To End All Wars

by Adam Hochschild

  In the reconstructed German trench, metal grates block off the entrances to two shafts. These lead to parts of what was an underground battlefield: the hundreds of miles of tunnels that the British and Germans constructed, sometimes digging down through decaying corpses, to plant mines under each other's trenches and to post underground sentries with stethoscopes to listen for tunneling by the other side. Sometimes miners accidentally hacked through the wall of an enemy tunnel, and then they fought in the claustrophobic passageways, with pistols, knives, picks, and shovels. In one tunnel, under Mount Sorrel near Ypres, researchers today have found in the support timbers scars from bullets fired during an underground fight that appears in the records of the 2nd Canadian Tunneling Company. In another, beneath Vimy Ridge in France, they found 8,000 pounds of explosives in rubberized bags that failed to go off in 1917. A huge, previously unexploded British mine beneath a Belgian ridge was ignited by a lightning strike in 1955. Tunnels are so common around Ypres that periodically a heavy tractor or harvester crossing a field or farmyard will suddenly drop five or ten feet when, somewhere below ground, a rotting support timber gives way at last.

  Beneath these placid farms lies a layer of soil densely sprinkled with rusted metal: cartridge clips, belt buckles, helmets, canteens, tobacco tins, bells used to sound the alarm for a gas attack, barbed wire, the screw-in metal stakes to which the wire was fastened, shell fragments and shells, rifles with their stocks rotted away, plus the occasional artillery piece, swallowed whole by mud. Plows unearth it all; some half-million pounds of First World War scrap is still collected from French and Belgian fields each year. And everywhere along the old Western Front the soil continues to yield up bones: the remains of 250 British and Australian soldiers were found beneath a French field in 2009.

  The thin band of territory stretching through northern France and this corner of Belgium has the greatest concentration of young men's graves in the world. Mile after mile of orderly thickets of white tombstones or crosses climb low hills and spread through gentle valleys, dotted here and there with the spires, columns, and rotundas of larger shrines. From the New Zealand Monument in Messines, Belgium, to the South African National Memorial at the Somme battlefield in France to the less grand cemeteries holding the bones of Senegalese troops or Chinese laborers, the land is dotted with reminders of how far men traveled to die. Even those lucky enough to be in a marked grave were sometimes buried twice over, after cemeteries from the first year or two of the war were blown up by shells in later battles. Today there are more than 2,000 British cemeteries alone in France and Belgium, cared for by almost 500 gardeners.

  An entire week of travel along the old Western Front, however, reveals only a single memorial celebrating anyone for doing something other than fighting or dying. A few miles outside of Ypres, across a one-lane country road from a brick barn, is a chest-high cross of sturdy wooden beams, stained dark. Next to it is a small fir tree in a pot, blown over by the summer wind; three silver balls are still attached to it, for it is a Christmas tree, and this homemade cross, not erected or maintained by any country's official graves agency, stands in memory of the soldiers from both sides who took part in the Christmas Truce of 1914. One of the soccer games in no man's land that day is said to have taken place near this spot. Stuck into the ground around the cross are more than a dozen smaller wooden crosses, a foot or so long, which you can buy in Ypres shops that cater to battlefield visitors. "In Remembrance" is stamped on each in English, and you can write a soldier's name beneath it. But on one of the little crosses, in the space for the name, someone has written "All of You," and, above that, "Imagine."

  And so, if we could imagine another cemetery, of all those who understood the war's madness enough not to take part, whether just on that Christmas Day or for longer, whose graves might it contain? It would certainly be an international cemetery, for in it would be Eugene V. Debs, whose opposition to the war won him a prison term in the United States, along with other ex-prisoners like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht from Germany and E. D. Morel from England. There would be many soldiers too, from the French troops who mutinied in 1917 and the million or more Russians who, that same year, simply left the front and made the long walk home to their villages, to the German sailors who in the war's final days put out the fires in their ships' boilers and refused orders to go to sea.

  Like Sylvia Pankhurst, few in this imaginary cemetery would be saints or paragons of good judgment, but when it came to the war, even someone as indiscriminate in her enthusiasms as Charlotte Despard made a better choice than her brother and those who dutifully marched off to be slaughtered under his command. Emily Hobhouse might have been wildly impractical in thinking that she could single-handedly start peace negotiations in Berlin, but no one else so much as tried. Keir Hardie would be in this cemetery with them, as would his friend Jean Jaurès, though he was murdered just before the war began, and Bertrand Russell, who foresaw with such clarity the shattered world the war would leave. Stephen Hobhouse and the more than 6,000 other British conscientious objectors who went to prison would be here too, with a special place of honor reserved for those taken to France in handcuffs who did not abandon their principles even when threatened with death.

