being established. The inescapable concept for identifying these writers was that of the ‘soldier-writer’, notably following the publication throughout the war of a Bulletin des écrivains de 1914 and the foundation in 1919 of an association of soldier-writers (Association des Écrivains Combattants, AEC). Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Barrès themselves used slight variations on the concept; the former spoke of ‘soldier-literary creators’ (‘littérateurs-soldats’) as early as June 1915 in the Mercure de France, and the latter of ‘soldier-writers’ (‘écrivains soldats’) in 1916.16 In Germany, the Frontdichter, the poet of the front line did not displace totally the concept of Kriegsdichter, the poet who writes on war. 13

Ségur (1916), p. IX. For our thesis (Beaupré, 2002a) we have studied around 600 French and German literary works published between 1914 and 1920 and written, at least in part, during the actual war years. 15 For more details, together with figures and tables on the publications: Beaupré, N. (2002a). 16 Barrès M. (1916), p. 7. 14

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

327

Therefore, we see the appearance of collections, or publishers such as Eugen Diederichs17 who specialised in the publishing poets or writers who had experience of the front. Elsewhere, little by little, the original concept of Kriegsdichter became interchangeable with that of Frontdichter, the phrase also used to designate the poet or writer with experience of the war in the front line. In France as in Germany, the fact that the expressions ‘écrivains’ (writers) or ‘Dichter’ (poets) were used—which could designate both the poet and the prose writer of worth—is a mark of the acceptance during the war of the emergence of a new kind of writer who is not necessarily originally a professional in writing: It left me open-mouthed, dazed, helpless . . . So I had abandoned my own setting, broken all my ties, I thought I was setting out on the unknown ways of a world overthrown and, on the very day of my departure, I had already fallen in with a war writer. In civilian life, he was a tinsmith.18

Legitimation Although in 1929 Roland Dorgelès could, in recall, revive the writing fever and numerous publications of narratives of these new ‘war writers’, during the war the phenomenon was taken seriously, in Germany as well as in France. The écrivain combattant and the Frontdichter, from the fact of their intimate knowledge of the war, responded to public expectations. Poets and prose writers who had direct experience of the front-line war and of its forms of violence became ‘narrative authorities,’19 the producers of representations of the conflict. Their utterances were expected and understood. Their works were legitimized, in the eyes of literary institutions—but also those of the public, civil, and military authorities—more by their presence in the front line than by their intrinsic literary quality. Thus, the publicity for bookshops, which accompanied the publication of Barbusse’s Le

17 The publisher E. Diederichs was a notable discoverer of poetic talent. He published, with the greatest care, the lines of the worker-poets turned combatants Heinrich Lersch, Max Barthel, Karl Bröger, etc. [Beaupré (2002a, 184–186)]. Further, he demonstrated a cultural activism in organising conferences that brought together the finest flower of German intellectual life to debate on war. On this aspect, see Hübinger (1996). 18 Dorgelès (1929), p. 13. 19 Natter (1999).

328

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

Feu, made explicit reference to his experience of fire and to the citations and medals which he had received. A small-scale polemic ensued, but the great literary review Le Mercure de France took up his defense on the basis that: The men at the rear who have spent the war period slackly in their own homes are tempted to blame the procedure, in the name of pure literature. On the contrary, the young writers who have fought with valor, who have suffered, who have endured in the trenches, have admitted as very natural the gesture which extended their glorious memories into their literary work.20

The publishers opened all their great series to the soldiers-writers, even creating series specially for them, such as Hachette with the Mémoires et récits de guerre or Albert Langen or Ullstein with their collections of Kriegsbücher (War Books).21 Some publishers occasionally even went so far as to encourage soldiers to write for them; the writer Karl Rosner, for example, who worked for the great German publisher Cotta, took on a Lieutenant-Colonel, Fritz Immanuel, whom he tried to persuade to write a war book. To this end he issued very precise advice. In October 1914, when the illusion of a short war still held sway, he wrote to Immanuel: We are very anxious to publish a book, after the end of the great German war, which from the starting-point of our political and militaristic determination in the war, would depict, would reveal a history of the war in grand themes, would show the extent to which our military institutions proved themselves in these campaigns, if the praxis of the war brought transformations or made others desirable and, finally, what new forms these transformations might take, so that these newly acquired experiences enable us to ensure the permanent security of the Reich. You know without doubt the work of General von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War.22

The most prestigious literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt in France and the Kleist-Preis in Germany, were regularly awarded to writers with experience of life under fire. Print-runs could be very substantial.

20

Mercure de France, (1917) p. 189. Schneider (1998), Natter (1999). 22 Letter, 15 October 1914, DLA (Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach Am Neckar) A: Cotta interna Rosner. 21

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

329

Le Feu, by Barbusse, exceeded 500,000 copies, Der Wanderer zwischen Beiden Welten (‘The Wanderer between two Worlds’) by Walter Flex published only in 1917 had sold nearly 200,000 copies by 1920. The critics were generally comparatively kinder to the works of soldierwriters. Indeed, in January 1916, in Germany as well as in France, official instructions required the censors to respect the ‘authenticity’ of soldiers’ writing.23 This probably was how Barbusse’s Le Feu escaped without any cuts. The soldier-writers themselves often took care to justify and legitimize their production through the fact that they had known the front and battles, while those at the rear could only argue and reconstruct. Back from the front line and from captivity, Gaston Riou wrote thus, prefacing the collection of poems of a soldier-poet: The terrible war, into which German ambition threw us, will not have turned us into barbarians: each soldier can bear witness to that (. . .) It is remarkable that it is specifically the works written in the line that are the most human and the most accurate (. . .).24

For him, in fact, the literature of war is an implicit proof of civilization. As for the writers at the rear, they introduced the new soldierwriters into the sanctum, and wrote prefaces for them in which they turned the literature of the front line into a separate category. Through the mediating role of writing a preface they therefore helped to legitimize new authors. Charles Le Goffic, for example—successful author of several works more closely related to bourrage de crâne (‘eyewash’) than great literature—wrote as follows in the preface to a collection of soldier-poets’ work: And then, my dear Comrade, your lines breathe confidence, lightheartedness, the joy of sacrifice. This is martial poetry without fanfare, the true poetry of a French soldier.25

Simultaneously with his support for the young poet, Le Goffic made use of him, as also did Gaston Riou, to pass on an ultra-patriotic

23 For Germany, see Natter (1999), p. 58 and for France, Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (BDIC), F 270 rés. CG (Archives de la censure). 24 Riou G. (1918), p. 5. 25 Le Goffic, Charles, preface to Gysin, Adolphe, Les bleus en bleu, Landerneau, Desmoulins, 1915, 32 pp.

330

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

message. Maurice Barrès himself made a specialty of prefaces, according between a few lines and several pages to at least a dozen works by writers who had fought in the war. He it was, for example, who discovered Jacques Péricard, a writer who found fame both during and after the war.26 In Germany, Professor Philipp Witkop, famous for his anthologies of German students’ war letters,27 returned to the general phenomenon of literary production in his preface to his publication of the narrative of a young unknown. Notably, he remarked in the preface: After more than two years of experiences that were dark, inescapable, very few of these lines manage to retain their depth. Where this is achieved, almost all the lines were created there, in the fighting and the trenches.28

Literary criticism also played a major role: the works of the soldierwriters were registered29 and often showered with praise; literary critics in Germany and France reviewed and discussed the phenomenon of the literature of war. Some voices, in France as in Germany, were indeed concerned at the development of this substantial work of literary legitimation based on presence at the front rather than on literary criteria. The critic Walter von Hollander foresaw an ultimate danger for literature: Everywhere, and increasingly, war should step back and art come to the fore, truth should take precedence over pathos. To the point that there no longer exists a literature of war—but the contrary, simply a literature in time of war.30

For Rémy de Gourmont, the king of the Mercure de France, when critics indulged works from the war they were failing in their function: And then, who will dare to judge it, this literature from men who waged war? There will always be a genre missing, that of literary criticism. (. . .) a terrible indulgence will hold sway for a long period, and

26

Jacques Péricard was the author of a miraculous episode which was celebrated at the time in France. Surrounded by Germans in a trench, he is said to have cried out ‘Debout les morts! ’ (‘Dead men, arise!) and they then leapt up and repelled the enemy. Pericard later became the author of several successful war books. On Péricard, see among others Smith (2000). 27 In English see Witkop (2002). 28 Witkop (1917), p. VII. 29 Prochasson (2001). 30 Hollander (1916), p. 1279.

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

331

the bad writers with false courage will be able to take advantage of this indulgence (. . .)31

Twelve days later, this stance did not stop him abandoning his grand principles as an impartial critic to present a dedicated homage in his review to a complete unknown, André Puget, a poet killed in battle who had left no more than a few hand-written pages. This multiform and legitimizing reception was bolstered, in effect, by an immense wave of obituaries offering fulsome praise of writers who had written virtually nothing but who had died in action. The obituaries appeared in the reviews but also became virtually a separate genre together with anthologies of writers killed in action. In 1916 Larousse published a four-volume anthology of French writers killed in the war, which was subsequently used as model for the famous Anthologie des écrivains morts à la guerre, published in the 1920s. Among other publications, Germany produced the Buch der Toten (Book of the Dead) published in 1919 by Wolf Przygode, a collection of expressionist artists and writers who were killed in the war. By turning personal experience, endured or witnessed, into a criterion for legitimation almost independent of artistic merit, literary milieux of the nations at war—Great Britain saw at the same time the emergence of those known as ‘the war poets’—not only shared in the establishment of a new category of writing but also implicitly denied one of its attributes: aesthetic judgment. In return, and alongside these new writers, the historian is faced with the question of the emergence of a new and specific genre relating specifically to the soldier-writers. A New Genre This question was posed notably in terms of aesthetics. At the same time as it engendered new authors, did the Great War bring a renewal in terms of form and artistic style, a specific modernity? Modris Eksteins replies in the affirmative, basing his argument on an analogy between modern warfare and a modernity of forms better adapted to take this modernity into account.32 In an alternative and perhaps more convincing approach, Jay Winter notes that British

31 32

Gourmont (1915), pp. 92–94. Eksteins (1991).

332

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

war poetry was notably founded on a ‘return to the sacred’, a nostalgia and recourse to forms inherited from the previous century.33 Without a direct approach to the much-debated question of ‘modernity’ of forms, it can none the less be noted that despite relevant cultural differences, in the cases of Germany and France we can see the emergence during the war, in the case of prose, of a hybrid literary genre; somewhere between personal narrative and fiction, it blends intimate matters in war conditions (which also served to create a distance from the real) with writing about a collective experience to which it was essential to bear witness. In effect, the great successes of the war and the immediate post-war period, as well as the paradigmatic works of this period in both countries, relate to this new hybrid genre. Among others, examples of this category are Le Feu by Henri Barbusse, with the subtitle journal d’une escouade (‘journal of a squad’; published in English as Under Fire),34 the works of George Duhamel, Vie des Martyrs and Civilisation,35 Jünger’s Storm of Steel, subtitled the journal of an assault troop officer,36 Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten (‘wanderer between two worlds’) by Walter Flex,37 subtitled Bearing witness to war . . . These publications emerged out of three genres: narrative account, the novel and diary. Of the novel they sometimes had the form and elements of fiction; from diary, they retained dates, the precision of immediate notes; from narrative accounts, they have the story-telling, generally linear and chronological. The German writer Otto Riebicke explained this fusion in the opening pages of his book: These notes arise from impressionist experience in loose sheets. They do not claim to be sketches, nor poetry, nor a picture, nor an account. They will take their place—born out of a present-day which needs births—between the forms.38

This hybrid genre grew out of an attempt, which superseded national differences, to take account of the experience of war. None of the

33 34 35 36 37 38

Winter (1995). Barbusse (1916). Duhamel (1916) and (1918). Jünger (1926). Flex (1917). Riebicke (1917), p. 2.

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

333

genres on its own could satisfy the writers, who therefore preferred to blend them into a form of war writing which emerged from a form of narrative—but a narrative redefined by its own contents, a narrative whose characteristics or rules were undermined by what should be said and what could not be said, in order to mutate, perhaps, into ‘words capable of making silence understandable, or the cry which defines it’.39 Literature is thus seen as much a means to give an account of these ‘extreme experiences’, of these ‘paroxysms in an infinity of paroxysms’40 as it became a purpose for whoever gradually discovered that he was a war writer, a writer during the war, about the war. It should be noted that the second great wave of writing, from 1928–9 onwards, saw a sharper demarcation developing between narrative and novel—occasionally constructed, it must be said, by critics of books on the war. This was when the novel experienced the great successes symbolized by the worldwide success of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, but was also criticized, notably by Jean Norton Cru himself, as being incapable of giving an account of the reality of war—in contrast to narrative or diary—because it was, in his eyes, too heavily imbued with literary ambition.41 In choosing to distinguish it clearly from these two latter genres, even when the frontiers were often blurred, the critic took part after the war de facto in the construction of different genres within the literature of war. Posed in regard to literary practices and their repercussion on the emergence of a new category, the question of the application of the comparative method must also be considered in relation to representations. Representations: An Example The question of comparison is particularly insistent because here we are located, a priori, at the limits of the comparative history method, not simply because it would itself be located there within the territory of comparative literature. Indeed, comparative history is a product

39 40 41

Trevisan (2001), pp. 173–4. Duhamel (1918), p. 39. Cru (1929).

334

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

of social history and of the comparison of major structures—social classes or groups, for example—set in the framework of an average or long duration.42 It is only recently that comparative history has also taken the cultural path43 in order to focus on topics such as semantics44 or literature. Further, literature participates so fully in the construction of national imagination, as much through the production of works as through that of ‘great men’, of ‘sites of memory’ or of ‘Dichter und Denker’45 (Poets and Thinkers), that it may be useless to compare that which would initially belong to the ‘master narratives’ of each nation. This is without taking into account any intrinsic bias in any comparative view that is brought to bear on a subject from a necessarily nationally constructed historiographic point of view.46 And yet, despite its limitations, the comparative approach also proves, in the end, to be pertinent to cultural history—well exemplified, for example, in images of the enemy presented through soldierwriters’ texts during the war. It makes it possible not only to attempt to understand differences but also to emphasize points of convergence—more, perhaps, than points in common. In effect, the texts written out of experience of the front are not full of images of the enemy. These texts take their place in a broader framework of the cultural vectors of these images (propaganda posters, postcards, texts by writers at the rear, etc.) yet they are not at the same time identical to them. As for the representations themselves, they also have a broader and longer history, rooted in the respective construction of national identities.47 To compare the images of the enemy as shown by French and German soldiers-writers thus presents the interest of appreciating how the context of the war weighs on these traditions and these identities, and how the experience of the front and the war influences the nature of these images.48 42

Kaelble (1999), Haupt, Kocka (1996), Charle (1996). Audoin-Rouzeau, Becker (1997), Prost, Winter (2004), particularly pp. 263–272. 44 Reimann (2000). 45 See the place given to them in Nora (1982–1992) and in François, Schulze (2001–2002). 46 Espagne (1999), pp. 36 and 44, and Werner, Zimmermann (2003), p. 11. 47 Jeismann (1997), Lindner-Wirsching (2004). 48 The construction of images of the enemy is a complex topic which seen a profound renewal in recent years (Stibbe (2001), Reimann (2000), pp. 167–222, Lindner-Wirsching (2004), pp. 161–202). The results that we present here are highly simplified in relation to our work; for more detail, see Beaupré (2002a), pp. 353–407. 43

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

335

In the German case, as in the French, in the case of published texts this experience influences the intensity and violence of these images only moderately, recognizing that they are often more violent in the French case, to some extent because of the invasion and occupation of part of the national territory. For example, we frequently find points in common between these images of the enemy and those, which are diffused by the Churches at war.49 This difference in intensity may also arise from a cumulative image of the ‘Boche’ in the eyes of the French, while German writers distinguish between France’s hereditary enemies, ‘asiatic’ Russian hordes and traitors to their origins in Germanic Kultur (the British), not to mention the artful sniper Belgians. Such distinctions between different enemies also reflect the acute sense of being under siege, which is characteristic of some writers. The theory of encirclement is clearly perceptible from a close look at the range of enemies, as shown for example by the great German poet Richard Dehmel, who qualifies the Russian empire as the ‘barbaric State’, the British as ‘cynics’ without ideals, and the French as prey to ‘Roman decadence’.50 In France, the acts of violence of the first weeks of the war are often put forward to establish an image that is both hard and enduring: They are hatred, massacre, fire, pillage, rape. Above all they are pride (. . .) If they had a passion for glory, they could wage an unjust war on us, as happened with some of our own wars, they would not wage an inhuman, horrible, brutal, coarse, war such as only devils could imagine it.51

These differentiated images allow both self-definition in relation to the enemy and the construction of one’s own war identity, and on occasions to legitimize one’s own behavior, even to speak of the violence of war when committed by the enemy or against an enemy so appalling that it can perhaps be justified. And yet these images of the enemy also obey narrative structures and reinforce the images found on both sides of the front line: songs and poems of hatred are found in the work of French as well as of German soldier-poets. Will Vesper, for example, operates a radical reversal and presents hatred as an active and positive feeling:

49 50 51

Krumeich (2004). Dehmel (1919), pp. 9–13. Péricard (1918), p. 57.

336

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré (. . .) His gentle face turned towards me, he said, Sing of love! And never hate. But I turned away I took my pen in my hand. And I wrote: O Lord, I hate! With all my soul, Lord, I hate! And in your eyes, I have looked again, Your love will not soften my hatred, For this hatred, O Lord Jesus, Is the fruit of my greatest love. My nation is in deep distress My hatred will pursue all enemies, to their death!52

In France, Henri Ghéon’s feelings followed the same lines: This is no longer a time for lamentation, Hatred can be holy . . . (. . .) Love, we will love our hatred For we will nourish it with you!53

Similarly, procedures such as reducing the enemy to animal status, diabolizing him or defining him as barbaric, run through German texts as they do through the French. The comparison initially posed in this form not only draws attention to cultural differences, it also illuminates, in a specific domain— literature, where differences of tradition are obvious—the generation, in the context of an event as overwhelming and worldwide as the war, of a cultural matrix, a system of practice and representations which is simultaneously a historical response defined by the event and the consequence of social continuities. In the case of the literatures of the combatant nations, German and French, this cultural matrix is visible as much at the level of representations borne by the texts as at the level of practices, with the emergence of new literary genres, of a new approach to narrative, bearing witness and the place of the personal experience in literary and poetic creation: so many novelties borne of the war at the heart of German and

52 53

Vesper (1915), 12 September 1914. Ghéon (1916), p. 64.

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

337

French literary settings contributing to the definition of the author and the writer. This definition itself had the direct effect of bringing new names to the front of the literary stage, which take their wartime place in the literary field for a longer or shorter period.

Comparison in the Wake of Research: The Example of the Association of Soldier-Writers and How the Writers Came Out of the War But the comparison is equally relevant in the wake of the research. It enables us to pinpoint the absence of a phenomenon present in the other field that has been explored. The case of literary associations of soldier-writers in the post-war period offers a good example of this approach. Without the awareness in France, of an ‘Association of Soldier Writers’ (AEC), founded in June 1919, it would not have been possible to consider the absence of such a society in Germany in the immediate post-war years. It would also not have been possible to ascertain later that such a society finally came into existence in 1936. By itself, comparison creates its own problematics.54 From then onwards we can consider the reasons which made possible the creation of such a society in France in 1919 and its absence in Germany, and then the reasons for its appearance under Nazism, without losing sight of the creation in the immediate post-war period of such a society in another country, which had itself also generated a wholly comparable war literature. Finally, such a comparison sometimes enables us to question the silences of history, which would not have become apparent without it. France In France the emergence from the war of the soldier-writers was accompanied by a war of manifestos, well known to historians.55 This was a clash between two camps, which became established politically, one on the left around Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland and Paul Vaillant-Couturier, and the other to the right, around Henri Massis. The former generated manifestos: the first in February 1919

54 55

Beaupré (2002a). Sirinelli (1990).

338

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

was an appeal from the Intellectuels combattants français aux intellectuels combattants du monde (‘French soldier intellectuals to the soldier intellectuals of the world’); the second, on 1 May 1919, founded the group ‘Clarté’ (‘Clarity’). The third was the most famous. Entitled Déclaration d’indépendence de l’esprit (‘Declaration of the independence of the mind’) and published in L’Humanité on 26 June, it was this latter publication that provoked a reaction from Massis and his consort, published in Le Figaro on 19 July 1919, entitled Pour un Parti de l’Intelligence. These manifestos marked the return to political differences after the war years under the seal of the ‘Union sacrée’ and the common goal—victory. Once victory was assured, expectations grounded in the peace became divergent. And yet in this context of acute ‘manifestitis’, one text has been forgotten by the historians, the manifesto of soldier-writers which was the founding text of the AEC. This organization was officially launched on 19 June 1919, edited by José Germain with Henry Malherbe, Prix Goncourt winner in 1917, as chairman and Jacques Boulanger as vice-chairman. In July the text appeared in Le Matin and then L’Information. This text, which was accepted by the eighty founding members and then implicitly by those who became members of the association in due course, is evidence of the ‘horizon blue’ (French military uniform) spirit located in the context of the transfer of the Unknown Soldier56 and the celebrations on 14 July 1919 with the AEC joining in. Without completely contradicting the theory of a return to political divisions—Barbusse and Léon Werth, for example, did not belong to the AEC—the association none the less confirmed an adherence to common values: those of the veteran soldiers of the Great War. Indeed, its members included writers from every aesthetic and political hue. Vaillant-Couturier might find himself next to Henri Massis, Georges Duhamel, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, and so on. One feature stands out clearly amidst these shared values—the theme of ‘the brotherhood of arms,’ that of the sacrifice of the soldiers, heroes and martyrs and already seen as the main victims of the war; the combatants are thus seen as ‘the tortured creators of the new gospel’; a breach between the front line and the rear would, according to the manifesto, have led to a ‘forgetting’ of the

56

Becker (1996).

