- Macdonald, Lyn.
1915: The Death of Innocence.
London: Penguin Books, [1993] 1997.
ISBN 0-14-025900-7.
-
I'm increasingly coming to believe that World War I was the defining
event of the twentieth century: not only a cataclysm which destroyed
the confident assumptions of the past, but which set history
inexorably on a path which would lead to even greater tragedies and
horrors as that century ran its course. This book provides an
excellent snapshot of what the British people, both at the front
and back home, were thinking during the first full year of the
war, as casualties mounted and hope faded for the quick
victory almost all expected at the outset.
The book does not purport to be a comprehensive
history of the war, nor even of the single year it chronicles.
It covers only the British Army: the Royal Navy is
mentioned only in conjunction with troop transport and
landings, and the Royal Flying Corps scarcely at all.
The forces of other countries, allied or enemy, are
mentioned only in conjunction with their interaction
with the British, and no attempt is made to describe
the war from their perspective. Finally, the focus is
almost entirely on the men in the trenches and their
commanders in the field: there is little focus on
the doings of politicians and the top military brass,
nor on grand strategy, although there was little of that
in evidence in the events of 1915 in any case.
Within its limited scope, however, the book succeeds
superbly. About a third of the text is extended
quotations from people who fought at the front, many
from contemporary letters home. Not only do you get an
excellent insight into how horrific conditions were in
the field, but also how stoically those men accepted
them, hardly ever questioning the rationale for the
war or the judgement of those who commanded them.
And this in the face of a human cost which is
nearly impossible to grasp by the standards of
present-day warfare. Between the western front
and the disastrous campaign in Gallipoli, the
British suffered more than half a million
casualties (killed, wounded, and missing) (p. 597).
In “quiet periods” when neither side
was mounting attacks, simply manning their own
trenches, British casualties averaged five thousand
a week (p. 579), mostly from shelling and
sniper fire.
And all of the British troops who endured these appalling conditions
were volunteers—conscription did not begin in Britain
until 1916. With the Regular Army having been largely wiped out in
the battles of 1914, the trenches were increasingly filled with
Territorial troops who volunteered for service in France, units from
around the Empire: India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and as
the year progressed, Kitchener's “New Army” of volunteer
recruits rushed through training and thrown headlong into the killing
machine. The mindset that motivated these volunteers and the
conclusions drawn from their sacrifice set the stage for the even
greater subsequent horrors of the twentieth century.
Why? Because they accepted as given that their
lives were, in essence, the property of the state
which governed the territory in which they happened to
live, and that the rulers of that state, solely on the authority
of having been elected by a small majority of the voters in
an era when suffrage was far from universal, had every right
to order them to kill or be killed by subjects of other states
with which they had no personal quarrel. (The latter point was
starkly illustrated when, at Christmas 1914, British and German
troops declared an impromptu cease-fire, fraternised, and played
football matches in no man's land before, the holiday behind them,
returning to the trenches to resume killing one another for
King and Kaiser.) This was a widely shared notion, but the
first year of the Great War demonstrated that the populations
of the countries on both sides really believed it, and would
charge to almost certain death even after being told by Lord
Kitchener himself on the
parade ground, “that our attack was in the
nature of a sacrifice to help the main offensive which was to
be launched ‘elsewhere’” (p. 493). That
individuals would accept their rôle as property of the
state was a lesson which the all-encompassing states of the
twentieth century, both tyrannical and more or less democratic,
would take to heart, and would manifest itself not only in conscription
and total war, but also in expropriation, confiscatory taxation,
and arbitrary regulation of every aspect of subjects' lives.
Once you accept that the state is within its rights to order
you to charge massed machine guns with a rifle and bayonet,
you're unlikely to quibble over lesser matters.
Further, the mobilisation of the economy under government direction
for total war was taken as evidence that central planning of
an industrial economy was not only feasible but more efficient than
the market. Unfortunately, few observed that there is a big
difference between consuming capital to build the means
of destruction over a limited period of time and creating
new wealth and products in a productive economy. And finally,
governments learnt that control of mass media could mould the
beliefs of their subjects as the rulers wished: the comical
Fritz with which British troops fraternised at Christmas
1914 had become the detested Boche whose trenches they
shelled continuously on Christmas Day a year later
(p. 588).
It is these disastrous “lessons” drawn from the
tragedy of World War I which, I suspect, charted the tragic course of
the balance of the twentieth century and the early years of the
twenty-first. Even a year before the outbreak of World War I, almost
nobody imagined such a thing was possible, or that it would have the
consequences it did. One wonders what will be the equivalent defining
event of the twenty-first century, when it will happen, and in what
direction it will set the course of history?
A U.S. edition is also available.
November 2006 