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THE END
The war came to an end when men refused to fight.
Attempts to achieve peace through negotiation
before 1918 came to nothing. The Germans were determined to keep all
the territory they had occupied. The Allies were equally determined
that Germany should gain nothing by her aggression and that her
military power should be totally crushed so that she would never
fight again.
IT MIGHT HAVE ENDED IN SEPTEMBER, 1914
Peace proposals were discussed before the war
started, and in the early days of the war President Woodrow Wilson
of the United States was busy trying to find a peace formula. The
newspaper the Evening World, published in New York on 17th
September 1914, carried a stunning report, "based on the highest
diplomatic authority," on the Kaiser's response to Wilson. The
Kaiser appears, in these remarks to be a man of wisdom and vision,
proposing a settlement remarkably close to that eventually agreed
after over four years' of warfare.
The Kaiser's main points:
Germany would not stop fighting so long as
Britain continued daily to declare that the war must be a fight to
the finish, until Germany had been crushed.
If the world at large hoped for disarmament then
the crushing of Germans would be the poorest way to accomplish it: a
crushed Germany would "repeat the era after the Napoleonic wars and
arm every man, child, cat and dog in the Empire for the day of
revenge."
Germany was willing to call the war a draw [!].
If this were agreed it would be the most conducive solution towards
future peace in Europe and to disarmament. Complete victory on
either side would not lead to stable conditions.
Germany would not agree to being dismembered. The German colonies
might be discussed.
Germany's borders must not be interfered with by
surrounding states. "Every man in the German Empire believes
sincerely and honestly today that the war is one of self-defence
against the hostile encroachment of Russia, France and England. Live
and let live is the policy that Germany wishes its enemies to
observe."1
1Evening
World, New York, 17 September, 1914.
AMERICAN PEACE MOVES
In November 1917 President Wilson put forward a
proposal for a negotiated peace settlement. Only the ageing Emperor
of Austria expressed interest in the idea, but unfortunately he died
before the month was out.
In December Wilson invited the nations involved
in the war to state their aims as a basis for negotiation.
Politicians did not wish to be wholly frank on this matter and in
the case of the Germans they would say nothing of their aims.
Wilson's significant move came on 8th January
1918 when he issued his fourteen point peace plan which included
Germany returning all captured Russian territory, returning and
restoring Belgium, and returning the area of Alsace and Lorraine
which Germany seized in 1871. National armaments of all countries
would be reduced to a minimum. National groups, including the Poles,
would have self-determination. A "general association of nations"
would be set up to safeguard the independence of all nations, great
and small.
TURNING POINT
On 8th August, 1918, the German armies near Amien
were suddenly turned back by Australian, Canadian, British and
French troops. From then on they were in continual retreat and their
faith in their ability to win the war was shattered. German soldiers
refused to advance. There were mass surrenders. The German High
Command was in a state of shock, and a new spirit of confidence
began to develop in the Allied armies.
[Roberts Graves's poem Defeat of the Rebels,
appears in full in Minds at War - the first time in print for over
50 years. It cannot be printed here for copyright reasons.
It tells of the British soldiers' response to the German retreat and
suggests a ruthless violence and cruelty. Lines include "The enemy
forces are in wild flight... It falls to us to shoot them down...
Where they shiver behind rocks or in ditches... [Such prisoners were
unprofitable."]
The situation as seen by a German soldier
Our lines are falling back. There are too many
fresh English and American regiments over there. There's too much
corned beef and white wheaten bread. Too many new guns. Too many
aeroplanes.
But we are emaciated and starved. Our food is bad
and mixed up with so much substitute stuff that it makes us ill. The
factory owners in Germany have grown wealthy; - dysentry dissolves
our bowels. The latrine poles are always densely crowded; the people
at home ought to be shown these grey, yellow, miserable, wasted
faces here, these silent figures from whose bodies the colic wrings
out the blood. . .