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

339

combatants; the war is described as ‘an appalling struggle.’57 A consensus began to crystallize around pacifism on principle, not incompatible with a certain patriotism, characteristic of veteran soldiers’ circles.58 Further, the association intended to protect the interests of soldier-writers threatened by ‘attacks of egotism and tricks’ on the part of those who had not fought and who ‘in our absence took our places.’59 In protecting the interests of soldier-writers, therefore—in circumstances that were highly unfavorable to war books in general— the association also shared in the defense, even as the war was ending, of the category of ‘soldier-writer’ itself, in the form in which it had developed during the war. The memory of writers killed in the war, quite separate from the expression of true mourning for them, also served this end. It was a matter of defending a category of writers ‘born of the war’60 as well as those who died in the war. The systematic listing of 560 writers killed in the war, the publication of the great five-volume anthology, beginning in 1924,61 the installation of bronze plaques bearing the name of the dead on the Panthéon (1927) and the inauguration of a ‘soldier-writers’ forest at Lamalou-les-Bains in the Hérault in 1931, all shared in this preservation of interests as much as in the classification of ‘soldier-writers.’ Around these consensual forms of discourse, the defense of socioeconomic interests and the exercise of mourning, the French soldierwriters could still overcome their revived political divergences and, for the most part, meet together. Germany In Germany, it was initially possible to believe in a conclusion to the war fairly similar to that in French literary circles, with a strong development of pacifism, particularly in the publication of works written but also censored during the war, as in the case of Fritz von Unruh62 or Paul Zech.63 As in the case of France, we can see an 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Manifeste des écrivains combattants in: AEC (1928). Prost (1977). Ibid. This expression appears in many works: see, among others, Ghéon (1919). AEC (1924–1926). Unruh (1919). Zech (1919).

340

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

almost immediate distancing by the public from combatant literature. The writer Friedrich Loofs could only confirm bitterly the absence of interest in Germany in ‘the literature of war in the narrow meaning of the expression as in its broader sense.’64 Similarly, Ernst Jünger, sharply checked by his publishers’ rejection, was forced to publish his Storm of Steel himself, paid for by his father. He was subsequently surprised at the success of his book.65 And yet this disengagement, which had indeed been part of the motivation behind the establishment of the AEC, did not generate in Germany the creation of a comparable institution in the months following the end of the war. Similarly, no monument was set up to honor the memory of German writers who were killed in the war, as was still regretted in 1935 by Franz Konrad Hoefert.66 Any anthologies of dead writers and poets that exist are very different from the systematic style of the AEC enterprise, and almost all bear a later date.67 The prominent resurgence of political divisions was also a central element. It was no doubt all the more obvious because of conflicting interpretations of the defeat and the revolution.68 And these apparent similarities between the French and German examples in fact conceal profound differences, which can only be observed through questioning the absence of any association of German soldier-writers in the immediate post-war period, followed by its appearance in the context of Nazism in 1936. Although in France the AEC, its philosophy and the image of its supporters expressed a common sphere of representation, the absence of such an association in Germany spoke of the irreconcilable nature of the divisions in literary circles: a characteristic, which can be found in the works of the immediate post-war period and the 1920s. What indeed can be seen in common between such writers as Ernst Jünger, who in 1924 added at the end of Storm of Steel: Faced with the memory of the dead, who for us are sacred, we feel that it is into our safe-keeping that true riches have been entrusted, the spiritual riches of the nation. We are responsible for what has

64 65 66 67 68

DLA Cotta Br. (Loofs), letter dated 3 November 1919 from Loofs to Cotta. Junger (1926), pp. IX–X. Hoefert (1935). Pyzygode (1919), Jünger (1928), Redslob (1930), Hoefert (1935). Barth (2003).

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

341

been, and what will be. Even if externally violence and internally barbarity come together in dark clouds, as long as, in the darkness, blades gleam and flash, it will signify: Germany lives, Germany will not be overwhelmed.69

. . . and the poet Julius Talbot Keller, close to the Dadaists, who in 1918 wrote ironic lines on the ‘Erreichnis’ (Accomplishment) by the German militarists: Orphans goose-stepping by, A priest stroking his moustache, Caesars raise reflective cylinders, And at the side, God glances through the morning paper.70

The first has not laid down his arms, and expects to continue the struggle, and the second has remobilized for fresh conflicts and new political horizons.71 The pacifism of the German soldier-writers was not, as in the French case, the object of any consensus, the consequences of basic values widely shared. It clashed with a revanchist nationalism and in the event acquired a very clearly anti-militarist and anti-patriotic aspect, as in the visual arts.72 In the context of the spread of the legend of the stab in the back,73 writers tore themselves apart beyond recovery over interpretations of the war and the defeat, whereas in France, even though intellectuals returned to their political differences and the post-war period could sometimes take on the appearance of very violent political struggles,74 the victory provided an interpretational framework which could remain open and common to all political camps. Thus, beyond the apparent similarities, comparative analysis, by revealing silences and absences, shows what made each case singular, making it perhaps possible, as a result, to allot greater weight to other and deeper similarities when they appear. In fact it was not until 1936 and the imposition of the Nazi interpretational monopoly on the war that an association of soldierwriters, the Frontdichter, was created, named Die Mannschaft, Kameradschaft der Frontdichter in der NSDAP (The Team, Association of soldier-poets 69 70 71 72 73 74

Jünger (1926). This end to the book was added in 1924. Keller (1918), p. 24. On these concepts: Horne (2002). Jünger-Kirchhoff (2002). Krumeich (2001), Barth (2003). Wirsching (1999).

342

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

of the front line in the NSDAP). It was conceived as a direct expression of the Party. It published anthologies of literary texts on the war, and a periodic and thematic series of war writings, from 1936 to 1938. Directed by the Nazi writer Otto Paust, one of its aims was the assembly of witness-narratives in a ‘Team House’ located at Guben, in Silesia. These witness-narratives from combatants were to relate to ‘the war of 1914–1933’, since ‘The Führer himself pronounced it: “National-socialism was born in the trenches!”’75 These two dates show clearly that for the Nazi soldier-writers the Great War did not finally end until 1933. The interior victory of the Nazis had effaced the defeat and exterior humiliation. It had effectively effaced the date of 1918. The members of this association applied themselves to effacing any conflicting literary interpretation of the war, particularly those who, in their eyes, offered a ‘Remarque-style disenchantment’, like that veritable ‘coward [who] took flight and [who was] more than dead.’76 Further, the extended chronology allowed it to receive into its bosom writers who were far too young to have fought in the Great War but who had joined commando-style groups or quite simply in the street battles of the Weimar Republic in Nazi organizations. In this way the association assimilated the concept of Frontdichter born of the Great War while simultaneously denaturing it and giving it a new meaning. Evocation of this association, much later than the French equivalent, functions as a counterpoint. Through comparison, it allows interrogation of its absence in the immediate post-war period and as an undertone shows the impossibility in defeated Germany of such an association outside the totalitarian, unifying and remobilizing context of Nazism. Before the Nazi accession to power we see an opposition born of the defeat between radical pacifism and nationalism. Norbert Elias saw clearly that the internal divisions within German combatant literature concealed other and far deeper divisions: The controversy between the literature, which accepted the war, and that which rejected the war, in the earliest years of the Weimar Republic thus reflected a very broad controversy in the Germany of the day, which was also one of its most central.77

75 76 77

Die Mannschaft 3 (1934), p. 9. Die Mannschaft 1 (1934), p. 9. Elias (1992).

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

343

Towards a Conclusion Beyond these examples, this study encourages reflection on the comparative method. Ahead of research, the comparison between these two national cases could serve to reveal the differences and points in common, and notably to question the installation—because of the great scale of the conflagration of the war and thus of the weight of factual history for both individuals and societies—of a system of practices and representations common to the societies at war. Thus, posed initially, the comparison makes it possible both to approach war culture and, equally, the war cultures in their national variations. Following research, the comparison also refers to what lay within each of the national frameworks under observation. It enables the historian to uncover silences and absences from history in one of the two fields of comparison, which are only visible because a phenomenon appears as startling and fundamental in the other. The comparison thus makes it possible to pose questions, to put forward hypotheses, to offer interpretations that are inaccessible without it, at the very heart of one of the two domains under study. To that extent it thus improves our knowledge of each of the two bodies, taken individually, while disentangling true and false similarities.

Bibliography Primary Sources AEC (1928) Annuaire de l’Association des Ecrivains Combattants de 1914 à 1918 (Paris: 1928). —— (1924–1926) Anthologie des écrivains morts à la guerre, 1914–1918, 5 vols (Amiens: 1924–1926). Bab J. (1914–18) Der Deutsche Krieg im Deutschen Gedicht, ed., 12 vols (Berlin: 1914/18). —— (1920) Die deutsche Kriegslyrik 1914–1918 (Stettin: 1920). Barbusse H., Le feu (Paris: 1916). Barrès M. (1916) Foreword of Anthologie des écrivains français morts pour la patrie, vol. 1, ed. Larronde C. (Paris: 1916). Cru J.N. (1929), Témoins (Nancy: 1993 first published 1929). Dehmel R. (1919) Zwischen Volk und Menschheit, Kriegstagebuch (Berlin: 1919). Die Mannschaft 1 (1934). —— 3 (1934). Dorgelès R. (1929) Souvenirs sur les Croix de Bois (Paris: 1929). Duhamel G. (1916) Vie des martyrs (Paris: 1917). —— (1918) Civilisation (Paris: 1993, first published 1918). Flex W. (1917) Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten (Munich: 1917). Ghéon H. (1916) Foi en la France. Poèmes du temps de guerre (Paris: 1916). —— (1919) L’homme né de la guerre, Témoignage d’un converti (Paris: 1919).

344

chapter eleven — nicolas beaupré

Gourmont R., ‘La “chose littéraire” (4 juillet 1915)’ in Dans la tourmente (avril-juillet 1915) Gourmont R., (Paris: 1916). Hoefert F.K. (1935) Das Ehrenmal der gefallenen Dichter (Berlin: 1935). Hollander W. v. (1916) “Die Entwicklung der Kriegsliteratur,” in: Die Neue Rundschau (sept. 1916). Jünger E. (1926) Im Stahlgewittern (Berlin: 1926 first published 1920). —— (1928) Die Unvergessenen, ed. (Leipzig: 1928). Keller J.T. (1918) Durchblutung, (Berlin: 1918). Mercure de France (1917) 1/1, 189. Péricard J. (1918) Debout les morts, souvenirs et impressions d’un soldat de la Grande Guerre, Pâques rouges, vol. 2 (Paris: 1918). Przygode W. (1919) Buch der Toten, ed. (Munich: 1919). Redslob E. (1930) Vermächtnis. Dichtungen Letzte Aussprüche und Briefe der Toten des Weltkrieges (Dresden: 1930). Riebicke O. (1917) Ringen an der Somme und in Herzen, (Magdeburg: 1917). Riou G. (1918) Foreword of Jeunesse Ardente, Fontaine-Vive J., (Paris: 1918). Ségur (1916) Foreword of Au front, impressions et souvenirs d’un officier blessé, d’Hartoy M. (Paris: 1916). Unruh F. v. (1919) Opfergang (Berlin: 1919). Vesper W. (1915) Vom großen Krieg (Munich: 1915). Witkop P. (1917) Foreword of Wir waren drei Kameraden, Kriegserlebnisse, Spengler W. (Freiburg in Breisgau: 1917). Zech P. (1919) Das Grab der Welt. Eine Passion wider den Krieg auf Erden (Hamburg: 1919). Secondary Sources Audoin-Rouzeau S., Becker A. (1997) ‘Violence et consentement, la “culture de guerre” du premier conflit mondial’ in: Pour une histoire culturelle, eds. Sirinelli J.-F., Rioux J.-P. (Paris: 1997), 251–271. Barth B. (2003) Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkriege 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf: 2003). Baumeister M. (2004) Kriegstheater. Grossstadt, Front und Massenkultur (Essen: 2004). Beaupré N. (2002a) Les écrivains combattants français et allemands de la Grande Guerre (1914–1920). Essai d’histoire comparé (PhD Paris/Nanterre: 2002). —— (2002b) « Du Bulletin des Ecrivains de 1914 à l’Association des Ecrivains Combattants (AEC): des combats à la mémoire, 1914–1927 » in La politique et la guerre. Pour comprendre le XXe siècle européen, eds., Audoin-Rouzeau S., Becker A., Coeuré S., Duclert V., Monier F. (Paris: 2002) 301–315. —— (2004) « Témoigner, combattre, interpréter: les fonctions sociales et culturelles de la littérature de guerre des écrivains combattants de 1914 à 1918 (France, Allemagne) » in 1914–1945 L’Ère de la guerre. T.1 Violence, mobilisations, deuil, eds. Beaupré N., Duménil A., Ingrao C. (Paris: 2004). Becker A. (1996) « Du 14 juillet 1919 au 11 novembre 1920; mort, où est ta victoire? », Vingtième Siècle, Revue d’Histoire, 49 (1996), 31–44. Charle C. (1996) Les intellectuels en Europe au XIXe siècle. Essai d’histoire comparée (Paris: 1996). Eksteins M. (1991) Le sacre du Printemps. La Grande Guerre et la naissance de la modernité (Paris: 1991). Elias N. (1992) „Kriegsbejahende Literatur der Weimarer Republik (Ernst Jünger)“ in Studien über die Deutschen. Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Elias N. (Frankfurt am Main, 1992). Espagne M. (1999) Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris: 1999). François E., Schulze H. (2001–2002) Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, eds., 3. vol. (Munich: 2001–2002).

new writers, new literary genres (1914‒1918)

345

Fussell P. (1975) The Great War and Modern Memory (New York/London: 1975). Jeismann M. (1997) La patrie de l’ennemi. La notion d’ennemi national et la représentation de la nation en Allemagne et en France de 1792 à 1918 (Paris: 1997). Jürgens-Kirchhoff A. (2002) „Kunst gegen den Krieg im Antikriegsjahr 1924“ in Der verlorene Frieden. Politik und Kriegskultur nach 1918, eds. Krumeich G., Düffler J., (Essen: 2002). Kaelble H. (1999) Der historische Vergleich, eine Einführung zum 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert, (Frankfurt/Main: 1999). Krumeich G. (2004) « ‘Gott mit uns’ La Grande Guerre fut-elle une guerre de religions » in 1914–1945 L’ère de la Guerre. Violence, mobilisations, deuil T. 1, 1914–1918, eds. Beaupré N., Duménil A., Ingrao C. (Paris: 2004). —— (2001) « Die Dolchstoß-Legende » in Deutsche Errinerungsorte, vol. 1, eds., François E., Schulze H. (Munich: 2001). Haupt H.G., Kocka J. (1996) Geschichte und Vergleich, Ansätze und Erlebnisse international vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung (Francfort: 1996). Horne J. (2002) « Introduction » in: 14–18 Aujourd’hui-Today-Heute. Démobilisations culturelles après la Grande Guerre, 5 (2002). Hübinger G. (1996) „Eugen Diederichs’ Bemuehungen um die Grundlegung einer neuen Geisteskultur“ in: Kultur und Krieg. Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Mommsen W. (Munich: 1996) 259–274. Lindner-Wirsching A. (2004) Französische Schriftsteller und ihre Nation im Ersten Weltkrieg (Tübingen: 2004). Loez A. (2004) ‘Tears in the Trenches: A History of Emotions and the Experience of War’ in: Uncovered Fields. Perspectives in First World War Studies, eds. Macleod J., Purseigle P., (Leiden: 2004) 211–226. Nora P. (1982–1992) Les Lieux de mémoires, ed., 7. vols (Paris: 1982–1992). Natter W.G. (1999) Literature at War. 1914–1940. Representing the “Time of Greatness” in Germany, (New Haven-London: 1999). Prochasson C. (2001) ‘Les mots pour le dire: Jean-Norton Cru, du témoignage à l’histoire’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, (2001) 48–4, 161–189. Prost A. (1977) Les anciens combattants et la société française 1914–1939 (Paris: 1977). Prost A., Winter J. (2004) Penser la Grande Guerre. un essai d’historiographie (Paris: 2004). Reimann A. (2000) Der große Krieg der Sprachen, Untersuchungen zur historischen Semantik in Deutschland und England zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges (Essen: 2000). Schneider T.F. (1998) „Zwischen Wahrheitsanspruch und Fiktion. Zur deutschen Kriegsliteratur im Ersten Weltkrieg“ in: Der Tod als Machinist. Der industrialisierte Krieg 1914–1918, eds. Spilker R., Ulrich B. (Osnabrück: 1998). Sirinelli J.F. (1990) Intellectuels et passions françaises. Manifestes et pétitions au XXe siècle (Paris: 1990). Smith L.V. (2000) ‘Le corps et la survie d’une identité dans les écrits de guerre français’ in: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 55/1 (2000) 111–133. Stibbe M. (2001) German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: 2001). Trevisan C. (2001) Les fables du deuil. La Grande Guerre: mort et écriture (Paris: PUF). —— (2003) ‘Lettres de guerre’, in: Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, 2 (2003). Werner M., Zimmermann B. (2003) « Penser l’histoire croisée: entre empirie et réflexivité » in: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 58/1 (2000) 7–36. Willard E. (1949) Guerre et poésie, (Lausanne: 1949). Winter J.M. (1995) Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Cambridge: 1995). —— (2002) Foreword of German Students’ War Letters, ed. Witkop P. (Philadelphia: 2002). —— (2003) ‘Le témoin moral et les deux guerres mondiales’, Revue européenne d’histoire sociale, 8 (2003) 99–117. Wirsching A. (1999) Vom Welkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg? Politischer Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich 1918–1933/39. Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (Munich: 1999).

CHAPTER TWELVE

WOMEN READERS OF HENRI BARBUSSE: THE EVIDENCE OF LETTERS TO THE AUTHOR Leonard V. Smith*

Women in France in the Great War constituted a particular kind of witness. Unless they lived in those parts of France occupied by Germany, they rarely incurred risks beyond the familiar ones of work and reproduction. Of course, women were barred by law and custom from taking part in life at the front, where the national drama of France in the Great War was being acted out most apparently. Nothing reaffirmed the “passive” nature of female citizenship in France more clearly than the gender division of labor between the front and the interior. Yet women in France suffered immensely during the Great War. There were certain obvious material and physical discomforts, such as long working hours, serious inflation, and shortages of consumer goods. Less obvious but doubtless even more intense was the emotional anguish women had to endure. Their rigidly constructed cultural role not withstanding, some women clearly felt a kind of guilt at not being able to contribute more “actively” to the national effort, by risking their lives for the country. The death, actual or prospective, of their husbands, lovers, sons, or fathers hung over every day of their lives. Certainly, for most women a gulf in understanding existed between themselves and their menfolk at the front. During precious leaves, few soldiers found themselves willing or able to discuss in detail their experience in the trenches. One of the paradoxes of the Great War was women’s emotional proximity to men’s suffering, coupled with a remarkable lack of specific information about it. As for other civilians, reading war

* Work on this article began during a visiting appointment at the Université de Paris 7-Jussieu, UFR-Sciences des Textes et Documents, in June-July 2001. I would especially like to thank Carine Trevisan for making possible this opportunity.

348

chapter twelve — leonard v. smith

writings provided a way to bridge the gap between soldiers’ experience and their own. Survivors such as women in mourning,1 or women in anguish about their loved ones could continue to live and perhaps to heal emotionally in part through trying to understand experience at the front through the written word. Journalistic accounts, ridden with wartime propaganda or bourrage de crâne, provided only limited comfort. Readers turned to published combatants’ accounts, which became more diverse and more sophisticated from 1916 on. In August 1916, a series by veteran Henri Barbusse began to appear in L’Oeuvre entitled “Le Feu: journal d’un escouade.” The series proved an immense success, particularly after it was published by Flammarion in December 1916. Le Feu won the Prix Goncourt shortly after its publication, and proved to this day the best-selling French novel of the Great War.2 Barbusse’s book diverged sharply in content and message from what had preceded it. Filled with the gruesome detail for which fiction of the Great War has become famous, Le Feu provided a “realistic” panorama of experience in the trenches seldom seen in previous war writing. But contrary to its later reputation, Le Feu was anything but a pacifist work. Rather, by representing fighting the war in such graphic terms, Barbusse sought to remobilize “true” heroism by changing the ideological foundations of the war. The physical horror of the war, he concluded, was an unchangeable fact.3 But by embracing the cause of “making war on war,” and using the upheaval of the war to overthrow capitalism itself, Barbusse sought to make a reality the international socialist utopia envisaged throughout Europe before 1914. Barbusse also had very specific ideas on how readers should encounter and understand his text, based in what Joan Scott called “the evidence of experience.”4 Combatants as writers and readers made themselves the exclusive arbiters of experience in the trenches. Barbusse described a cultural contract between author and reader

1 For a discussion of the emotional anguish of women in mourning, see AudoinRouzeau (2001). Mourning and literature are discussed more broadly in Trevisan (2001). 2 According to publicity from Flammarion, the book sold 300,000 copies within two years of its publication. Martin, et al. (1986, 296). 3 Smith (2001, 117–20). 4 Scott (1991).

women readers of henri barbusse

349

in Le Feu itself.5 In Chapter 13, a provincial soldier with an accent happened upon the narrator writing the text, and asked him “if you give us all words in your book, will you make us talk the way we do, or will you fix it up? What will you do with the fancy words we use?”6

Barbusse assured him, “I’ll put all the fancy words in their place, old buddy, because they speak the truth.”7 The remarkable success of the book simply made public the cultural contract between veteran as authors and readers. In a preface to the September 1917 edition of Le Feu addressed “Aux Soldats vivants,” Barbusse wrote, You have loved my book because it is a book of truth. . . . I will prevent you from forgetting the beam of moral beauty and of perfect sacrifice that will pierce the darkness in your own selves, the monstrous and disgusting horror of the war. 8

Combatants as readers had endorsed the authority of Barbusse’s voice as master narrator. Barbusse asserted a virtual identity in meaning between the text as written and the text as read. As Roger Chartier described this kind of reading practice, “reading is thought of as inscribed in the text, an effect automatically produced by the very strategy of writing peculiar to the work or its genre.”9 In the case of Barbusse, knowledge about the war was discerned by combatants and transmitted directly to civilians, who were to accept it without dissent, on the basis of the authoritative nature of soldiers’ experience. It follows, of course, that the dynamic that determined the meaning of experience at the front remained exclusively male. Women, like other non-combatants, had access to this truth exclusively through the written word of the war author, as accepted through an uncritical reading on the part of fellow combatants.

