I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise. Siegfried Sassoon, Finished With the War: A Soldier’s Declaration
War’s a joke for me and you,
While we know such dreams are true. Siegfried Sassoon
It was a mental darkness. You could not think. A Dark Age. Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End
The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he would no longer stand unbearable things. ibid.
We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story. Ford Madox Ford
Ford was still recovering from the blast six years later when he began to write Parade’s End: it was both a love story and one of the greatest accounts of the war and how it shattered the foundations of the old world. Who on Earth was Ford Madox Ford? BBC 2012
One of the most appealing characters in literature. ibid.
Ford produced two masterpieces ... Good Soldier ... and Parade’s End. ibid.
Some of the most moving poetry in English came out of the First World War ... There is a less well known soldier-poet who is quite unlike any of the others. He found the war invigorating, at least some of the time. The Poet Who Loved the War: Ivor Gurney, BBC 2014
An intense attention to place ... He [Gurney] would write love poems to the localities that had nurtured him. ibid.
His mental state had started to suffer. ibid.
He’s gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We’ll [written Will] walk no more on Cotswold
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed. Ivor Gurney, To His Love
I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford
Against a pearl-grey sky;
My heart was with the Oxford men
Who went abroad to die. Winifred Mary Letts, The Spires of Oxford, 1916
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, death, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head? Charles Hamilton Sorley
I do wish people would not deceive themselves by talk of a just war. There is no such thing as a just war. What we are doing is casting out Satan by Satan. Charles Hamilton Sorley, letter to mother March 1915
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die;
I ask and cannot answer
If otherwise wish I. Patrick Shaw-Stewart, I Saw a Man This Morning
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flamed-capped, and shout for me. ibid.
Good-bye-ee! - Good-bye-ee!
Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee. R P Weston & Bert Lee, song 1915
Don’t be too quick to learn the geography of Europe; I think it’s all about to change. Letter father to son, cited The First World War: Call to Arms
One day that shook the world: it’s Christmas Eve 1914 ... Two vast armies each a million strong face each other stopped dead in the mud. Days that Shook the World s2e2: The Christmas Truce, BBC 2004
Like a playground stand-off neither side is quite sure how to make the next move. ibid.
When the enemy appears out of no-man’s land the British decide to trust their instincts instead of their training. The first meeting between enemies is the lower ranks. ibid.
The truce spreads. ibid.
They agree Christmas Day only to finish the next morning by eight-thirty sharp. ibid.
They are in effect committing mass treason. ibid.
The perfect accessory for a day off at the front: a football. ibid.
One game did produce a familiar result: 3-2 to the Germans. ibid.
Boxing Day: no actual shots were fired in anger that whole day or the next. ibid.
The First World War was meant to be the war that ended all wars. But the manner of its conclusion laid the seeds for the most violent century in history. Days that Shook the World: Armistice Day
Imperial Germany is now a republic. ibid.
The casualties in the six hours between the signing and the cessation of hostilities were huge. ibid.
The German people endure terrible hardship. ibid.
The Sinking of the Lusitania in 1916 purposefully sank in order to generate a public backlash that would pull the United States into war with Germany. The Secret Plan of the New World Order
In 1915 it was the sinking of the USS Lusitania by a German submarine to trigger the crisis that would eventually bring the United States into the First World War. It appears however that the US had secretly skipped to the Germans the information that the ship was carrying a special cargo of weapons headed to England. This provoked a reaction from the German submarine which sunk the vessel on which more than one hundred Americans were also travelling. The New American Century, 2007
The First World War began almost by accident. It ended just as strangely. In between it was more destructive than any war had ever been. More British, French and Italian soldiers died in the First World War than died in the Second. The First World War: To Arms, Channel 4 2003
The First World War shaped the twentieth century. ibid.
It was in the Balkans that it all began nearly a hundred years ago. ibid.
Serbia wanted the break-up of the Empire. She welcomed national unrest particularly in Croatia and Bosnia. ibid.
Franz Ferdinand and Sophie died on the way to hospital. ibid.
Germany’s crucial decision to back Austria was made with no care for the consequences; neither the Kaiser nor his senior political and military leaders took any steps to find out what Austria-Hungary had in mind. It was an extraordinary oversight because nothing in the Balkans happened in isolation. Europe was divided into two camps: on one side were Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy; on the other were France and Russia. War with one could mean war with the others. ibid.
The Kaiser was so sure no war was brewing he went on holiday. ibid.
Britain could never afford to have Europe dominated by a triumphant Germany. ibid.
This was a war of nationalities and races. ibid.
Germany was relying on her ally Austro-Hungary to hold the eastern front. ibid.
Serbia had scattered the Austrian army. ibid.
Nothing in this war would be easy, quick or clean. ibid.