There were during the war rumblings of how the resentment against the memory of Afro-Caribbean slavery, Muslim resentment at Russo/Franco/British domination of Western Asia, and the whole balance, or imbalance, of power worldwide, might be manipulated. The diary of German sailor Richard Stumpf mentions the idea that ‘the Mohammedan population of [Egypt] will also take the opportunity to overthrow the English despotism’,52 and there was a persistent rumour that Germany might, via Mexico, exploit white suppression of black people in the Southern States of the USA: ‘A plot to procure a negro rising in the Southern States and to establish a negro Republic in Texas is spoken of’ (among ‘new and sensational disclosures regarding Germany’s intrigues’).53
If there was some awareness that the concept of the ‘white race’ had rendered itself meaningless by the war, but that race was a determinant, then a conflicted Europe would have to be understood in terms of race. Heather Jones states that ‘for many Europeans between 1914 and 1918, “race” meant multiple things – not only biological “race” but also ethnicity or nationality – and understanding of the term also changed during the war. Within the wartime world-view, not only the non-European or imperial world was defined in terms of racial hierarchies; under the influence of social Darwinism, the different nationalities and ethnicities of Europe itself were also seen as distinct “races” ’.54 The emergence of this sense of race in the European context can be seen in a number of cultural developments in the nineteenth century: the use of mythologies in music, particularly German and Scandinavian, pageantry in England and the rejection of the ‘Norman’ in favour of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’, including lexical rejection of Latin-based words,55 and even what might be termed ‘nationalist paleoanthropology’. Following the discovery of ‘Neanderthal Man’ in 1856 and ‘Cro-Magnon Man’ in 1868, the focus of the hunt for human origins in Europe had moved back to Germany with ‘Heidelberg Man’ in 1907, at the time of worsening relations between Germany and France, and the establishment of the entente cordiale between Britain and France. In 1912 the fragment of human skull which came to be known as ‘Piltdown Man’ was first sent to Arthur Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the British Museum (Natural History) by Charles Dawson, with a letter that described it as a ‘portion of a human skull which will rival H. Heidelbergensis in solidarity’.56 Competitive racial divisions in Europe were being pushed back to prehistory. On the outbreak of war European racial competition was already potent, and ready to be used for propaganda purposes: ‘the German intellectual classes’ had misled the German people ‘as to the position of the German race in the world’, wrote Wynnard Hooper, City Editor of The Times.57
British verbal culture, in keeping with the promotion of the Anglo-Saxon during the second half of the nineteenth century, repeatedly referred to the ‘Anglo-saxon race’. The Anglo-Saxon race ‘irrespective of flag’58 included all English-speaking nations, though how this involved ‘hyphenated people’ (see p. 150) is only clear if they were different races within a nation, speaking different languages, as seen in Belgium, and presumably parts of Britain. But as well as Anglo-Saxon they were also ‘the British race’.59 Usually when the subject refers to combat, it is the ‘British race’ involved rather than the Anglo-Saxon race: Haig’s letter to Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, after the beginning of the Somme offensive praised the ‘fighting power of the British race’,60 echoing a longstanding view of the British soldier: ‘the reputation of the race for courage and coolness’.61 There were specific characteristics, naturally different depending on where the opinion was coming from: ‘I saw, too, how in physique the people of that island race of ours stand out above the other races’,62 balances an Australian view of the Brits as ‘a race of mild curates’,63 the American James Beck’s view that ‘if this were an ordinary war I could well understand that Great Britain would come out of it with the simple remark, “Well, let’s have a cup of tea. What’s the next event?” ’,64 and a post-war view of the British army in France as ‘a race of egoists’.65 Other characteristics were vaguer: ‘the best is never got out of the Anglo-Saxon race until it is in a tight place’.66 But these might be more recognised than defined: Masefield saw it in a combination of casualness and proficiency – ‘we are a queer race’.67 Cpl John Streets’ poem ‘An English Soldier’ begins ‘He died for love of race’, which looks to be sentimentalising a complex set of reasons why and how people enlisted and survived or died, but at the time resonated with a view of wartime Europe as a conflict between cultures and languages as much as nations;68 one writer in the book celebrating the 1928 British Legion Pilgrimage felt that the story of the raid on Zeebrugge ‘filled our minds with “pride of race” ’.69