5

Smith (1995). “Si tu fais parler les troufions dans ton livre, est-ce que tu les f’ras parler comme ils parlent, ou bien est-ce que tu arrangeras ça, en lousdoc? C’est rapport aux gros mots q’on dit.” 7 Je mettrai les gros mots à leur place, mon petit père, parce que c’est la vérité. 8 Vous avez aimé mon livre parce que c’est un livre de vérité. . . . Je vous empêcherai d’oublier de quel rayon de beauté morale et de parfait holocauste s’éclaira là-bas, en vous, la monstreuse et dégoûtant horreur de la guerre. Reprinted in Barbusse (1920, 43–45). Ellipses are mine. 9 Chartier (1989, 156). 6

350

chapter twelve — leonard v. smith

The needs of women as readers and Barbusse’s concept of how he should be read converged in a particular way in letters written to him by women. A small number of such letters, eighteen of which I will examine here, survive in the large collection of correspondence to Barbusse conserved in the Fonds Barbusse at the Bibliothèque de France. “Fan letters” are by definition unrepresentative of readers as a whole. Simply taking the time to write such letters suggests that the people who do so are among the most fervent admirers of a book. But a fan letter also suggests a particular relationship between reader and author. Most readers are satisfied with the meaning they draw from their own encounter with the text. But readers who write to authors want more than this, by seeking some sort of direct contact. Always implicitly and often explicitly, women who wrote to Barbusse wanted some form of response—most often a personal interview or some sort of appearance before a women’s’ literary group. It would be a mistake, then, to use these letters as evidence of how “women” writ large encountered Barbusse as an interpretive community. Rather, I argue that it is more useful to consider fan letters from women as their own genre of war writing. Collectively, these letters share great continuities of form and content, though the specific elements can vary. These letters testify to a particular reading of Barbusse rooted in gender. Women who wrote to Barbusse did so because reading his work responded to needs they had as women. In these idiosyncratic but suggestive documents, they provided a reading of Le Feu that reinforced hierarchies between women and men, between soldiers and civilians, and between authors and readers. Yet at the same time, they demonstrate that what Barbusse might have considered “ideal” readers did not all read Le Feu the same way. On closer inspection, letters from women highlight the ambiguities of the text itself. Almost invariably, letters from women include some statement of self-abasement. “Inconnu humble, mais sincère,” wrote Gabrielle Leclerc-Lefebvre, of the rue Daguerre in the 14e arrondissement of Paris, on 16 December 1916, the day she learned Le Feu had won the Prix Goncourt, One modest voice in the concert of praises which raises itself toward you right now, which brings to you the tribute of her admiration. . . . . Please forgive the horrible paper on which I write this, I am only a small embroiderer that the fortunes of war have made a secretary in

women readers of henri barbusse

351

an office, a little poet manqué, who nevertheless knows how to read and to admire.10

If the woman was single, she always indicated her profession. Some felt a particular need to express their unworthiness before the great man of letters. A Mademoiselle Bernadac from the Ariège wrote on 12 May 1917 that You are going to find stupid, monsieur, all these unformed ideas that rise in my head and that I remain powerless to translate but that I nevertheless offer to you. Beyond my incoherence and my mistakes, try to read all the enthusiasm and all the sympathy that you have inspired in me, and please have the good will to excuse a fervent admirer to whom your work has brought both tears and comfort.11

Gender clearly constituted part of what led these women to express such unworthiness to communicate directly with Barbusse. A women from Lyons writing on 9 February 1917 and describing herself as “une petite ouvrière” who worked in a store, sought to rehabilitate not just the female sex but provincials by expressing her unconditional admiration for the author of Le Feu: Finally, and above all to improve your impressions of women (Oh, I know very well that many of them deserve the comparison made by your comrades when they hear a women say “War must be beautiful,” They think they see a cow admiring the slaughterhouse.) But you see, monsieur, we women are not all like that in the provinces.12

Without exception, the women who wrote to Barbusse expressed some form of personal unhappiness. For single women, this could

10 “Une voix modeste dans le concert d’éloges qui monte actualement vers vous, vient vous apporte le tribut de son admiration. . . . Pardonnez mon affreux papier, je ne suis qu’une petite ‘brodeuse’ que les hasards de la Guerre ont fait secrétaire d’administration, une petite poétèsse manquée, qui sait cependant lire et admirer.” Ellipses are mine. Throughout, the original orthography has been respected. Sometimes, this has required some guesswork on my part, when the writing is exceptionally difficult to read. 11 “Vous allez trouver stupides, Monsieur, tous ces embryons d’idées qui montent à mon cerveau et qui restent impuissants à traduire ce que j’éprouvait [sic] pour vous. À travers mes incoherences et mes incorrections essayez de lire tout l’enthousiasme toute la sympathie que vous m’avez inspirés et veuillez avoir la bonté d’excuser une fervente admiratrice à laquelle votre oeuvre a arraché bien des larmes et apporte bien des consolations.” 12 “C’est enfin et surtout pour réhabiliter dans votre pensée les femmes (oh je sais bien que beaucoup méritent la comparaison si juste de l’un de vos camarades, lorsque il en entendit une dire: ‘Que ça doit être beau la guerre, il voyait une vache admirait [sic] l’abbatoir [sic]).’ Mais vous voyez, Monsieur, toutes nous ne sommes pas ainsi même en province.” It was not possible to make out the name of the author of this letter.

352

chapter twelve — leonard v. smith

be simple loneliness or a feeling of separation from suffering of their compatriots. More often, though, they had loved ones at the front. They turned to Barbusse as a mediator between their own suffering and that of their soldiers at the front. Marie Chauvel de Chauvigny, of 17 rue de Val de Grâce (Paris?) wrote to Barbusse on 13 September 1916, while Le Feu was still being published as a series in L’Oeuvre. She had two sons at the front. “I read your Feu with a quasi-religious passion,” she wrote, “not only because my two sons have lived, and continue to live, the life of the trenches, but because in truth I feel a bit the mother of all those who have fallen, and of all those who suffer, wherever they fought. Your work makes this passion stir in me. [italics in original]”13 Anna Thieck, of Boulogne-sur-Seine, writing on 24 May 1917, thanked Barbusse for helping her understand the experience of her two sons. Both had been wounded twice, one gravely. Both sons greatly admired Le Feu, thus further confirming the contract between combatants and the author made in the book itself. This provided comforting assurance to Anna Thieck of the unquestionable veracity of the book. They are so sincere, those who have seen all the atrocities, the horrors of this terrible struggle, so long and discouraging. And above all what they appreciate is your modesty. . . . [ellipses in original] and the bitterness one feels in each line, in the words of your brothers in arms at the lack of results and progress coming from all this killing, which itself comes from the military structure of which we are only the tortured victims. And we have lost our sons to the these savage needs, worthy of Redskins, alas!14

A strong, personal, and emotional connection to Barbusse and his book sharply demarcates women’s letters from those written by men.15

13 J’ai lu votre ‘Feu’ avec une passion quasi-religieuse, “non pas seulement parce que mes deux fils ont vécu (et vivent encore) la vie des tranchées, mais parce qu’en vérité je me sens un peu la mère de tous ceux qui tombent, et tous ceux qui souffrent, quel que soit le front qu’ils défendent. Et il me semblait la sentir vibrer en moi, votre oeuvre.” Emphasis in original. 14 “C’est tellement sincère, eux qui ont vu les atrocités! l’horreur de cette terrible lutte si longue et si décourageante, Et surtout ce qu’ils apprécient, c’est votre modestie. . . . . [ellipses in original] et l’amertume qu’on sent a chaque ligne, dans la bouche de vos frères d’armes sur les résultats problématiques et le progrès réalise par ces tueries soute [sic] à la glacie [sic] militaire nous ne sommes que des boureaux [sic]. Et ce pour cette besogne d’apaches que nous avons échoués nos fils, hélas!” 15 Men were more likely to discuss the “truth” of the book in a relatively abstract sense, and to provide intellectual reflections on the political message of the book. See Gravier (2001).

women readers of henri barbusse

353

In a few deeply felt sentences in each letter, women explain their emotional implication with the text, which seems to explain what led them to write to the author. Emma Demarle, of the Seine-etOise, wrote to Barbusse on 19 July 1917 to thank him for a particular kind of comfort offered by Le Feu. Demerle was a German who had married a Frenchman. She had a husband in the French army and a brother in the German army. The notion of a “war on war” rather than a war against the German “other” provided a way out of her dilemma of conflicted loyalty. It is that I feel certain chapters of your book address themselves as much to the French as to the Germans, as much to your friends as to your enemies. And it seems to me that you are speaking to me, who is French by marriage, but who has never forgotten Germany, the country of my birth. It is above all through reading Le Feu chapter by chapter that I suffer from these mixed feelings; for a long time I refrained from rereading the book, so much did it upset me. It is horrible for me to witness and take part in this struggle between brothers, between two peoples equally dear to me, and my tears flow, from pity and powerlessness.16

She herself sought to take part on the ideological struggle of Barbusse, by offering to translate the book into German. Barbusse apparently responded negatively. Yet she continued to express her anguish and adherence to Barbusse’s internationalism in a letter dated 24 July 1917: There are days when I envy people who can hate the Germans with all their heart, and I want to do the same, . . . [ellipses] But, I say to myself that in order to judge and condemn a whole nation you need better knowledge and information than we have right now. This is the reason I wish ardently for the conference at Stockholm, which can only help clarify this incredibly confused situation.17

16 “C’est que je sens que certains chaptires de votre livre s’adressent autant aux Français qu’aux Allemands, autant à vos frères qu’à vos ennemis. Et il me semblait que vous me parliez à moi, qui suis Française par le marriage [sic] et qui aime profondément la France, mais qui n’ai jamais oubliée l’Allemagne, mon pays d’origine. C’est surtout à la lecture par chapitre du Feu que je souffre de cette dualité de sentiment; pendant longtemps je me suis obstencée [abstenue ?] de relire, tant il m’émotionne. Il me semble consister et participer à cette lutte fratricide entre les deux peuples qui me sont également chers, et mes larmes coulent de pitié et d’impuissance.” 17 “Mais, je me dis aussi que pour juger et condamner toute une nation, il faudrait des connaissances et renseignements plus précises que ceux qui nous possédons actuellement. C’est pour cela que je souhaite ardemment la conférence de Stockholm, elle ne pourra qu’éclaircir la situation, embrouillée a souhait.”

354

chapter twelve — leonard v. smith

For some women, the act of reading Le Feu offered them a means of experiencing combat, powerfully if vicariously. Juliette Longuer of 42 rue Monmourcy in the 3e Arrondissement of Paris expressed this simply in a very short letter written to Barbusse on 30 November 1916: “Please accept, Monsieur, all my admiration for your work Le Feu, a book so full of truths that by reading it, I live alongside the characters in it.” Gabrielle Leclerc-Lefevre when into more detail: “Truly, there are moments when in reading you I feel run through me the holy trembling of art and of horror, these pages, at the end of the work above all, where you describe the complicated agony of sinking into mud, of cold rain, of a bombardment, when my eyes are wet with tears and each page, and a thousand others make me tremble terribly.”18

She reported that she experienced the famous form of soldiers’ depression, ‘le cafard,’ for two days after reading the book. Likewise, Berthe Mortier (residence not reported) felt herself in the trench alongside Barbusse’s characters: Monsieur, I rise from your book as out of a trench. It seems that my face is haggard, muddy, stricken with fever, like the men who debate each other at dawn [at the end of the book]—So much—I have lived these pages—so much have I felt in me the suffering, the horror, the misery, and the splendor that they contain.19

Reading Barbusse for these women plainly involved more than absorbing otherwise unavailable information about life at the front. It involved a vivid response of the senses. Barbusse opened up for them the sounds, the smells, the daily discomforts, the dangers, and the agonies of the front. Reading his text enabled them to bridge the experiential gulf between themselves as women and soldiers in the trenches.

18 “Veuillez accepter Monsieur toute mon admiration pour votre écrit Le Feu, oeuvre remplie des vérités que par sa lecture m’a fait vivre avec ceux qui sont exposés.” Gabrielle LeclercLefevre went into more detail: “Vrai, il y eut des instants où en vous lisant j’ai senti courir en moi le frison saint de l’art et celui de l’horreur, des pages, à la fin de l’oeuvre surtout, comme celles où vous décriviez l’angoisse compliquée de l’enlisement, de la pluie froide ou du bombardement où mes yeux se sont mouilles de larmes et cette page, et mille autres m’ont fait frémir indiciblement.” 19 “Monsieur, je sors de votre livre comme d’une tranchée. Il me semble que mon visage est hâve, boueux, fiévreux, comme celui de ces hommes qui causent dans l’aube—Tellement j’ai vécu ces pages—Tellement j’ai senti passer en moi la souffrance, l’horreur, la misère et la splendeur qu’elles contiennent.”

women readers of henri barbusse

355

From the point of view of the prescribed reading practice assumed by Barbusse (and for that matter, by many other combatant authors) the women who wrote to Barbusse were “ideal” readers. Adoring and deferential, they sacralized his text and claimed to accept its unitary meaning whole, without input or even reflection on their part. As Elizabeth Flynn described such a reading practice: “The reader can allow the alien thought to become such a powerful presence that the self is replaced by the other and so is effaced. In this case the text dominates the reader.”20 This way of reading, it follows, could only affirm a whole series of cultural hierarchies that Barbusse did not seek to question.21 Men who fought on the battlefield created knowledge as writers. Women who did not fight received that wisdom as readers. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that all of these “ideal” readers read Barbusse identically. In Le Feu itself and in Barbusse’s many speeches and articles that touch on it, two themes in his work seem to have mattered most to him—the “realism” of his depiction of life and death at the front, and the political message of the work. Without exception, the women whose letters have been examined here accepted Barbusse’s “realism,” his stark rejection of the language of bourrage de crâne and his graphic descriptions of the effects of violence. Like male readers in and out of uniform, women affirmed Barbusse’s status as truth-teller about “real” life at the front as he had lived it. Women who wrote to Barbusse, almost invariably claimed that they accepted his “political” message as well, though they presented somewhat more varied responses to what they believed this message actually was. Berthe Mortier believed Germany must be vanquished for enlightenment to prevail, a reading well grounded in the text itself. “Unfortunately,” she wrote, “the German people are—because of their infamous government—yet more blind than any other. We must, therefore, through war, force them to listen. And when they listen

20 Flynn (1986, 268). Flynn associates this sort of response primarily with a first reading. Readers typically achieve more critical distance in subsequent encounters with the text. 21 Barbusse’s letters from the front to his wife are nearly silent on public politics. See Barbusse (1937). His collection of essays written between 1917 and 1920 maintains a deafening silence on women in the new world the war was supposed to make possible, even on so fundamental an issue as the franchise. Barbusse (1920).

356

chapter twelve — leonard v. smith

they will understand. [italics in original.]22 Yet just how a victory by France, a nation depicted in the novel as led by corrupt politicians and war profiteers, would transmute itself into a victory of international socialism is clear neither in the letters of the women who read Le Feu, nor in the book itself. None of the letters examined here advocated open revolution—itself intriguing given that these letters were written in the grim days of late 1916 and 1917. Indeed, Marie Chauvel de Chauvigny, writing in December 1916, actually disagreed with Barbusse on a particular point. She cited a passage at the end of the book, when the survivors in Le Feu take part in an involved discussion of the meaning of the war: “Equality is always the same . . . liberty and fraternity are words, while equality is a thing.”23 She provides no indication of her class origins in the letter, though she does not provide a profession. Her elaborate style and her references to Lammenais, Hugo, and Tolstoy suggest if not a certain degree of financial comfort, at least an education. To Chauvel de Chauvigny, “égalité” seemed too radical a concept. Certainly her politics were “bourgeois,” whatever her socioeconomic status. She preferred the term “justice,” which she described as comfortably in the political mainstream: Justice supposes Equality always and everywhere—while the reverse is hardly true—equality in rights and duties for the individual as for the collectivity, for the great as for the adversary. Justice, to my mind, is the only true equality, the only equality possible, the only one that cannot be, like all the others, deformed at will.24

Barbusse answered her letter, though unfortunately the response does not survive among his papers. She recanted her earlier dissent in her last letter, dated 18 January 1917: “Thank you for your letter. This time I have understood”. In this letter she asked that Barbusse permit her to send him a piece of her own work, a common request

22 “Malheureusement,le peuple allemand est—par un gouvernement infâme—plus aveuglé encore qu’un autre. Il faut, donc, par la guerre, le forcer à l’entendre—Et quand il entendra il comprendra.” (Emphasis in original.) 23 “L’Égalité est toujours pareille . . . la liberté et la fraternité sont des mots, tandis que l’égalité est une chose . . .” (Ellipses in original.) 24 La Justice suppose toujours et partout l’Égalité.—tandis que l’inverse n’est point vrai—l’égalité de droits et de devoir pour l’individu comme pour la collectivité, pour le grand comme pour l’adversaire. La Justice, c’est à mon sens la seule égalité vraie, la seule possible, la seule qui ne soit pas comme l’autre, déformable à volonté.

women readers of henri barbusse

357

in such letters. She had written some sort of political work, described by her as “sterile dreams or humanitarian utopias”. Yet by sending this piece to Barbusse, she hoped to cement the special and personal alliance between author and reader. She added, in what was probably a needlessly conspiratorial tone: I have not spoken to anyone (not that I fear the fate of the illustrious author of Utopia [probably Sir Thomas More]. But great was my conviction that in the eyes of everyone my ideas would seem ridiculously subversive. After all, that is perhaps their sole excuse and their sole merit.25

More common than Chauvel de Chauvigny’s combination of humble resistance followed by submission was an expression of simple bitterness and frustration, and the interminable war and its cost. Anna Thieck called on Barbusse: To compel the common people to see the horror of these trenches and the inhuman suffering endured by our sons, our brothers, our husbands! and the difference between beings of the same country and this hatred that develops among those who struggle versus those who profit and who play at the war.26

One can easily understand focusing on the “realism” of the novel rather than its political message. The socialism of Le Feu, in the end, had its roots in the relatively tolerant international socialism of Jean Jaurès and Keir Hardie—the very socialism so massively rejected by Europeans in August 1914. It proved yet more ill-suited to the divided and poisoned world of the European Left after 1917. Barbusse himself embraced the Soviet model of socialism into the beginning of the Stalin era, and consequently became politically marginalized in the years before his death in 1935.27 As Émilie Gravier has argued, the political meaning of Le Feu inevitably got caught up in ideological struggles of the war itself.28 Today, the politics of the book are practically ignored. Even the most devoted and admiring readers of

25 “Je n’en ai parlé à personne (non pas que je craîgnise [sic] le sort de l’illustre auteur d’Utopia” [probably Sir Thomas More]), tant était grande ma conviction qu’aucune yeux de tous ils paraîtraient ridiculement subversifs. Après tout, c’est peut-être là leur excuse et leur seul mérite.” 26 “Faire voir à la foule l’horreur de ces tranchées et ces souffrances surhumaines s’endurées par nos fils, nos frères, nos maris! et cette différence entre les êtres d’un même pays et cette haine que se développe chez ceux qui peinent contre ceux qui profitent et qui jouissent!!” 27 See Baudorre (1995). 28 Gravier (2001).

358

chapter twelve — leonard v. smith

Barbusse, then, prefigured responses of other readers later on. Perhaps, then, “ideal” readers and an unconditional acceptance of a prescribed reading do not exist.

Bibliography Audoin-Rouzeau S. (2001) Cinq Deuils de guerre, 1914–1918 (Paris: 2001). Barbusse H. (1937) Lettres de Henri Barbusse à sa femme, 1914–1917 (Paris: 1937). —— (1920) Paroles d’un combattant: Articles et discours 1917–1920 (Paris: 1920). Barbusse, H., Fonds Henri Barbusse, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Salle des manuscrits, Fr. N.A. 16485, “Lettres adressés à Henri Barbusse principalement par des combattants de 14–18, à propos de son ouvrage LE FEU”: (Adam-Keim), Microfilm 3042; (Lafitte-Zakker), Microfilm 3151. Baudorre P. (1995) Barbusse: le pourfendeur de la grande guerre (Paris: 1995). Chartier R. (1989) “Texts, Printings, Readings”, The New Cultural History, ed. L. Hunt (Berkeley: 1989), 154–75. Flynn E. (1986), “Gender and Reading”, in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, ed. E. Flynn and P. Schweickart (Baltimore: 1986), 267–88. Gravier E. (2001) “La Reception du Feu de Henri Barbusse par les combattants”. Mémoire de Maîtrise, Institut d’Études Politiques, Paris. Martin H.J., Chartier R., and Vivier, J.P. (1986) Histoire de l’édition française: Tome IV, le livre concurrencé, 1900–1950 (Paris: 1986). Scott J.W. (1991) “The Evidence of Experience”, Critical Inquiry 17 (1991) 773–97. Smith L. (2000) “Le Corps et la survie d’une identité dans les écrits de guerre français”, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 55 (2000) 11–33. —— (1995) “Masculinity, Memory, and the French World War I Novel: Henri Barbusse and Roland Dorgelès”, in Authority, Identity, and the Social History of the Great War, eds. M. Shevin-Coetzee and F. Coetzee (Providence: 1995), 251–73. Trevisan C. (2001) Les Fables du deuil: la grande guerre, mort et écriture (Paris: 2001).

