Chapter Overview
The First World War and Its Aftermath 26
Politics and Economics 28
The Position of the ‘Other’ 31
Culture 35
Science and Technology 38
The following considers the period from the last decades of the nineteenth century through to the beginning of the Second World War via a selection of events, developments and discourses which were both generally significant and important in terms of literary Modernism.
The First World War and Its Aftermath
War had been a feature of the nineteenth century, from the Napoleonic Wars at its opening to the Anglo-Boer Wars at its close. Such wars did have an impact on the civilian population, but their effects pale into insignificance beside those of the First World War (1914–1918), which was fought by the Allied powers – Great Britain, France, Russia, until 1917, and, after 1917, the United States – against Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Italy began the war on the side of Germany, but changed its allegiance to the Allied side in 1915.
Much of the action of The Great War, as it was known at the time, was concentrated around the western front – the line of trenches running through Flanders in Belgium and north-eastern France – and a much larger and more mobile eastern front bounded by the Baltic, Moscow, St Petersburg and the
Black Sea. This concentration was not dissimilar to the practices of war in the nineteenth century, where the action was contained within relatively small locales, and on the whole did not involve large numbers of civilians.
However, certain differences of scale made the 4 years of warfare, and their aftermath, one of the most traumatic experiences of the twentieth century.
Technological innovation meant that military armoury was far more powerful and effective than ever before; the use of machine guns, tanks, armoured cars, aircraft, shells and chemical weapons had devastating consequences in terms of numbers of casualties. The war led to 9 million deaths among the combat-ive nations, of which approximately 750,000 were British (Winter 2003: 75). It led to the destruction of three empires – the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian – and the collapse of the German monarchy, and was at its close the bloodiest war in history. After the war, almost everyone would have had direct experience of loss and bereavement, of a family member, lover, neighbour or work colleague. In families and in public spaces during the interwar years the presence of men shattered by the experience of war, physically or mentally, acted as a terrible reminder not just of the war’s cost and waste, but, as in Virginia’s Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway (1925), of the beliefs, class hierarchies and conventional moralities that made it possible (for Woolf, see also Baxter, Murray, Paddy, Randall and Stinson).
Indeed, remembering the war was given a visible presence almost as soon as hostilities ended, remembrance of a new kind. War memorials were built in almost every town and village in Britain and France in the decade following the war. The Cenotaph in Whitehall in London, designed by Modernist architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, was originally built as a temporary site of remembrance in 1919, but became permanent in 1920. The understatement of the design, the absence from it of any symbols of triumph, glory or patriotism, and its immense popularity from the beginning, are testament to the very deep sense that the war, despite the victory of the Allies, had been a terrible mistake, and that conventional forms of remembrance were no longer appropriate (Winter 1998: 102–5). Similarly, the creation of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey in 1920 became a site for collective memory in a way that statues of victorious generals or representations of heroic deeds no longer could.
As suggested above, civilian casualties were not huge. As Chris Wrigley details in ‘The Impact of the First World War’ deaths caused directly by the war – aside from explosions at munitions factories and so on, or the deaths of civilians near the front – numbered around 1,400 people killed during air raids in Britain. Around 3,400 were wounded during the raids, and a smaller number were killed when German battleships shelled the north-east coast of Britain in December 1914 (505). However, in other ways the impact on the civilian population could hardly have been greater. The enormous loss of life
among combatants obviously had a great effect on those at home, but also everyday life altered for many, and not just in negative ways. The war effort, and its enormous and unprecedented demands in terms of raw materials and labour power, led the British government to intervene in the economy and in the private lives of its citizens in ways that would have been unthinkable before, for either of the two main political parties, Liberals or Tories. Food rationing, conscription into the armed services (begun in 1916), the Defence of the Realm Act (1914) and the systematic use of propaganda interfered with the supposed freedoms of the British as never before. The government took control of the coal mines and railway network, previously in the hands of private business, directed labour from one sector of the economy to another, and fixed levels of rent. There is some evidence that significant sections of the population, in particular the urban poor, experienced improvements in living standards during the war such as improved nutrition and a decrease in infant mortality (Winter 2003). Another offshoot was the rising importance of psy-chiatry, or the ‘talking cure,’ used to rehabilitate shell-shocked soldiers rather than court-martial them.
However, despite these gains for some of the civilian population, the overwhelming legacy of the war was one of trauma and loss. Not only millions of young men had been lost throughout Europe, but also a whole belief system, a whole view of the world, had been shaken to its core. The faiths of nineteenth-century Europe – in progress, in science and technology, in civilisation and in the belief that the European tradition represented the best of these things – was shattered by the bloody destruction. While many, of course, maintained such faith despite the challenges, for those who produced the most significant cultural representations after the war, a shocked pessim-ism dominates.
