Foreword

It’s been popular to give wars brand names for at least a century.

The First World War was sold to Americans as the ‘War to End Wars’. Rather like the preacher who predicts an apocalypse, that’s a trick that can only really be pulled once, but since then we’ve had wars for all sorts of other excellent reasons including Democracy and Freedom (Humanitarian wars to ‘Protect Civilians’ are currently much in vogue). We’ve also had wars against lots of dreadful things: Oppression, Tyranny, Dictatorship and Extremism. There’s even been a trend towards using the war brand for endeavors that aren’t really wars at all, such as the 1970s+ War on Drugs, wars on malaria, poverty and so forth.

In turn, opponents of wars have assigned their own brand names, claiming for instance that a war said to be against ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ was really a ‘War for Oil’. Other wars have been named wars of conquest, imperialist wars or wars for a partisan cause such as Israel.

The essay that follows is therefore just part of a long tradition of branding wars with simple descriptors. It’s about war over the last century and attempts to argue two rather controversial propositions:

1. World War One was a War Against Socialism
2. World War Two was a War Against Peace

Combined together, these propositions may enrage people across the political spectrum, from far right to far left along with liberals in the middle.

If so, it would help make my point. The great mass of humanity has been duped.

Intelligent feedback and criticism welcome.

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The rout of Socialism

Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

– Leonard Cohen

Just over a century ago, at the dawn of the 20th century, the level of economic inequality between and within nations was high.

It was possible to speak of an ‘elite’ although the boundaries of any such category are not exact. Marxists would use the term ‘ruling class’ but whatever expression is used, it refers to a social construct more than a distinct, clearly-definable subset of humanity.

This very wealthy elite was predominantly – although not exclusively – European and North American. By any objective standard they were an elite that enjoyed wealth and opportunity unprecedented in human history.

But they were haunted by a specter. The specter was socialism.

One hundred years ago, socialists were in a situation somewhat akin to the position of ‘green’ politics in our contemporary era. They could reasonably argue that ‘socialism’ in a modern form had never been really tried anywhere on earth. It meant they had no working examples to point to; there were no functioning, national-scale working models of socialist societies. On the other hand, there were no discouraging instances of failed socialism.

Attracting growing support from the intelligentsia as well as the working classes, socialism was a political tradition and ideological aspiration which seemed to many intellectuals to have a most promising future.

Of course, there were really many ‘socialisms’ co-existing at the time – different tendencies and ideological stands from anarchism to democratically-oriented reformist socialism, communalism to Lenin-style vanguardism. A century ago, there was no obvious prospect of a single, unifying ‘revolution’ was likely any time soon – and absent broad socialist unity, the privileged elite had plenty of cards to play. Even so, the growing popularity of a political ideology asserting that all humans have equal rights to economic security and prosperity was widely viewed as a significant threat to the established social and political order.

In retrospect, if there was one, single, ‘game-changing’ event that stalled the seemingly inexorable rise of socialism, it was the gigantic human-created cataclysm we now call the First World War. This is a somewhat contrarian statement, because the First World War is often portrayed as an event that benefited the advance of socialism. I think that’s an inversion of the truth.

As a consequence of The Great War, one huge nation covering a sixth of the earth’s land mass (Russia along with much of its pre-war Empire), became ‘socialist’ under a particularly repressive, authoritarian and dictatorial form of socialism. There’s no denying ‘Leninist’ tendencies had been present in the socialist movement prior to 1914.  But in most if not all countries – including Russia – they were a minority within the socialist movement as a whole. Until war came…

The enormous prestige of gaining such vast terrain for ‘socialism’ indubitably biased the world socialist movement towards Russian-style Communism in the period following World War One. After the USSR’s expansionist victory in the Second World War and the subsequent success of Communists in China, the Leninist tendency within socialism seemed even more on the ascendant. Western Europe never embraced authoritarian Marxism to the same extent. The dominant form of socialism in the west remained democratic socialism, which in turn came in many flavors. Yet worldwide, the influence of the Communist USSR – and to a lesser extent Communist China – was hugely significant. Most observers of the socialist movement at the beginning of the 20th century would probably have been quite surprised that a relatively small tendency within the socialist movement as a whole would soon become so influential and remain so for more than 50 years.

