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Here you will find discussions of selected themes which emerged in the book, additional poetry and images, and suggestions for further reading on various aspects of the subject. The intention of the website is to add texture to the arguments made in the book by providing details and examples which had to be omitted because of space considerations. In listing suggestions for further reading, I have noted only those sources, primarily monographs and articles, which are readily available.

Many dissertations and conference papers have dealt with these subjects, but they are often difficult to obtain. Should any reader be interested in specific references to these dissertations or conference papers, I would be happy to supply them. I would also be delighted to receive questions, comments, and suggestions from readers on any aspect of Death So Noble, or to hear of ongoing research on anything I have touched upon.

Please feel free to contact me at vance@sscl.uwo.ca
Jonathan F. Vance
Department of History
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6A 5C2
Canada

1. The Just War

This cartoon, by the Belgian cartoonist Louis Raemaekers, appeared in the Armistice issue of the Canadian Magazine, perhaps to remind readers that the glow of victory was no reason to forget German atrocities. With the defeat of Germany, the magazine changed the cartoon's title from 'Spoils of the Victors' to 'Spoils of War.' 1

Let's not be beastly to the Boche?
In contrast to this oft-cited line from a contemporary song, there is little evidence in Canada of a spirit of forgiveness directed towards the enemy. In fact, the postwar era saw a continuation of the kind of demonization of the enemy which had characterized the war years. Samuel Baylis's collection of poems entitled Echoes of the Great War is typical in this regard. Dedicated to 'our little soldier, H.M.B., 1890-1915,' the book is obviously the work of parents still grieving the loss of their son at Ypres, for it includes a number of vicious anti-German poems with titles like 'Cain,' 'Judas,' and 'The Doom of Lucifer.' 2 It did not take the death of a loved one to stir the embers of anger in Canadians. They found more than enough motivation in the destruction of cities in France and Belgium, the execution of Edith Cavell, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare. Indeed, these events provided grist for the mills of countless poets in interwar Canada. The following is just a sampling of the works which took as their subject the evidence of German wartime perfidy:

• Camilla Sanderson, 'Edith Cavell,' in Good Morning (Toronto: William Briggs 1918), 36-7
• Isabella B. Watson, 'Edith Cavell,' in War Time Poems and Heart Songs (Toronto: William Briggs 1918), 22-3
• George Herbert Clarke, 'Ruins (Ypres, 1917),' in The Hasting Day (Toronto: Ryerson Press 1930), 77
• Rev. A. O'Malley, 'Louvain,' in Sonnets of a Recluse (Barrie, ON: Gazette Print
• Arthur L. Phelps, 'Rheims,' in Poems (Iowa: English Club of Cornell College 1921), 10.
• Violet Alice Clarke, 'Lusitania Day, 1919,' in The Vision of Democracy and Other Poems (Toronto: Ryerson Press 1919), 102-3
• Bernard McEvoy, 'Lusitania,' in Verses for My Friends (Vancouver: Cowan Brookhouse 1923), 110
• Robert J.C. Stead, 'The Submarine,' in The Empire-Builders (Toronto: Musson 1923), 122-3 Albert Durrant Watson, 'Freedom (Lusitania Day, 1915),' in The Poetical Works of Albert Durrant Watson (Toronto: Ryerson Press 1924), 224-5.

Cecil E. Selwyn's 'On Germany's Lusitania Medals' is representative of this genre of poetry. It takes as its theme the fact that medals issued by Germany to commemorate the sinking were coined in advance, leading many people to the conclusion that the attack on the liner was carefully planned in advance.

Oh, yes! You had it well arranged
Beforehand,
That ne'er the Lusitania,
Reach the land!
Upon your medals, Death
Hands out the checks
To all the human stream
O'erflowing her decks;
His grinning skeleton
In Cunard office stands
And to the happy throng
Their ticket hands.
As into shape
The molten copper ran,
No doubt you'd satisfaction
From your plan,
That ne'er forgotten be
The foulest crime
Ocean has seen
Thro' all the span of time! 3

Often, the ire of poets was directed specifically at the German Kaiser. Take, for example, the following poem, in which the author wishes upon Kaiser Wilhelm the same fate which befell Czar Nicholas and King Charles I, both executed by their own people for their supposed crimes:

'Fallen'

How art thou fallen from imperial state,
Proud Hohenzollern, in thy latter days;
Far better hadst thou perished in war's blaze,
Or shared the Muscovite's ignoble fate;
Or passed with English Charles the narrow gate,
Who, martyred, won a people's deathless praise.
Louis was kingly e'en in death's dark ways.
Ah! pigmy soul, didst thou strive to emulate
Rome's noblest Cæsar's titan majesty,
Aping the pomp, yet lacking the great heart?
While nations execrate thine infamy
Thou hidest in a neutral land apart
From thine own people brutalized by thee.
Think deeply ere from earth thou dost depart. 4

Even more bitter is a poem by an amateur versifier in Ontario:

The Last Days of the Kaiser
The Kaiser now is all down and out
He is so sick, so sorry and so sad,
Without a doubt he's got the gout,
And he has gone Kultur mad.