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ENEMY IN BELGIAN SILENT FICTION FILMS* Leen Engelen Wars don’t end when the last shot is fired or a treaty signed They end when the movies tell us they’ve ended Anthony Giardina1

Introduction 1916. In his book Deux mentalités la Belge et l’Allemande, Jean Massart, vice-director of the Classe des Sciences de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, makes a comparison between Belgians and Germans. In his introduction, he sets forth the main ideas of his book: Instead of a full examination of all the particularities of the presentday German spirit, which would take too long, we will restrict ourselves to those from which Belgium suffered most, suffered cruelly: and further, we will not speak—it would be unnecessary—of the disgusting spirit of rape, rapacity and drunkenness. The psychological factors with which we will concern ourselves are pride, deviousness and wickedness.2

In the preface, Massart impresses on the reader that in making this study, he paid great attention to its objectivity and its scientific character. Despite the fact that he is a right-thinking member of the universitas-community, he depicts German nature in no uncertain terms. * I sincerely thank the Royal Belgian Film Archive, Brussels for allowing me acces to the films held in its collection and for the reproduction of the stills. I also thank my supervisor, Professor Willem Hesling. 1 Giardina (2003: 26). I am grateful to Sophie De Schaepdrijver for pointing this quote out to me. 2 Massart (1916: 8). “Au lieu de passer en revue toutes les particularités de l’esprit allemand actuel, ce qui serait trop long, nous nous limiterons à celles dont la Belgique a souffert le plus cruellement: encore ne parlerons-nous pas—ce serait superflu—de l’immonde esprit de viol, de la rapacité et de l’ivrognerie. Les éléments psychologiques auxquels nous nous attacherons sont l’orgueil, la fausseté et la méchanceté.”

360

chapter thirteen — leen engelen

1919. Belgian filmmaker Charles Tutelier, 22 years old, shoots a film titled La Belgique martyre. Although the war is over, the armistice has been signed and in Versailles world leaders are debating on the settlement of the war debts, Tutelier has not neither forgotten nor forgiven. Les boches are depicted as infamous, untrustworthy, evil bearers of death; as satanic, militaristic beasts and as cowards. Neither the scientist, nor the filmmaker has a good word for the German people and military. Moreover, in their work they both portray the German foe in vivid contrast with their fatherland Belgium. The enemy stands for everything one does not want to stand for oneself, everything one is not and one does not want to be. Both elements are inseparably linked to one another. The latter is a universal principle that can be found in almost all cultural representations of the enemy.3 In his book War on Film. The American cinema and World War I, 1914–1941 the American film scholar Michael T. Isenberg states that these constructions are traditionally at work in war films as well: “Films depicting an enemy nation, whether made during or after the war, tell us much about ourselves. [. . .] enemy vices were the reverse image of our virtues.”4 The post-war films on the First World War do not deal solely with the problems and events of a passed historical period, i.e. 1914–1918. As Siegfried Kracauer posits, films also reflect the Zeitgeist of the time in which they are made. After the armistice, war cultures continued to be strongly imbedded in the mentality of the Belgian people, and throughout the inter-war period their remnants still loomed large in the movies, literature, arts, historiography and corporate life. The appearance of Germans on the screen was thus connected to the evolution of public opinion and mentality in the 1920s.5 3

Reshef (1984: 3) describes this issue in connection with the French caricatures made in 1870–1871 during the French-Prussian war, as follows: “Les images forgées en ces périodes de crise pour représenter autrui nous renseignent peu sur autrui et beaucoup sur nous-mêmes. L’imagologie [. . .] nous apporte une connaissance de la personnalité de celui qui projette, mais n’est qu’hallucination par rapport à son thème.” 4 Isenberg (1981: 145). 5 In his definition of war culture, John Horne explicitly refers to the opposition between the representation of the enemy nation and the representation of the fatherland: [dans la culture de guerre il s’agit de] “Weltanschauungen des peuples enrôlés dans le conflit, bien sûr, avec une idéologie simpliste selon laquelle le soi collectif idéalisé de la nation et des alliés affronte un ennemi diabolisé” (Horne, 2002: 45).

cinematic representations of the enemy

361

This chapter investigates the images of the enemy in Belgian fictional war films of the 1920s. It first focuses on racial and animalistic stereotypes, and then scrutinizes representations of the invasion. The fate of German characters in the films’ narratives is analysed in a third part. These issues will be connected to the legacy of the 19th Century, Belgian experiences of invasion and occupation in 1914–1918 and processes of European co-operation in the 1920s.

Animalistic and Racial Stereotypes: Is the German Bark Worse Than His Bite? Animalistic Stereotypes All films discussed here round the usual suspects up. Germany is obviously public enemy number one. Austria-Hungary has a narrow escape. In the 1922 film La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit several caricature drawings are used. Objects of laughter are German GeneralGovernor Colmar von der Goltz—often called von der Goltz Pacha— and Moritz Freiherr von Bissing. By means of a dissolve, an image of their respective head changes into a pear. The French word poire indeed used to be a swearword for someone who is easily fooled. Already in the 19th Century, this kind of visual metamorphosis— a face changing into a pear—was a very well known formula. HonoréVictorin Daumier (1808–1879) made several analogous drawings of the French king Louis-Philippe, le roi citoyen. His loss of prestige is symbolised by Daumier’s graphical metamorphosis. The drawings were spread all over Paris by means of posters. Under the Second French Republic in 1848, censorship increased and Daumier was troubled by the government. For his drawing, Gargantua—picturing Louis-Philippe as Rabelais’ Gargantua with a pear-head, Daumier was then sentenced to six months imprisonment. During the Great War, the stage of innocent satire is surpassed and the use of this type of metaphor reaches its pinnacle. The allied press often represents the Germans as pigs. Like pigs, Germans are characterised as voracious and greedy. The analogy with Daumier’s Gargantua, whose gluttony was legendary, is obvious. Dutch cartoonist, Louis Raemaekers imagines the Germans as pigs wearing a monocle, a Pickelhaube and an Eisernes Kreuz, symbolically devouring Belgium, portrayed as a beautiful, gracious woman dressed in white. The

362

chapter thirteen — leen engelen

Fig. 4. German General-Governor Colmar von der Goltz, “Von der Goltz Pacha”. Still from La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit, Armand du Plessy, 1921.

cinematic representations of the enemy

363

clandestine press also uses this metaphor. In Le Petit Diktionnaire (sic) de Boche, we find the following description under the lemma Kannibales: “Said of people who eat their own kind; applicable, in consequence, to the Boches who eat only pork.”6 In many war films made in the early twenties, we recognise similar images. Germans are addressed as, or compared to a variety of less flattering species of the kingdom of animals. Linking physical appearance to character-traits, these images tread on dangerous ground. The border between satire and hate propaganda becomes very thin. In his essay Le rire (1899) Henri Bergson remarks: There is nothing humorous outside that which is properly human [. . .] we may laugh at an animal, but that happens when we have unexpectedly seen it in a human attitude or with a human expression.7

In case of the animalistic representation of the German foe, the human traits are stereotypical characteristics or iconic. In the triumphant epilogue of La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit (1922) a short animation is included: ‘the departure of the last Boche’. A pig, identifiable as German because of its Pickelhaube is chased out of the yard of a Belgian farm by a soldier. The following caption comments sarcastically: ‘Look at him, the C . . . with his spiked helmet, chased out of Belgium by our soldier’. In the immediate after war period, Belgians found pride and joy in laughing at the German defeat. Similar images are to be found in fiction films of other victorious nations. In the British comedy, The lads of the village (1919, Harry Lorraine) for instance, local youngsters amuse the villagers by adorning a pig’s head with a German helmet. In the Belgian war films, German characters use the word pig, pointing at Belgians as well as at German fellow citizens. When policeman Pinkhof fails to lay his hand on the editors of the Libre Belgique, the clandestine daily, von Bissing calls him Schweinhund and sends him away.8 Von Bissing vents his frustration about the stupidity of his inferiors by cursing. In this scene the director exposes

6 Massart (1917: 100) “—se dit des gens qui mangent leurs semblables; applikable (sic) par conséquence aux boches qui ne mangent que du kochon (sic.)” 7 Bergson (2002: 2–3) “il n’y a rien de comique en dehors de ce qui est proprement humain. [. . .] on rira d’un animal, mais parce qu’on aura surpris chez lui une attitude d’homme ou une expression humaine.” 8 Ironically at the Leipzig trials one German was tried for having repeatedly called prisoners Schweinhund. Zuckermann (2004: 251).

Fig. 5. Poster for La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit, Armand du Plessy, 1921. Collection of Paul Geens (Belgium).

364 chapter thirteen — leen engelen

cinematic representations of the enemy

365

the German unjustness: Not only their enemies but also their compatriots are oppressed without scruples. According to Ouriel Reshef, Prussian officers were already characterised in a similar way in 1870: [. . .] more concerned with themselves [. . .] than with their surroundings—therefore indifferent equally to the difficulties endured by the soldiers placed under their orders and to the exactions visited upon the civilian population.9

Belgian directors went even further in using animalistic metaphors. In Âme belge (1921) the beginning of Belgian mobilisation is rung in by the following caption: ‘The Belgian army goes out on campaign to confront the wild animals set loose by the Kaiser.’ What follows is a montage of a parade of the Belgian military accompanied by dogs pulling sledges. Dialectically the idea the Belgians want to pay the German army back in its own coin is emerging. The same metaphor is used in La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit. Two German Sherlock Holmes look-alikes, obviously members of the Kriminalpolizei, are shadowing a patriotic Belgian secretly distributing the Libre Belgique. When they try to lay their hands on the brave patriot a caption comments: ‘the beast (fauve) watch for its prey’. Misled by a simple feint, the detectives lose sight of the Belgian. Consequently they look idiotic and their zeal is ridiculed. Comparing Germans to wild animals means stressing their aggressive instincts and their inability to think. Driven mad by bestial impulses they attack and kill their enemies. It almost goes without saying that the Belgians depict themselves as the fittest, who survive in the jungle of the war. Similar, but even more daring jargon is used in the 1923 film La revanche belge. A young Belgian girl, Hélène is chased by a German officer named Fritz Bauer. She continuously rejects the attention of her suitor. She is constantly at her guard because in the prison camp where he locked her up, Fritz has a lot of power over both her and her father. Falsely announcing the death of her fiancé, he tries to force her to marry him. After the armistice she can finally speak her mind and she does so immediately: ‘Terrible monster, I have got away from your claws.’ His extreme cruelty and insensitivity inspires her to call him a monster. 9 Reshef (1984: 67). “[. . .] plus préoccupés d’eux-mêmes [. . .] que de ce qui les entoure— indifférents donc autant aux difficultés endurées par les soldats placés sous leurs ordres qu’aux exactions perpétrées sur la population civile.”

366

chapter thirteen — leen engelen

These films partly follow in the footsteps of unsubtle, though popular Hollywood productions like the so-called ‘Hate-the-Hun’ films— produced in the last year of the war—and the post-war ‘Hangthe-Kaiser’ films.10 The 1918 production Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin, starring Rupert Julian, provides a very crude image of the Germans. The Kaiser is depicted as pure evil, as the mad dog of Europe, deliberately provoking war and atrocities. Another example can be found in Metro’s 1921 box-office success Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Racial Stereotypes Satire? Yes of course, but there was more to it. In the 1870’s barbarity was a central notion in the definition of the German enemy. In 19th century France this concept had political—mainly anti-republican— connotations. In the 1910’s however, ethnic dimensions were added. Germans were no longer seen as barbarians because of their supposedly backward political system or their history of warfare; they were now believed to have a racial predisposition for barbarity. Their inferiority was biologically determined and consequently everything they tackled in the cultural, political, or social field was thus conditioned.11 Many respected academics were happy to supply scientific proof for this conception. To provide the ultimate evidence for the influence of the German physiognomy on the German Sein und Wesen, they turned to theories stemming from phrenology, anthropometry, craniology and palm reading. Although these theories were already criticised by the 19th century academic establishment and have meanwhile been completely discredited by historical hindsight, they were given a lot of credence in the inter-war period. Respected academics such as historian G. Lenôtre (member of the Académie française) and psychologist Edgar Bérillon busied themselves writing on this subject.12 Initially this ethnic-anthropologic approach mainly found

10

These notions are coined by Brownlow (1978). Jeismann (1997: 304–305). 12 In 1915, Bérillon wrote a speech in which he contrasted the German physiognomy with the French. Not only did he mention differences in the shape of their skulls and noses, he also exposed the typical German apathetic eyes and ears evoking the head of a dog or a wolf. Moreover, the German physiognomy was characterised by a big mouth and thick lips, indicating a hypertrophy of the intestines. The German voracity is thus proved scientifically. Jeismann (1997: 302). 11

cinematic representations of the enemy

367

acceptance in the right-wing circles. But it easily lent itself to vulgarisation and soon became common knowledge.13 Belgian scientists generally had a more restrained view than some of their French counterparts did. They were mainly interested in theories of socio-biology and eugenics. Their discourse was, progressive and moderate, not racialized. Scientists using racial theories to stigmatise the enemy were mainly Walloons. Convinced that Flanders would abandon the Flemish demands after the war, their anti-Germanic sentiments were therefore not directed against their fellow Belgians. From this point of view, the comparison between Germans and pigs as described above is far from innocent. Jokes about the German Kultur include scornful remarks about their lack of etiquette and refinement and their insatiable hunger for sausage and beer.14 But it goes even further. In Âme belge (1921) there is a very strong racial component present in the judgement of the enemy. The film mentions ‘le naturel boche’ (‘the Boche nature’) of the German protagonist Otto; the ‘German soul’ is opposed to the ‘Belgian soul’ and a meeting of Von Bissing and his staff is called ‘une importante réunion de têtes carrées’ (‘a great gatehring of square heads’). Indeed, in the 1860’s the French craniologist Adrien Adolphe Desbarolles discovered in a comparative study that in ‘German’ brains the part which is responsible for the digestive processes, is bigger than in ‘French’ brains. This would explain not only the square-like form of their head, but according to Desbarolles it but also clarify the greedy and voracious nature of Germans.15 A 1915 review of the work of Adolphe Desbarolles explains (in Jeismann, 1997: 301–302): [. . .] faithful to his method, Desbarolles next studied the German skull, in accordance with the theory of phrenology. [. . .] The volume of this latter organ [the organ of discrimination and discussion] is frequently augmented in Germans, according to Desbarolles, by its neighbouring organ, causality, by the organ of mimicry which inspires the taste for representation and drama, often also by the organ of ‘wonderment’. This assemblage combines to give the skull as a whole the form which has given rise to the vulgar epithet for Germans of ‘square heads’.16

13

Bérillon (1915), Jeismann (1997: 301–312) and Le Naour (2003). See also Le Naour (2003). 15 Desbarolles (1866). 16 [. . .] fidèle à sa méthode, Desbarolles étudie ensuite le crâne allemand selon la phrénologie. [. . .] Le volume de ce dernier organe [l’organe de la discrimination et de la discussion] est sou14

Fig. 6. ‘Une importante réunion des têtes carrées.’ Still from La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit, Armand du Plessy, 1921.

368 chapter thirteen — leen engelen

cinematic representations of the enemy

369

The scientific research on physiognomy thus confirms a variety of 19th century prejudices on the Germans: their ugliness, crudeness, voracity and stupidity. The anecdote printed in the popular movie magazine Ciné-revue demonstrates the deep-rooted ethnic determination of the enemy. When the film Libre Belgique was being shot, one scene took place in a cul-de-sac off the Rue de L’Empereur. I was on my way there for the filming when I saw my friend Festerat a little way off in the Place de Justice, already dressed as a Boche soldier—but without his film make-up—turning into the cul-de-sac, surrounded by enquiring people. At this moment a very elegantly dressed lady turned to me, saying ‘Monsieur, they have just arrested a German soldier; I was right there: can you believe it! What a nerve, to come back to Belgium so soon, and in uniform! Even if he’d been in civilian clothes, that man, I’d have seen at once that he was a Boche, for he’s got such a dirt. . . .’ And the indignant lady did not use the word physionomy, you must believe me! Poor Festerat.17

Contextualisation: Frustration and Catharsis War films mainly resort to animalistic and racial stereotypes in the immediate after-war period and the early 1920s. These early war films were made in chaotic circumstances. The German responsibility for the outbreak and conduct of war and the necessary reparations were still being negotiated; the revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Weimar Republic paralyzed Germany while Belgium was trying to overcome political and economic instability. This climate of uncertainty made it possible for early war films to spread such hateful images. The violence of these representations

vent augmenté chez les Allemands, dit Desbarolles, par l’organe voisin, la causalité, par l’organe de la mimique qui inspire le goût de la représentation et du théâtre, souvent aussi par l’organe de la “merveillosité”. Cette agglomération constitue pour l’ensemble du crâne la forme qui a fait donner vulgairement aux allemands le nom de “têtes carrées”. 17 “une anecdote de Harzé” (1922: 6). Quand on a tourné le film Libre Belgique, une scène se passait dans une impasse de la rue de l’Empereur. Je me rendais à cet endroit pour tourner quand, arrivé place de justice, je vis de loin le camarade Festerat costumé déjà en soldat boche—mais non maquillé—qui pénétrait dans l’impasse, entouré de curieux. À ce moment une dame très élégamment vêtue m’accosta en disant: “Monsieur, on vient d’arrêter un soldat allemand; je l’ai vu de près: croyez-vous! Quel toupet! déjà revenir en Belgique, et en uniforme! Même s’il avait été en civil, celui-là, j’aurais bien vite vu que c’était un boche, car il a une assez sal. . . . . .”. Et la dame indignée n’avait pas prononcé le mot physionomie, je vous prie de le croire! Pauvre Festerat.

370

chapter thirteen — leen engelen

only makes sense within the framework of the war culture, with its characteristic logic of dehumanization and denial of the enemy.18 In the after-war period, these stereotypes were a manifestation of unabated wartime enmity. Popular memory and contemporary fears prevented cultural demobilisation. Though often harsh and hateful, these images were mainly applied as humorous elements. Humour was used in two ways. On the one hand, it was a device to keep war cultures mobilised (or to prevent demobilisation),19 on the other hand, it defined and expressd the self-image of the Belgians as a small but plucky country that did not lose its witty optimism under the German occupation. The longevity of the crude enemy-images used in these films is the result of a cathartic process. Because of the occupation, the Belgians could not vent their feelings of frustration and anger about the German invasion in 1914. These opinions did get a forum in the underground press (e.g. Libre Belgique), but they could not be brought out in the open until after the armistice. The embryonic Belgian film industry was shut down completely in 1914 and until 1919 no fiction films were made in Belgium. In England, a nonoccupied allied country, fiction films immediately aired the general frustrations and fears about the German conduct of war. In the summer of 1914, Maurice Elvey made The Bells of Rheims. The film is now lost, but an Exeter critic gives us a good impression of the mood of the film: “The Bells of Rheims, the superlative example of German ‘Kultur.’ The Germans shell the Cathedral, an act deliberately committed without the shadow of a pretext on the ground of military necessity.”20 In the early months of the war, numerous similar films were made in England. Popular interest for the genre however, quickly faded. By 1915, British audiences generally prefered Charlie Chaplin comedies and serials.21 18 In the wartime (satirical) press (e.g. Punch or La Baïonette) the animalistic stereotypes are sometimes extremely hateful. After the war a lot of these magazines disappear or adapt to the post-war climate and become much milder. 19 For a more extensive study of the use of (pictorial) humour as a means of social mobilisation in the First World War, see Purseigle (2001: 289–328). 20 Exeter Flying Post, February 20 (1915). On the website of the Bill Douglas Center for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture: http://www.ex.ac.uk/bill.douglas/Alex/ Alex7.htm#161. 21 ‘British & Colonial. What the Company did in the Great War’, presentation by Gerry Turvey at the 7th British Silent Cinema Festival, Nottingham, April 15–19, 2004.

cinematic representations of the enemy

371

But there is more: In the twenties, Belgians were still anxious that the German army would again overrun the border to execute its pan-German ideas. Images did not only ridicule and humiliate the enemy but also contributed to exorcise this fear and cope with the ordeal of the aftermath of the war.22 From the twenties onwards, the international political forum encouraged European reconciliation and co-operation. To accomplish this, cultural demobilisation was a conditio sine qua non. Demobilisation was a very slow, asynchronous process that took place on many different levels. In post-war Belgium cultural demobilisation progressed at a much faster pace in political and economical fields than in popular culture. Only from 1925 onwards did the way the Germans were represented in popular Belgian cinema slowly begin to change. Gradually animalistic and racial stereotypes disappeared from the screen. Consequently, we can conclude that these particular representations were part of a very radical and deep-rooted war culture that softened in the mid-1920s and faded away to a certain extent in the 1930s. As shown above, processes of cultural demobilisation are cultural specific. In the United States for example, the crudest enemy images have already disappeared by 1920.23

Representation of Atrocity Stories: Germans as Bearers of Death Representations of German soldiers in the Allied countries often connected them to Death. A diversity of images is used: they are seen as bearers of death, murderers, gravediggers or the old gentleman with the scythe. Similar representations figure in the Belgian fiction films here under scrutiny. The appearance of these images is closely connected to the invasion and to the numerous atrocity stories that followed at its heels. In the late summer of 1914, German soldiers, convinced—mostly unfoundedly—that the Belgian civilian population was fighting a franc-tireur war, killed more than 5000 Belgian civilians. Immediately, allied propaganda used the events to mobilise allied and neutral populations for the war effort. They invoked ‘the rape of Belgium’ to

22 23

Le Naour (2001: 267–268). Isenberg (1981: 145–154).

