Wider Reading Extracts / Texts

Some more wider reading extracts:

‘Methods of Barbarism’ – Vera Brittain

…As a nurse in France during the last War, I myself had to care for ten of the first mustard gas cases that came down from the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Remembering the sufferings of those gassed men and the small percentage of recoveries in the hospital, I for one am thankful for the development of public opinion which has caused the belligerent nations to observe up to date the Poison Gas Convention of 1925, and to deny themselves the dreadful fruit of their scientific researches in this field, even though war itself continues.

But we have no reason to be complacent for refraining, like the Nazis, from this type of chemical warfare. The tortures to which we have subjected citizens, including children, in our 'saturation raids' far exceed the sufferings caused by poison gas between 1914 and 1918. I venture to prophesy with complete confidence that the callous cruelty which has caused us to destroy innocent human life in Europe's most crowded cities, and the vandalism which has obliterated historic treasures in some of her loveliest, WILL APPEAR TO FUTURE CIVILISATION AS AN EXTREME FORM OF CRIMINAL LUNACY WITH WHICH OUR POLITICAL AND MILITARY LEADERS DELIBERATELY ALLOWED THEMSELVES TO BECOME AFFLICTED.

We can do no less than seek an answer to each new excursion into the dark abyss of inhuman barbarity, for as we become more sensitive and intelligent creatures, our capacity for good and evil alike increases with our knowledge.

It may take centuries yet to abolish war altogether, but within those centuries the terrible refinement of scientific inventions may first abolish man unless he deliberately restrains himself from employing them. One fact, at any rate, emerges from the story of our own mass bombing, by which our leaders have surpassed even the savageries of the Thirty Years' War, and have brought about a still more disastrous setback to the influence of Christianity and of chivalry. If the nations of the world cannot agree, when peace returns, to refrain from the use of the bombing aeroplane as they have refrained from using poison gas, then mankind itself deserves to perish from the epidemic of moral insanity which today afflicts our civilisation.

But there is no need to wait for the end of the War before we consider exactly what we are doing, and decide whether we desire the Government which we elected to continue a policy of murder and massacre in the name of the British people. It is now too late to save many of Europe's finest cities, to restore historic treasures reduced to rubble, or to bring back to life more than a million German and ex-allied civilians. But even though we knew that the rest of the Continent must fall victim to the vandalism of our politicians, the obligation would still lie upon us who repudiate their criminal policy to assert, loudly and clearly, that their deeds are not done by our will or with our consent.

 

 

 

************************************************

Hamilton Fyfe went to France on the outbreak of the First World War.

To me at first it was an exciting novelty. The thrill of romance was in it still. All that I had read about war (nearly all of it rubbish) flooded my mind with ideas of pomp and circumstance, of shrewd intellects contending for advantage, of marching columns and flying cavalry doing as those intellects planned. What a fool I was! How quickly I learned that war is above all dullness; that those who direct it - or let it take its own course - are mostly pompous, incompetent dullards; that, like all other machinery, the machinery of war has escaped from the control of its users; that the task of soldiers is to cower in trench dug-outs and have hell rained upon them. However, for the moment, before I had seen anything of it, war appeared to be a tremendous event, full of colour, fine in quality; and I was going to report it.

The whole country swarmed already with soldiers. Most of them were middle-aged, none of their uniforms fitted. They wore the absurd red trousers below the blue coat which had been in fashion since Napoleon's time. I recall a conversation with a French journalist who assured me that the army would lose all spirit if its red trousers were taken away. He would not listen to me when I said the uniform would have to be altered, as the British red coats were changed to khaki in South Africa. That was the general attitude of Frenchmen.

 

 In September 1914, Lord Kitchener, Britain's War Minister, banned journalists from the Western Front. Hamilton Fyfe attempted to overcome this problem by joining the Red Cross.

 

The ban on correspondents was still being enforced, so I joined a French Red cross detachment as a stretcher bearer, and though it was hard work, managed to send a good many despatches to my paper. I had no experience of ambulance or hospital work, but I grew accustomed to blood and severed limbs and red stumps very quickly. Only once was I knocked out. We were in a schoolroom turned into a operating theatre. It was a hot afternoon. We had brought in a lot of wounded men who had been lying in the open for some time; their wounds crawled with lice. All of us had to act as aids to our two surgeons. Suddenly I felt the air had become oppressive. I felt I must get outside and breathe. I made for the door, walked along the passage. Then I found myself lying in the passage with a big bump on my head. However, I got rid of what was troubling my stomach, and in a few minutes I was back in the schoolroom. I did not suffer in that way again.

What caused me discomfort far more acute - because it was mental, not bodily - were the illustrations of the bestiality, the futility, the insanity of war and of the system that produced war as surely as land uncultivated produces noxious weeds: these were now forced on my notice every day. The first cart of dead that I saw, legs sticking out stiffly, heads lolling on shoulders, all the poor bodies shovelled into a pit and covered with quicklime, made me wonder what the owners had been doing when they were called up, crammed into uniforms, and told to kill, maim, mutilate other men like themselves, with whom they had no quarrel. All of them had left behind many who would be grieved, perhaps beggared, by their taking off. And all to no purpose, for nothing.

 

 ********************************************************

 

 

Two Fusiliers - Robert Graves

AND have we done with War at last?

Well, we’ve been lucky devils both,

And there’s no need of pledge or oath

To bind our lovely friendship fast,

By firmer stuff

Close bound enough.

By wire and wood and stake we’re bound,

By Fricourt and by Festubert,

By whipping rain, by the sun’s glare,

By all the misery and loud sound,

By a Spring day,

By Picard clay.

Show me the two so closely bound

As we, by the red bond of blood,

By friendship, blossoming from mud,

By Death: we faced him, and we found

Beauty in Death,

In dead men breath