The Kaiser Bill, that ne'er do well,
Who went so far, so far astray,
He need not die to go to hell,
For on earth he'll get it every day.

From his lofty pinnacle of false fame
He has fallen with an awful thud;
Insane, inbred, cruel and ugly beast,
He has signed his name with human blood.

Sure thing now that he has lost the race,
And the coward now will hunt his hole,
And into his own self-made mire
His beastly carcass it will roll. 5

Note the description of the Kaiser as 'insane, inbred, cruel and ugly' and the prediction that 'his beastly carcass' will be cast into 'his own self-made mire.' Clearly Burns has no interest in exercising a spirit of forgiveness where the Kaiser is concerned.

The Pacifist Challenge
In the book, I argue that pacifism was deemed by many people to be incompatible with the memory of the war. One could certainly pray for peace within the context of the myth, but to focus strictly on pacifism was criticized as naive, short-sighted, or harmful. Indeed, the First World War and pacifism seem to have been regarded as two entirely different and unrelated matters.

The problem, of course, was the pacifist's attempt to condemn war in a general sense without seeming to cast aspersions on the dead or the meaning of their sacrifice. More often than not, this attempt drew strong criticism.

At the unveiling of the Vancouver cenotaph in April 1924, for example, a small knot of people with placards saying things like 'Don't Be Fools' were charged by a group of onlookers. Cheers went up from the crowd as the banners were wrested from the protesters and trampled underfoot. 6 An earlier editorial in the Vancouver Sun seemed to summarize what the crowd might have felt: 'War is filth and misery and wounds and death, and they do well who emphasize this now. But emphasis distinguishes the part at the cost of the whole and war is more than these.' The editor went on to muse about arguments against militarism and how best to avoid war, but concludes that 'in sight of the cenotaph those controversies are for the moment forgotten.' 7

The implications of his remarks are clear: pacifism had no place in the memory of the war. So, when the Venerable Archdeacon J.C. Davidson was asked to take part in ceremony to decorate the graves of heroes of peace, a common feature of alternative Armistice Day observances, he was happy to accept. However Davidson, who had served as a chaplain during the war, was careful to point out that his participation in no way implied he was sympathetic to the pacifist interpretation of the war. 'This ceremony,' he stated emphatically, 'does not in the smallest degree detract from the honour which we all so gladly give to the soldiers of the Empire' 8. For Davidson, decorating the graves of heroes of peace was not an alternative to the official Armistice Day ceremonies, as the organizers of the ceremony might have hoped, but rather an adjunct to them.

For a final word on this subject, one might consider an address the Reverend Alan Shatford, the Anglican cleric who served overseas as a military chaplain, which described the thin line that pacifists tried to walk, too frequently without success:

Another reason why men are hesitant about condemning war too loudly is because they think a condemnation of war involves condemnation of all the men who took part in the war. Some of the advocates of peace have overshot the mark. They have impugned the motives and discredited the services of the men who served in the war. They tell us we ought to destroy our memorial tablets; we ought to stop putting up monuments; that we ought no longer to be paying tribute to the men who shared in so ghastly and tragic an experience as war.

But again let us pause and think, cannot we distinguish between the unworthiness of war and the worthiness of men who took part in it? ... I am ready at all times to bow my head in reverential silence before any cenotaph or any monument that gives honor to the men who sacrificed everything they had in the firm belief and conviction that they were fighting in a just cause, but that does not involve approval of war. We must remember the action of men in war however regrettable war is. 9

Suggestions for further reading

• E.J. Bowen, 'Sussex Peace Groups, 1914-45,' Journal of Southern History 9 (1987): 141-57
• Chris Chatfield and Peter van den Dungen, eds., Peace Movements and Political Cultures (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press 1988)
• Norman Ingram, The Politics of Dissent: Pacifism in France, 1919-39 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991)
• David C. Lukowitz, 'British Pacifists and Appeasement: The Peace Pledge Union,' Journal of Contemporary History 9 (1974): 115-27
• Michael Pugh, 'Pacifism and Politics in Britain, 1931-35,' Historical Journal 23 (1980): 641-56

Footnotes
1. Canadian Magazine 52/1 [Nov. 1918], 343.
2. Samuel Mathewson Baylis, Echoes of the Great War [Montreal: Witness Press 1919].
3. Cecil E. Selwyn, 'On Germany's "Lusitania" Medals,' in Rhyming Snapshots of an Idle Fellow (Toronto: Ryerson Press 1924), 71-2.
4. Arthur Charles Nash, Memories in Melody (Toronto: Ryerson Press 1920), 19.
5. David Burns, Random Writings (Brooklin, ON: private 1920) 2:101.
6. Vancouver Sun, 28 April 1924, 16.
7. Vancouver Sun, editorial, 26 April 1924, 8.
8. Globe, 11 November 1930, 14.
9. Major the Rev. A.P. Shatford, 'The Battle of Peace,' in Addresses Delivered before the Canadian Club of Toronto, 1931-32 (Toronto: Warwick Bros. and Rutter 1932), 3.