372

chapter thirteen — leen engelen

claim that justice lay on their side. The cruel stories were often exaggerated and sometimes simply untrue. The end of the mobile war also meant the end of the atrocities.24 Nevertheless, the stories continued to circulate in occupied Belgium and remained central to the Belgian war culture till long after the armistice.25 In the course of the 1920s, several political initiatives for European and international cooperation were developed: the League of Nations, the Locarno Pact, and the Briand-Kellog Treaty. Successful reconciliation necessitated, however, a certain official amnesia vis-à-vis the German atrocities. Extreme pacifist voices—unjustly—ascribed the atrocities to allied propaganda; Arthur Ponsonby’s book Falsehood in Wartime being a case in point here.26 As far as the representation of the enemy is concerned, Ponsonby states that in times of war, a government finds itself obliged to spread a negative image in order to legitimate its military actions against him. Furthermore, the enemy cannot be presented as too gentle, because in this case, the people would wonder why the victory takes so long and they would, as a result, lose faith in the strength of the national army.27 Popular fiction films however, barely mirror ongoing processes of cultural demobilisation. The invasion and the atrocity stories remain a major preoccupation in the Belgian war films up to the 1930s. First, German soldiers are represented as brutal murderers of innocent Belgian women and children. Up until 1930, a large majority of the Belgian war films deal with civilian victims of the German conduct of war. Quite a few films refer to the myth of the severed hands and historical martyrs like Gabrielle Petit or Yvonne Vieslet28

24 With atrocities we refer to the acts of violence committed by the German army against the Belgian and Northern French civilian population between August and mid October 1914. Larry Zuckerman justly claims “the rape of Belgium lasted more than fifty months under an occupation that kept seven million people in fear for their lives, liberty and property. The real rape had nothing to do with atrocities, authentic or imagined, but with routine terror and the mind-set that condoned it, which put German crimes on another level” Zuckerman (2004: 1–3). 25 For an outstanding study of German atrocities see: Horne & Kramer (2001). 26 Arthur Ponsonby’s Falsehood in wartime was first published in London in 1928. We are using a new and annotated French translation by Jean Plantin: Ponsonby & Plantin (1996). The translator claims the original French translation, as published in Belgium (undated but probably before 1930), contains many translation mistakes. 27 For a critical assesment of the pacifist turn and the work of Arthur Ponsonby see: Horne & Kramer (2001: 366–375). 28 Gabrielle Petit worked as a spy for British Intelligence. She was arrested an executed in 1916 at the age of 23. She figures in fiction films dating from 1921

cinematic representations of the enemy

373

occur on several occasions. Most films however, focus on fictitious victims of the invasion of the imperial army. Dating from 1921, La Belgique martyre illustrates the continuation of war culture after the armistice. In the film, a village pastor warns his parishioners for the German advance. In the next shot, we see a column of spike-helmeted German cavaliers riding through the image. Since they ride on the horizon, their profile consequently emphasized the shape of their helmets. The following caption annonces: ‘the bearers of death.’29 It does not take long before the prophecy becomes reality. Imperial soldiers gratuitously execute Mother Seghers, whose husband has joined the Belgian army as a volunteer. The film shows how drunken German soldiers start a fight and shoot at each other—a brawl sarcastically commented upon as a manifestation of the ‘German Kultur.’ As a small group of other German soldiers ascertains the result of the bloodshed, they immediately suspect the Belgian civilians of being franc-tireurs. Since there is nobody to be seen in the neighbourhood, they walk on to the adjacent house, where the Seghers family is quietly having dinner. Although the family obviously has nothing to do with the incident, the Germans call for revenge: Civilians fired on German soldiers, I heard shots coming from that direction. A lesson has to be taught. One of you will be shot. I let you choose yourself who will pay for the others.30

The mother was then underhandedly picked out. Regardless of the pastor’s plea to spare the woman, she is put against the wall of the churchyard—‘the wall of death’ reads the caption—and brutally shot by an execution squad. As if this was not yet enough, the soldiers set out to burn down the village and shoot at the villagers. Chaos reigns in the main street, people run over each other, not knowing how to escape this inferno. The scene is tinted in red and orange tones.31 Dead and destruction are the result of the imperial deluge: (La Libre Belgique et l’héroïne Gabrielle Petit and la Belgique martyre) and 1928 (Femme belge). Yvonne Vieslet, a nine-year old shot by a German because she gave her brioche to a hungry French prisoner of war, figures in films dating from 1922 ( Jeune Belgique), 1929 (La petite martyre) and 1938 (la tragédie de Marchienne). The latter film was a remake (by the same director) of the 1929 production. 29 My translation. Original caption in Dutch. 30 My translation. Original caption in Dutch. 31 Tinting is a mechanised non-photographic colour process. The black-and-white positive filmstock is immersed in a bath of dye, whose colour varied according to the mood/setting of a scene. Tinting usually produces a uniform colour throughout.

374

chapter thirteen — leen engelen

‘the death-bells are ringing over Flanders.’32 The symbolic meaning of bells is made very clear in this film, for Belgium was traditionally pictured as a nation of bell-ringers. Thanks to the British composer Edward Elgar’s contribution to the King Albert’s Book—Carillon, opus 75 for carillon on a text by the Belgian poet Emile Cammaerts— the carillon continued to be a symbol of Belgian cultural identity during the Great War.33 The invaders silenced the bells on the church towers, which once set the pace of peaceful times. For the remainder of the film, the bells are not heard again, before the Armistice, when the church bells herald a new era of hope and life. The resurrected Belgium has overcome the German bearers of death. Un soldat inconnu, a now lost film dating from 1924, also focuses on the bloodthirsty behaviour of the Germans during the invasion. A reviewer describes the story of the film as follows: [. . .] the poor little village is occupied by the Teuton hordes. The barbarians, not content with pinning us down, are murderers, making the blood of innocents flow, of defenceless people; they kill Suzanne’s father, massacre a priest, a baby.34

In most war films produced up until 1928, the Germans are depicted similarly. From the films, a consistent series of stereotypical images of the German invasion emerges. German soldiers are invariably described as gratuitous murderers. The innocent are always their first victims: children, priests and women. Cruel and diabolic, they remain indifferent to the death and destruction they cause. The Belgian population on the contrary, is represented as living a peaceful and quiet life in the countryside. Their tranquillity is disturbed by the mobilization, when young men join the Belgian army and young women enlist as nurses. The family members who stay at home, are threatened, robbed or killed in the course of the invasion. This juxtaposition is central to the script that structures the representation of the invasion in all Belgian films here discussed.

32

My translation. Original caption in Dutch. Derez (2000: 520–521). 34 “Un Soldat Inconnu” (1924: 5). [. . .] le pauvre petit village est occupé par les hordes teutonnes. Les barbares, non contents de nous tenir sous leurs bottes, assassinent, font couler le sang des innocents, des êtres sans défense; ils tuent le père de Suzanne, massacrent un prêtre, un enfant. 33

cinematic representations of the enemy

375

Underlying National Frustrations and the Fate of German Characters The Treaty of Versailles was a great disappointment for Belgium. Neither financial nor territorial demands were properly met. The greatest setback however was the refusal of the former allies to fully acknowledge Belgium’s unjust suffering. A major reason for this is the Belgian failure to prove the crimes of the occupation.35 As a result the allies more or less ignored the civilian victims of the invasion, their number being almost derisory in comparison to the number of British or French soldiers that died on the battlefield. In 1919, the former allies sought to deny Belgium reparations promised during the war. The disappointing outcome of the peace talks partly explains the obsession of Belgian filmmakers with the invasion. The Belgian quest for moral recognition went on long after the matter had been ‘settled’ in the Versailles treaty and the Leipzig trials. Although Belgium actively took part in the political process of European co-operation,36 traces of this national frustration do surface in popular culture. As to the film’s diegesis it is remarkable that a lot of Germans, soldiers and civilians (living in Belgium) die at the end of the film, not on the battlefield, but due to murders, accidents or natural causes. La Jeune Belgique (1922) tells the true story of the young Yvonne Vieslet whom a German soldier killed because she had given her brioche to a starving French prisoner of war. At the end of the film, her brother takes revenge and kills the murderer. He is praised for his act and everybody agrees justice has been done. In reality however, the murderer was not even found after an elaborate investigation had been carried out. Considering that the director had so far been anxious to remain true to the original event, the film’s ending is surprising. Another character, Maria Devlieger—German by birth, but now landlady of a pub in Belgium—is collaborating with the Germans. At the end of the film, she also dies in a rather uneasy manner. When she wants to run away after the armistice, she suddenly suffers an attack of congestion and drops dead. Her natural

35

For an excellent study of this issue: Zuckermann (2004). In 1919, the Belgian politician Louis Hymans, became the first president of the League of Nations. A few years later, a Belgian delegation under the presidency of Emile Vandervelde took part in the preparation of the LocarnoPact (1925) and in 1928 Belgium was one of the nations signing the Briand-Kellog treaty. 36

376

chapter thirteen — leen engelen

death carefully keeps the director from having to mention the less flattering post-war settlements between angry Belgians and supposed collaborators. Another example can be found in Âme Belge (1921). Otto Kreuzebaum, a naturalised German married to a Belgian woman, also collaborates with his original compatriots. His wife finds out about his unpatriotic behaviour, but her motherly heart—and without any doubt the contemporary morals—restrain her from leaving him. When at the end of the film, the Belgian resistance blowing up the building where Otto finds himself accidentally kills this seems to bring a very convenient solution to the deadlock situation of his Belgian wife. In yet another film, La revanche belge (1922), the German Fritz Bauer, trying to escape a furious love rival, runs into a tree and dies from a fractured skull.37 Although the death of a character is an excellent narrative closure, this series of German dead is not merely a coincidence. Why didn’t the directors let these characters survive? I would argue that the diegetically unnecessary death of Germans is a subconscious trace of Belgium’s never redeemed quest for moral recognition and satisfaction. By letting German protagonists die, directors metaphorically take the law in their own hands and make a symbolic end to an unjust situation, on which they had no hold in reality. The study of representations of the enemy in popular fiction films allows us to better understand both the war and the post-war period. The films discussed above bear witnessed and contributed to both a mobilized war culture and the post-war evolution towards cultural demobilization. The specificity of the Belgian war experience is central to the understanding of the enemy images as they feature in national war films. Popular expressions of war culture were largely suppressed during the war and could only manifest themselves openly after the armistice. The fierce invasion and harsh occupation regime left remnants in Belgian mentality long after the war had ended. These remainders of war culture can be traced in popular fiction films.

37 This event is made explicit by an explaining caption: ‘In his fall, Fritz Bauer’s skull was fractured against a tree.’

cinematic representations of the enemy

377

Bibliography Bergson, H. (2002) Le Rire. (Paris: 2002). Bérillon, E. (1915) La polychésie de la race allemande. Das übertriebene Darmleerungsbedürfnis der deutschen Rasse. (Paris: 1915). Celan, P. (2000) ‘Todesfuge’, in Gesammelte Werke, Erster Band. (Frankfurt am Main: 2000) 39–42. Desbarolles, A. (1866) Le caractère Allemand expliqué par sa physiologie. Paris: Librairie International. Derez, M. (2000) ‘The experience of occupation in Belgium’, in The Great War 1914–1945. Vol. 1 Lightning strikes twice, eds. Liddle, P., J. Bourne & I. Whitehead (London: 2000) 511–532. Giardina, A., (2003) “The German James Dean: Horst Buchholz, 1933–2003”, The New York Times Magazine, December 28 (2003) 26. Horne, J. & A. Kramer (2001) German Atrocities. A History of Denial. (London: 2001). Horne, J. (2002) “Introduction”, 14/18 Aujourd’hui-Today-Heute 5 (2002) 45–54. Jeismann, M. (1997) La patrie de l’ennemi. La notion d’ennemi national et la représentation de la nation en Allemagne et en France de 1792 à 1918 (Paris: 1997). Kracauer, S. (1949) “National Types as Hollywood Presents Them”, in Mass Culture. The Popular Arts in America, eds. Rosenberg, B. & D. Manning White (Illinois: 1957) 257–277. Le Naour, J.-Y. (2001) “Laughter and Tears in the Great War: the need for laughter/the guilt of humour”, Journal of European Studies 3/4 (2001) 265–275. —— (2003) “Bouffer du Boche”, Quasimodo (2003). Massart, J. (1916) Deux mentalités. La Belge et l’Allemande (Paris: 1916). —— (1917) La presse clandestine dans la Belgique occupée (Paris: 1917). Purseigle, P. (2001) “Mirroring Societies at War: pictorial humour in the British and French popular press during the First World War”, Journal of European Studies 3/4 (2001), 289–328. Reshef, O. (1984) Guerre, mythes et caricature (Paris: 1984). Zuckermann, L. (2004) The Rape of Belgium. The untold story of World War I. (New York: 2004). “une anecdote de Harzé”, Ciné-revue 8 (1922) 6. “Un Soldat Inconnu”, Ciné-revue 47 (1924) 5–6. Filmography La Belgique martyre, Charles Tutelier, 1919. La Libre Belgique et l’héroïque Gabrielle Petit, Armand Du Plessy, 1920. Âme belge, Armand Du Plessy, 1921. La jeune Belgique, Armand Du Plessy, 1922. La revanche belge, Théo Bergerat, 1923. Un soldat inconnu, Francis Martin, 1924.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PARIS, BERLIN: WAR MEMORY IN TWO CAPITAL CITIES (1914–1933) Elise Julien

Focusing on the memory of the First World War as it took root in Paris and in Berlin between 1914 and 1933,1 this research takes its place at the crossroads of the history of the First World War, of memory, of urban life and capital cities, and of comparative history. This study of memory draws extensively on contemporary historiography. In particular, it questions and stimulates cultural history, understood as the analysis of collective representations. The memory with which we are concerned here must first therefore be specified and then relocated in the context of the First World War and the post-war years, before it can contribute to an analysis of the effects of the war on the societies under consideration. Here the approach is also comparative, for we are simultaneously looking at the memory of the war in Paris and Berlin. The two metropolitan centers show similarities—functional and structural—in their role as capital cities that invite comparison. Further, these capital cities also serve above all as prisms through which memory enables us to study the restructuring of collective identities at various levels: international, national, urban, communal.

Remembering War in Capital Cities A History of Memory and Constructions of Identity Here, memory is a subject for history. It is at the same time a process of development through cultural and social interaction and 1 This is a modern history thesis entitled: ‘Paris, Berlin: the memory of the First World War (1914–1933) in preparation under the shared supervision of Professors Jean-Louis Robert (University Paris I) and Jürgen Kocka (Freie Universität Berlin) in the form of a co-tutorship.

380

chapter fourteen — elise julien

the result of this process, in other words representations that are diverse but always, in social terms, framed in the past. To borrow the terminology of Maurice Halbwachs, who was responsible for developing and then establishing the concept, ‘collective memory’ explains a certain number of social phenomena relating to memory.2 Despite being reproached with having sharply differentiated collective memory from individual memory, Halbwachs was right to emphasize the human impossibility of recollecting in isolation from society: the reconstruction of memory operates through the circumstances of the past event, and thus also through those of social or collective settings. Therefore, the individual memory always has a collective dimension. In this tension between individual memory and collective memory it is useful to avoid setting these terms in opposition, each excluding the other. To bring out the link that unites them, Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan emphasize the need for continual questioning of the action of memory. This avoids treating collective memory as an abstract concept disconnected from its individual origins, a swathe of ideas seen as enveloping a whole population in evoking certain aspects of the past. These two authors point out that those who make the effort to remember together do so out of duty to their private memory, but that they nonetheless use socially significant language and gestures in this process. That which they call the ‘agent of memory’ is an individual but one who is part of a social grouping established for commemorative perception. In the end, the link between private history and collective gesture, between the isolated individual and the social individual, is agency.3 Besides, the study of memory constitutes a fruitful approach to the construction of identities. Identity is based on memory, which makes it possible to think oneself identical in time; memory is based inversely on identity, which gives each individual or group the awareness that such an unfolding of temporal sequences has meaning in itself. The dialectical links which unite these two concepts are undeniable, but their combined development can be complex. An act of memory makes it possible to control the past, to appropriate it for oneself and to make one’s own mark upon it: memory is thus strongly marked by 2 It was principally in three of his works: Halbwachs (1925, 1941, 1950) that we find the sociological definition of collective memory. 3 Winter and Sivan (1999), pp. 9–10.

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 381 identity. In return, memory may serve to create or recreate identities. It is thus probable that individuals and groups are all the more likely to go back over their past if that return becomes the means to construct an identity, or if it is challenged to redefine it permanently or, if its very existence is disputed. Total memories will be matched to solid identities, fragmented memories to fragmented identities. Within this framework we must examine certain features more closely, starting with commemoration. A ceremony designed to recall a person or an event, its very etymology suggests a human link that is founded on memory. If commemorations occupy a central place in the political world, it is precisely because they contribute to a definition of political legitimacy and identity: the act of commemoration is part of a relationship which is problematical for history. It ought not to be seen as a simple means of creating consensus, for it also reveals tensions and conflicts and proves to be a political issue. Commemorations, which seek to reach out to the citizenry at large, also reflect political strategies and processes of decision or of implementation, which are not immediately readable. These strategies and processes may be the work of the state, as chief initiator of commemorations so far as it is the incarnation of a political community, by affirming consensus on the great values that unite the whole nation. Yet they may also be the work of more limited communities, whether local, political or religious, or groupings of particular interests, which thus assert, preserve or strengthen their identity. In this sense, it is necessary to see commemorative ceremonies not only as the work of a public authority or consensus: in capital cities as elsewhere, they are also the expression of smaller memorializing groups at the heart of civil society. From the viewpoint of group and individual identity, sites of memory are essential commemorative structures of recall. In the case of a war leaving more than three million dead in France and Germany alone, graves and places of burial are significantly privileged elements in the combined interplay of memory and identity. Like war memorials, these sites are used for the commemorative ceremonies already mentioned. But they are also used for far more personal rituals of separation; bearing the names of the dead which endure in carved form, they thus represent what has not been lost. It is also at these sites that those close to the dead place their flowers and messages, a way of offering in return something to those who have given all.

382

chapter fourteen — elise julien

In France as in Germany we find memorials to the First World War in a very varied range of settings (public squares, town halls, cemeteries, schools, places of work, churches etc.); this is because they are in fact a shared feature of the expression of memory derived from the different active frameworks, groups or communities evoked above. For this reason, war memorials are both a striking form of witness to the history of memory and a manifestation of it. The first element which should be analyzed is the political and moral significance assigned to war memorials by those who commissioned and created them. The works of Antoine Prost on French war memorials are useful sources of reference here.4 Beyond their initial significance, war memorials and tombs seek to help survivors to face the death and to commemorate the dead. As far as possible they must take into account the way in which the families of the dead, and the population in general, perceive and adopt these sites of memory directly linked to the war. Finally, while these monuments clearly bear powerful meanings, these messages evolve with time until, generally, they eventually lose their original focus. Sites of memory may remain as no more than the traces of this operation of memory. As they are conceived here, sites of memory inevitably acquire some of their definition from the work undertaken under the aegis of Pierre Nora.5 Their intention, however, was to constitute a counterpoint, local and particular. Where Nora’s sites of memory operate to grasp France’s national, constructed memory, they sought to foster a grasp of a range of memories, the outcome of multiple social settings where the stakes are easily perceived on a reduced scale of study. A major interest of the concept of site of memory lies in its capacity to lead towards an inventory of styles of a changing, moving, elective memory incarnated in conceptual and material locations, of variable strength but always living. Further, it supplies solid frameworks and points of reference, comparative if needed, to a cultural history threatened by lack of clarity. A Comparative Urban History: The Memory of Two Capitals We have mentioned the use of memory to comprehend the construction of collective identities; yet there is no single identity, only 4 5

See Prost (1984). Nora (1984–1992).

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 383 multiple identities. Each individual consists of several identities that interact at various levels—race, family, profession, religion, ideology, nation, region, town, district, etc. It is extremely difficult to know which of these identities takes the lead in the perception and behavior of an individual at a precise moment. And yet the work of appropriation of memory, even national, almost always operates within the concrete circumstances of everyday life, through the mediation of groups, situations, and community aggregates on a smaller scale than the nation. From this point of view, the city is a valuable level at which to understand how memory works and identity crystallizes. First, this level makes it possible to remain close to the daily work of memory, and close to group operation. It then makes it possible to perceive phenomena that are generally difficult to visualize and to express, some of which have been studied through urban anthropology.6 The way, for example, in which the inhabitants of a district, a village or a city invest their memory in the space in which they live, usually without it giving rise to conscious discourse.7 Finally, the city is a ‘community’ according to the definition of Jean-Louis Robert and Jay Winter: ‘a social or geographical entity around which ordinary people construct their daily life’:8 both a community of experience and an imagined community. Not all cities, however, have the same status, the same weight in national life, the same symbolic significance. The importance of capitals in relation to other cities in their respective nation requires that we pay particular attention to them. Their vocation as centers of power makes them a prime focus in any study of the attitude of those who govern in a domain such as that of memory. In the period under consideration here, these cities are at least in part symbols of the war. But at the same time they are also great cities, with their own personality, identities of district, suburbs and outlying areas, and inhabitants who live their daily lives within units smaller than that of the city itself. We must therefore look carefully at how the capital, a socialstructure of considerable size, came to be located at the junction of the national State and civil society, and how it may be simultaneously 6 7 8

See in particular Hannerz (1980), Swoboda (1990). Frijhoff (1993). Robert and Winter (1997), p. 4.

384

chapter fourteen — elise julien

the symbol of national memory and the site of local memory. For the capital, simultaneously, subsumes the nation, concentrates its symbolic and decision-making elements, and constitutes a separate entity which does not represent the rest of the nation. Ultimately, it forms a sort of local prism of national history, no doubt not entirely accurate, but revealing phenomena which would not otherwise be apparent. This articulation of the memory of war and urban identities makes it possible to construct a reading of the subject via a spatial grid. The capital city is the space which sees at its heart the juxtaposition of different levels of analysis: that of the capital as symbol of the nation State (the national/urban space link to be specified), that of the capital as a great city (aspects of imagination and of administrative authorities), that of the capital as a network of local social institutions (a corresponding number of local social sites of memory at the heart of civil society) and that of the capital as a multi-faceted setting for daily experience. The specificity of the status of capitals explains how such a variation in levels of analysis is applicable as much to Paris as to Berlin, despite the different meaning that the capital may have in both nations. It supplies an initial series of comparative axes for analysis.

Principal Lines of Research The Memory of the First World War: Breaks, Continuities, Legitimations In many ways, the First World War affected, even disrupted cultures, social structures, and politics, thus contributing greatly to the singularity and interest of a study of memory in the post-war period. In Germany as in France, this was the time for a determined affirmation of the republican state. The state relied on a national memory in order to establish its identity, continued to develop it and made every effort to validate it. The political use of memory was of course not specifically French or German, nor was it exclusive to the republican state,9 but in the aftermath of the First World War it was wholly remarkable in France as well as in Germany. In

9 All European nations were then undergoing what Eric Hobsbawm calls ‘the invention of tradition’, see Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983).

