John Bull at bay
PETER FLEMING
Impacts of War 1914 to 1918 John Terraine (Hutchinson 60s) The impacts here studied are those on the men in, or on their way to, the trenches: on the generals who commanded them: on the politicians who controlled and directed the generals: and on what in the Second War
came to be called the Home Front. After four years the actors who filled the first three of these roles had changed; few survivors of the original BEF were still in a front line manned largely by conscripts, Lloyd George's coalition government had succeeded Asquith's Liberal administration, and at GHQ French had been replaced by Haig. As for the British public, its physical composition had altered only marginally, but its outlook, under the stresses of bereavement, hardship and disillusion, had radically changed; the euphoric, almost hysterical patriotism of August and September 1914. when a quarter of a million men joined the colours in five weeks, was forgotten. or remembered with incredulity, and in July 1918, at the most critical juncture of the whole war, the muni- tion workers went, albeit briefly, on strike. Of the four actors, the only one for whom no understudy could be made available was giving a dangerously inadequate performance in what few recognised as the last act.
Mr Terraine does not make this point which—if it is valid—is of interest only in that it seems to show that the impact of the First War had, from the nation's point of view, its most deleterious effect on those who bore the lightest burdens of suffering and responsibility; but in his excellent book he makes a great many other points and sup- ports them with evidence which is often fascinating, sometimes new and always tell- ing.
'It cannot.' he writes. 'be too often said that novelty was of the essence of the First World War—more novelty than any similar span of time. has ever produced.' In four years the arts of war were changed out of recognition. 'The trenches' and all they stood for were in themselves a startling innovation. Tanks. gas, the war in the air. the use of wireless telegraphy. the overriding import- ance of artillery—all these revolutionised much military practice and had to be ab- sorbed into military theory: from which (Mr Terraine might have added) had painfully to be discarded long-held tenets about the role of cavalry and the utility of officers' swords.
There is a striking parallel between some of the impacts of war in 1914 and 1939-40. On both occasions the British public suc- cumbed to an attack of spy-fever which would have been ludicrous had not its con- sequence for enemy aliens or those, like Prince Louis of Battenburg and Lord Hal- dane. suspected of pro-German sympathies been so dire. And the mishandling of war news and war correspondents evoked in 1914 the same sort of public indignation that was visited on the hapless Ministry of Informa- tion a quarter of a century later. Even the infelicitous choice of 'We'll hang out our washing on the Siegfreid line' as a marching song in the opening stage of Hitler's war had earlier echoes in the Kaiser's. A. C. Ainger, the author of the 'Eton Boating Song', wrote, and the Times warmly recom- mended, a number of stirring ditties, one of
which—to be sung to the tune of 'Here's to the Maiden'—included the couplet Here's to Lord Kitchener, brown with the sun Gentle, persuasive and balmy.
These lyrics failed to find favour with the Old Contemptibles.
In 1918 the 'Frocks', and notably Lloyd George, get a rough handling from Mr Ter- raine; he blames them, not only for an all- but-disastrous remustering of the British army in the early months of that year and for being grossly unfair to Haig, but for deliberately fostering a spirit of revanchisme which, having helped to win the 'Khaki elec- tion'. went on to embitter the proceedings of the peace conference and thus to lay the foundations of future strife. He argues this case persuasively; but elsewhere he chides another historian with failing `to grasp the fact that there was foreign [Allied] participa- tion in the war', and there was so much 'foreign participation' in the peace confer- ence that it is difficult to believe that a less unchivalrous attitude on the part of the British delegation would have decisively modified the terms of the Versailles Treaty.
But he has written an admirable book.
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