The main British concentration as regards race during the war was on the ‘German race’, also described as the ‘Germanic race’ or the ‘Teutonic race’. A strong view of what this constituted, to the British observer, was given in a letter in The Times from Stanley Roberts, which was summarised as ‘the Teutons are a chosen race’, who should strive for predominance. The ‘Teutonic race’ was generally typified in France and Britain as barbaric, naturally militaristic, and highly self-organising; there was a begrudging respect for organisation and efficiency, though this could be accounted for as a result of authoritarianism and ‘the mechanical drill system of the Teutonic race’.70 British journalists’ reports of barbarism attached to the race were condemned by the pro-German Swedish writer Sven Hedin: ‘During the first phase of the war the British press accused the Germans of barbaric cruelty to their prisoners and to wounded opponents. Not for one moment did I believe these reports but for the sake of the Teutonic race I wanted to uproot this calumny and to bring to light the truth’.71 But in the British press the term ‘Teutonic race’ served as a simple, convenient and frequent marker for why the Allies needed to fight rather than negotiate: ‘any wrong committed by the Teutonic race against its neighbours was approved by Heaven because the world-domination of Germany through war was part of the Divine scheme’,72 and ‘the machinations and barbarianism of the Teutonic race’.73 ‘Teutonic’ remained a marker of condemnation after the end of the war with ‘Teutonic arrogance’,74 ‘Teutonic mendacity’,75 and ‘Teutonic cunning’.76
After so many decades of colonial dominance and consequent racial privilege, outside Europe, the emergence of a power making European racial claims of rights to power was a challenge to Stanley Roberts, who observed that Britons were a mix of Latin and Anglo-Saxon: Germany’s claim that ‘If you are born a Celt or a Slav there is no hope for you’77 was part of the German ruling classes’ bombast. But the fear of German European, and subsequently world, domination was expressed in terms of race elsewhere: ‘The Germans aim at nothing less than the domination of Europe and of the world by the German race’.78
‘Pan-Germanism’ had changed from the idea of the unification of German-speaking peoples in Europe to the fear of German political expansionism. Yet within Germany there were distinct divisions: Richard Stumpf felt that the Prussians despised the ‘quiet, patient Bavarians’;79 2nd Lt Cyril Drummond reported that during an unofficial truce, when a Dublin Fusilier was killed, ‘the Saxons immediately sent over and apologised, saying it hadn’t been anything to do with them, but from those so-and-so Prussians on their left’;80 and the Saxons were claimed in one instance to be getting on so well with the British troops facing them that the authorities had had to stop mutual visits across no man’s land.81 In some sections the antipathy between Saxons and Prussians was exploited: ‘opposite one section of our centre the Germans for some time waved flags and took considerable pains to inform out troops that they were Saxons. It is possible that the different light in which we regard Saxons and Prussians is realised’.82 Cross-no-man’s-land communication even created the potential for a change in the disposition of the armies: ‘While our guns were giving the Prussians opposite us hell, the Saxons opposite the Middlesex applauded the hits. Later they shouted across, “We are being relieved by Bavarians tonigh
t. Give us time to get out and then shoot the ---s” ’.83 The Illustrated London News couched this in what would have been seen at the time as a racial connection – ‘Saxons and Anglo-Saxons fraternising’.84
The racial characteristics of other peoples facing the British soldier were less distinct. It was easy to lump together the various peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as numerous peoples with vaguely exotic names: ‘hordes of Croats, Magyars, Slovaks, Swabians, Rumanes, and other races of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’,85 ‘hordes’ indicating a fear of uncontrolled invasion. Turks were frequently described as ‘dirty’ or as ‘the unspeakable Turk’,86 ‘a stubborn fighter’, ‘as tough as the Germans’, but ‘no one can tell how a Turk will behave under any given conditions; the Turks themselves do not know how they will behave’.87 Har Dayal (1884–1939), an Indian Nationalist revolutionary, certainly had no good word for the Turks: ‘the Turks, as a nation, are utterly unfit to assume the leadership of the Muslim world. They have been, and are, only a predatory tribe, without culture and political capacity … The Turks have no brains; that is the plain truth. They can fight well, but they cannot administer or organise. They have been in possession of a vast empire for several centuries; but they have no great or noble national literature … The Turks could not sing or speculate, as they are really very low in the scale of mental evolution’.88 The result of the Gallipoli campaign would seem to argue against this. K. A. Murdoch’s letter to the Australian Prime Minister claimed that ‘the British physique is very much below that of the Turks’,89 but this view was naturally condemned by Ian Hamilton.