After the war, though, the rhetoric of governments, and the hopes of many, suggested that the war would be ‘the war to end all wars’ and that its horror would act as a deterrent. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 by all the major powers involved in the war, and its aim was indeed to prevent such a war happening again. It declared Germany responsible for the war, required Germany to pay enormous reparations and to be subject to arms control, and it awarded territories to the victors; measures which some at the time saw as dangerous, and which many since have seen as major causes of the Second World War.
Politics and Economics
The attempt to organize relations between nations differently after the First World War was consolidated by the establishment of the League of Nations in 1920, with goals of disarmament, collective security and the use of diplomacy
to settle disputes. However, very quickly, it became clear that the organisation was not going to be the solution to international conflict that some hoped. Its failure to act over France’s invasion of the Ruhr Valley in 1923 was an early indication of this. Added to this, the punitive economic aspects of the Treaty of Versailles had dire consequences for Germany throughout the 1920s, bringing massive inflation, widespread suffering, and consequent political instability. The British economist John Maynard Keynes warned against the potential catastrophic consequences of this in his study, The Economic Consequences of The Peace (1919), and his predictions were borne out (see also Stinson).
It was not just Germany that suffered economically after the First World War, however. All the European powers involved in the war had used up huge amounts of their national wealth in fighting such a long and costly war. As Wrigley indicates in Britain, for example, by the end of the war the government was drawing 50 per cent of national income, compared to 8–9 per cent before the war (505). Although there was a brief post-war boom in Britain, the economy was weakened throughout the 1920s.
In order to pay for its war effort, Britain had borrowed heavily from the US. Following the war, although Europe remained the most powerful bloc politically and economically, this masked an increasing American power. This rise was due not so much to the war, although the war certainly accelerated the process, but more that, as the US rapidly industrialized (along with Japan), it no longer needed British goods, and rather became a competi-tor. In particular, while in Britain the products of nineteenth century indus-trial processes continued to dominate, in the US the rapid growth area was in new consumer goods, such as the motor car.
The economic instability of the period – a consequence in the 1920s of the First World War and in the 1930s of the Depression caused by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 – had serious political consequences. The historian Eric Hobsbawm has argued that, because of the combined effects of these two disasters, the period became one of ‘international ideological civil war’
(Hobsbawm 1994: 144). This ‘war’ saw the rise of numerous right-wing parties in Europe in the 1920s, most notably the rise to power of Benito Mussolini’s fascists in Italy in 1922, and the increased activities of left-wing groups organized around union activity and the labour movement. In Britain in the 1920s there was increasing unrest among labour groups, culminat-ing in the General Strike in 1926. The strike lasted 9 days, and involved around 1.75 million workers. In terms of its later consequences, however, the most significant event in the developing ‘ideological war’ was the election victory of the National Socialists in Germany in 1933, and Adolf Hitler becom-ing Chancellor. There were many in Europe who saw this as positive for Germany – the election of a strong leader and party who could bring some
stability after the chaos of the 1920s – and that the repression carried out by the regime was a necessary part of restabilizing Germany. Certainly in Britain, the Nazis drew enthusiastic support from many on the right. Britain’s own major fascist group, Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, while never achieving a mass following, were also seen by many, particularly in those in establishment with a desire to maintain traditional class hierarchies, as a positive force (Pugh 2002b: 232).
The attraction of fascism during the period was inextricably linked with the fear of communism since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. Joseph Stalin had risen to power in the Soviet Union through the 1920s, becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922, and de facto leader from the late 1920s. Through the 1930s his power was consolidated, and his vision for the USSR implemented, through the use of mass exile and mass murder.
The murderousness of Stalin’s regime was known about throughout the 1930s. However, despite this, the extreme economic conditions led many to see communism as the most obvious response. In Britain, membership of the Communist Party rose significantly through the 1930s – from 2,500 in 1930 to 18,000 in 1938.
The most resonant setting for the conflict between left and right during the 1930s was the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). In 1936 the Spanish election was won by the Popular Front (a party made up of various centre and left groups), and they formed a government. A military coup to topple this government was staged by forces on the right in Spain, led by army generals. The coup was not wholly successful, but the resulting instability developed into a full-blown civil war. Both sides looked for support from outside Spain – the generals looked to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, the government to the USSR and the democratic countries of Europe. Britain, France and the USSR decided on a public position of non-intervention, although the USSR did give support to the government of Spain. This flouting of its supposed policy of non-intervention did improve the standing of the USSR in the eyes of many Europeans, though. While other European governments maintained their detachment from events in Spain, thousands of ordinary European people were horrified at the attack on the legitimate government, and many joined international brigades in order to fight on the government side, or give support in other ways, such as driving ambulances. Over the course of the war 40,000 people from over 50 nations joined the international brigades, including many writers and artists. As is made clear in Homage to Catalonia (1938), George Orwell’s account of his time in Spain fighting on the govern-ment side, despite this support, the infighting between various factions and the lack of support from other governments meant that in the end the right won, beginning the dictatorship of General Franco which lasted until the mid-1970s.
