Three Poems of Isaac Rosenberg Read

Self-Portrait in Steel Helmet (1916)
Isaac Rosenberg, 1890–1918

Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet and artist born to parents of Jewish heritage, who had immigrated from Lithuania. His Poems from the Trenches (printed posthumously in 1922)  are recognized as some of the most outstanding poetry written during the First World War.

In 1915, lacking any job prospects and with the war in Germany heating up, Rosenberg decided to enlist in the Bantam Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. He was sent to the Western Front in 1916, and would never rise above the rank of private. On 1 April 1 1918, while on night patrol south of Arras, Rosenberg was killed in battle. His body was never found. 

Break of Day in the Trenches 

The Immortals

Returning, We Hear the Larks 

Ten Thoughts from Pacifist Romain Rolland Inspired by the War

Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland (born 29 January 1866, Clamecy, France—died 30 December 1944, Vézelay) was a French novelist, dramatist, and essayist, an idealist who was deeply involved with pacifism, the search for world peace, and the analysis of artistic genius. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.

In 1912, after a brief career in teaching art and musicology, he resigned to devote all his time to writing. He collaborated with Charles Péguy in the journal Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, where he first published his best-known novel, Jean-Christophe, 10 vol. (1904–12). For this and for his pamphlet Au-dessus de la mêlée (1915; Above the Battle), a call for France and Germany to respect truth and humanity throughout their struggle in World War I, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. His thought was the centre of a violent controversy and was not fully understood until 1952 with the posthumous publication of his Journal des années de guerre, 1914–1919 (Journal of the War Years, 1914–1919). In 1914 he moved to Switzerland, where he lived until his return to France in 1937. In the 1930s, Rolland grew closer and closer to the Parti communiste français (PCF), the French Communist Party, and became part of the anti-fascist movement. 

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• I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.

• Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also love theirs. . . What ideal have you held up to the devotion of these youths so eager to sacrifice themselves? Their mutual slaughter! 

• A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose. 

• One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her!

• Europe is like a besieged town. Fever is raging. Whoever will not rave like the rest is suspected. And in these hurried times when justice cannot wait to study evidence, every suspect is a traitor.

• It must be admitted that on neither side have they brought honor to the cause of reason, which they have not been able to protect against the winds of violence and folly.

• We cannot stop the war, but we can make it less bitter. There are medicines for the body. We need medicines for the soul, to dress the wounds of hatred and vengeance by which the world is being poisoned. 

• Of what use are such as cannot serve! Yet these are the most innocent victims of this war. They have not taken part in it, and nothing had prepared them for such calamities. 

• O young men that shed your blood with so generous a joy for the starving earth! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, making enemies of those who should be brothers; all of you, marching to your death, are dear to me. 

• The newspapers of both countries give publicity only to prejudiced stories unfavorable to the enemy. One would imagine that they devote themselves to collecting only the worst cases, in order to preserve the atmosphere of hatred. . .

He Stands for All the Fallen: Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, 95th Aero Squadron–Video

(A Tip –  Enable Captions! Narrator is excellent, but speaks rapidly.)

A Canadian Classic: Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan

Devastated Halifax, 6 December 1917

By Hugh MacLennan

New Canadian Library, 2007 (1941)

Susanne Marshall, Reviewer

Originally presented in The Canadian Encyclopedia 

Barometer Rising was the first novel published by Hugh MacLennan, arguably Canada's most significant novelist of the middle of the 20th century and certainly its most recognized. First published  in 1941 amidst the turmoil of the Second World War, the novel is set during the First World War, not on the battlefields of Europe but in Canada before, during, and after the Halifax Explosion, which destroyed much of that city's north end on the morning of 6 December 1917. MacLennan himself was a survivor of the explosion and drew on his own memories as a boy of ten who witnessed the destruction. Barometer Rising marks a shift in MacLennan's writing from works with international themes—which failed to find publishers—to the decidedly nationalist theme that occupies his major works.

Barometer Rising is an allegory of Canada's shift away from the political and cultural influences of colonial, imperial Britain to a decolonized independence and emergent national consciousness throughout the course of the First World War. The mythological template of Homer's Odyssey is clearly in evidence throughout the book; the tale of a hero's return and redemption is also the narrative of a culture's coming of age. Protagonist Neil MacRae returns to Nova Scotia from the battlefields of Europe, where his body, mind, and reputation have been battered. His morally bankrupt Anglophile uncle, Geoffrey Wain, the former colonel of his regiment, has blamed him for the failure of an attack, and MacRae is under threat of prosecution and execution for cowardice. 