Our artillery is fired out, it has too few shells
and the barrels are so worn that they shoot uncertainly, and scatter
so widely as even to fall on ourselves. We have too few horses. Our
fresh troops are anaemic boys in need of rest, who
cannot carry a pack, but merely know how to die. By thousands. . .
The summer of 1918 is the most bloody and the most terrible. The
days stand like angels in blue and gold, incomprehensible, above the
ring of annihilation. Every man here knows we are losing the war.
Not much is said about it, we are falling back, we will not be able
to attack again after this big offensive, we have no more men and no
more ammunition.
Still the campaign goes on - the dying goes on -
Erich Maria Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front.
Victory - an agonised cry - a French
interpretation. Rodin's sculpture in a main street in Verdun.
THE BRITISH PREPARE FOR VICTORY
WHAT'S THE USE OF WORRYING?
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while,
So pack up your troubles
In your old kit bag
And smile, smile, smile.
Popular soldier's song of the First World War
SMILE, SMILE, SMILE
Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned,
"For," said the paper, "when this war is done
The men's first instincts will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has but begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, -
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified..
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity."
Nation? - The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
(This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France,
Not many elsewhere now, save under France.)
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.
Wilfred Owen, late September 1918.
[This next poem was Owen's view of what the end would be like. It
was written in May 1917.]
THE END
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,
And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth,
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth,
And wash, with an immortal water, age?
When I do ask white Age, he saith not so:
"My head hangs weighed with snow."
And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:
"My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,
Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried."
Wilfred Owen
Terms of the Armistice
In 1914 George Bernard Shaw had warned, "Unless we are all
prepared to fight Militarism at home as well as abroad, the
cessation of hostilities will last only until the belligerents have
recovered from their exhaustion."
By the terms of the armistice Germany agreed:
- to remove all troops and personnel from: Belgium, France,
Luxembourg, Alsace, and Lorraine
- to remove all troops in the east that occupied Russia; to
restore eastern frontiers to their 1914 status
- to return all prisoners and deported civilians from these areas
- to hand over their means of making war, including, 5,000 heavy
guns, 25,000 machine guns, 1,700 aeroplanes, 5,000 railway engines,
150,000 railway wagons, 5,000 lorries, 10 battleships, and all their
submarines
- to make good all damage and loss in Belgium and northern
France.
Hysteria swept the country. There was little sign of magnanimity
in victory: instead a mood of ruthless revenge. Countless public
meetings were held at which the most popular cries were, "Make
Germany pay!" and "Hang the Kaiser!"
WHAT HAD BEEN ACHIEVED?
AN IMPERIAL ELEGY
Not one corner of a foreign field
But a span as wide as Europe;
An appearance of a Titan's grave,
And the length thereof a thousand miles.
It crossed all Europe like a mystic road,
Or as the Spirits' Pathway lieth on the night.
And I heard a voice crying,
This is the Path of Glory.
Wilfred Owen
Human failure
Ten million soldiers dead. Perhaps twenty million
maimed. Perhaps twenty million children without fathers. Perhaps
thirty million families bereaved, handicapped, distressed as a
direct result of the fighting. Thousands of homes destroyed, land
ruined. Mass deportation into slavery. Hundreds of thousands dead of
starvation. One million Armenians massacred by the Turks. Triumph
no-where. Human dignity, self-respect; torn to pieces. A monumental
failure for mankind - a failure to speak and listen, to find common
ground, to negotiate. A futile, illogical and mindless reliance on
the use of force which devastated the user and victim alike,
illustrating the fact that no other species is capable of causing
horror and distress on such a scale. Man had created powers that
collectively he had neither the intelligence nor the morality to
control. Man had released a genie. - The significance of human
foolishness and aggression had been hugely magnified by the
technological powers at his disposal - military, scientific, and the
media. The need for wisdom in national leaders became important as
never before.
The century of war
More than a hundred million people have died in
wars this century. The twentieth century has been the century of
war; and the First World War was merely an overture. Yet those who
ordered their nations into action, and less still, those who so
willingly obeyed the call to war had no clear concept of what it was
meant to achieve. They fought for crudely nationalistic and personal
reasons.
