1918 saw the end of the Great War on the Western Front. The scale of death and suffering are well known, and millions were affected. Their experiences were individual and we cannot assume that everyone responded in the same way. There are indications, however, that for many, particularly on the winning side, the end of the war was a time of hope as well as relief. It was as if the recent horrors needed to be redeemed by the prospect of something better.
The slogan ‘The War to End War’ reflected the desire that something good should come out of it. Internationally, the League of Nations promised a way for states to resolve differences without resort to war; Britain found a local angle with the idea of ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’, a notion that found some purchase, particularly for men with families, as the post-war government embarked on the first big wave of council house building. Was this just a feature of the end of the war or was it there all through? And what happened to those hopes in the post-war period?
In the early years, the troops were all volunteers and we have images of popular enthusiasm to enlist. The socialist parties of Europe were caught on the hop, never expecting workers to fight for imperialist governments, and had to quickly adapt their stance. Propaganda of the period presented images of patriotism, and we can assume that part of the appeal was the sense of solidarity, but individual motives are elusive.
I can give a personal illustration of this, though not an explanation. I was interested in a piece of family history, a great-uncle who went missing around 1905 when he was fourteen. As records have become more available, we recently discovered that he had gone to Australia, enlisted in June 1915, and had been killed in the second month of the battle of the Somme.
Australia had joined the war from the outset, but in June 1915 had reduced its minimum height requirement to 5 feet 2 inches – my great-uncle’s enlistment papers showed him as 5 feet 3½ inches, so he signed up at the earliest possible date but well after the first wave of enthusiasm. Whatever the war meant to him, it was still important to be part of it.
By 1918 any remaining aspirations had taken more concrete shape and the idea of war to end war had different connotations in different countries. The Franco-Prussian War was in living memory and the weight of past humiliations shaped French and German politics. Despite Woodrow Wilson’s role in creating the League of Nations, America returned to its pre-war isolationism and in time the League could not respond to new challenges to world peace. Britain had not been involved in European conflict since Waterloo, and here the focus was more upon a social agenda. However, governments lacked the economic understanding to sustain it, early initiatives withered, and returning troops increasingly faced unemployment and hardship. It became harder to believe in a social progress that might make sense of the suffering, and by the end of the 1920s, the idea of the Great War as the end of War was giving way to a view of it as a war that had had to be fought and won. The poets and writers who had caught the experience of those who had lived through it, began to fall out of favour, often characterised as defeatist, and it was only after the Second War and especially in the run-up to the fiftieth anniversary in 1964 that their reputations recovered.
There was an opportunity in 1945 to get it right this time, one that was largely taken up. The British electoral system delivered a radically minded government with the power to effect real change, much of which has survived. However, a workshop interested in Hope in the context of War must consider whether 1945 was a freak event. Modern wars are fought at distance and there is less need to offer hope on the home front. If we come out of war with hope for the future, should we regard that as a luxury?
A footnote. I visited the Somme last year and saw where my great-uncle had died. His unit had been attacking a German blockhouse named ‘Gibraltar’, so-called because the defending forces had the word on their cap badges – a mystery until you know that this was a Hanoverian regiment that historically had been part of the British capture of Gibraltar, when Britain had a Hanoverian King. It was a telling reminder of how allies in one war can become enemies in another!
Stephen Williams is SOF treasurer and convenor of the Birmingham group.