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Forecasts of Warfare in Fiction 1803–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

I. F. Clarke
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde

Extract

Fifty years ago the dreadful slaughter of Verdun and the Somme revealed to the still unsuspecting nations of Europe that the applied science of the machine gun, barbed wire and heavy artillery had changed the nature of warfare. Later on, when writers as different as Winston Churchill, Field-Marshall Lord French, Herbert Read and William Faulkner attempted to explain the general sense of stupefaction at the unprecedented massacres of the First World War, they pointed to a catastrophic gap between what had been expected and what came to pass. According to Winston Churchill, “for a year after the war had begun hardly anyone understood how terrific, how almost inexhaustible were the resources in force, in substance, in virtue, behind every one of the combatants” The military explanation came from the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces: “No previous experience, no conclusion I had been able to draw from campaigns in which I had taken part, or from a close study of the new conditions in which the war of today is waged, had led me to anticipate a war of positions. All my thoughts, all my prospective plans, all my possible alternatives of action, were concentrated upon a war of movement and manoeuvre.”.

Type
Concepts of War
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1967

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References

1 Churchill, Winston S., The World Crisis, 1911–1914 (London, 1923), I, p. 11.Google Scholar

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6 The European recollection of the Battle of Dorking remained very vivid, certainly up to the end of the century. For example, in 1882 the editor of the Bibliothèque populaire de la Suisse Romande introduced a story of a future war with a direct reference to Chesney: “La fameuse Bataille de Dorking, dont l'apparition il y a une dizaine d'années, fit tant de bruit en Angleterre, a eu de nombreuses imitations plus ou moins originales, plus ou moins spirituelles.” (Ire Année, November 1882, p. 265.) On another occasion a French translator introduced his version of The Battle of Port Said as “la description d'un combat naval imaginaire, sorte de Dorking maritime” (Garcon, A., Le Combat Naval de Port Said, Paris, 1883, p. 3Google Scholar). For a study of Chesney's achievement see: Clarke, I. F., “The Battle of Dorking” Victorian Studies, June 1965, pp. 308328.Google Scholar

7 Read, Herbert, Annals of Innocence and Experience (London, 1946), p. 118Google Scholar. A similar view appears in: Wrench, E., Struggle, 19141920 (London, 1935), pp. 112113Google Scholar. He writes: “My ideas of European wars were derived from panoramas of the Franco-Prussian conflict to be seen in continental cities. It was the war of tradition. Cavalry charged at the foe. When death came, it was a heroic death brought about by heroes on the other side.” Theodore Ropp – War in the Modern World (Durham, N.C., 1959), p. 187 – makes a similar point: “Consequently and unconsciously, the men in the ranks in 1914 had been led to believe that the coming war would be short and glorious. The resulting shock was to be one factor in the appearance of the greatest war literature in history.”Google Scholar

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9 Thackeray, W. M., Vanity Fair (London, 1956), p. 256Google Scholar. It is relevant to note here the comment Arthur Waugh makes on Victorian poetry: “The Victorian poets wrote of war as though it were something splendid and ennobling; but as a matter of fact they knew nothing whatever about it.” Tradition and Change (London, 1919), p. 150. One thinks of the lines on the Crimean War in Tennyson's Maud”. They begin: “And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd!” (Part III, IV).Google Scholar

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38 Rear-Admiral Colomb, P. and others, The Great War of 189– (London, 1893), p. 185.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., pp. 187–188.

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