  This would be a cemetery not of those who were confi dent they would win their struggle, but of those who often knew in advance that they were going to lose yet felt the fight was worth it anyway, because of the example it set for those who might someday win. "I knew that it was my business to protest, however futile protest might be," wrote Russell decades later. "I felt that for the honour of human nature those who were not swept off their feet should show that they stood firm." And stand firm and honor the best of human nature they did. Their battle could not be won in 1914–1918, but it remained, and still remains, to be fought again—and again. For even a century's worth of bloodshed after the war that was supposed to end all wars, we are painfully far from the day when most people on earth will have the wisdom to feel, as did Alice Wheeldon in her prison cell, "The world is my country."

  SOURCE NOTES

  With the primary sources quoted here, I have, when possible, indicated the ultimate origin of every quotation. Official documents in the British National Archives I have listed by their file numbers. A full list of departmental letter codes can be found on the National Archives website; the ones that most commonly appear in the notes that follow are HO, the Home Office; WO, the War Office; FO, the Foreign Office; CAB, cabinet papers; and AIR, the Air Ministry, where, for unknown bureaucratic reasons, records of surveillance of British civilians by military intelligence in the latter part of the war came to rest. When I've not been able to look at a document myself and have relied on a secondary source, I have so indicated. However, even the most reliable scholars sometimes give incomplete source data. Where I've not been able to track down the quotation elsewhere, rather than using cumbersome locutions like "Smith to ?, n.d., n.s., quoted in Jones, p. 38," I've simply put "Jones, p. 38."

  The edition of Douglas Haig's wartime diaries and letters edited by Gary Sheffield and John Bourne, the most extensive in print, contains slightly more than a quarter of Haig's diaries for this period. When a diary quotation is not to be found here, I've quoted authors, usually Haig's biographer Gerard De Groot, citing the full text of the diary, whose original is in the National Library of Scotland.

  For statistics, I have relied on books with an overview of the war that I found most helpful, such as those by Trevor Wilson, Hew Strachan, John Keegan, David Stevenson, and Anthony Livesey listed in the Bibliography. However, these experts and the British Official History sometimes differ about the casualty toll of a particular battle or the number of miles or yards troops advanced. Precision in war is elusive: there is no arbitrary moment when one battle ended and the next began, and sometimes it was unclear which army held a particular patch of ground. The British and Germans calculated their casualties slightly differently, having to do with how soon wounded soldiers were returne
d to active duty, and for some German and many Russian operations there are only estimates available. Historians are still arguing about how many casualties the Germans suffered in the Battle of the Somme, for example. And, for British casualties at Passchendaele, although we know the rough numbers, the Official History notes that "the clerk-power to investigate the exact losses was not available." (This may or may not be true; eager to vindicate Haig, the Official History's authors dramatically inflate German casualty figures.) For death figures in 1918 it is not always clear when these include victims of the great influenza pandemic. When reliable sources give conflicting figures, I've generally used the most cautious, and so when I've said that there were at least 20,000 casualties in a particular battle, it usually means some sources cite higher numbers.

  Within quotations, I have on a few occasions silently adjusted a comma or dash, but no words have been changed and all ellipses are indicated.

  page INTRODUCTION: CLASH OF DREAMS

  [>] My father's sister married: See pp. 21–101 of his lively autobiography: Boris Sergievsky, Airplanes, Women, and Song: Memoirs of a Fighter Ace, Test Pilot, and Adventurer (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999).

  The magnitude of slaughter: Whalen, p. 41.

  [>] "The Great War of 1914–18": Tuchman 1, p. xiii.

  "This is not war": David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 117–118, quoted in Keegan 1, p. 197.

  "Supply me with socks": Gilbert, p. 82.

  [>] "had won, nor could win": Mind's Eye: Essays (Manchester, NH: Ayer, 1977), p. 38.

  "Humanity? Can anyone": Alexander Nemser, "Low Truths," New Republic, 30 July 2008.