It took several decades, but the general appeal of the USSR’s model of socialism gradually waned as the 20th century rolled by. In the second half of the 20th century, idealistic socialists outside the USSR found it increasingly hard to defend the internal and external policies of the Soviet regime. The USSR’s lack of free speech, abuses of judicial process, economic inefficiencies and the rigid authoritarianism and militarism of the Soviet leadership and its military interventions in rebellious satellites such as Hungary became too hard to rationalize and explain away – notwithstanding quite genuine achievements by Soviet society that were adduced by true believers as countervailing considerations.

Eventually, the USSR ‘fell’. Some three generations after the turmoil and revolutionary zeal of the October Revolution, the Russian nation decolonized and went through an economic catharsis no less tumultuous than the 1920s, leading after one chaotic decade to the bruised but recovering Russian society of today. Post-Leninist Russia is back within the capitalist fold – although for reasons explicable only by apologists for western militarism, it remains a notional military adversary of the USA and NATO.

One could go so far as to say that from the vantage point of a century later, the First War was a War Against Socialism. And although it wasn’t apparent at the time, it was successful. A consequence of the First World War was that prospects for consensual world socialism were set back by several generations.

Whether or not this result was achieved by deliberate prior planning is an interesting question, but I don’t propose to examine at this time. By plan or by accident, in the long-term socialist ideology was a victim of the war. The Western European and North American elite have enjoyed a century of continuous privilege ever since. Elites in both the USA and the UK have enjoyed robust continuity, without a single rupture caused by revolution or military defeat. The Anglo-Saxon elite – more successfully than any other – has kept socialism at bay.

The bloodbath of World War One had another rather obvious consequence. It gave rise to unprecedented revulsion with war – especially in the countries of western Europe and North America. Pacifism became popular to a quite novel extent, especially in Britain. For idealistic young men and women in the 1930s, the cry “Never Again!” was a self-evident reference to war. Nor was the popularity of anti-war sentiment confined to the political left or the right. For a while it had very broad appeal. In the USA it was especially strong on the political right.

Growing grass-roots determination to avoid another war that flowered in the generation following World War One represented a potent threat to some very powerful vested interests in the western world. It was, of course, of no real consequence to many capitalists, businesses and family fortunes. But it did jeopardize the plans of specific vested interests – based mainly in the USA and UK. These were the forces that collaborated to launch World War Two. They managed to do so by enlisting one brand of socialists (most of the left in the western world) to join them in going to war against another brand of socialists (National Socialists in Germany) who in turn became embroiled with a third, supposedly more extreme variant of socialism (the Marxist USSR). The latter ended up, somewhat remarkably, in war-time alliance with the major capitalist powers.

Having made the bold claim that World War One was the western plutocracy’s answer to socialism, I’ll go further and assert that World War Two was its deadly response to the peace movement. The Second World War was arguably even more effective in achieving its objective than the First. After promising peaks in the mid-1930s, the European and North American peace movement was eventually shattered by World War Two. I believe it has yet to fully recover.

Meanwhile, with no breaks in continuity and a succession of wars to boost its budgets, the military, ‘security’ and ‘intelligence’ functions of the British and American states have grown from strength to strength.

To illustrate this point, I use the more extreme example: the USA. Back in the 1930s, it was a nation with a general consensus supporting continental isolationism and an aversion to European wars. The USA didn’t even have a foreign intelligence agency. Public opinion was overwhelmingly anti-war. Yet within a few years America was transformed into a military colossus, eventually sporting hundreds of overseas military bases and the largest so-called ‘intelligence community’ in history. By the end of the 20th century, the USA’s military spend came to equal the combined military budgets of all other nations on earth. America had become the new Rome..

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How peace got lost

I find it astonishing how so many ‘socialists’, once war broke out in the northern autumn of 1914, became almost immediate converts to rampant nationalism and militarism. Something similar was true of other progressive social movements. For instance, suffragette split on the issue of war, but the majority seemed to support militant nationalists such as Christabel Pankhurst.

Had the majority of socialists united with determination in solidarity against the war, the conflict’s outcome would likely have been very different. The war would probably not have lasted beyond a year or so – and might well have led to quite dramatic advances for democratic socialism and international co-operation between the most economically advanced nations on earth. On the other hand, the imperial elites, who’d presided over the outbreak of war  would quite likely have been out on their ears – from St Petersburg to London. In class terms, the stakes in the First World War were extremely high. It wasn’t just a war between nations. The imperial contestants were recklessly gambling all – including the possibility that their own prosperity would vanish in chaos and revolution.

The First World War bled white the youth of a generation, but did leave most of Europe relatively unscathed. It was mainly a military conflict between military machines. Civilian casualties remained a small proportion of the total. Since then, technology and ideology have combined to bring war much more directly to civilian populations. Civilian casualties were a considerably higher proportion in World War Two and it’s been a continuing trend since (Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan for example).