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 385 France, the victory seized by Clemenceau in 1918 helped decisively to reinforce the national entrenchment of republican consensus: in Germany, the war constituted the first common experience for some sixty million Germans, and despite its innate potential tensions, the republican state wisely turned to the memory of the war in the search for secure national cohesion. This period offers highly favorable terrain for a study of the rapport that France and Germany maintain with their national past. The problematic under examination here leads to a study of these questions with the telescope of memory focused on the prism of the two capital cities. The comparative analysis of sources relating to public authorities illustrates the different elements of memory in the two nations. In these domains, the imbalance of sources—particularly where they are official—between the two capitals represents above all a difference of content in the memorializing policy established by the public authorities. French authorities appear to have had a much more active policy than their German equivalents. In France, war memorials, rolls of honor in town halls, and the establishment of a war museum asserted and expressed this memorializing policy. The public authorities either took the initiative or offered genuine support to such undertakings. In Germany this was by no means the case, or at least not once the war was over. Since 1914, public and private undertakings strove to organize a memory of the war for the postwar period. The Emperor indeed gave instructions to gather correspondence, personal diaries, newspaper articles, which led to the establishment of a war collection in the Staatsbibliothek in Prussia from January 1915). At the end of 1918, this determination vanished, apparently not so much because of the defeat as on account of the events linked to it: revolution and change of régime. In fact, the interpretation of the defeat proved above all divisive and through its memorial interference, hampered any recall of the war. Memory developed, therefore, more extensively outside the framework of public authorities, and was entirely the responsibility of civil society, although without going so far as to create a consensus. Further, the scrutiny of positive action by public authorities concerning memory rather than the examination of the memory of the war as it appears in these official documents reveals a similar difference. In France, debates and numerous speeches (inaugurations, obituaries, commemorations, prize-givings, etc.) frequently evoked the war. This set of discourses reveals a certain core of agreement over the

386

chapter fourteen — elise julien

value of cultivating the memory of the war, even if the ways of doing this may vary over time. In Germany the war is conjured up for material reasons (help for victims, aid to widows, orphans or the war-handicapped), or it is invoked, summoned up, used as political justification. The fact of having fought in the front line offered legitimacy and a right to be heard which explains the many accusations of political ambush. The interpretation of war, its memory become the object of a partisan struggle.10 In this context, public authorities either reflected the struggles or allowed them to paralyze by them. It appears that overall the French Republic came out of the First World War consolidated, through a memorializing consensus, while the young German Republic, the direct consequence of the war, failed to base any kind of legitimacy on a memory of the war. At the infra-national level, in each section of society, the war generated strands of memory that integrated elements originating in the pre-war period. Did these groups select a memory that particularized the world war, then seen not only as a major event, but also as the bearer of a new identity in course of construction? Alternatively, did they seek to use the memory born out of the conflict to reconfigure identities dating from the pre-1914 period? The first of these choices, that of a fundamental rupture, is exemplified in the action of French veterans, the anciens combattants, who formed a distinctive group, endowed with a new and founding memory. This did not, however, prevent them from adopting elements that predated the war, for example reinvesting in timehonored symbols such as the revolutionary armies of 1792. The reverse seems to have occurred in Germany, where the Kriegervereine remained entirely rooted in their traditions from the old régime, even though their statutes proclaimed loyalty ‘to the German people and to the nation,’ replacing the earlier loyalty due to ‘the emperor and the Reich, to prince and to nation’. These soldier organizations used the war to reactivate an older memory, identity and tradition, harking back to the wars of liberation against the Napoleonic occupation of the early 19th century. In most cases the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871 formed part of the image. Finally, to further sustain their

10 These comments agree with the conclusions of works by Benjamin Ziemann on the memory of the war in the political circles of the Weimar Republic: Ziemann (1999).

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 387 continuing identity, certain groups went so far as to conceal part of their memories: families managed to erase the pain of mourning in the attempt to return to a ‘normal’ life and an undamaged family identity. Two Capitals, Two Contexts Comparison of the two capitals presupposes reinstating them in their respective contexts. Full awareness of these contextual differences indeed establishes the relevance of the comparison. The first question is that of capital city traditions in France and Germany. Paris and Berlin are each in their own way the metropolis of two states with very different histories, that their characters reflect. To borrow Christophe Charle’s formula, one of the two capitals represents the heiress, the other the newcomer.11 Paris symbolized an awareness and prestige already long established, whereas Berlin had only recently achieved the status of a political and administrative, industrial, even artistic capital. It still lacked the unanimous recognition and symbolic aura of the French capital. Further, in speeches and the press, ‘Parisians’ were very often assimilated into a community welded together by a shared will, soul and history, into an autonomous cultural and social entity. Never have Berliners been presented in this way. The factors which prevent the existence of such a community, at least in the imagination, are certainly multiple. Social and political divisions were then deeply rooted in the heart of the German capital city’s population. Besides the history of Berlin as capital city was still recent, while its geographical limits continued to expand (notably with the law creating Greater Berlin in 1920). In other respects, the way in which the war unfolded and was experienced in one or other of the two capitals modify the recollection of the war that was retained. In Paris, the proximity of battles on the Marne and aerial bombardment from Zeppelins from 1914 onwards gave direct life to the threats which hung over the heart of the nation represented by its capital city. The government left the city on 2 September, and Paris became a rear-line camp;

11 Charle (1998), referring to a comparison between Paris and Berlin, cultural capitals at the turn of the century.

388

chapter fourteen — elise julien

the defensive situation of Paris in the war is thus clear. It was in the end the long-range artillery bombardment which had a serious effect on minds, to the extent that after the victory the resolute behavior of the population during these dark hours was transformed into heroism, and the city under enemy fire became a martyr-city, honored with the award of the Croix de Guerre. In Berlin, on the other hand, the fighting was remote—so remote, in fact, that it scarcely ever touched national soil. And yet the consequences of the war were felt more severely here than in Paris, as the German capital suffered great difficulties in its food supplies. The blockade of the country set up by the Allies already accused of encircling Germany also gave strength to the concept of a defensive war; but the context of defeat and continuing material difficulties did little to encourage any honoring of Berlin’s sufferings during the war years. Finally, the historic formation, legal status and spatial development, of Paris and Berlin account for their own distinctive features. The administrative organization of the German capital, like its geographical boundaries, changed with the law of 1920.12 The administrative régime in the French capital13 remains unique in France: it is still largely conditioned by the fear of Paris which animated the legislators in 1871. The operations of the municipal executive, managed in other communes by an elected mayor, are undertaken by the Prefect of the Seine and the Prefect of Police, nominated by the government. None the less, the capitals can be broadly defined by taking Berlin within the limits set out under the law of 1920, while Paris consists of the city intra muros together with certain suburban communes representing the Département of the Seine. Taken within these broad outlines, both Paris and Berlin have a clearly defined centre and a broad mix of peripheral areas. This similarity should enable us to identify possible oppositions between the heart of the capitals and their periphery, as well as possible disparities in the population’s sense of identity. But although the law of 1920 integrated the Berlin suburbs into the German capital, the communes of the Paris suburbs remain statutorily distinct from the French capital. This should make it possible to see the extent to which the differences of

12

Pomplun (1970). The essential work of reference in this respect is still Maurice Félix: Félix (1946). 13

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 389 administrative status between Paris and its suburbs may, in contrast to circumstances in Berlin, have had consequences for daily life and the construction of memory. A Memory of Mourning, a Cult of the Dead Despite their individual character, memories of the First World War in Paris and Berlin are undoubtedly open to methodical comparison: this is particularly ascertainable in the way in which, through mourning, they deal with that essential element, the death of a large number of men. It is possible though to recognize that the memory of war can encompass other matters and go beyond the memory of the dead: there are events of all kinds to be recalled, be they experiences at the front or the rear, or the feelings connected to them. Yet mourning and, in the public domain, the cult of the dead inescapably dominate the memory of the war. Faced with mass death, mourning becomes the most clearly universal experience of the First World War and the following years. It is both revealing and logical that Jay Winter, focussing on ‘a comparative cultural history of the Great War’14 looked primarily at this significant aspect of the war. Beyond the outcome of the war, beyond defeat and victory, this is indeed the recurrent element. On the other hand, variations appear in the interpretation of death and in the forms of mourning. In Germany the authorities sought to convince Germans that their loved ones had not died in vain, despite the unexpected defeat. Moreover, the recollection of the dead, of their loyalty and their sacrifice, served to maintain a certain spirit of resistance (to western values, to the Diktat of the peace treaties). In France, feelings of relief, immense and predominant, steered exhortations towards a pacifist patriotism; the dead must be remembered, with gratitude, for having saved France, and the nation must remain vigilant to avoid any possible future war. Here we address the question of mourning, including at an individual level, in its relationship to the collective, in the potential individual adherence of the bereaved to the public, collective, or even civic cult of the dead. This cult made manifest a sacralization of

14

Winter (1995).

390

chapter fourteen — elise julien

death in the public space. However, it remains to be ascertained whether mourning found expression, even elicited solace through the erection of monuments, the unfolding of commemorative ceremonies, or whether it remained outside them. The answers to these questions undoubtedly conditions the success or failure of the memorializing policies described above. Memories on Varying Scales The memory of the war developed at various levels, and it is a particularity of the capitals that territories within them can be juxtaposed and seen at different scales. Within the capitals, therefore, the study of memory may also vary according to the territories under examination. The national character acquired by the First World War in Paris and Berlin arose not only from the fact that their inhabitants participated as the rest of the national population in the national memory. Their status as capital in effect enabled these two cities to play a different role in the construction of this memory, particularly in the reception of its symbolic markers. In Paris, from 1920 the Arc de Triomphe became indissolubly linked to the memory of the war by the location of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath its arch. In Berlin, from 1931 the Neue Wache, the home of the Imperial Guard, housed a monument honoring the war dead. This monument, initially Prussian, was largely taken over by the Reich and finally found its place in public opinion as the national monument. Eventually—and each in its own way—Paris and Berlin thus became the symbolic depository of a national yet problematic memory. But it seems that these locations were not whole-heartedly adopted by the local population in everyday life; they remained above all symbols of a distant memory which touched the local population no more than it touched the rest of the national population. Although located in the heart of Paris and Berlin respectively, the Arc de Triomphe and the Neue Wache were not the result of municipal initiatives, and this prompts an examination of the role the municipal authorities could or wished to play. In contrast to the situation in the suburbs or peripheral areas, the memory of the war, albeit localized in the centre of the two capital cities, seems not to have been organized or sustained mainly by the municipal authorities. The peripheral communities (communes in the Paris suburbs; towns and villages in the outskirts of Berlin administratively linked to the

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 391 capital in 1920) have a strong identity, which most often happen to be contiguous with the local public authorities. The situation appears less straightforward in the centre of Paris and of Berlin, where the authorities were taken up with the usual functions and administrative challenges inherent in great cities. The population here was also held together less by locally defined identity and solidarity than by professional, social and political solidarities. Municipal authorities thereby lost their role as initiator, and civil society largely took on the formulation of the memory of the conflict. Therefore, memorials to the dead of the First World War are often found in churches, hospitals, cemeteries, post offices, stations, universities and schools. Institutions, establishments, organizations and associations were determined to honour their dead, to claim them as their own heroes. This communal memory welds specific groups around their everyday experience and identity: belonging to a school or university establishment, profession, administration or business, attachment to a religious community or military association, etc. As Jay Winter put it, the strong links that unite the members of these small groups, form ‘fictive kinships’.15

Civic War Memorial and the Capital Cities’ Memory At the intersection of the themes evoked above, civic war memorial stand out as a stepping-stone around which our exploration comparative urban history of the memory of the war may revolve. While a cultural approach has led researchers to encompass the aftermath of the conflict and its social effects in the history of the Great War, the study of war memorials has made a critical contribution to the cultural renewal in First World War studies.16 However, in France as in Germany, such studies ignore Paris and Berlin. This very remarkable neglect explains why their civic memorials remain little known.17

15

Winter (2002). For example: Winter (1995), Sherman (1999), Prost (1977, 1984), Becker (1988), Koselleck (1979) Lurz (1985–1987). 17 It is undeniable in France, where war memorials are above all considered a provincial feature; Parisian war memorials have not been the object of any developed work. For Germany, a single study exists on Berlin memorials (not specifically 16

392

chapter fourteen — elise julien

This lack of knowledge calls into question the potential or actual status of Paris and Berlin as symbolic capitals in the inter-war years.18 Paris was of course the French capital and therefore the natural place for display, for demonstrations and manifestations that constituted the symbolic construction of the city as a capital city. Berlin had no corresponding tradition, for centralization was less advanced here than in the French capital. It was none the less capital of the imperial and then republican Reich, and traditionally, that of Prussia. But is the presence of the symbols of a State’s capital sufficient to make a city a symbolic capital? The problematics of memorialisation immediately extends the question: are Paris and Berlin memorial symbols apart from their war memorials? Are not these cities capable of developing a war memory of their own? Do these capitals form communities of memory? This analysis of war memorials thus deals with sites, which are simultaneously accessible and the deepest expression of their instigators and that form what Jay Winter has described as ‘salient elements in the cultural memory of 20th century Europe’.19 Projects for Memorials to the War Dead in Paris and Berlin Let us first consider projects for Paris and Berlin war memorials to the dead of the First World War, to establish whether the capitals seized the initiative in national homage in the same way as the State or other agents. In Paris, the immediate post-war period saw a flowering of projects for large war memorials. Some of these projects stemmed from individual initiatives, but elected municipal or general councillors proposed most of them between November 1918 and May 1919.20 These memorials were most frequently conceived as monuments to the nation’s victory or to all the dead of the war: in all respects, Paris thus appeared as the spearhead, the avant-garde of national initiatives towards a great monument. those of the First World War). It does not however deal with the specificity of this war and above all it ignores all recent problematics on the topic: Weinland (1990). 18 This question was posed, in reference to Paris, by Jean-Louis Robert: Robert (2002). 19 Winter (2002). 20 Data from the BMO (Bulletin municipal officiel de la Ville de Paris et du Département de la Seine) which publishes all Minutes of sessions of the municipal and general councils.

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 393 During the war Paris had indeed genuinely functioned as the combatant nation’s symbolic capital. Because of its nerve-centre situation and (unlike Berlin) its proximity to the front line, the city symbolized national defense. Throughout the war and thereafter, Paris, the ‘heart’ of France is a recurring them constantly developed across the political spectrum. Dramatic and mythical episodes add to this impression; the taxis of the Marne in 1914, the shelling of Paris in 1918, which turned it into a Martyr-City that received the Croix de Guerre just as did a front-line city such as Rheims. It is indeed in the continuity of this symbolic dynamism that we must understand the multiplicity of the Paris city council initiatives about war monuments. It is significant that almost all these proposals concern monument to the dead. The memory of the war is, first and foremost, an act of bereavement. Only two proposals differ: a triumphal arch to the glory of the allied armies and a victory column, in the same spirit as the column erected in Berlin in 1871.21 Yet, these two exceptions were quickly rejected, for memorials ought to have celebrated the anonymous ‘Poilu’ while the victory only signified the achievement of ‘free peoples’.22 And in fact, Paris, like everywhere else in France, very soon proposed the erection of war memorials, notably in the form of cenotaphs and monuments to the ordinary soldier.23 The situation in Berlin offers a striking contrast with the flowering of memorials in Paris. In general, the Berlin city assembly24 engaged very little in discussion of the war once it was over, and on the

21

City council, 15 November 1918. According to the terms of the former chairman of the Conseil Municipal Louis Dausset, Conseil Municipal of 15 November 1918. 23 We can cite the main projects under discussion: project for a monument to the Poilu in the Tuileries gardens, presented by the Conseil Municipal chairman Louis Dausset, Conseil Municipal of 22 November 1918; project for a cenotaph and a monument to the Poilus at the Porte de Vincennes, presented by city concillors Lemarchand and Petitjean, Conseil Municipal of 30 May 1919; proposal by Doctor Bourjade to build at La Défense a vast mountain of stones brought from all parts of the world, to be worked by sculptors of all the nations, CM of 3 December 1918 (Paris passed on this occasion from the ranks of symbolic capital of France to that of symbolic capital of nations); late project (reflecting in fact the rejection of large-scale Paris proposals) for a monument in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, presented by city counciller Fiquet, CM of 4 March 1921. 24 Published Minutes of sessions of the Stadtverordnetenversammlung. We should point out that these Minutes ceased to appear, for an unknown but perhaps financial reason, between November 1921 and September 1924. 22

394

chapter fourteen — elise julien

subject of war memorials there is nothing similar to the situation in Paris. Moreover, there is also no trace of such projects in central city administrative documents (the Magistrat).25 One might therefore suppose that no proposals were in fact examined by the Berlin city authorities. The explanation for this absence of a Berlin memorial to the dead of the war may consist of several strands. First, Germany did not have the same centralizing tradition as France, which affected the status of the capital. Berlin, unlike Paris, may have had no ambition to represent the whole nation. Its role in the war, its position as regards the distant frontline, and above all when the regime changed, did not give it the necessary legitimacy to speak on behalf of the nation. Either the capital was not a strong symbol of Germany, or it was one to some degree consensual, which aroused distrust. The question also arose of the personality and identity of Berlin. Historic Berlin meant the centre, represented by the red town hall, the Rotes Rathaus. Nonetheless, from 1920, Berlin expanded to become Greater Berlin, which fundamentally changed the outlines of the city and the composition of its council. This expansion is no doubt one reason why the city did not press for a memorial to all the dead. Even more fundamentally, the very act of commemoration proved problematic in Germany after the First World War. What could possibly be commemorated in the wake of defeat? On the national political stage, a form of homage did not appear possible until after 1924 when the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the war officially raised the issue. But this initiative came from the central authorities of the Reich, and Berlin had proposed nothing before this. The city authorities were apparently reluctant to undertake any such act of homage, and the private initiatives did not operate on the scale of the capital. Finally, we should not forget the very serious financial difficulties faced by the nation, and which certainly did little to encourage proposals for projects that could not in any case be realized. Even in Paris, however, where projects were so numerous, municipal initiatives soon appeared to have failed. By the middle of 1919, the city council lost its role as initiator in memorial projects. Several reasons account for this development. Here too the financial issue was critical. At the end of the war, the city was in dire straits. In

25

The documents of Magistrat are preserved in the Landesarchiv Berlin.

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 395 1919, the majority of the city council refused either to take out new loans or to increase taxes. Thereby, it lost the to the State the means to assent to its monumental choice. Divisions paralyzed the Council and made a unanimous choice impossible: splits between the elected councilors along their district’s boundaries, disagreement over the nature of the monument, dissensions on aesthetic demands. Even if Paris was not challenged as capital of France, it encountered enough obstacles to prevent it from finding its autonomous expression in a general memorial to the war dead. Ultimately, in both cases, no monument to the dead arose from the capitals’ initiative. Behind this united façade, the existence of projects of this type reveals much about the character of Paris and Berlin, but the persisting fact is the absence of memorial, be it a setback or a pure and simple void. The Capitals’ Central Municipal Homage to Their Dead Although Paris and Berlin were not the initiators and prime promoters of each nation’s Great War memorial, they had the chance to create a central war memorial, dedicated to their own dead. We may suppose that like many towns and cities in France and Germany, the capitals were honoring their own. A central memorial was therefore designed to avoid a scattering of monuments in the great city, and perhaps to erect a memorial that would be held up as a model for the nation’s other towns. But in neither case did this occur. In the case of France, Paris failed to create a substantial monument to honor her citizens who died for their country. Even in 1932, at the time of the inauguration of the war memorial in the 9th arrondissement, the Chairman of the town council, de Fontenay, deplored the lack in his speech: The Capital, crushed under the weight of innumerable voluntary sacrifices, has still not set up an altar worthy of the vast holocaust of her sons (. . .). There is no work of art whatever worthy of such a sublime subject (. . .). A time may come when the passage of time (. . .) and the genius of an artist will enable the City to express her grief and her overwhelming pride as a metropolis in mourning.26

26

Speech, 16 July 1932, BMO dated 24 August 1932.

396

chapter fourteen — elise julien

Among the reasons for the non-appearance of a memorial to the war dead of Paris were municipal finances. But the decision to be made over the nature of the memorial and its aesthetic qualities, was also and all the more delicate, that its location in the capital would endow this memorial with significance as a model. Lastly, the stormy debates and serious conflicts of interest the city was familiar with further prevented the creation of the monument. Despite these regrets, and despite voices which sometimes openly denounced the inappropriate proliferation of memorials in the arrondissements, there would be no central monument to the Parisian dead of the First World War.27 In Berlin, where the records are less systematic than in Paris, nothing appears in the Minutes of the city council, or in the documents issued by the Magistrat, which could hint at any such attempt. We just know that no central city monument has ever been established. In both cases we see the failure to create a great municipal war memorial which could have served as a model monument for France or Germany’s other cities, if all hope was still not abandoned. The regrets of political authorities underline the importance of the symbolism such a unique memorial would have taken on as well as the weighty implication of its absence. In the aftermath of the war Paris was unable to build what would have been the manifestation of a victorious capital city. A fortiori, in Germany where the end of the war remained very problematical, Berlin failed to build consensus round its metropolitan character for a tribute to its dead. The Scattered Tribute of Cities to Their Dead In Paris, for lack of means or determination, the City council passed responsibility to the arrondissements and to private or associational initiatives. In fact, the Parisian monuments are the war memorials of arrondissements, financed largely by subscription. Yet, their absence in the capital’s symbolic landscape remains striking. We should first note the late appearance of these memorials: the first was inaugurated in 1925, and subsequent inaugurations slowly

27 Neither would there be any monument to the dead of the Second World War, after very similar debates had taken place. Archives of the Bureau des monuments de la Ville de Paris.

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 397 followed during the 1920s and 1930s. This limited the effect that would have been produced by early and simultaneous inaugurations. Generally, Arrondissement memorials were modest and little known, as they remain today, even ignored by the staff of the town hall where most of them are located, away from the focus of interest. This problem was recognized and raised since the time of the monument’s erection, particularly by the veterans’ associations who, on the contrary, wished for maximum visibility.28 It is also worth noting that virtually none of these arrondissement memorials bears a list of the dead men’s names, while everywhere else in France it is this feature, which gives war memorials their great dramatic power.29 But it could be said that Paris does not escape the general tendency for the memorials to promote the tomb more than the glory.30 Besides, few monuments evoke Paris as symbolic capital: only the memorial of the 8th arrondissement represents the glorious city, decorated with the Croix de Guerre. In other cases, however, the monuments may be the sign of local arrondissement patriotism, as attested by this declaration by a town councilor at the time of the inauguration of the 10th arrondissement memorial: Our 10th arrondissement has responded in its entirety to the call of the nation in danger [. . .] our 10th arrondissement, perhaps the most vibrant of all the arrondissements of Paris [. . .] which witnessed the enthusiastic departures of 1914.31

Overall, through their scattered locations, their late appearance, their low visibility and the poverty of their symbolism, arrondissement memorials show themselves to be of little importance in the capital’s memorializing construction. In this context, the contrast with the Paris suburbs is striking.

