Our Journal: First World War Studies

That the British public thought that the First World War would be ‘over by Christmas’ in 1914 is such a common feature of war fiction, memoirs and histories that it has scarcely been questioned, let alone seriously examined. The phrase has become shorthand for naivety among a generation of young men who are supposed to have rushed to join the army rather than missing all the ‘fun’, the politicians and generals who sent them to the front and the journalists who cheered them on. This article investigates how common it really was and attempts to place it in the wide context of public reactions to the war, using newspapers, letters and diaries to uncover the feelings of the time rather than post-hoc reflections. As with former givens of 1914, such as ‘war enthusiasm’, what emerges is a more complex picture than simple naïve faith in the imminent success of British and Allied arms. Treating predictions of peace as part of a coping strategy for soldiers and civilians at war, we should not be surprised to find predictions of peace by various specific dates, and particularly by Christmas, throughout the Great War and beyond. This article questions the ubiquity of the idea of the war ending before Christmas in 1914 and the singularity of that year for optimistic predictions.

Key Words: Soldiers, civilians, expectations, predictions, morale, Christmas, Kitchener

This paper analyses a polemic between French and German Catholics that erupted during the First World War. Building on earlier studies into the role of intellectuals during the war, it supports the view that intellectuals eagerly lent their support to the cause of the nation, and were thus part of a widespread ‘mobilization of intellect’. But it goes further, and looks at how Catholic scholars sought ways to enhance their position within the nation. Because the war was of an order to call into question basic faith in the achievements of culture and civilization, intellectuals shifted to looking at how nations and their politics were governed by culture. As a generative substratum for national character and behaviour, however, culture provided scholars with a way to recast their commitment to universal truth. By looking at the specific ways French and German Catholics accused each other of a reversion to barbarism, the paper develops this insight by showing how such accusations served each side as a strategic ploy for their domestic rehabilitation in France and Germany, respectively.

Key Words: Catholicism, First World War, intellectuals, culture, religion

Much of the historiography of the First World War in the Middle East suggests that the soldiers of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force motivated themselves by seeing the British campaign against the Ottoman Empire as a crusade against Islam. The construction of the campaign as a crusade was a product of the need for politicians to portray the Egyptian Expeditionary Force\‘s operations to the British public as relevant to the wider course of the First World War. Inter-war memoirists and novelists also chose this topos in order to boost the sales of their works. By examining the letters and diaries of soldiers from across the British Empire, it is clear that this assumption is erroneous. A religious fringe within the British Imperial Army in Palestine did perceive the campaign in such terms, but they were only a minority. Instead most soldiers focused on the Islamic culture that they encountered in the Middle East, demonstrating that a strong vernacular orientalism was present in early twentieth-century British culture.

Key Words: crusading, Middle East, orientalism, Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Jerusalem, Palestine, tourism

Between the start of the war in 1914 and commencement of conscription in 1918, tens of thousands of men who volunteered for service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) were rejected as unfit for service. However, despite forming both a numerically and socially significant minority with Canada\‘s wartime population, these men are, generally speaking, non-existent in most Canadians\’ public and academic memories of the Great War. This paper seeks to redress this lapse in public and academic memory by examining the files of over 3050 men rejected for service during the formation of the First Contingent of CEF at Valcartier mobilization camp in August–September 1914. In all, these 3050 individuals account for approximately 60% of the over 5000 men that were ejected from the camp.

Divided into two parts, the first part of this paper describes these files and the information that can be garnered from it. It indicates that as well as offering insight into the physical characteristics of these men, this source also presents a conduit through which to engage with the nature of the CEF medical examination, the ways families might endeavour to undermine their husbands\’, fathers\’, brothers\’ and sons\’ attempts to enlist, and a rejected volunteer\‘s wider experiences – both during and after the war. The second half of the paper then employs this source material to paint a portrait of these men. In doing so, it demonstrates that there were often no visible indicators – other than the lack of a khaki uniform – that marked rejected men as different from those deemed fit to fight. In engaging with this topic, this section also explores some of the implications rejection had for these men.

Key Words: recruiting, medical examination, rejected volunteers, unfit, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF)

Over the two past decades, a new approach to the Great War has progressively developed. Shifting their focus of inquiry to the social and the cultural, away from the economic and the political, the historians of the Great War are particularly attached to the study of the legacy of the war on the cultural and social structures of European societies. The study of war\‘s memory has therefore been placed at the heart of historical research in most of the countries that took part in the war. In France, the mnemonic turn of the cultural historiography of the Great War is thus seen in several works which, through the various forms of commemoration such as the war memorials or the cult of the Unknown Soldier, examine the relationship between memory and identity as well as between remembrance and mourning at both the public and individual levels. This article about Armistice Day in France explores the difficulties of the transmission of memory in the aftermath of war. It questions the persistence and the abandonment of war values and culture in the years that succeeded the Great War. It aims to demonstrate the interaction between memory, trauma, and the creation of symbolic narratives. It also argues that the celebration of Armistice Day should be seen as a public sphere of discussion where two different conceptions about the past, the present, and the future, of the national community are confronted. It finally claims that the mnemonic practices should consequently be treated as a network of cross-perspectives among the expectations of the future, the reception of the past, and the experience of the present.

Key Words: war remembrance, symbolic narratives, cultural demobilization