Although technology helped drive the “civilianization” of war casualties, the role of ideology and government policy should not be understated. When new technologies with obvious military potential were invented, most notably the ‘conquest of air’, many people were aware of the danger and pressed for controls by international agreement. There were, for instance, proposals to ban aerial bombing floated in the 1930s by at least one major European nation. Unfortunately, they did not win common agreement.

When World War Two did break out there was a swift descent into hideous mutual terror. Yet some ‘rules of warfare’ were observed, whether or not they’d previously been formalized by treaty. That’s to say, there was some holding back from utterly unspeakable, worst-case cruelty. One clear example was that, despite holding huge reserves of lethal sarin gas, the German leadership eschewed its use on battlefields and against civilian populations. Unlike World War One, no broad-scale military usage was made of poison gas by any of the protagonists.

Even so, World War Two did entail mass terror of a ferocity the world had never seen before. Entire cities with large populations were incinerated from the air. The worst offenders, sad to say, were the USA and Britain, who used World War Two to turn destruction of cities into an art-form. By war’s end, the USA had even perfected a completely new technology that would enable its President to order obliteration of tens of thousands of people via a single ordinance drop. In the event, Truman chose to try out the USA’s nuclear bombs twice on Japanese cities, without warning and certainly with no subsequent apology. It was an unspeakably murderous act.

Not only were Britain and the USA the most notorious civilian mass murderers during World War Two. They were also, I believe, the instigators of the war. It was British and American diplomacy first and foremost that brought about a conflict the Axis powers were clearly most anxious to avoid. Once war broke out (that is, following their declarations of war), it was the western powers that refused proposals for a negotiated end to hostilities. Unconditional surrender was the consistent Allied demand until they achieved their goal.

After five bloody years of war, the ‘Allied powers’ did prevail. Crucial to their success was the wartime alliance they forged with the USSR – a partnership that saw a crusty imperial power link arms with a brash nouveau riche capitalist republic and a brutal and authoritarian communist dictatorship. The latter, despite devastating losses, was eventually a beneficiary of the war in geostrategic terms.

After their military victory, those within the elites of the two English-speaking allies who’d been instrumental in fomenting war had tidying up to do, in cahoots with their temporary Soviet allies.

They had to cover their tracks. The war had caused the most terrible suffering for hundreds of millions of people, so the perpetrators had the strongest of incentives to obscure their own responsibility for the war. They also wished to camouflage and rationalize their horrendous brutality during the war. Arguably both English-speaking nations had committed the greatest war-crimes of all time – atrocities without precedent. It was a reputation they were naturally keen to avoid.

Denying that Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been blown to smithereens by their bombs wasn’t really an option. The evidence could scarcely be denied. The solution was to ‘out-do’ those atrocities in the public mind – while falsely pinning the blame for starting the war on the defeated nations.

It was really just a matter of infusing new life into wartime propaganda that had already served US and UK national interests well during the war, when it had been used to whip up their own populations into a fury of righteous indignation. The post-war task was to emphasize suitable aspects of that propaganda and endow them with the status of ‘indisputable fact’. The landmark event used to ‘sell’ this false history to the world was the Nuremberg Trials. They are generally spoken of today as representing some kind of historical benchmark in international jurisprudence. In fact, the list of people who consider the Nuremberg trials were a disgraceful travesty of justice is impressive indeed, although their comments are rarely mentioned.

By the 1950s, the essential framework of our contemporary world was in place. It’s a world fashioned out of a combination of legal, political and economic arrangements between nations, world-transforming technologies and generally accepted ideological understandings. Of course, it’s a world that continues to evolve. Some major changes have occurred during the last 60 years, such as the remarkable collapse of the USSR. Yet overall, continuity has been greater than difference. We still live in a world of nation-states, operating under the rubric of the UN, World Bank, IMF and other key post-1945 institutions. Technology has evolved to be sure, but our societies are still largely reliant on fossil fuels. We remain under the threat of nuclear weapons – the most lethal devices for deliberate mass murder ever invented.

Crucially, we also still live under the “ideological understandings” that were in place six decades ago, based on historical beliefs that are largely distorted myths.

In the English-speaking countries (including Australia, whose view of world history is largely derived from Anglo-American sources) these myths still dominate our lives. They colour how we view the world. They define what we think is acceptable and what is not.