Just as ‘the Balkan Wars’ covered a complex series of conflicts, the term ‘the Balkan races’, even though they had ‘varying aims and aspirations’,90 swept into a convenient group a mass of connected and conflicting cultures. For those without knowledge of the complexities, the term ‘race’ did not help: R. W. Seton-Watson, the influential academic who was involved in the creation of Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, in a letter to The Times 16 September 1914 talked about ‘common Southern Slav patriotism’, ‘the Serbo-Croat race’ and the ‘Serb, Croat and Slovene race’.91 Political expediency and the stereotypes from popular culture filled in the gaps. Before they entered the conflict, the Bulgarian nation were described by the Kaiser as ‘the most vigorous of all the Balkan races’,92 while it was reported that Bulgarians were believed by Russians to be unnecessarily thrifty.93 ‘The people of Montenegro … are extremely bellicose … of a peculiarly proud and warlike temperament’,94 while ‘the native of Macedonia … possesses in full the laziness of the true Oriental and the fascinating tricks of a nation of beggars’.95 Another soldier’s view was that the Greeks were ‘a lazy, dirty lot, and such thieves’.96 The idea of ‘dirt’ was a strong determinant – the defeated Balkan army in 1918 was described as ‘arrayed in Serbian loot, with here and there a filthy uniform’:97 among Britain’s allies, the Serbs, having moved on from ‘Servia’ to ‘Serbia’ in the autumn of 1914, ‘are not dirty people’, Mr Hogarth was at pains to assure his audience at a lecture in Oxford in 1915.98
British soldiers were also exposed to the difficult relationship between the majority of France and those French citizens living close to the border with Flanders, for many of whom Flemish was their first language. The expression ‘les Boches du Nord’ was levelled at these people, echoing the attempts by the German occupiers of Belgium to develop an ethnic relationship based on language. R. H. Mottram, acting as an interpreter and working with a Flemish and a French colleague, relates in A Personal Record how the French interpreter (‘he disliked his Flemish-speaking compatriots’) looks at the names Nordpeene, Bolleseele, Merkeghem on a map and says ‘Can we be in France?’ His Belgian colleague claims Charlemagne as his military ancestor, whereupon the French interpreter states, ‘Charlemagne, c’était tout simplement un boche!’99
The French interpretation of racial grouping that included Flemings under the term ‘Boche’ refers to the Franco-German assessment of the war in racial terms as a conflict between ‘Boche’ and ‘Welsch’, a German term cognate with ‘Welsh’, meaning ‘foreigner’.100 In effect these are balancing insults: the German Welsch at that time carried meanings of ‘Roman, Italian, French’,101 and links to the use of ‘L’Union Latine’, primarily an idea of a connection between France and Italy. An article in the Manchester Guardian about fighting in Galicia states that this is where ’the Slavs first became a distinctive race. … the two opposite ends of the same Alpine race; the Frenchman and the Russian, are cousins, with an alien northern Teutonic race coming between them to disturb the family unity. Of course, Europe is a hotchpotch of races, and none of us are very pure in our stock, but there is much more than idle fancy in believing that the religious peasant of Brittany is of blood kin with the devout villager of Russia.’102
The Kaiser and his advisers were clear that the approach to war was along lines of race: in May 1913 Wilhelm II wrote on a report that ‘The struggle between Slavs and Germans can no longer be avoided and will surely come’.103 The same views were held by the German Chief of the General Staff, Moltke104 but the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Baron Franz Conrad, felt that for Austro-Hungary a ‘racial conflict’ would be problematic as it would involve nearly 50 per cent of the empire fighting ‘against their racial comrades’.105 Seaman Richard Stumpf believed that ‘at the outbreak of war, our enemies, especially the Russians, expected that the races living along the Danube and the Theiss would come over to their side’.106