  "It cannot be that": Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 88.

  xiv more than 20,000 British: Pearce, p. 169. For some years scholars used a smaller figure, but Pearce's careful calculations are convincing as to why the earlier estimates were too low. A more precise number is impossible to determine.

  [>] "They advanced in line": Travers, p. 158. Travers, like other writers, attributes this account to Brigadier General Hubert C. Rees. But Rees, in his papers at the Imperial War Museum (IWM 77/179/1), as more recent scholars have pointed out, complains that his corps commander, Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, "put my remarks in his own language." It is likely that Rees was less responsible for the tone of this passage than Hunter-Weston, who is on record (see CAB 45/188, quoted in Middlebrook, p. 80) as being wildly unrealistic in believing that the troops would meet no obstacles to their advance on July 1, 1916.

  1. BROTHER AND SISTER

  [>] "How many millions": Morris 2, p. 31.

  "I contend that we": Marlowe, p. 5.

  [>] "We are a part": New York Times, 24 June 1897.

  "From my heart": Times, 23 June 1897.

  "a small select aristocracy": A. G. Gardiner, Prophets, Priests and Kings (London: Alston Rivers, 1908), p. 229.

  "Only heaven left": Chauncey Depew to Lord Rosebery, 1894, quoted in Tuchman 1, p. 23.

  [>] "I didn't know": Morris 2, p. 408.

  [>] "You have the heartfelt": French to Buller, 15 July 1902, John French, p. 95.

  [>] more than £70,000: Farwell 1, p. 27.

  "An army tries to": n.p., quoted in Ellis 1, p. 105.

  [>] "Play the game": Farwell 1, p. 134.

  [>] "I took a ticket": "In the Days of My Youth," Charlotte Despard Papers, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, p. 4.

  [>] "That hymn was": Linklater, p. 23.

  "How bitterly ashamed": "In the Days of My Youth," pp. 11–12.

  [>] "She does not find them": Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People of London, vol. 5 (London: Macmillan, 1902), p. 153.

  [>] "I determined to study": Mulvihill, p. 58.

  [>] "those who slave": Linklater, p. 89.

  [>] "It certainly was amusing": Gerald French, pp. 44–45.

  "Only nervous people": Despard 2, p. 17.

  2. A MAN OF NO ILLUSIONS

  [>] "The whole side of the hill": Churchill 2, p. 87.

  "standing at a table": Churchill 2, p. 98.

  "jams, tinned fruits": Haig to Henrietta Jameson, 17 February 1898, quoted in De Groot 1, p. 56.

  "I am not one": Haig 2, p. 4.

  18 "The enemy went down": Ellis 1, p. 86.

  [>] "the rapture-giving delight": Farwell 1, p. 117.

  "It is a weapon": Ellis 1, p. 102.

  [>] "It is the British race": Farwell 2, p. 27.

  [>] "the man of no illusions": Winston Churchill, London to Ladysmith and Ian Hamilton's March (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962), p. 123. Churchill first used the phrase in writing of Milner in the Morning Post during the Boer War.

  "as lucid as a page of print": Buchan 3, p. 98.

  "a civilian soldier": Marlowe, pp. 38–39.

  "to Brixton ... to see C": 23 January 1898, quoted in Pakenham 1, p. 34.

  [>] "a frock-coated Neanderthal": Gilmour, p. 140.

  "great day of reckoning": Gollin, p. 33.

  "great game between ourselves": Johannes S. Marais, The Fall of Kruger's Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 330.

  "Will not the arrival": Milner to Selborne, 24 May 1899, quoted in Marlowe, p. 68.

  "no civilizing experiment": Gilmour, p. 78.

  [>] "that an empire is": "Rudyard Kipling," in George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1954), p. 126.

  "Accept my felicitations": Lansdowne to Chamberlain, 10 October 1899, quoted in Pakenham 2, p. 567.

  [>] "just like a good fox hunt": James 1, p. 434.

  "Strain everything": Judd and Surridge, p. 147.

  borrowed a hefty £2,000: Haig claimed it was £2,500. See De Groot 4, p. 50n12.

  Biographers disagree over whether the loan was ever repaid.

  [>] "The feeling was": Anonymous officer, quoted in German General Staff, p. 147.

  "An epoch in the history": L. S. Amery, ed., The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, vol. 3 (London: St. Dunstan's House, 1905), pp. 394–395.