As I write, the two most populous English-speaking countries, this time in cahoots with France, are bombing Libya from the air. Since World War Two, this form of warfare has been preferred by the Anglo-American war machines for rather obvious reasons.

On what basis do these bomb-happy nations justify their action? Why – it’s all about human rights of course. We bomb… because we care.

But what gives us that right? How dare the USA and UK arrogate to themselves the right to kill by long-distance action in remote locations?

There are two answers – the ‘legal’ answer, and the more deeply entrenched ideological answer.

In terms of legality, the UK and USA managed to fix a vote in the UN Security Council at a crucial time that ceded them the authority to impose a ‘No Fly Zone’. They made no serious attempt to establish global consensus. The type of diplomacy they exercised had nothing to do with consensus. It was concerned only with achieving the goal which the war-promoting countries had already set: they wanted war. A UN Security Council resolution was a necessary fig leaf to give an appearance of legality to their direct involvement in the war. They got their fig leaf, even though UN Security Council Resolution 1973 provides a self-evidently incoherent policy  framework that could perpetuate Libyan civil war indefinitely – the very worst imaginable outcome from a genuine humanitarian perspective!

These serial war-mongering rogue states – most notably the USA and UK  - have made a travesty of the aspiration of finding genuine international agreement. They play the UN as a game – a game to get their way using fair means or foul.

It is disgusting – but it would never be accepted if it were not for the ideological arrogance of the Anglo-Saxon nations – a grandiose self-image which they’ve managed to market to the rest of the world to a quite remarkable extent.

A significant proportion of the British and American public seriously believe they – as a people – are better placed to make decisions about what’s appropriate for people living elsewhere (such as Libya) than the ‘other peoples’ concerned (eg the Libyans). And why not, given their history? They are, after all, the same people who saved the world from the greatest threat it had ever faced – the Great Evil One himself, Adolf Hitler. If some people have to make more decisions than others, who better than the Anglo-Saxon nations, bastions of democracy and human rights?

Most westerners seriously imagine that world peace, since 1945, has been preserved by their own nations’ military dominance. Yet the truth is mainly the opposite. From 1939 onwards world peace has been foiled by collusion between the key allied powers of World War Two. It’s true Anglo-American military strength seemed to make sense during the ‘Cold War’ era, supported by the narrative that the west had defeated Nazi Germany only to witness the rise of another ‘Evil Empire’. But post-1990 that excuse for militarism had to be dropped. It should now be apparent to objective observers of international affairs that far from keeping the peace, the US/UK effectively serve as guarantors of continuing, controlled and highly contrived war.

From an Anglo-American perspective, what has changed most of all about warfare is its externalization. Notwithstanding occasional false-flag operations such as 9-11 or the 7/7 London bombings, war no longer happens at home. It’s entirely exported to regions of the world that the war planners deem ‘peripheral’. The cost of war in terms of human life is now quite small for the aggressor nations and their military are all professional employees (accompanied by increasing numbers of private contractors).  But of course, the impact of war is devastating to the recipients of western military aggression.

Would the great-great grandfathers of this generation of Anglo-American warmongers have approved? Maybe they would.

Like magicians, the canny Anglo-American warmongers misdirect the attention of observers. They adorn themselves in the regalia of peace, human rights, justice and freedom. Beneath the splendid ideological garments, reality is not so flattering.

By flash-freezing long-discredited war propaganda back in the 1940s – and keeping it rigid and impenetrable ever since – the ‘Allies’ obscured their role in fomenting the bloodiest war of all time, obscured their role in making it the bloodiest war of all time – and re-sanctified the very notion of war itself.

They achieved this last task by creating the myth that World War Two ‘ was both ‘necessary’ and ‘just’ – the ultimate response to the peace movement.

To this day, World War Two is referred to as the quintessential ‘necessary’ war. Take, for example, this recent article by the veteran Israeli peacenik Uri Averny. It contains a perfect example of what I mean. Here’s the relevant extract:

THE VERY term “war crimes” is problematic. War itself is a crime, never to be justified unless it is the only way to prevent a bigger crime – as with the war against Adolf Hitler, and now – on an incomparably smaller scale – against Muammar Qaddafi.

So there we have it – from someone who defines himself as a supporter of the peace movement, no less.

Averny is correct to suggest that war itself is a crime. But his analysis is downhill from there. He explains that sometimes war is essential. The greatest of such instances was World War Two – the ultimate “justified war”. But other, lesser cases reflect in the glory of that iconic necessary war, so they can be considered a bit necessary too – even though war itself really is a crime when you think about it. Oh and by the way… if you’re wondering who gets to decide which wars are necessary… it’s the good guys do, of course! The victors of World War Two! US! The same heroic people who vanquished Adolf and the Nazis.