During the course of the war German propaganda castigated the French and the British for using non-white troops, as a threat to the supremacy of the ‘white race’; this had its foundation in centuries of racism, manifested pre-war in the atrocities in German Southwest Africa (1904–7), which were seen in terms of ‘racial struggle’.107 German wartime propaganda against African, Caribbean and Asian troops mirrored the language of the German High Command pre-war – not just ‘disgusting Japs’, ‘filthy Cossacks’ and the Kaiser’s 1900 comment about Chinese people ‘dar[ing] to look cross-eyed at a German’, but ‘detestable Austrians’, ‘ghastly Walloons’ and ‘dirty Americans’.108
Awareness of physique is a constant trope in British soldiers’ perception of their enemies; it had been so in the early months of the war as it became apparent that the men of Kitchener’s Army were typically unfit, undernourished and unable to manage the rigours of military life – and many reported feeling very well after a few months’ training. But the enemy they faced were typically presented as short, fat, undernourished, short-sighted, crop-headed, and square-headed. The recent history of anthropometrics in determining a criminal physique opened the potential for an entire race, however the term might be applied, to be condemned as criminal. An anthropometric link between the criminal and the bestial had been proposed and widely taken up in the late-nineteenth century;109 M. MacDonald’s group of ‘an undesirable class known as “suspects” ’, which included spies, people who had robbed dead or dying soldiers, or collaborators, are described as having ‘crime and bestiality stamped on their faces’.110 Fraser and Gibbons applied this thinking to their entry for ‘squarehead’:
A German. In its origin an old seafarer’s term, suggested probably by the somewhat square shape of the typical Teutonic skull. The close-cropped hair of the German soldier on active service, noticed among prisoners, accentuated the idea of squareness, and gave the term currency at the Front in the War. The Squarehead or Nordic type of skull (brachy-cephalic) is a recognised form in anthropology, in contradistinction to the Longhead (dolicho-cephalic) type. Says a British authority on the subject: ‘A very big proportion of the German people are Squareheads. The Saxons are nearly always Nordic, and a quite large proportion of the Prussian aristocracy also. These distinctions as they bear on the habits of the racial types have a bearing also on the callings they choose and the effects of those callings on physique and long life. The great majority of the police are of the Nordic type: so are s
oldiers and sailors. The Squarehead is almost extinct in these islands. Perhaps, very roughly, one person in 10,000 is an English Squarehead. But it is a very interesting fact that our murderers, in the majority of cases, are square-headed; and in the United States the proportion of murderers of the square-headed type is extraordinarily high.’111
Fraser and Gibbons’s authority here may have been M. Descamps whose assessment of the Anglo-Saxon head as dolichocephalous and the German ‘accurately termed a “squarehead” ’ was printed in the Yorkshire Post in May 1917112 – and note here the apportioning of scientific and non-scientific terms. An article in the Chester Chronicle on ‘The Human Body’ by the famous anthropometrist Sir Arthur Keith proposes that if you compare a man from Strasbourg with a man from Nottingham there would be little to choose between them, but for the probability that ‘the Englishman’s face is the longer and narrower’.113 The demarcation by head shape between Britain, France and Germany was given three days after the declaration of war between Britain and Germany in an article titled ‘Nationality in Heads’ in the Sevenoaks Chronicle, which posed the idea that heads became rounder nearer the equator: ‘a Frenchman’s head is much rounder than an Englishman’s, while “squarehead” is a term often applied to Germans, the latter being very rounded, with the exception of the back, which is decidedly square’.114 Austrians, though ‘very good imitations of the closely-shorn, square-headed, heel-clicking Prussians’,115 were not referred to as ‘squareheads’, though the description by French–Canadians of the British as têtes-carrés implies that the term carried a sense of German-style militarism that could be carried across national boundaries.116 The effects of anthropometrics were seen in the physical ‘grading’ of soldiers – A1 down to C3 – which became part of everyday language: ‘I am A1 and hope you are too’ is a frequent phrase in soldiers’ postcards home from the Front.
Words and The First World War Page 19