  "The Cavalry—the despised Cavalry": Haig to Lonsdale Hale, 2 March 1900, quoted in De Groot 1, p. 80.

  [>] "The charge of French's": German General Staff, p. 147.

  "who has taught the British": Rice, p. xvi.

  "a first-class dress-parade": "The Captive," in Traffics and Discoveries (New York: Scribner's, 1904), p. 30.

  3. A CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER

  [>] "without evening dress": Cecil, pp. 152–153.

  "to have a clever wife": Georgina, Marchioness of Salisbury, to Eleanor, Viscountess Cecil, quoted in Cecil, p. 69.

  [>] "one, so to speak": Cecil, p. 80.

  "I wish Milner had": Cecil, p. 116.

  "One day I know": Cecil, p. 126.

  "the solidarity of the British": Violet Milner, p. 138.

  30 "Sir Alfred is very": Annie Hanbury-Williams to Violet Cecil, in Cecil, p. 160.

  "Was it a declaration": Cecil, p. 159.

  [>] "the wicked war of this": Linklater, p. 96.

  "three a penny": Farwell 2, p. 315.

  [>] "very low indeed": Cecil, p. 175.

  [>] "the mad men at home": Milner to Bagot, 21 November 1900, quoted in Jacqueline Beaumont, "The Times at War, 1899–1902," in Lowry, p. 83n39.

  [>] as a "screamer": Milner to Haldane, 1 July 1901, quoted in Kaminski, p. 99.

  "He struck me as": Emily Hobhouse to Mary Hobhouse, 8 January 1901, Van Reenen, p. 37.

  [>] "My heart wept": Emily Hobhouse, The Brunt of the War and Where It Fell (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 72.

  27,927 Boers: Figures compiled by Transvaal government archivist P.L.A. Goldman, cited in Roberts, p. 252, and Morgan, p. 68.

  "a little six months' baby": Emily Hobhouse to Mary Hobhouse, 31 January 1901, Van Reenen, pp. 54–55.

  "I rub as much salt": Emily Hobhouse to Mary Hobhouse, 26 January 1901, Van Reenen, p. 49.

 
; "If we can get over": Milner to Chamberlain, 7 December 1901, quoted in Krebs, p. 52.

  [>] "What an army": Balme, p. 183.

  "pro-Boer ravings": Milner to Kitchener, 7 June 1901, quoted in Pakenham 1, p. 511.

  [>] "Sir, the lunacy": Hobhouse to the Committee of the Distress Fund, n.d., Van Reenen, p. 148.

  "I had thought of that": Roberts, p. 224.

  "Your brutal orders": Hobhouse to Milner, 1 November 1901, Van Reenen, p. 151.

  "restarting the new": Farwell 2, p. 444.

  "The white man": Cecil Headlam, ed., The Milner Papers, vol. 2 (London: Cassell, 1933), p. 467, quoted in Adam Smith, pp. 123–124.

  [>] "play the game like gentlemen": Blackwood's Magazine, 1902, quoted in Adam Smith, p. 122.

  "fascinating and most hopeful work": Adam Smith, p. 117.

  "I must say I am": Adam Smith, p. 118.

  [>] "A very small memento": Cassar, p. 32.

  "I daresay that he": Esher to Knollys, 16 January 1904, in "French, John Denton Pinkstone," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online), accessed 9 March 2010.

  "This is certainly": French to Sir Charles Boxall, 20 October 1901, quoted in Holmes, p. 117.

  4. HOLY WARRIORS

  [>] "In the campaigns": French to Winifred Bennett, 19 March 1915, quoted in De Groot 1, p. 138.

  "I am thoroughly satisfied": Haig 3, pp. 223–224.

  "moral factor of an": Ellis 1, p. 56.

  [>] "I have often made up": Denis Winter, p. 33.

  "the rôle of Cavalry": Douglas Haig, Cavalry Studies: Strategical and Tactical (London: Hugh Rees, 1907), pp. 8–9.

  [>] "I asked myself": Women's Franchise, 11 July 1907.

  "I'm quite safe": Mulvihill, p. 73.

  "The women began to": Daily Mirror, quoted in Linklater, pp. 113–114.

  [>] 21 days in solitary: HO 144/847/149245.

  "If she insists on": Linklater, p. 114.

  She called for equality: Despard 1, p. 6.

  "I had sought and found": Women's Franchise, 11 July 1907.

  [>] "I began to think": Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 28.