While MacRae and Penelope Wain, who is the colonel's daughter and MacRae's former lover, seek to clear his name, Col. Wain seeks to bury the past and profit from the opportunities the war presents. The explosion literally blows the old order apart, disintegrating its cynicism and hollow ideals and affording MacRae the chance to emerge an active hero for a new generation and a country on the brink of renewal. At the end of the novel, MacRae and Penelope Wain are poised to depart from "old" Halifax for the dynamic potential of the westward regions of the country.

Certainly, the novel has had its share of criticism. George Woodcock, classifying it as "romantic realism," noted MacLennan's relative conservatism, in contrast to literary movements of the time; his works' didacticism and sometimes simplistic characterization; and their reliance on local colour and on coincidence. Barometer Rising has aged better than many of MacLennan's works, nevertheless contemporary critics and readers often find the quality and tone of his nationalism jarring. Barometer Rising suggests the new role of Canada is to be a bridge between Britain and America . . .

Order HERE

Nevertheless, Barometer Rising's immediate popularity—sufficient to allow MacLennan to leave his teaching post at Lower Canada College—has not waned; it remains beloved by Canadian readers who savour MacLennan's skilled and powerful evocations of the atmosphere of wartime Halifax, of the chaotic horror of the explosion and its aftermath, and the heroic efforts of the survivors. Furthermore, by the middle of the 20th century, Canadian readers were hungry for Canadian subjects; Barometer Rising announced a turn in literary production in Canada to consciously Canadian stories about the growing nation and its people, which continued in a flowering of Canadian literary nationalism in the following decades.

Susanne Marshall

After the Marne—A Second War of Movement Ensued

A series of running battles were fought in the race to the sea. For a month and [a] half both armies slipped north leaving a path of total destruction called the "Kingdom of Death."

Charles Casimer Krawczyk, Remembrance: As Long As We Live

Fall 1914: French Cavalry on the Move

Clearly the first month of the war was one of movement featuring long marches, corresponding retreats, and brief holding actions. In month two, there was the Battle of the Marne and the retreat to the Aisne, where things started to get bogged down trench-wise, as was also happening over in the Vosges Mountains near the Swiss border. However, there were three areas where the combatants still saw opportunities for mobile warfare and potentially decisive action: Flanders, Lorraine, and in the area just west and north of where the main forces had found themselves bogged down, which would become known as the locale of the "Race to the Sea."

After the September 1914 Battle of the Marne, big sections of the battlefields in France and Flanders seemed to be "locking up," especially along the Aisne River and in the Alsace. None of the commanders, however, could accept the stalemate, so improvised efforts were attempted to seek a decision via a breakthrough or flanking maneuver in the post-Marne Second War of Movement. Alas, these attempts failed and left the combatants doomed to the "Long War" of 1914–18. Nevertheless, a close study of these operations reveals that within them were both the same lost opportunities for victory and the war-shaping events characteristic for the longer struggle that took place in the First War of Movement, when the Schlieffen Plan and Plan XVII were guiding the commanders.

Memorial in Souchez (Artois) Commemorating
Fighting in October 1914

Alas, no one would gain an advantage in the Race to the Sea. One last opportunity to avoid total trench warfare would fail in Flanders on the last day of October 1914. The Western Front was in lockdown. It would not move dramatically until the first Ludendorff Offensive launched on 21 March 1918. The forces in France and Flanders, the men being mobilized, and tens of thousands of schoolboys not yet aware of their military destinies, were condemned to 1,236 days of trench warfare and many failed attempts to break out of it.

Source:  March 2021 St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

As War Approached Progressives Came to Power in America

Click on Image to Enlarge

The 1912 Presidential Candidates

Dennis Cross

The election year 1912 in the United States was one of the most consequential in the country's history. For the first time, a presidential election pitted three presidents against each other: the incumbent, his predecessor, and the man who prevailed over both of them to become the next president. After leaving the White House in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt embarked on an extended big game hunting trip to Africa. He returned to the United States in 1910 to a tumultuous welcome and news of dissension within his party.  The progressive movement was gathering strength and Republican progressives were increasingly disenchanted with William Howard Taft, Roosevelt's successor and protégé.  By early 1912 Roosevelt was edging closer to challenging Taft for the party's nomination, and by March his “hat [was] in the ring.” One of the measures advocated by progressives, choosing delegates to party conventions by primaries rather than state party conventions, had been adopted by several states. Roosevelt entered and won a number of primaries, but Taft controlled the party machinery in most of the other states. Going into the convention, the outcome would depend on the resolution of challenges to the credentials of delegates supporting the president. 