28 See the examples of the 7th and 19th arrondissements: Minutes of the inauguration of the memorial of the 12th arrondissement on 9 December 1928, BMO dated 1 February 1929; archives of the Bureau des monuments de la Ville de Paris, box Monuments aux morts du 19 e arrondissement. 29 Only the 7th arrondissement is an exception, with a system of sliding plaques, like metallic plates, around a victory column. The pretext of lack of space, which is often suggested, is therefore not necessarily valid. 30 One may refer to the classical problematics of the historiography of monuments: pacifist memorials, memorials to glory, burial monuments, religious monuments, etc. See Prost (1984). 31 Declaration of a town councillor at the inauguration of the memorial of the 10th arrondissement on 28 June 1925, BMO dated 15 August 1925.

chapter fourteen — elise julien

398

Pierrefitte Epinay

Gennevilliers

Dugny Le Bourget La Courneuve

L'Ile-St-Denis St-Denis

Nanterre

Colombes Bois-Colombes Asnières La Garenne-C. Clichy Courbevoie Levallois-Perret

Drancy

XVI

IX II I

Romainville Noisy

XIXLe Pré-St-G.

VI

Bagnolet

III

XI

Montreuil

XX

Fontenay-sous-B.

V

Le Perreux

Vincennes

XII XIV

XIII

St-Mandé

Charenton

Vanves Malakoff

Villemomble Rosny

X

IV

XV Issy

Pavillons

Bobigny

Les Lilas

VII

Boulogne

Montrouge Gentilly

St-Maurice Joinville Champigny Maisons-Alfort

Châtillon

Arcueil-Cachan Bagneux Villejuif

Fontenay-aux-R. Le Plessis

Créteil Bonneuil

Chevilly

Choisy Thiais

Fresnes Antony

St-Maur

Alfortville Vitry

Bourg-la-R. L'Haÿ Sceaux

Châtenay

Bry

Nogent

Ivry

Kremlin-Bicêtre Clamart

nom destowns communes de banlieue Suburban

Bondy

VIII

Suresnes

arrondissments de Paris Parisian arrondissement

Pantin

XVII

Neuilly

IV Ivry

Aubervilliers St-Ouen

XVIII Puteaux

limite de Paris et de la Seine boundaries of Paris and the Seine limite des arrondissements arrondissement et communesboundary

Stains

Villetaneuse

Rungis Orly

0

1

2

3

4

Map 1. Paris and the Département of the Seine.

5km

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 399 As illustrated in Map 1, the division can be seen along the demarcation line between the City of Paris and the département of the Seine, which surrounds it. In the suburbs, memorials were quickly built, in collaboration with civil society. They were generally conspicuous, and remain so to the present day: in the cemetery, in the square in front of the town hall, in a square nearby, they bear the names of the dead. Without going through all the criteria evoked above, Graph 1 illuminates this contrast between Paris and the suburb, based on the chronology of war memorial building.32 It is immediately clear that the erection of a memorial bore a clear meaning for the suburban communes that it lacked in the arrondissements of Paris. In his analysis of the Seine veterans, Antoine Prost notes that in certain respects the suburban communes bore some resemblance to provincial communities. Contrasting the levels of membership of veterans’ associations—running at 38 per cent in Paris and 66 per cent in the suburbs—he observes that, in suburban communes the local association of veterans aimed to bring all veterans together, without distinction, as was indeed the case in the countryside or in small towns. In Paris, on the other hand, a large number of competing associations had in parallel organized arrondissement sections, which had a demobilizing effect.33 We may suspect that similar divisions hampered the establishment of war memorials. Wherever the homage was locally focused, thereby encouraging collaboration between the commune’s administration and civil society (voluntary groups, leading citizens, religious parishes, general population, etc.), a war memorial could be quickly set up; where the political stakes were higher, where competition and rivalries were strong, paying homage was more problematical and the memorial’s realization much slower. This inequality between Paris and its suburbs may also reveal the affirmation of communal suburban identities confronting the capital. 1914 marked the end of plans to extend Paris;34 the organization,

32 In the suburbs, the data are taken from the BMO (speech by a representative of the Conseil Général at the inauguration). For the Paris arrondissements, the data come from the BMO (Minutes of ceremonies) of the archives of the Seine and the Archives du Bureau des monuments de la Ville de Paris. 33 Prost (1977) volume 1, p. 134. 34 In Paris it was the suburbs which were politically ‘Red’; in Berlin, it was the city centre. This explains why Paris was not concerned to integrate its suburban

Number of inaugurated memorials

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Graph 1. Memorials to the Dead in Paris and Its Suburbs.

1927

1930

1929

1928

1926

1925

Memorial erected by a parisian Arrondissement Memorial erected by a suburban commune

Années

400 chapter fourteen — elise julien

1934

1933

1932

1931

1924

1923

1922

1921

1920

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 401 the planning of the great city henceforward became the dominant issue. Then, communal citizenry and identity grew while Paris asserted its administrative particularities.35 As for Berlin, was the situation similar in any way? To explore the contrast between the historic centre and the peripheral areas—a division translated in Paris by an administrative frontier—,we may separate the historic Old Berlin from the districts added administratively to the city in 1920 with the creation of Greater Berlin. Map 2 shows a centre, within a black line, whose limits correspond to those of Berlin at the beginning of the century and incorporating six districts; the peripheral zone is reaching out to the edge of today’s Greater Berlin, taking in numerous towns and small communes regrouped in 1920 into fourteen major districts. We shall then compare and contrast these two sections of the city. The law of 27 April 1920 deserves attention, insofar as this specific legislation created the Berlin districts, at the centre and in the peripheral areas. The central districts are defined by electoral constituencies and do not therefore correspond to a pre-existing community. On the periphery, the law gathered in pre-existing towns (Städte), rural communes (Landgemeinden) and estates (Gutsbezirke), under the name of one of these communities, usually the largest. As a result, for example, we should not confuse the Landgemeinde of Steglitz with the district of Steglitz, which also includes Lichterfelde and Lankwitz. All these districts date back only to 1920 and have no communal identity before that date. It is therefore unsurprising that they did not set up war memorials in their name. In this respect, they cannot be lumped together with the Paris arrondissements or the suburban communes. In fact only one district monument exists, that at Weißensee, inaugurated in 1925. It is indeed the preexisting district communities, such as the Gemeinden as they were marked out before the law of 1920, that retain their significance, and account for the construction of many monuments. Yet, admittedly the term remains ambiguous in that it can designate both a civil administrative commune and a church parish.

areas into the city, while in Berlin the unwillingness came from the periphery and the conservative Vororte. 35 In fact, the memorials which relate to the territory of Paris as a whole are the war memorials of Paris authorities: the council’s war memorial, the Police Headquarters memorial, etc.

L Wannsee

G Potsdam

L Cladow

0

1

L Nikolassee

2

3

4

Steglitz

L Hohen-

L Britz

LA Buckow (ö)

L Lichtenrade

LA Buckow (w) L Marienfelde

LA Mariendorf

Tempelhof Neukölln

L Bohnsdorf

L AltGlienicke

L Adlershof

Treptow

thal

G Grünau L Schmöckwitz

Bezirk ayant érigé un monument à ses morts

Gemeinde urbaine (religieuse) Urban (religious) Gemeinde that erectedérigé a war memorial ayant un monument à ses morts

Gemeinde erected a war Gemeindethat ayant érigé memorial un monument à ses morts

Bezirk that erected a war memorial

nom de Gemeinde Gemeinde

Bezirk nom de Bezirk

Gemeinde limite de boundary Gemeinde

Bezirk limite boundary de Bezirk

Old-Greater Berlin limite Vieux-Grand Berlin

L Rahnsdorf

Dahme Forst

L Müggelheim

Cöpenick

G Cöpenick Forst

L Pankow

Pankow

L Friedrichshagen

L Mahlsdorf

St Cöpenick L Grünau

L Ober- S Wuhlheide schöneweide L L Niederschöneweide Johannis-

L Rudow

L Treptow

Lichtenberg L Friedrichsfelde

G Hellersdorf

L BiesL Kaulsdorf dorf

L Marzahn

Map 2. Berlin and its memorials.

5km

L Zehlendorf

L Steglitz

St Neukölln

hain Kreuzberg

Schöneberg

L L Lichterfelde Lankwitz

G Dahlem

Zehlendorf

G GrunewaldForst

Tiergarten

L WartenG berg L Falkenberg Wartenberg

WeissenseeG Falkenberg

L Weissensee

G Malchow L Heinersdorf

Prenzlauer schönhausen Berg St Lichtenberg Mitte Friedrichs-

St St L Grune- LWilmersdorf Schöneberg wald Schmargendorf L Friedenau L Tempelhof

Wilmersdorf

L Pichelswerder G Heerstr. (s)

Charlottenburg

St Charlottenburg

G Plötzensee

L Pankow

L Karow

G Buch

L Blankenberg L G Blankenberg Malchow

Pankow

G Rosenthal

Wedding

L Reinickendorf

GA Jungfernheide

G Jungfernheide (n)

L Tegel

L Lübars

L BlankenG Blanken- felde felde L Buchholz

LA Rosen- LA Rosenthal (ö) L Wittenau thal (w) L Niederschönhausen

L Hermsdorf

Reinickendorf

G Heerstr. (n)

L Tiefwerder

Spandau

L Gatow

L Staaken

St Spandau

L Heligensee

G TegelForstNord

G Frohnau

402 chapter fourteen — elise julien

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 403 In the case of a certain number of peripheral villages, where geographical borders of the two coincide exactly, the monument resulted from the shared effort of the local administrative authorities, parish leaders, veterans’ associations, and of the population as a whole. When the memorial was decided upon after 1920, the local communal authorities had disappeared and responsibility lay with the initiators of the memorial to negotiate its achievement with the new district mayor. In general, when the memorial was set up by subscription on the territory of a Gemeinde, it was inaugurated and adopted immediately by the district, which took on its maintenance. When the monument had been planned before 1920 to be set up thanks to municipal funding, there was a conflict with the Magistrat, which decided in 1920, in view of the city’s financial situation, that the erection of memorials should not incur any municipal financial outlay whatever. The memorial might then be delayed, or even not be achieved at all.36 In a strictly urban setting (Old Berlin or the 1920 conurbation), church parishes might on the other hand cover only a small part of the town or district. It was then either the town as civil Gemeinde which took on the building of a monument (as in Spandau or Schöneberg), or a church parish that did it for its parishioners only (as in the examples at Charlottenburg, Wedding, Prenzlauer Berg). Graph 2 shows the chronology of memorials to the civilian dead in Berlin, using the Gemeinden as the basic community unit.37 The first memorial to appear, that of the Jewish community, was an exception: for its ‘constituency’ covered the whole of Greater Berlin. For the remainder, town centre memorials, shown in light type, appear here again to have been more difficult to establish than those of the periphery, shown in dark type. They are few in number and were erected later. However, it must be admitted that the data assembled to create this graph cannot be regarded as complete, since the documentation available in Berlin lacks the systematic nature of the Parisian sources. Due to this disparity, the chronology is less reliable than that of the preceding graph. Some memorials are in fact physically identifiable (because they remain in situ today or thanks to photographs taken 36 In fact, the memorials, which relate to the territory of Paris as a whole are the war memorials of the Parisian authorities: the Council’s war memorial, the Police Headquarters’ memorial, etc. 37 Landesarchiv Berlin, A Rep. 40/1173.

Number of inaugurated memorials

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Graph 2. Memorials to the Dead in the Old and Greater Berlin.

1926

1931

1930

1929

1928

1927

1925

1924

1923

1922

Memorial erected by an Old Berlin Gemeinde Memorial erected by a Great Berlin Gemeinde Memorial erected by the Jewish Gemeinde, covering the whole city

Years

404 chapter fourteen — elise julien

1934

1933

1932

1921

1920

1919

1918

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 405 in the inter-war years) but it is often difficult to date them. Others can be precisely dated—but the date has little meaning. In the case of the village of Nikolassee, the monument was agreed in 1919 by the municipal council in collaboration with the church parish. The council voted credits and worked towards a rapid realization because it feared a loss of autonomy with the conurbation law then in preparation. However, the monument was still unfinished when the village became part of Greater Berlin, and the mayor of the new district of Zehlendorf, under the order of the Magistrat, refused to support the agreed funding. Negotiations ensued, a compromise solution was proposed by the district in 1922. The memorial initially designed to be set up in a public square, was transformed into two plaques at the church entrance. For want of anything better, this new version of the monument was finally agreed upon, but it was not completed until 1929. The accomplishment of this war memorial was thus delayed by nearly ten years. Elsewhere, it was above all the financial crisis and the currency change that created problems. Although the timing in Berlin was undoubtedly complicated by financial difficulties and the monetary crisis, this did not hinder the effectiveness of the former Gemeinden, even at the end of the 1920s.38 We may observe the existence of other types of inclusive district memorials: these are memorials to municipal staff, as for example the one erected in 1927 at Tempelhof.39 I would suggest that in contrast to Gemeinden whose civil society remained very active, the central authorities attempted to establish unification in the district through administrative powers. Finally, in Paris, as in Berlin we note a dispersal of memorials and a transfer of initiative on to local administrative bodies and private or associative wishes. In both cases, memorials were financed largely through subscriptions, and local community identity seems to have been stronger in the outskirts or even outside the capital.40 Chronology and the pattern of progress, however, varied in both cities. In Paris the municipal initiative was genuine and swift, but 38 Data from the Land of Berlin archives, from church archives, from a thesis: Weinland (1990), from the conservation of monument services of the Bezirke, and of various photographic researches. 39 It is remarkable that a Gemeinde such as Rosenthal, which in 1920 was divided between the districts of Reinickendorf and Pankow, none the less set up a memorial to all its dead. 40 Landesarchiv, A Rep. 43–08/26 and 29.

406

chapter fourteen — elise julien

came to nothing: the city quickly passed the matter to the State and gave a free rein to the arrondissements. According to the law of 25 October 1919 concerning the commemoration and glorification of those who died for France during the Great War, the arrondissements of Paris were treated as communes.41 Like all French communes, they were required to keep a roll of honor in the town hall. When decided by the State, homage was thus paid rapidly in the arrondissements. When the initiative passed to the arrondissements themselves and their inhabitants for the erection of monuments, it proved more complicated. In Berlin the municipal initiative was initially non-existent because it first required to come to terms with the defeat. The field was therefore free for civil society initiatives, which operated through the Gemeinden and which mostly developed on the outskirts of the city. When the city sought to take back responsibility, it was already late and civil society had not waited. The former communes or parishes asserted their preeminence over the administrative district, especially when they overlapped. There was in this respect a major difference with Paris as to the role of religion. Parish memorials exist in Paris (simple plaques in certain churches) but they have none of the significance of those in Berlin: amid a largely non-practicing population, they do not replace the memorials of the arrondissements. Overall, such a dispersal and symbolic weakness undermined the cities’ memorializing construction, as capital. There would remain, therefore, the powerful symbols of the national memorials erected in Paris and Berlin. The Symbolic Nationalization of the Capitals In the case of Paris, after the City had failed to create a memorial to the war dead it was the State, which from 1919 took on the national memory of the war, even though the City of Paris and the département of the Seine were represented in the ad hoc commissions. The tomb of the Unknown Soldier is of course the most famous site of the memory of the First World War in Paris. It was all the more significant that it marked the success of a construction and recon41 In the case of Paris with the possibility of grants from the Conseil Municipal, in the suburbs with a varying role from municipal authorities and possibilities of grants from the Conseil Général, in the case of Berlin with complete responsibility for the costs taken on by civil society, in any case from 1920 onwards.

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 407 struction as early as the 1920s. Thanks to the Unknown Soldier, Paris is indeed a symbolic capital of memory, but this is only because the State could not have chosen another site than Paris for the national war memorial. On 12 November 1919 the first decision was taken to inter the body of an unknown soldier, initially in the Panthéon. Enthusiasm for the idea of the Unknown Soldier was unanimous, but the war veterans organized a major campaign to have the body buried under the Arc de Triomphe. This proposal was finally accepted, and quickly voted through on 8 November 1920. On 11 November the body of the Unknown Soldier was displayed in a mortuary chapel and buried on 28 January 1921. It was only three years later, on 11 November 1923, that the Flame was installed round which the ritual would revolve; every evening delegations from all over France would rekindle the Flame, in a gesture which was to represent the living cult of memory.42 The tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Flame constitute two very powerful signs, which operate both as a site of pilgrimage and emotion and as a place of state ceremony. It is indeed the symbolic capital that operates here, in Paris, rather than Paris assuming its function as a symbolic capital. The possible establishment of a German national memorial was a recurring question throughout the Weimar Republic, but the concept was only genuinely launched in 1924, in a combined declaration by President Friedrich Ebert and Chancellor Wilhem Marx, marking the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of the war. The erection of an Ehrenmal for the war dead was intended to translate the moral duty of the German people; private gifts should thus ensure its financing. Across the nation, voices were raised in opposition to this idea on economic grounds, and proposing the opening of rest and nursing homes for disabled rather than the erection of a monument. None the less, proposals flooded in to the Ministry of the Interior. Remarkably, it was not at all obvious that the national monument should be located in Berlin. At the end of 1925, out of 79 projects laid before the Ministry of the Interior, only 11 proposed the installation of a national monument in the capital.43 Under pressure from the large veterans’ associations, which supported a

42 43

Journal Officiel, 26 October 1919, p. 11910. See Prost (1977), Anonyme (1949), Dupont (1958).

408

chapter fourteen — elise julien

plan for a Heiliger Hain (sacred wood) in the German countryside, the Commission for the erection for a national war memorial gave up its preference for Berlin and, like Hindenburg, rallied to the position of the veterans. But successive governments in turn failed to debate the problem genuinely. In face of the Federal State dither, the government of the State of Prussia proposed in 1929 to transform the Neue Wache building in Berlin, designed by the architect Schinkel, to honor Prussia’s dead. A competition was launched in 1930, and won by Tessenow, whose plan was achieved with support from the federal Ministry for Defense. In fact the president and government of the Reich openly saluted this monument as an initial solution to the vexed question of a national memorial. On the Prussian side, it was maintained that it was not a Reichsehrenmal but rather a place of contemplation dedicated to the Prussian dead. However, it also clearly responded to the need for a site in the German capital, which could receive homage of foreign visitors, as had become the practice in the capital cities of almost all the belligerents. The question of the national memorial was finally settled in March 1931 in favor of a Heiliger Hain in Bad Berka forest, near Weimar. A competition was launched and a plan gained approval in January 1933, before being abandoned after Hitler’s accession to power. In Berlin, the Neue Wache building, redeveloped in 1931 quickly achieved the rank of national symbol, particularly because the national monument that was eventually to be set up in Thuringia was never achieved. It is also possible that this Prussian monument was eventually adopted by the Reich due to its location in the capital. Indeed, a ceremonial site was needed there even if it did not acquire such a powerful ritual as that of the Arc de Triomphe. In both cases, pre-existing military sites were converted into sites for both contemplation and official ceremonies. Yet, beyond these obvious parallels there remain considerable differences between Paris and Berlin. In one case, the decision was swift in the context of victory and powerful national symbolism took hold in the capital; in the other, the initial decision was tardy in the context of a problematic commemoration, completion dragged on and led to hesitation over the site. National symbolism was finally established de facto in the capital, in a process that reflected the duality of Berlin, which remained the Prussian capital as it gradually became accepted as the national capital.

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 409 Conclusion The comparative study of civilian monuments to the First world War in Paris and Berlin enables us to draw some conclusions on the memorializing characteristics of these capitals. There are similarities between the two cases: both capitals acquired memorial symbols thanks to the mechanical consequence of the centralization of functions in the capital rather than through the city’s inherent dynamics. In this respect, in fact, initiatives came from above, from the State, whether national or Prussian. Paris concentrated the memory of the war in the tomb and flame of the Unknown Soldier, Berlin tardily and uncertainly established this memory in the Neue Wache building. On the other hand, there is no Paris monument, no Berlin monument, and no local monuments, establishing Paris and Berlin as symbolic capitals of the memory of the war. The study of these same memorials also brings out differences between the two cities, arising from various factors. In France, first, the capital city has a tradition, an ‘obviousness’ and a personality that do not exist in Germany. Secondly, come the differences of administrative status between the two cities. Paris inherited a structure already long established, with a strong dichotomy between the city intra muros and its suburbs, while Berlin saw the continuing evolution of its geographical borders and its administrative structure. More fundamentally, the end of the war led to major political consequences on the national scale, in which the capital cities took their place. In France, victory meant that homage was admitted by all, and quickly gained prominence. The fact that local initiatives had difficulty in reaching a conclusion in Paris, and not in the suburbs, confirms to the problematic specificities of the capital. In Germany, the difficulty to confront the defeat prevented the organization of any relatively consensual homage. Forms of homage were confined on the scale of territorially limited communities. When the State sought to take the initiative, this created a break in the discourse (in 1924) but it had little effect on what was created. We have here the confirmation that the capitals were directly linked to national life: they were not only contributors to a national context but, as capitals, they also underwent a symbolic nationalization. Beyond this nationalization, which marginally concerned them, Parisians and Berliners did not mainly organize their memory within the municipal frameworks, nor even necessarily in the

410

chapter fourteen — elise julien

more limited administrative frameworks of the arrondissements and districts. Where then can we find the commemorative identity of these populations? If the capitals and their administrative dependencies do not constitute genuine social frameworks, we must no doubt look further down the ladder of civilian society and memorializing settings to discover what formed the identity of these inhabitants in their daily lives: administrations, businesses, parishes, schools and universities, etc., provide a more suitable framework for these memories. It none the less remains interesting to analyze the particular position of the capitals in their own countries. While they could be its epitome, we discover that they are very specific insofar as they did not set up any truly municipal homage to their dead. This specificity enables the historian to juxtapose different levels of analysis in the scrutiny of a single site, which cannot be found elsewhere. These specific objects, which are nonetheless found in both countries, are thus a means, through comparison, to move outside strictly national frameworks.

