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8. To Found a Nation

A Classless Society
If the spirit of the Canadian Corps could provide an antidote to labour unrest, it could also provide an escape from the paralysing effects of class discord. The whole notion of comradeship was predicated on an individual's worth rather than any external factors; performance, rather than wealth, education, or breeding, was the determinant of success. According to the myth, the happy few of the CEF were members of a classless society, a true meritocracy. W.B. Kerr, himself a veteran, made much of the levelling influence of the trenches. His memoir Shrieks and Crashes contends that Canadian troops saw their officers not as masters but directors, and the officers reciprocated this repect by declining to press for the letter of the law in deference and discipline. 1

In his view, rank did not presuppose the superiority of one man over another; the military hierarchy existed simply for the sake of administrative efficiency and expediency. Whatever the reality of this, it appealed to the Canadian imagination. One former officer identified a dominant characteristic of the CEF experience as 'the great chasm which has been bridged between officer and man.' 2 There had been no class distinctions at the front, insisted the Reverend C.C. Owen at the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial; 'all were heroes who played their part.' 3

The potential of the war experience as a leveller was the theme of a short story by schoolteacher and ex-soldier Henry Amoss. 'The Boy Who Came Home' is the tale of Harry James, an engineer whose enlistment drives a wedge between him and his intended, Jeanette Fuqua. She has inherited the political beliefs of her French-Canadian father, and concludes that the war is no concern of Canada's. Temporarily disillusioned with Harry, she takes up with Charles Effingham, an irrascible broker and budding war profiteer. Gradually, she becomes more like him, developing his love of business and growing excited by his supercilious assertions of class superiority. Harry's return from battle precipitates a crisis of faith for Jeanette in a local restaurant. As the trio dines, Harry runs into his battery commander, the son of a local tycoon who has been the goal of Jeanette's social manoeuvrings. When Harry and his former commander converse as equals, Jeanette is awestruck. She realizes that Effgingham's class posturings, which she has accepted in toto, is meaningless and that Harry is indeed the genuine article. The war has made it clear that a man can only be judged on his innate worth. 4

In many people's minds, there was no reason why this egalitarian spirit should not prevail in Canada after the war. Indeed, the idea of equality in death governed most of the commemorative activity which occurred after the war. The policy of the Imperial War Graves Commission certainly centred on it. The prohibition on repatriating remains was only partly due to logistical problems; it was also to guard against favouring the wealthy and influential, who could afford the repatriation costs 5

Furthermore, the decision to prohibit repatriation allowed the IWGC to enforce the use of identical headstones, regardless of rank or social standing. In an age when the wealth of an individual was often gauged by the size of the family mausoleum, identical headstone asserted that no one individual's sacrifice was greater than another's. 'They are all equal in death,' said Newton Rowell in the House of Commons. 6 The resulting uniformity had a striking impact on visitors, who could not help but be impressed by the cumulative effect of the identical headstones. For a doctor who toured the cemeteries after the war, they symbolized 'the true democracy of death.' 7

The true democracy of death was sustained on Canadian war memorials as well. Honour rolls most often list the names of the dead alphabetically, rather than by rank; very often the rank is not even given. In an honour roll unencumbered by rank, decorations, or other personal details, there is nothing to mark off one dead soldier from another. Officer is indistinguishable from private, solicitor from labourer. In death, such distinctions were deemed to be irrelevant. The memory of the war, then, could stand as a remedy for class dissent. The men of the CEF would return from the war with a healthy distrust of class distinctions and as living proof of the efficiency of a true meritocracy. Inspired by the soldiers' successes on the battlefields, Canadians would realize that the same principle should govern their lives. Class would eventually become obsolete, and Canadian society would evolve into the mould of the CEF: a classless society.