Once the British people had committed themselves
to war to save Belgium (and Britain) from the German invasion they
accepted extensions of the war without a murmur of protest. They
found themselves fighting and dying in other parts of the world for
reasons that probably made little sense. Britain declared war on
Austria-Hungary, an Empire with whom we had no quarrel, on 12th
August 1914, and on Turkey on 6th November. British troops fought in
Africa, Palestine and Italy. No-one seemed to question this, yet
tens of thousands died in these peripheral wars.
Belgium
And did they save Belgium? Or did Belgium save
France and Britain by absorbing the speed and force of the German
attack?
At the end of the war her independence was
restored, but only after she had first been devastated. Within weeks
of marching into this neutral country savage reprisals had taken
place against civilians who had attempted to harass the German
forces. Scores of civilians including children, teenagers and old
people had been rounded up and killed by firing squads. Villages,
including churches, had been totally destroyed. Hostages had been
seized by the German armies as a guarantee of "good behaviour" by
Belgian communities. The Belgians were forced to pay for upkeep of
the occupying forces.
Thousands fled the country. Seven hundred
thousand men had been deported to Germany as slave labourers. Famine
had broken out which had been relieved by charitable help from
overseas - but even this humanitarian aid had been less successful
than it might because many supply ships were sunk by German
submarines. Hunger was everywhere. The birthrate fell by 75 per
cent. The university city of Louvain had been set on fire. The town
of Ypres had been blasted to rubble. Farmlands were ruined by
trenches and shells.
Art treasures had been looted and shipped to
Germany. Machinery from factories was taken to Germany and what
could not be moved had been destroyed. Blast furnaces had been blown
up; coal mines had been flooded.
This was how the Allies saved Belgium, yet it was a basis for a
renewal of life. What would Belgium's fate have been without
opposing Germany?
The once magnificent centre of Ypres, with its cathedral and
thirteenth century Cloth Hall 27th April 1918.
North Eastern France
This area suffered in ways similar to Belgium;
four thousand and twenty-two villages had been destroyed; twenty
thousand factories had been robbed of machinery and destroyed. In
addition, hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland, far more than
in Belgium, had been ravaged by trenches, shells, thousands of miles
of barbed wire, the litter of corpses, the deadly debris of war. But
for a time the enemy had been repulsed and the areas of
Alsace-Lorraine returned to France after nearly fifty years of
German occupation.
Britain and the rest of Europe
Edward Grey's fear had been that if Germany won
she would dominate France; that the independence of Belgium,
Holland, Denmark, and perhaps Norway and Sweden would become "a mere
shadow, a fiction," with all their labours at the disposal of a
Germany that would dominate the whole of Western Europe; and this
would be an intolerable situation for Britain.
It seemed that Edward Grey's war aims had been
achieved. - The defence of Belgium and the crushing of militarism
for ever was less successful.
America
America had wanted to remain neutral in the war,
and was only reluctantly drawn in by the Allies. Her war dead were
relatively few. The survivors returned home to ports devoid of
cheering crowds. No-one knew of their courage or achievements. Yet
America had been an important reason for the Allied victory.
Furthermore it was President Woodrow Wilson's 14 point plan which
set the agenda for a peace settlement and which would have been more
successful had it been interpreted in keeping with its spirit and
clear intent.
America was strengthened by the war. It became the foremost world
power.
The German perspective
We cherish no illusions as to the extent of our
defeat - the degree of our impotence. We know that the might of
German arms is broken.
Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, Head of German
delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference.
The war continued after the signing of the
armistice and the end to the fighting on 11th November. Britain
continued to blockade German ports to stop food getting through. The
belief and fear was that the Germans would revive to fight on or be
able to weaken the punitive nature of the treaty which would be
signed. The blockade, which had existed throughout most of the war,
had helped to weaken and so defeat Germany. However, the blockade
was not the sole reason for her food problems. These had been worse
than Britain's partly as a result of her use of manpower. A far
greater proportion of her workers worked in munitions and war
related activities than in Britain and relatively fewer in
agriculture.