Confused? Yes, we are confused. Very confused, Our dominant historical narrative has been distorted by lies, absurdities and dis-proven myths. It’s not surprising we’re confused…

Uri Averny is a grand old man of the Israeli peace movement. I could instead have chosen examples of ‘World War Two worship’ by much more bombastic pro-war commentators. In the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, barely a day went by without one talking-head or other warning about ‘appeasement’. Hoary old myths and distortions from the Nazi era perform excellent pro-war service to this day.

The myths of World War Two are ubiquitous and by no means confined to open advocates for militarism, as the example of Uri Averny indicates. They are shared by right, left and center. They unite east and west. It is no exaggeration to say they form a crucial part of our commonly accepted intellectual landscape. And of course, they are incessantly re-iterated by the western media, refreshed by Hollywood and reaffirmed by the mainstream publishing industry.

Uri and his adopted nation have a somewhat different interest in the frozen history of World War Two. The State of Israel was also born out of that war. The Zionist State acquired ‘moral legitimacy’ and vast wealth as a consequence of general acceptance of the notion that Nazi mass murders of European Jews were carried out on such a gigantic scale that they represented the greatest war crime of all time.

Most of the heated debate about World War Two surrounds this Jewish/Zionist narrative of events. Although interwoven with what I’ll call the Anglo-Saxon myths – it’s essentially a separate topic. In this essay I shall merely pause to note the ongoing usage and efficacy of that related mythology, which makes the fate of Jews during the war the central and most significant event of the war.  It is, of course, a historical perspective enforced by law in several jurisdictions, including Israel itself.

As someone of Anglo-Saxon ethnic origins, I want nothing but the truth about history. Insofar as I was taught lies in the past about my culture and its history, I’d like those lies corrected so posterity is not equally misled. For me, the call to universal truth is fundamental. I’m fond of many aspects of the culture I acquired through an accident of birth, but I want it to become better by shedding dross. My primary loyalty is to humanity as a whole – not to a national, ethnic or religious sub-set.

I have no doubt the future belongs to people of similar conviction. Tribalism is a dead-end. War is species suicide.

As for Socialism, so badly derailed by a century of war and confusion, I believe in the broadest sense it’s a necessary – but far from sufficient – prerequisite for collective human well-being . Socialism need not and should not be at the expense of free speech, individual initiative and private enterprise. And it may be the word carries too much historical baggage to be useful in the future. But whether we call it socialism or something else, modern civilization needs a civilizing, equalizing integument around the raw energy of what may be called the realm of enterprise to prevent the latter usurping the common good. In the 21st century, Socialism itself also requires a ‘outer integument’ – the vital constraining influence of ecologically sustainable management of human activity.

Seen as complimentary, with blue constrained by red and red by green, these three great movements are best regarded not as competitors but as complimentary forces. Appropriately co-related, they can sustain life that’s worth living for us all.

War, on the other hand, is the absolute antithesis of sustainability, justice and freedom. War – and the malevolent ideologies that glorify and promote it – remains humanity’s greatest common enemy.

Encouraged by Betrand Russell and other war resisters, the British soldier-poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote a powerful declaration at the height of the bloody Great War: Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration

It was published and read in the British Parliament by a sympathetic MP – and created quite a stir.

Sassoon’s statement prompted demands for court-martial. In the end, an elegant compromise was struck. Instead of shooting the rebellious but socially prominent soldier, Sassoon was confined to an War Hospital for the remainder of the war on the pretext he was suffering from neurasthenia (shell-shock).

Lt. Siegfried Sassoon.
3rd Batt: Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
July, 1917.

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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 agression 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.

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Sassoon’s brief statement (emphasis added)  has an honest eloquence that speaks directly to this generation.

That’s partly because each succeeding generation has shown a remarkable propensity to fall, all over again, for much the same lies, deceptions and mind-numbing bellicosity that fooled their fathers and grandfathers.

These days the First World War is typically represented as a necessary, although ultimately insufficient war. The involvement of English-speaking countries is lauded as a great act of collective sacrifice. Sassoon’s insight was far more accurate. Peace was negotiable as late as 1917, but Britain’s war leadership and their backers were bent on agression and conquest.

Unlike his friend and fellow-poet Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon survived the Great War and lived to a ripe old age.