Suggestions for further reading

The War and Nationalism:
• Frans Coetzee, 'English Nationalism and the First World War,' History of European Ideas 15, no. 1-3 (1992): 363-8.
• Marilyn Shevin Coetzee, 'Popular Nationalism in Germany during World War I,' History of European Ideas 15, no. 1-3 (1992): 369-75.
• Bill Gamage, 'The Crucible: The Establishment of the Anzac Tradition,' in Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, ed. M. McKernan and M. Browne (Sydney: Allen and Unwin 1988): 147-66.
• Stephen Harris, 'From Subordinate to Ally: The Canadian Corps and National Autonomy,' Revue internationale d'histoire militaire 51 (1982): 109-30.
• Stuart Robson, 'Growing Up Is Hard To Do: Canadians in the World Wars,' in Journal of Canadian Studies 22, no. 4 (winter 1987-8): 142-52.
• G. Serle, 'The Digger Tradition and Australian Nationalism,' Meanjin Quarterly 101, no. 21-2 (1965): 149-58.
• J. Lee Thompson and John H. Thompson, 'Ralph Connor and the Canadian Identity,' Queen's Quarterly 79 (1972): 159-70.
• Alistair Thomson, 'The Anzac Legend: Exploring National Myth and Memory in Australia,' in Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, eds., Myths We Live By (London: Routledge 1990), 73-82.
• Mary Vipond, 'The Nationalist Network: English Canada's Intellectuals and Artists in the 1920s,' Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 5 (spring 1980): 32-52.
• Mary Vipond, 'Nationalism and Nativism: The Native Sons of Canada in the 1920s,' Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 9 (spring 1982): 81-95.
• Jay Winter, 'Nationalism, the Visual Arts and the Myth of War Enthusiasm in 1914,' History of European Ideas 15, vol. 1-3 (1992): 357-62.

The War as Leveller:
• G.D. Sheffield, 'The Effect of the Great War on Class Relations in Britain: The Career of Major Christopher Stone, DSO, MC,' War and Society 7, no. 1 (May 1989): 87-105.

Veterans and Radicalism:
• David Englander, 'Troops and Trade Unions in 1919,' History Today 37 (1987): 8-13.
• David Englander, 'The National Union of ex-Servicemen and the Labour Movement, 1918-1920,' History 77 (1991): 24-42.
• Raymond Evans, '"Some furious outbursts of riot": Returned Soldiers and Queensland's "Red Flag" Disturbances, 1918-1919,' War & Society 3 (1985): 75-98.
• David Hood, 'Adelaide's First "Taste of Bolshevism": Returned Soldiers and the 1918 Peace Day Riots,' Historical Society of South Australia 15 (1987): 42-53.
• Stephen R. Ward, 'Intelligence Surveillance of British Ex-Servicemen, 1918-1920,' Historical Journal 16 (1973): 179-88.

The War as a Moulder of Youth:
• Paul Axelrod, 'The Student Movement of the 1930s,' in Youth, University and Canadian Society: Essays in the Social History of Higher Education, ed. Paul Axelrod and John G. Reid (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1989).
• Deborah Hull, '"The Old Lie": Teaching Children About the War,' Melbourne Historical Journal 20, no. 1 (1990): 88-110.
• Barry M. Moody, 'Acadia and the Great War,' in Youth, University and Canadian Society: Essays in the Social History of Higher Education, ed. Paul Axelrod and John G. Reid (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1989).
• Robert M. Stamp, 'Empire Day in the Schools of Ontario: The Training of Young Imperialists,' Journal of Canadian Studies 8, no. 3 (August 1973), 32-42.
• Ian Willis, 'Patriotism and Education in New South Wales,' Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 80, no. 1&2 (1994): 74-90.

The War and Ethnic Minorities:
• Art Grenke, 'The German Community of Winnipeg and the English-Canadian Response to World War One,' Canadian Ethnic Studies 20, no. 1 (1988): 21-44.
• Raymond J.A. Huel, 'The Public School as a Guardian of Anglo-Saxon Traditions: The Saskatchewan Experience, 1913-18,' in Ethnic Canadians: Culture and Education, ed. Martin L. Kovacs (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center 1978).
• Brenda Lee-Whiting, '"Enemy Aliens": German-Canadians on the Home Front,' The Beaver 69, no. 5 (Oct.-Nov. 1989): 53-8.
• James W. St.G. Walker, 'Race and Recruitment in World War I: Enlistment of Visible Minorities in the CEF,' in Canadian Historical Review 70, no. 1 (March 1989), 1-26.

Footnotes
1. W.B. Kerr, Shrieks and Crashes: Being Memories of Canada's Corps, 1917 (Toronto: Hunter-Rose 1929), 137-8.
2. Lieut. Walter H. Kirchner, 'The Cemetery at Villers-au-Bois', Canada in Khaki 3, 118.
3. Quoted in W.W. Murray, ed., Epic of Vimy (Ottawa: Legionary 1936), 88.
4. Henry Amoss, 'The Boy Who Came Back,' Canadian Magazine 58 (1921-22): 415-23.
5. House of Commons, Debates, 3 April 1919, 1107.
6. House of Commons, Debates, 1 April 1919, 1058.
7. George Gibson, 'Seven Years Afterwards,' Canadian Medical Association Journal 16, no. 1 (Jan. 1926), 79.