Ultimately, it is believed, between half and
three quarters of a million Germans died as a result of starvation
brought about by the blockade. When, in the treaty negotiations that
followed, Germany was branded as solely responsible for the war her
representatives seized on the concept of "war guilt" and pointed to
Britain's behaviour in continuing the blockade against a defenceless
nation.
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES - A PEACE TO END PEACE
In 1914 George Bernard Shaw anticipated the peace
negotiations, and the claims and counter-claims of innocence and
guilt.
Neither England nor Germany must claim any moral
superiority in the negotiations. Both were engaged for years in a
race for armaments. Both indulged and still indulge in literary and
oratorical provocation. Both claimed to be "an Imperial race" ruling
other races by divine right. Both showed high social and political
consideration to parties and individuals who openly said that the
war had to come. Both formed alliances to reinforce them for that
war. '
1 Common Sense About the War, supplement to New Statesman,
4 November,1914.
At Versailles Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, leader of
the German team of negotiators, said much the same thing, "During
the last fifty years the imperialism of all European states has
chronically poisoned the international situation. The policy of
retaliation and that of expansion, as well as disregard of right of
peoples to self-determination, contributed to the disease of Europe,
which reached its crisis in the world war."
Nevertheless, the victors unanimously agreed that
Germany was responsible for the war and because of this Germany was
to pay for the damage. This was an idea that had been stridently
supported by the British press for years, especially the Northcliffe
press which campaigned for ever harsher treatment of Germany.
Rudyard Kipling had been an early supporter of the punish-Germany
faction. A personal tragedy changed his attitude as can be seen in his self-pitying poem, The Children. - His only
son had been killed in the Battle of Loos.
THE CHILDREN
( "The Honours of War" - A Diversity of Creatures )
These were our children who died for our lands: they were dear in
our sight.
We have only the memory left of their home-treasured sayings and
laughter.
The price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another's
hereafter.
Neither the Alien nor Priest shall decide it. That is our right.
But who shall return us the children?
At the hour the Barbarian chose to disclose his pretences,
And raged against Man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared
for us,
The first felon-stroke of the sword he had long-time prepared for
us,
Their bodies were all our defence while we wrought our defences.
They bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us,
Those hours which we had not made good when the Judgement o'ercame
us.
They believed us and perished for it. Our statecraft, our
learning Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning
Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour -Not since
her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her.
Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them.
The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption:
Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption,
Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marvelling, closed on
them.
That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was
given
To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven -
By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires -
To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes - to be cindered by fires -
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
But who shall return us our children?
Rudyard Kipling.
Written in 1917, when reparations were first discussed.
Public opinion in Britain and France fiercely supported Kipling's
point of view at the end of the war.
FOR THE APOSTLES OF "NO HUMILIATION"
(Certain people have proclaimed their opinion that the German
nation ought not to be humiliated.)
Rumours arrive as thick as swarming bees;
Our evening rags announce with raucous clamour
The latest wire, the semi-final wheeze
Transmitted by the fertile Rotterdammer,
Giving a local version
Of William Two's spontaneous dispersion.
They leave me cold. I care not how he pays
The heavy debt his deeds of wanton fury owe -
Whether he puts his orb to bed, or stays
On exhibition like an antique curio;
The reckoning we charge
Has to be settled by the Hun at large.
Here and elsewhere his advocates impute
Innocence to the Bosch - a gentle creature,
Too prone perhaps to lick the tyrant's boot,
But otherwise without a vicious feature;
They'd have our wrath abated;
Poor child, "he must not be humiliated."
Why not? Against his army's bestial crimes
He never lifted one protesting finger
The wrongs of Belgium drew his jocund rhymes;
Over the Hymn of Hate he loved to linger,
Pressing the forte pedal
And wore - for luck - the Lusitania medal.