He never shared in the fabulous wealth of the famous Sassoon family, as his father married a gentile for love and was disinherited. But Siegfried left the world something much finer than the trappings of an ill-gotten fortune, built largely on opium trading.

He left words that continue to inspire…

Siegfried Sassoon

Wisdom

By Siegfried Sassoon

This post features one of my favourite quotations from World War One – and one of the best-known war poems of modern times.

The quotation is from John Viscount Morley‘s Memorandum of Resignation from the cabinet of John Asquith in August 1914, at the outbreak of war.

Morely resigned when it became clear a majority of the British cabinet supported the push, led by Foreign Minister Edward Grey, to declare war on Germany.

John Morley was one of the very few members of the cabinet who remained steadfast in opposing Britain’s entry into the war. This short extract from his  memorandum is eerily prescient:

“…What grounds for expecting that the ruinous waste and havoc of war would be repaid by peace on better terms than were already within reach of reason and persistent patience. When we counted our gains, what would they amount to, when reckoned against the ferocious hatred that would burn with inextinguishable fire, for a whole generation at least, between two great communities better fitted to understand one another than any other pair in Europe? This moral devastation is a worse incident of war even than human carnage, and all the other curses with which war lashes its victims and its dupes.”

Morely was to be proven right.The flame of conflict lit in August 1914 wasn’t extinguished for a generation. By that time, the world had been transformed and a ‘war culture’ firmly entrenched in Britain and the USA. How differently things might have turned out, had the British and German people co-operated throughout the whole of the 20th century, instead of bleeding each other dry in two savage episodes of mutual mass destruction.

Morley’s whole memorandum is well worth reading. He argues persuasively that the stated grounds for Britain’s declaration of war – defense of Belgian neutrality – were merely a pretext. By the time Belgium emerged as an issue, Grey and the war faction had no intention of staying out of the conflict.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history…

Although casualties as a whole were higher in World War Two, British casualties in World War One have never been matched, before or since.

It’s small consolation that the killing fields gave rise to some outstanding English-language war poetry (hard to imagine anything comparable emerging from today’s ‘professional’ British Army).

One of the most powerful indictments of war I’ve ever read is ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen:

Dulce et Decorum Est1

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares² we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest³ began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots⁴
Of tired, outstripped⁵ Five-Nines⁶ that dropped behind.

Gas!⁷ Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets⁸ just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime⁹ . . .
Dim, through the misty panes¹⁰ and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,¹¹ choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud¹²
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest¹³
To children ardent¹⁴ for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.¹⁵

- 8 October 1917 – March, 1918

Explanatory footnotes from Warpoetry.co.uk

1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST – the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean “It is sweet and right.” The full saying ends the poem: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country
2. rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines
3. a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4. the noise made by the shells rushing through the air
5. outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle
6. Five-Nines – 5.9 calibre explosive shells
7. poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned
8. the early name for gas masks
9. a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue
10. the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks
11. Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling
12. normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew; here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier’s mouth
13. high zest – idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea
14. keen
15. see note 1

For years, I simplistically imagined that Wilfred Owen adopted a near-pacifist view by the end of the war – and that his death in the very last days of the conflict was a tragic accident. But it seems the truth is more tortured and complex.

Owen became a microcosm of the broader madness that raged around him, the insanity  unleashed in August 1914. He appears to have developed a death wish, shedding his broader humanitarian values.

Here’s an account extracted from Chapter 9 of Minds at War: Wilfred Owen’s psychological journey:

By April 1918 he had taken another crucial decision. He had decided to turn his back on life. Talking to his brother whilst home on leave he said that he wanted to return to the front line. “I know I shall be killed. But it’s the only place I can make my protest from.”

In July, encouraged by Robert Ross (best known as a friend and supporter of Oscar Wilde) and the poet, Osbert Sitwell, Owen began to plan a volume of his poems. For it he wrotea his first quick, half-thought-out draft of a preface. Some idea of his thoughts about his role may be gleaned from this.

Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.

Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

On 26th August he was declared fit for front line action and instructed to embark for France. He wrote to Sassoon, “Everything is clear now; and I am in hasty retreat towards the Front.” Retreat from life, perhaps, or from himself.

Owen rejoined the Manchesters at la Neuville near Amiens on 15th September. As his company waited to go into the front line his fear was beginning to show. He wrote to Sassoon, pathetically blaming him for his predicament.

‘You said it would be a good thing for my poetry if I went back. That is my consolation for feeling a fool.

This is what the shells scream at me every time: “Haven’t you got the wits to keep out of this?”’