The Spanish Civil War attained a status in Europe in the late 1930s far beyond its local origins and ramifications. The war was seen as a microcosm of the wider conflict which was increasingly dominating the continent. The international brigades were peopled with those who believed that a victory for the right in Spain would lead to a Europe dominated by fascism. When the Spanish Civil War ended, the Allied Powers, including Britain under Neville Chamberlain, had already begun their policy of appeasing Hitler and a belligerent Germany. Britain, France and Italy signed the Munich Agreement with Germany in September 1938, effectively acceding to German demands for part of Czechoslovakia. The declaration of war with Germany a year later, following the German invasion of Poland, engaged the Allies (Britain, France and the USSR) against a common enemy, and the experience of the war undermined any claims by fascism to political legitimacy for the majority of Europeans.
The Position of the ‘Other’
Towards the end of the nineteenth century the demands of three groups began to challenge the hegemony of imperial, patriarchal culture. While there is no sense in which working-class men, the colonized or women necessarily acknowledged common ground, very often far from it, it is possible to see the combination of their demands as radically unsettling.
Trades unions had finally achieved a reasonably secure legal basis in Britain in the 1870s, and unions acted as pressure groups in the last decades of the century. However, the goal was direct access to parliament through political representation. By the 1890s the extent of union membership made them powerful enough to establish a new political party. The Independent Labour Party was formed in 1893, and in 1900 it affiliated to the Labour Representa-tion Committee, the political arm of the trade union movement, which started to field candidates in by-elections completely independently of the Liberals.
In the election of 1906, 29 candidates supported by the LRC won seats, and became the Labour Party.
At this time the party had no explicit policies beside support for unionism and a desire to elect working-class men to parliament, but the First World War greatly accelerated its political evolution, and after the election in 1918 – which followed the extension of the franchise in the Representation of the People Act of that year – for the first time working-class men made up the majority of the electorate. Although the party did not perform that well in this election, it did become the largest opposition group. The party became the official opposition in 1922 and formed its first government (albeit a minority one) under Ramsay MacDonald in January 1924, to the horror of much of the political establishment and of many ordinary citizens. Ramsay
MacDonald’s government only existed through Liberal support and was made cautious by its desire to show it could govern. The government lasted only 9 months, brought down by a vote of no confidence over alleged revolutionary sympathies. That such accusations could be so powerful demonstrates the extent to which for many seeing the representatives of the working class at home at the centre of national power was an unsettling and frightening experience.
British industrial development and growth had dominated the nineteenth century. By the 1870s Britain was the richest, most powerful nation in Europe, and via its empire, its culture was spread throughout the world. However, in the last decades of the century, a number of other countries began to indus-trialize rapidly. This competition caused significant anxiety in Britain, and fuelled the country’s search for new markets and raw materials. In the 1880s Britain, Germany, France and Belgium all took part in what became known as the ‘Scramble for Africa’, when the continent was rapidly divided up between the major European powers. Rather than stemming anxiety, how-ever, this process involved Britain in numerous skirmishes with rival nations, indigenous peoples, and settler groups, and more significantly the expansion of British imperial interests into Africa came to complicate and seriously undermine the country’s sense of its imperial mission.
This effect of the division of Africa did not become apparent for some time, however. The colonial matter dominating this period was much closer to home. Irish resentment at absentee Protestant landlords, discriminatory legis-lation and British negligence during the famines in the middle of the century produced a republican movement which had instigated a violent campaign against British rule. The final decades of the century were dominated, though, by an Irish Parliamentary Party led by Charles Stewart Parnell which worked within the Westminster system to attempt to secure Home Rule for Ireland.
His Irish MPs at Westminster enjoyed a reasonably powerful position due to the closely balanced parliaments during these years, and William Gladstone – Liberal Prime Minster four times between 1868 and 1894 – announced his support for Home Rule in 1885. The question of Home Rule was contested right up to the First World War. A Home Rule bill was passed in September 1914, but suspended until after the war. By the end of the war, the situation in Ireland had changed beyond recognition.
Opposition to English rule was not only expressed through Westminster politics. There was also an important cultural movement which attempted to recover and disseminate a specifically Irish culture as a resistance to English dominance. Of particular importance was a focus on Gaelic, and on the myths and folklore of Ireland’s past. The Celtic Revival, as this movement came to be known, inspired many of the younger writers of the time, including the poet W.B. Yeats and the playwright J.M. Synge. In 1904 Yeats was involved in
opening the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, with, among others, his patron Lady Gregory, who published several volumes of Irish myths and legends
opening the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, with, among others, his patron Lady Gregory, who published several volumes of Irish myths and legends