He took a holiday for children slain,
And butchered women set his flags a-flutter;
Our drowning anguish served for light refrain
To beery patriots homing down the gutter;
On prisoners he spat,
The helpless ones, and thanked his Gott for that.
Had he but fought as decent nations fight,
Clean-handed, then we must have spared his honour;
But now, if Germany goes down in night,
'Tis he, not we, that puts that shame upon her,
Shame not of mere defeat,
But such that never our hands again can meet.
Why should his pride of race be spared a fall?
Let him go humble all his days for sentence.
Why pity him as just a Kaiser's thrall,
This beast at heart - though fear may fake repentance?
For me, when all is said,
I save my pity for the murdered dead
Owen Seaman. Published in Punch, October 23, 1918.
Skin Germany Alive
Saw Winston Churchill for a few minutes at the Ministry. Full of
victory talk . . . One feels that England is going to increase in
power enormously. They mean to skin Germany alive. "A peace to end
peace!"
Siegfried Sassoon, Diary, 6 November 1918
In Paris, the nucleus of a wild, international,
pleasure-crazed crowd, the Big Four were making a desert and calling
it peace. When I thought about these negotiations at all - which was
only when I could not avoid hearing them discussed by Oxford dons or
Kensington visitors - they did not represent at all the kind of
"victory" that the young men whom I had loved would have regarded as
sufficient justification for their lost lives. Although they would
no doubt have welcomed the idea of a League of Nations, Roland and
Edward certainly had not died in order that Clemenceau should outwit
Lloyd George, and both of them bamboozle President Wilson, and all
three combine to make the beaten, blockaded enemy pay the cost of
the War. For me the "Huns" were then and always, the patient,
stoical Germans whom I had nursed in France, and I did not like to
read of them being deprived of their Navy, and their colonies, and
their coal-fields in Alsace-Lorraine and the Saar Valley, while
their children starved and froze for lack of food and fuel. So, when
the text of the Treaty of Versailles was published in May, after I
had returned to Oxford, I deliberately refrained from reading it; I
was beginning already to suspect that my generation had been
deceived, its young courage cynically exploited, its idealism
betrayed, and I did not want to know the details of that betrayal.
Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth
The charge on Germany was set at
£240,000,000,000, fifty-two percent to go to France, twenty two
percent to Britain; ten percent to Italy, eight percent to Belgium,
and eight per cent to the remaining Allies. Over the years the
Germans succeeded in arguing the charge down. From 1923 to 1925
French tanks and troops occupied the Ruhr region of Germany because
Germany had failed to keep up payments. The remaining payments were
finally wiped out by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1932. Britain
continued to settle her war debts with the USA, making the final
payment in 1969.
At the Versailles conference the Germans had, at
first, refused to sign the crippling and humiliating agreement. They
were distressed by many of the articles in the two hundred page
document. They bitterly resented the clause concerning the transfer
of the three and a half-million German speaking population in
Sudetenland to Polish rule.
In 1914, H G Wells, George Bernard Shaw, the
Kaiser, and no doubt others, had warned that peace terms that were
harshly punitive to Germany would provoke retaliation and revenge at
the earliest opportunity. Of the big four who so disgusted Vera
Britain, Lloyd George had tried in vain to soften the manifestly
provocative terms being imposed on Germany. In proposals he put
before the peace conference, the Fontainebleau Memorandum of March
1919, he asserted that: You may strip Germany of her
colonies, reduce her armaments to a mere police force and her navy
to that of a fifth-rate power; all the same, in the end if she feels
that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919 she will
find means of exacting retribution from her conquerors. The
impression, the deep impression made upon the human heart by four
years of unexampled slaughter will disappear with the hearts upon
which it has been marked by the terrible sword of the great war.