Late afternoon on 1st October, and on through the night, the 96th Brigade of the Manchesters went into action near the villages of Joncourt and Sequehart, six miles north of St Quentin. There was “savage hand- to-hand fighting.” At first the Germans were driven back, but they made repeated counter-attacks. Owen threw himself into his task. He wrote to his mother,

I lost all my earthly faculties, and I fought like an angel . . . I captured a German Machine Gun and scores of prisoners . . . I only shot one man with my revolver . . . My nerves are in perfect order.

The psychological change in Owen’s personality was now definitely confirmed in action. Before this time we do not know what attempts, if any, he made to kill the enemy. His identification with soldiers and the soldiers’ role, and his abandonment of his Christian principles, was now complete. Showing his habitual concern for his mother’s feelings he implied that he had killed only one man, but the citation accompanying the Military Cross which he was awarded for his actions that night make it clear that he used the machine gun to kill a large number of men. “He personally manipulated a captured machine gun in an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.”

He now rationalised his motives. In part, he was thinking as a soldier. Forgetting that he had been ordered there, he wrote,

“I came out in order to help these boys – directly by leading them as well as an officer can …”

and then he added an idea which had long been with him, seeing himself once again as an outsider to the soldier’s role,

“indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak as well as a pleader can.”

By killing men he crossed a moral divide between the good and the damned, and in so doing, surrendered his personality to the moral-numbness of front-line soldiers. The real Wilfred Owen no longer existed. The Wilfred Owen who entered the war was dead. His behaviour was no longer the expression of his own will: he was part of a fighting brotherhood, a killing machine. He was impervious to fear, had no sensitivity. He had no self-regard, no self-respect – no self to lose.

From now on his behaviour could be totally reckless being sufficiently rewarded by surges of adrenalin and a sense of heart-warming camaraderie. He wrote to his mother again on 8th October telling her this story of the aftermath of the battle when his company was still surrounded by the enemy.

The letter concluded, “I scrambled out myself and felt an exhilaration in baffling the Machine Guns by quick bounds from cover to cover. After the shells we had been through, and the gas, bullets were like the gentle rain from heaven … Must write now to hosts of parents of Missing, etc . . .”

Writing of the battle to Sassoon on 10th October he said, “I cannot say I suffered anything; having let my brain grow dull . . . My senses are charred.”

Owen knew that the war was nearing its end. The Germans were in full retreat. The British soldiers were welcomed with joyful gratitude by the French, and he was really enjoying himself being part of a band of soldiers. In his last letter to his mother, written on 31st October, he describes the maty atmosphere in his billets, “The Smoky Cellar of Forester’s House.” Conditions were so cramped that he could hardly write for pokes, nudges and jolts. The room was dense with smoke. His cook was chopping wood and an old soldier peeled potatoes and dropped them in a pot splashing Owen’s hand as he did so. It was a scene of perfect soldierly brotherhood, and Owen remarks on his lack of sensitivity to danger.

“It is a great life. I am more oblivious than alas! yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, and the hollow crashing of the shells. . . Of this I am certain: you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here.

Ever Wilfred x”

His mind was now perfectly prepared for his final action. There were now no crucial military objectives, yet the crossing of the seventy feet wide Sambre and Oise Canal, just south of the tiny village of Ors was treated as such. The Germans held the east bank, and were well defended with machine guns. At 5.45 on the morning of 4th November, under a hail of machine gun fire, the Royal Engineers attempted to construct an instant bridge out of wire-linked floats so that Owen’s brigade and 15th and 16th Lancashire Fusiliers could cross and destroy or capture the enemy. Group after group of soldiers went forward and were killed or wounded. Wilfred Owen, standing at the water’s edge, was encouraging his men when he was hit and killed.

Seven days later the war was over. Church bells rang throughout the country. As they were ringing in Shrewsbury, Susan and Tom Owen received the telegram announcing their son’s death

The more I observe its output, the more my respect for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation declines.

It’s not just that it pushes disinformation about current events that help ferment and justify wars of aggression.

It’s not just that it dissembles and evades the truth about major so-called ‘terrorist’ events, whether domestic or overseas.

The ABC also uses the past to refurbish pro-war conformism. A good example is this year’s ANZAC Day website extravaganza: Gallopoli, The First Day

To view it yourself, you’ll need a good broadband connection and 2GB of RAM+ is recommended. It’s an audiovisual extravaganza – bringing history to life with 3-D terrain maps and other wizardry.