Bibliography Anonyme (1949), La flamme sous l’Arc de Triomphe au tombeau du Soldat inconnu (Paris: 1949). Becker A. (1988), Les monuments aux morts, mémoire de la grande guerre (Paris: 1988). Charle C. (1998), Paris fin de siècle. Culture et politique (Paris: 1998). Dupont M. (1958), L’Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile et le Soldat inconnu (Paris: 1958). Félix M. (1946), Le régime administratif du département de la Seine et de la Ville de Paris (Paris: 1946, 3e édition). Frijhoff W. (1993), « La ville: lieu de mémoire de l’Europe moderne? », in Pim Den Boer, Lieux de mémoire et identités nationales (Amsterdam: 1993), 68. Halbwachs M. (1925), Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: 1925). Halbwachs M. (1941), La topographie légendaire des Evangiles en Terre Sainte. Étude de mémoire collective (Paris: 1941). Halbwachs M. (1950), La mémoire collective (Paris: 1950). Hannerz U. (1980), Exploring the City. Inquiries toward an Urban Anthropology (New York: 1980). Hobsbawm E. and Ranger T. (1983), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: 1983). Koselleck R. (1979), « Kriegerdenkmale als Identitätsstiftung der Überlebenden », in Identität, ed. O. Marquard and K. Stierle, (Munich: 1979), 255–276. Lurz M. (1985–1987), Kriegerdenkmäler in Deutschland (Heidelberg: 1985–1987) 6 volumes. Mosse G. (1975), The Nationalization of the Masses. Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New-York: 1975). Nora P. (1984–1992), Les lieux de mémoire (Paris: 1984–1992) 7 volumes. Pomplun K. (1970), 50 Jahre « Groß-Berlin ». Ein Ruckblick auf die Eingemeindungen seit 1861 mit dem Wortlaut des Berlin-Gesetztes von 1920 (Berlin: 1970).

paris, berlin: war memory in two capital cities (1914‒1933) 411 Prost A. (1977), Les Anciens combattants et la société française, 1914–1939 (Paris: 1977) 3 volumes. Prost A. (1984), « Les monuments aux morts. Culte républicain? Culte civique? Culte patriotique? », Les lieux de mémoire, ed. P. Nora (Paris: 1984) volume 1, 195–225. Robert J.-L. (2002), « Les monuments aux morts de la Grande Guerre à Paris », in Capitales culturelles, capitales symboliques. Paris et les expériences européennes, ed. D. Roche and C. Charle (Paris: 2002) 149–158. Robert J.-L. and Winter J. (1997), Capital Cities at War. Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919 (Cambridge: 1997). Sherman D. (1999), The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (1914–1940) (Chicago: 1999). Swoboda H. (1990), Identität und Stadtgestaltung (Vienne: 1990). Weinland M. (1990), Kriegerdenkmäler in Berlin, 1870 bis 1930 (Francfort: 1990). Winter J. (1995), Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: 1995). Winter J. (2002), « Guerre et mémoire au XXe siècle. Une interprétation des monuments aux morts fondée sur l’interaction sociale », in La politique et la guerre. Pour comprendre le XXe siècle européen, ed. S. Audoin-Rouzeau, A. Becker, S. Cœuré, V. Duclert, F. Monier (Paris: 2002) 138–153. Winter J. and Sivan E. (ed.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: 1999). Ziemann B., « Die Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg in den Milieukulturen der Weimarer Republik », in Kriegserlebnis und Legendebildung. Das Bild des “modernen” Krieges in Literatur, Theater, Photographie und Film, ed. T. Schneider (Osnabruck: 1999) volume 1, 249–270.

INDEX 1917 Club, 204 Aachen, 147 academics, 275, 277, 295–322, 366 acculturation, 7 aerial warfare (air raids), 13 African American soldiers, 215–41 Ain, 140 Albert Hall, 202 Albert Langen, 328 Allier, 140 American Geographers, 266–7, 276 Amette, Cardinal (Archbishop of Paris), 178–9 Angelina’s Soldiers’ Buffet, 249 Angell, Norman, 191 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 326 Arc de Triomphe, 390 Armenian Genocide, 14 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 325 Ashley, Colonel Wilfrid, 253 Asquith, Herbert Henry, 195, 200–1, 203–6, 211–2 Asquithians, 210 Association des écrivains combattants (AEC), 326, 337–8, 340 Astor, Nancy Lady, 257 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, 4–6, 10, 33 Bab, Julius, 325 Baden, 144 Balfour, Arthur James, 195 Barbusse, Henri, 327, 329, 332, 337–8, 347–58 Barnes, George, 207 Barrès, Maurice, 326, 330 Barrington, Viscountess, 262 Baudrillart, Alfred (Rector of the Institut Catholique de Paris), 163, 169–72, 176–7, 187 Bavaria, 144 Beauvoir, Simone de, 153 Becker, Annette, 4–6, 10, 33 ‘Belgian soul’, 367 belligerence, 2–4, 18, 20, 32–3 Benda, Julien, 295 Bendix, Reinhard, 19

Benedict XV, Pope, 133, 166, 171–6, 178–9 Bene“, Eduard, 301 Berger-Levrault, 326 Bethmann-Holweg, Theobald von, 44–5 Bielefeld, 147 Bissing, von, 363 black officers, 223 Blanchin, 145 Bonar Law, Andrew 209 Bond, Lieutenant-Colonel R.C., 144 Bouches-du-Rhône, 140 Boulanger, Jacques, 338 Bourdieu, Pierre, 22 Bourne, Randolph, 23 Brailsford, H.N., 191 Briand-Kellogg Treaty, 372 British Expeditionary Force (BEF), 43, 60–7, 136 British Geographers, 277–82, 286 Brive, 153 ‘Brotherhood of the trenches’, 245, 263–4 Bruchmueller, Colonel Georg, 49 Brunswick, 147 ‘brutalization’, 6, 8–9, 11, 33 Bryce Group, 196 Bulletin des écrivains de 1914, 326 Burns, John, 192 Burrows, Ronald, 306 Busse, Carl, 325 Buxton, Noel, 202–3 Cadorna, Luigi, 73–4, 76–84, 86, 88, 91, 93–4, 96–8, 100 Cambrai, 139 Canadian Corps, 65–7 Carcassonne, 141 Catholicism, 94 Cazals, Rémy, 7 Cecil, Lord Robert, 197 censorship, 92, 96 Châlons, 143 Chapon, Henry (Bishop of Nice), 178–9, 186 Chartier, Roger, 21–2 Chauchat guns, 47, 53–5

414

index

Chiozza Money, Leo, 194 Church Army, 261 Churchill, Winston, 192–3, 195 citizenship, 28–9 civil liberties, 23 Civil Rights Movement, 215 civil society, 10–1, 13–6, 23–6, 29, 31, 33 Clausewitz, 1 Clemenceau, Georges, 385 Clermont-Ferrand, 140 Coalition Liberal, 208, 210 Cohen, Deborah, 30 Cologne, 147 Comité d’études, 284–6, 301, 303–4 commemoration, 381, 385, 394, 406, 408 common meeting places in villages, pre-war examples of, 243–5 parish room/institute, 246 public houses, 243–4 roadside, 244 school-rooms, 245 stables, 243 comparative history, 3, 15–7, 19, 32 Comrades of the Great War, 253, 255 Connaught Rooms, 211–2 conscription, 31, 190, 192–5, 197, 212 consent, 5, 7, 18, 23–4, 26, 28–9 Corrèze, 152 Cotta, 328 Cru, Jean Norton, 326, 333 cultural history, 4, 18–22 Currie, Sir Arthur, 66 Curzon, Lord, 193 Daily Telegraph, 203 dances, 245, 253, 259, 262 Daumier, Honoré-Victorin, 361 death penalty, 78, 82, 85–6, 97 decimation, 82–4, 92 defense expenditures (Britain, France), 12 Dehmel, Richard, 335 demobilised soldiers, moral authority of, 246, 260–2 demobilization, cultural, 9, 182, 184, 186, 370–2 Denis, Ernest, 297 Derby, Lord, 194 Desbarolles, Adrien Adolphe, 367 desertion, 79, 84–7, 97 Diederichs, Eugen, 327 disabled African American veteran, 229

disabled veterans, 235 disillusionment, definition of, 106–7 Disposal Board, auction of huts, 253, 254–5 dissent, 7, 25 Distinguished Service Order, 193 Division Aérienne, 56 divorce trial, 208 Dorgelès, Roland, 327 Drieu La Rochelle, Pierre, 338 Du Bois, W.E.B., 215 Duhamel, Georges, 332, 338 Durkheim, Emile, 314 East Africa, 190, 193 Eastern Front, 13–4 Ebert, Friedrich, 407 Eisenmann, Louis, 310 Eksteins, Modris, 331 Elias, Norbert, 29, 33, 342 Enemy Propaganda Department, 299 Estienne, Colonel J.E., 54–5 European history of the First World War, 3–4, 18, 32 Evening Standard, 203 execution, 75–6, 78, 80–3, 87, 89, 92, 97 experts, 271–3, 277–84, 291 Fabians, 189 Falkenhayn, Erich von, 44, 46 Fascism, 8, 11 First Coalition, 193 Flex, Walter, 329, 332 Foch, General Ferdinand, 42, 52, 55 Forbes, Angela Lady, 249 Foreign Affairs Group, 191 Foucault, Michel, 28 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 366 Fourteen Points, 204 Frankfurt, 147 Free Liberal Party, 210 Freedom of the Seas, 199 French clerics, 133 French Geographers, 266, 282–3 French, Sir John, 43 Friedrichsfeld, 147 Gallipoli, 190, 193 Geneva Convention, 136 George, Henry, 189–90 Germain, José, 338 German atrocities, 9 German Geographers, 266, 269, 288

index ‘German soul’, 367 Geyer, Michael, 4, 10, 14–5 Ghéon, Henri, 336 Gironde, 140 Gladstone, Herbert, 211 God and the war, 122, 126 Goltz, General-Governor Colmar, von der, 362 Gourmont, Rémy de, 330 Gramsci, Antonio, 26 Grayzel, Susan, 2 Gregory, Adrian, 30 Groener, General, 24 Guben, 342 Guest, Freddy, 193, 209 Hague Convention on Land Warfare of 1907, 136 Haig, Sir Douglas, 43, 67 Halbwachs, Maurice, 380 Halévy, Elie, 1, 31–2 ‘Hang-the-Kaiser’ films, 366 Hanover, 147 Harcourt, Lewis, 200 ‘Hate-the-Hun’ films, 366 hatred of the enemy, 6 Hegel, G.W.F., 15 ‘hegemonic belligerence’, 27 ‘hegemony’, 26 Henderson, Arthur, 202, 206 Himmler, 145 Hindenburg Line, 40 Hindenburg Program, 16, 47 Hindenburg, Paul von, 16, 44, 408 Historial de la Grande Guerre, 5 Hitler, Adolf, 342 Hobson, J.A., 204 Hoefert, Franz Konrad, 340 Hollander, Walter von, 328 Home Front, Heimat Front, 2, 10, 150–1 Hoog, Georges, 169, 179–80, 186 Horne, John, 9, 24 House of Commons, 193, 203, 206–7, 209–10 House, Colonel Edward, 196–8 Howard, Sir Michael, 1, 27 Immanuel, Fritz, 328 imprisonment, 76–7, 82, 85–6, 89–91, 93, 95–6, 98–9 Independent Labour Party (ILP), 189, 192, 195, 208, 212 Institut d’études slaves, 302

415

intellectuals, 266, 269 Intelligence Bureau, 298 International Democratic Peace Congresses, 182 Irish uprising, 200 Jeismann, Michael, 367 Jewish community, 403 Joffre, Joseph, 41–2 Johnson, Douglas W., 265–93 Johnson, Henry, 233–5 Jowett, Fred, 206 Jünger, Ernst, 332, 340 Kaiserism, 190 Keble Bell, John, 146 Keir Hardie, James, 191 Keller, Julius Talbot, 341 Kerr, Philip, 203 King Albert’s Book, 374 King’s College, London, 306 Kitchener clubs, 259 Kitchener, Lord, 42–3 Kocka, Jürgen, 379 Körner, Theodor, 325 Kramer, Alan, 9 Kriegsministerium, 141 La Libre Belgique, 363 Labour Party, 189, 191, 201–2, 204–7, 209, 211, 213 Laffargue, Captain André, 52 Lamalou-les-Bains, 339 Lambert, Richard, 194–5 Land Taxation, 189, 208, 212 Landshut, 145 language of sacrifice, 14, 102 Lansdowne, Lord, 203 Larousse, 331 Lavisse, Ernest, 312 Lawrence, Jon, 9 League of Nations, 190, 196–7, 199, 202 leave, 74–5, 86–8, 95, 97, 99 Le Goffic, Charles, 329 Leipzig trials, 363, 375 Le Puy, 142 Lettres à un soldat, 179 Liard, Louis, 310 Liberal Party, 190–1, 200, 206–7, 209–13 Liberal War Committee, 195 Liberalism, 190–1, 201, 205, 209–10 Lib-Labism, 206

416

index

Liebesgaben, 153 Limoges, 142 Lloyd George Liberals, 209 Lloyd George, David, 192–3, 195, 199–200, 204–5, 208–9, 211–2 Locarno Pact, 372 Long, Walter, 193 Loofs, Friedrich, 340 Louvain, 147 Louveau-Rouveyre, Marcel Eugene, 154 Ludendorff, Erich, 16, 44, 49 lynching, 220, 228 Lytton, Capt. N., 259 MacDonald, James Ramsay, 189, 191–2, 202, 204, 206, 210 Maclean, Sir Donald, 210 Mainz, 147 Malherbe, Henry, 338 Manchester Guardian, 202, 210 Mangin, Charles, 58 Manifesto of the 93, 314 Mannschaft (Die), 341–2 maps, 270, 272, 324 Mariot, Nicolas, 7–8 Marne, battle of, 44, 137 Marseillaise, 140 Marx, Karl, 24 Masaryk, Thomas, 301 Massis, Henri, 337–8 Masterman, Charles, 189, 194 Masurian Lakes, 44 Maubeuge, 136 Maurice Debate, 205 Maxse, Sir Ivor, 63 McCarthy, Daniel, 138 McKenna, Reginald, 193, 203 Memorandum on War Aims, 204 memorials, 124, 245, 391, 393, 396–7, 399, 403, 405–6, 409 war, 245, 381–2, 385, 391–4, 396–7, 399, 401 Mercure de France, 325–6, 328, 330 Meurthe et Moselle, 140 militarization of Europe, 4, 10–2, 15 military chaplains, Anglo-German similarities and differences, 125–9 duties, 103–4 numbers, 103–4 military geography, 270, 274 military participation, 17 military police (carabinieri ), 75–7, 79–80, 85, 88, 91–3

Military Service Act, 1916, 30 Military Service Tribunals (Britain), 30–1 military tribunals, 75–82, 84–6, 89–94, 97, 99 Milner, Lord, 189 Minister of Munitions, 193, 200 Modernism, 296 Moltke, Helmut von, 44, 137 Mons, 136 Morel, Edmund Dene, 190–2, 203, 207, 210 Morley, John, 192 Mosley, Oswald, 204 Mosse, Georges L., 6, 8–9, 11 mourning, 389 Munich, 143 mutiny, 28, 88, 91, 93–5, 97 National Registration Bill, 193 nationalization (symbolic), 406 Neue Wache, 390 new diplomacy, 265, 287, 290 New Europe, 298 New York, 197, 199 Newcastle-under-Lyme, 189, 207 Nivelle, General Robert, 54 ‘no annexations and no indemnities’, 201 Nora, Pierre, 382 Notre Étoile, 171, 179 Nouvelle Revue Française, 325 Ober Ost, 14 open diplomacy, 198, 287, 290 Orléans, 142 Other Club, 195 Outhwaite, Leonard, 190, 210–1 Oxford, 1, 317 Pacelli, Eugenio (Pope Pius XII), 176, 178 Pacifism, 94, 96 Palatinate, 144 Paris Peace Conference, 267, 289, 292 Pau, 139 Paust, Otto, 342 ‘peace without victory’, 199, 202 Péricard, Jacques, 330 Pershing, John J., 59 Pétain, General Philippe, 54–5 Petit, Gabrielle, 361, 372 Pippin, Horace, 230 Poland, 198–9

index Ponsonby, Arthur, 372 Ponsonby, J.A., 191 Prefects, France, 139 prisoner of war camps, 138 prisoners of war, 133 propaganda, 78, 94–5, 137, 295 Prost, Antoine, 2, 9, 21–2, 32, 382 Prussianism, 194 Przygode, Wolf, 331 Puget, André, 331 Radical Committee, 205 Raemaekers, Louis, 361 rational recreation, 248 reading rooms, local examples of, 247, 256 reading, 347, 349–50, 353–5, 358 Realism, 355, 357 Red Cross, German, 144 Reform Club, 200 Remarque, Erich Maria, 333, 342 representation, 21 Reshef, Ouriel, 365 Rhineland, 144 Riebicke, Otto, 332 rioting, 224 Riou, Gaston, 144, 329 Robert, Jean-Louis, 21–2, 379 Roberts, George, 207 Roberts, Needham, 233 Rodewald, Hans, 141 Rolland, Romain, 337 Rosner, Karl, 328 Rouen, 142 Rousseau, Frédéric, 7 Runciman, Walter, 193, 197, 199 Rural Development Commission, 244 Russell, Bertrand, 204 Russia, 190, 201–2 Russian prisoners, 133 Russian Provisional Government, 201 Russian Revolution, 201, 212 sacrifice as religious theme, 103, 114–6, 120–1 Saint Etienne, 140 Sangnier, Marc, 163–87 Sarrebruck, 144 Sassoon, Siegfried, 250 Schlieffen Plan, 138 Schneidmühl, 133 School of Slavonic Studies, 308 Schubert, Gustav, 138 Scottish churches hut, France, 249

417

Seeckt, Hans von, 46 Ségur, Marquis de, 326 self-determination, 207 Seton-Watson, 297 Single Tax, 228 sites of memory, 381 Smillie, Robert, 207 Smith, Leonard V., 28 Smith-Dorrien, General, 193 Snowden, Philip, 189, 206–7, 210 social Catholicism, 163, 170, 178, 182 social domination, 15–7, 22, 25–6, 30–1 ‘social history of representations’, 21–2 social mobilization, 14, 17, 20, 25, 30 ethics of, 14 Socialism, 94–6, 98, 356–7 ‘social relations of sacrifice’, 22 soldiers clubs and recreation rooms, 247–53, 259, 263 in France, 248–50, 261–2 Kitchener clubs, 259 local examples in Britain, 247–48, 250 as essential buildings, 252 Soldiers Clubs Association, 250–1, 254, 258 Crowborough, 250 Sorbonne, 310 South African war, 189 ‘Spirit of 1914’, 107, 120 spy scares, 135 Staffordshire Sentinel, 205–6, 208 Stockholm, 201–2 Strachan, Hew, 2 Switzerland, 158 syndicalists, 192 Tannenberg, 44 Tannenberg, battle of, 139 Tarbes, 142 Templemore, 133 ‘ten-year rule’ (British Treasury), 12 The Inquiry, 267, 271–8, 280, 283–7, 290–1 The Nation, 203, 207 ‘Third O.H.L.’, 16 Third Republic (France), 17 Tilly, Charles, 28–9 Tipperary, 133 Tocqueville, Alexis, de, 23 Torgau, 139 Transvaal, 189 Treaty of Versailles, 375

418

index

Trentmann, Frank, 25 Trevelyan, Charles, 190–2, 204–5, 207, 210–1 Ullstein, 328 Union of Democratic Control (UDC), 191–2, 194–6, 198, 201, 203–5, 212 United Services Fund, 253 University of Paris, 301 Unknown Soldier, 390 Unruh, Fritz von, 339 Vaillant-Couturier, Paul, 337–8 Vansittart, Robert, 155 Vaterländische Frauenverein, 152 Vatican, 133 Vesper, Will, 335 veteran political activism, 227 veterans, 386 village clubs and halls in southern England, absence of activities in war, 253 activities in, 259, 262 army hut purchases, 253–4 as ‘social gains’, 246 as a reconstructionist vision, 244–5, 262–4 as war memorials, 245, 256–7, 268 church responses to, 256, 258–9 grants from the United Services Fund, 253–4 local examples of new or enlarged halls, Barcombe, 257–8 Haywards, Heath, 256–7 Hindhead, 256 Laira, 257 Lavant, 260 North Chapel, 254–5, 260–1 Slinfold, 261 Westcott, 256 Weybridge, 260 Woking, St. Johns, 259–60 Woking, village, 259

Village Clubs Association, 243–5, 254 model rules, 244 Vitre, 142 voluntary associations, adaptive qualities of, 245, 254 ‘war culture’, 4, 6–9, 17, 19–20, 26, 28, 133–62, 164, 180, 183–4, 186, 270, 325, 343, 360, 370–1, 373, 376 Catholic, 168–72, 177, 179–80, 182, 186 war violence, 9–10, 28, 33 wartime politics, 17 Weaver, Lawrence, 245 Weber, Max, 16–7, 19, 27, 33 Wedgwood, J.C., 189–213 Wells, H.G., 204 Werth, Léon, 338 Western Front, 230 Wickham Steed, Henry, 298 Williams, Raymond, 26 Wilson, President Woodrow, 190, 196–9, 201–2, 204–5, 212, 265, 275, 315 Winter, Jay, 2, 26, 32, 331, 380 Witkop, Philipp, 330 Wittenberg, 147 women, as readers, 355 Women’s Institute, 254, 258, 261 Wright, J.D., 7–8 Würtemberg, 144 xenophobia, 135 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 247–8, 250, 252, 255–8 in France, 248 paid organisers, 255, 257 Red Triangle clubs, 247, 256–7 Young Women’s Christian Association, (YWCA), 256 Blue Triangle clubs, 256 Zech, Paul, 339