The maintenance of peace will then depend on
there being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up either
the spirit of patriotism, or justice or of fairplay. To achieve
redress our terms may be severe, they may be stern and even
ruthless, but at the same time they can be so just that the country
upon which they are imposed will feel in its heart that it has no
right to complain. But injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour
of triumph, will never be forgotten or forgiven.
For these reasons I am strongly averse to
transferring more Germans from German rule to some other nation than
can possibly be helped. I cannot conceive of a greater cause of a
future war than that the German people, who certainly proved
themselves one of the most vigorous and powerful nation's in the
world, should be surrounded by a number of small states, many of
them consisting of people who have never previously set up a stable
government for themselves, but each of them containing large masses
of Germans clamouring for re-union with their native land.1
1 From
Lloyd George's summary in The Truth About the Peace Treaties.
Gollancz, 1938.
The French accused Lloyd George of being an
appeaser and with their friends over-ruled him. Lloyd George's voice
could not hold back the tide of Allied opinion; it could not resist
the pressure of press inspired opinion in Britain. He had been
certain for a long time, not only that harshness would be
counter-productive, but also that Germany was incapable of paying
the astronomic sums of money being proposed. Ultimately Germany paid
only approximately £2,500M. Had such a low figure been written into
the treaty Lloyd George was certain that, "no Allied Ministry would
have survived to sign it, for no Allied parliament at that time nor
for several years afterwards would have sanctioned so low a figure."
The German delegation and Government were
horrified by the treaty they were asked to sign. Only when
threatened with an Allied invasion of Germany did they, under
protest, sign it. The German Government statement read,
The Government of the German Republic has seen
with consternation from the last communication of the Allied and
Associated Governments, that the latter are resolved to wrest from
Germany by sheer force even the acceptance of those conditions of
peace which, though devoid of material significance, pursue the
object of taking away its honour from the German people. The honour
of the German people will remain untouched by any act of violence.
The German people, after the frightful suffering of the last few
years, lacks all means of defending its honour by external action.
Yielding to overwhelming force, but without on that account
abandoning its view in regard to the unheard of injustice in the
conditions of peace the Government of the German Republic therefore
declares that it is ready to accept and sign the conditions of peace
imposed by the Allied and Associated Governments.1
1 Quoted by Martin Gilbert, p517.
MEMORIALS
Reburying the dead
For seven years after the war had ended, 5,000
men of the Imperial War Graves Commission were employed in digging
over the battlefields, identifying the bodies where possible, and
reburying the dead in more than 2,000 British cemeteries - land
given to Britain by the French and Belgian Governments. - Today 500
gardeners still tend these graves.
Wherever the war had raged, and wherever soldiers
had come from, memorials were erected. The largest memorials include
the British at Thiepval in the Somme region, the Canadian at Vimy
Ridge, near Arras, and the French at Douaumont near Verdun. At Ypres
54,896 names are inscribed on the massive Menin Gate memorial - the
names of soldiers who died nearby but were not able to be
identified. Yet the memorial proved too small. 34,984 names were
left over. These were inscribed on a wall a few miles away at the
British military cemetery at Tyne Cot, Passchendaele. The Menin Gate
memorial was inaugurated by King Albert of the Belgians on 24th July
1927. The last post was sounded. Every evening since then and every
evening "for all time" the last post will be sounded at the Menin
Gate.
The Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres
Trumpeters sound the last post at 8pm, as they have done every
evening since July 1927, and will do for all time.
The Imperial War Graves Commission completed its task of cemetery
building on 22nd July 1938. The Second World War began on 1st
September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland to seize back
Sudetenland.
Near Verdun stands a grim tower, the Ossuary at Douaumont. The
vaults beneath this tower contain the bones of 130,000 unidentified
French and German soldiers who died nearby.
Today thousands of people visit the battlefield
memorials in wonder and sadness at a human tragedy which casts its
shadow over them, and which adds to their apprehension for the
future of mankind.
German Cemetery, Langemarck
One of four sculptures of German soldiers which stand as penitent
sentinels on the edge of the cemetery.
WHEN YOU SEE MILLIONS OF THE MOUTHLESS DEAD
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.