The author, Harvey Broadbent, specializes in this area of history. He’s fluent in Turkish, highly knowledgeable and well qualified to present material about the period. In terms of the narrow confines of the project, the A-V presentation does a good job. But where’s the historical context?

Sure, it’s fun to see the Day One of the Gallipoli assault become as realistic as a video game (although without a shoot button, I doubt die-hard gamers will stay long). But how about context? What about some answers to the ‘why’ questions?

The ABC presents an Australian view, so it seems to me the first question it might ask about the Gallipoli fiasco is: Why were shiploads of young Australians sent there at all? What was the nature of Australia’s quarrel in 1915 with the Ottoman Empire, as it was then? Why did we hate it so much that we shipped armed warriors halfway round the world to invade another nation’s sovereign territory?

If anyone can find this information on the ABC Gallipoli Special website, please let me know. I don’t have enough RAM to make the presentation fly. I did find one button called ‘Historical Analysis’ and clicked on it expectantly. It took me to a page of well-written text. It’s not that there’s anything obnoxious about what’s said there. There isn’t. But it treats the event as though it all began the day the Anzacs showed up. There’s some background about the respective military forces. There’s discussion of military strategy and tactics. But if you – like me – are interested to know WHY the Australian Government sent tens of thousands of youngsters to get killed on someone else’s beaches, I think you’ll need to look elsewhere.

I acknowledge there’s a place for military history. There’s a place for specialization within history. But there is also a crucial role for synthesis, overview, critical thought and deep analysis. I can’t see much of that in the ABC’s Gallipoli website. Zero, to be precise.

Nor do I expect much from the ABC’s general coverage of the ANZAC event this year. So, I haven’t been surprised.

ANZAC Day – 25th April – is Australia’s main war remembrance occasion in the annual calendar. Every year, it seems to me, the media hype edges upwards.

The occasion is not yet, thank goodness, abused directly for advocacy of contemporary wars (that’s done 24x7x365 by other means). Yet lacking any real critical discussion about the deeper ‘why?’ questions, it becomes a celebration of futility that conveys the impression dying and killing for no good reason whatsoever is an acceptable, normal and somewhat inevitable part of human life. I’m sure many in this country believe you can’t be a ‘real Australian’ if you don’t get fully behind the ‘Anzac spirit’.

When Australians commemorate the Anzacs (full title: the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), we often say “they died for our freedom”. It sounds great. But what do we do with that freedom? Are we, perchance, STILL tagging along behind other so-called allies, invading distant lands on futile violent missions?

Anyhow, is the mythic claim true at all? Did Australia’s participation in the First World War really preserve ‘freedom’ in this country? Freedom for whom? Was there truly a threat to the freedom of this newly independent nation at the time? Who declared war on whom anyway? (Answer: Australia declared war on Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, not the other way round – or more accurately Britain declared war on our behalf).

As far as the Gallipoli conflict is concerned, the Turks had no quarrel with Australians. Responsibility for the egregious, bloody, unnecessary futile carnage was ours alone – not theirs. Have we really understood and absorbed that lesson?

To counter such inconvenient reality checks, apologists for contemporary Australian militarism like to distance our modern nation from early post-Independence times. Today, we’re told, it’s all changed. Australia doesn’t dance to London’s tune anymore!

That is quite true. If divorce from the position of the British Government is the hallmark Australian independence, it was achieved in 1947, when Australia supported the agenda of the Zionist movement over Palestine – against the wishes of the more principled Labour Government in Britain. (More history you’re unlikely to glean via the ABC).

Today, despite retaining the monarchy, Australia is independent from Britain.

Our problems now have much more to do with our Governments’ more recent buddies, whose thirst for expending Australian blood, sweat and firepower may, in time, exceed that of imperial Britain. The ABC doesn’t facilitate discussion about that, either. Perish the thought!

Every year around ANZAC Day, I entertain hopes that this time round, there may be a celebration of the peace activists during World War One. What about the Australians who said no to war? I assume this topic may have been covered by the ABC once or twice in its multi-generational history, but I must have missed it myself.

To my way of thinking, war resisters were the bravest spirits of all in the Great War. Why don’t we commemorate the lives of the men and women who demanded peace? Why are those people written out of the popular history of this country? Why does the ABC insult their memory by overlooking their contribution?

As it’s name suggests, the ABC has great didactic potential. Broadly speaking, it uses this power, at present, to advance the aims of a warmongering minority – not the peace-loving majority.

Is that an institution worthy of taxpayers’ funds?