Charles Sorley, September/October 1915
HIGH WOOD
Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,
Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,
The famous spot which in Nineteen-Sixteen,
July, August and September was the scene
Of long and bitterly contested strife,
By reason of its High commanding site.
Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees
Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench
For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;
(They soon fall in), used later as a grave.
It has been said on good authority
That in the fighting for this patch of wood
Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,
Of whom the greater part were buried here,
This mound on which you stand being . . .
Madame, please,
You are requested kindly not to touch
Or take away the Company's property
As souvenirs; you'll find we have on sale
A large variety, all guaranteed.
As I was saying, all is as it was.
This is an unknown British officer,
The tunic having lately rotted off. Please follow me - this way . .
.
the path, sir, please.
The ground which was secured at great expense
The Company keeps absolutely untouched,
And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide
Refreshments at a reasonable rate.
You are requested not to leave about
Paper, or ginger-beer bottles, or orange-peel,
There are waste-paper baskets at the gate.
Phillip Johnstone, 1918
Not High Wood, but there are many tours of the trenches available
these days. Here are students from Ratcliffe College, Leicester, at
Vimy Ridge near Arras on a sub-zero March afternoon.
Glory, honour, and courage
I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and
sacrifice and the expression in vain. We heard them, sometimes
standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the
shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations
that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now
for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things
that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the
dockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except bury
it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and
finally only the names of places had dignity . . . Abstract words
such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene.
Ernest Hemingway '
'Quoted by Peter Vansittart, Voices of World War One,
p248.
Victory Crowns the Just
Let all who trust justice to the arbitrament of war bear in
mind that the issue may depend less on the righteousness of the
cause than on the cunning and craft of the contestants. It is the
teaching of history, and this war enforces the lesson. And the
cost is prohibitive. It cripples all the litigants. The death of
ten millions and the mutilation of another twenty millions amongst
the best young men of a generation is a terrible bill of costs to
pay.
Lloyd George '
1 War Memoirs, Introduction, p ix.
POETS WHO DIED IN THE WAR
Rupert Brooke - died 23rd April 1915 of
blood poisoning following a mosquito bite. Age 28.
Julian Grenfell - died of wounds, 30th
April 1915. Age 27.
Charles Hamilton Sorley - killed 13th
October 1915 in the Battle of Loos. Age 20.
Robert Palmer - killed 21st January, 1916,
in Mesopotamia. Age 28.
William Noel Hodgson - killed 1st July 1916
on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Age 23.
Alan Seeger - killed 4th July 1916 in the
Battle of the Somme. Age 28.
Edward Wyndham Tennant - killed 22nd
September 1916 in the Battle of the Somme. Age 19.
Arthur Graeme West - killed 3rd April 1917
by a sniper. Age 26.
Edward Thomas - killed 9th April 1917 in
the Battle of Arras. Age 39.
Robert Ernest Vernede - killed 9th April,
1917 in an attack on Havrincourt Wood. Age 41.
Ewart Alan Mackintosh - killed 21st
November, 1917 at Cambrai. Age 24.
John McCrae - died of pneumonia, 28th
January, 1918. Age 46.
Isaac Rosenberg - killed 1st April 1918, on
night patrol. Age 28.
Phillip Bainbrigge - killed 18th September,
1918. Age 27.
Wilfred Owen - killed 4th November, 1918.
Age 25.
THE KNIGHTED POETS
Owen Seaman - knighted 1914
Henry Newbolt - knighted 1915
William Watson - knighted 1917
John Galsworthy was offered a knighthood in
1918 but turned it down.
A P Herbert - knighted 1945
Herbert Read - knighted 1953
British Commonwealth Military Cemeteries in a small area of the Western Front
END OF A SELECTION OF EXTRACTS FROM MINDS AT WAR
(war poetry anthology with additional material including extracts from
soldiers' diaries, letters and autobiographies).See the link at the top
of the side panel for more information.
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