The Democratic field was even more wide open. William Jennings Bryan won the party's nomination in three of the last four election years, starting with his “cross of gold” speech at the Democratic convention in 1896. In 1912 he was still the leading progressive voice in the party, but no longer an active candidate for the nomination.  Some delegations supported favorite son candidates, and some arrived at the convention uncommitted, effectively controlled by local organizations like New York's Tammany Hall. Four candidates led the field. The leading competitors for the progressive vote were Speaker of the House Champ Clark of Missouri, a longtime Bryan supporter, and Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, a relative newcomer to the progressive cause. Governor Judson Harmon of Ohio was the candidate of northern conservatives, while Representative Oscar Underwood of Alabama was the candidate of the Deep South.  Governor Wilson surged to an early lead in the pre-convention campaign, but more recently Speaker Clark won some important primaries and prevailed in a number of state party conventions. He had the lead in the delegate count going into the convention.  

The Republicans went first. At their convention in June in Chicago, Roosevelt forces mounted challenges to the Taft delegations, but the convention chairman, Elihu Root (secretary of war and of state under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, and since 1909 a United States senator from New York), made rulings that resulted in those challenges being rejected. Irate at what they considered theft, most of the Roosevelt delegates walked out of the convention, met with Roosevelt at a hall across town, and resolved to form a new Progressive Party with Roosevelt at its head. Back in the convention, the remaining delegates nominated President Taft for a second term.  

The Democrats arrived in Baltimore for their convention the following week, anticipating a protracted fight for the nomination. In addition to the scattered field of candidates, the Democratic Party, unlike the Republicans, required a two-thirds majority to decide on a nominee. Speaker Clark led on the first several ballots and seemed to have the nomination within his grasp when, on the tenth ballot, Tammany Hall switched New York's vote from Harmon to Clark, giving him a majority. The South held firm for Underwood, however, and during the roll call on the 14th ballot Bryan announced his support for Wilson. A gradual slippage of support from Clark to Wilson followed, and Wilson was finally nominated on the 46th ballot.  

In August, the Republican progressives returned to Chicago where they nominated Roosevelt by acclamation as the standard bearer of their new party. The bitter split in the Republican Party virtually guaranteed a Democratic victory. Taft, a victim of the progressive temper of the times, was unlikely to be reelected in any event, and  Roosevelt's best hope was frustrated by the Democrats' nomination of Wilson, who  was well positioned to compete effectively for the progressive vote. In the general election, although he won less than 42 percent of the popular vote, Wilson swept the Electoral College with 435 votes to 88 for Roosevelt and only eight for Taft. The Socialist Party, led by Eugene Debs, won almost a million popular votes, the best showing in its history. 

Source: The Journal of the World War One Historical Association, Fall 2012

Map Series #27 France's Red Zones

"Access Forbidden" on the Verdun Battlefield

More than a century after the end of WWI, an area the size of Paris is still off limits. This archipelago of Red Zones remains pockmarked with deadly explosives and chemicals. They are silent witnesses to the long-lasting environmental impact of modern warfare. In some parts of France, World War I has never ended. These are the Zones rouges–an archipelago of former battlegrounds so pockmarked and polluted by war that, more than a century after the end of hostilities, they remain unfit to live or even farm on.

By 1919, the French Ministry for the Liberated Territories had divided the afflicted areas into three zones, depending on the degree of destruction:

• Zones vertes ("Green Zones"), with minimal damage;

• Zones jaunes ("Yellow Zones"), with heavy but limited damage; and

• Zones rouges ("Red Zones"), usually closest to the former front lines, which were completely destroyed.

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Green and Yellow Zones were returned to civilian use relatively early. The Red Zones were different. They were, in the words of one official postwar report, “completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible.” Red zones were cleared only superficially and mostly just closed off.

In 1919, these Red Zones covered around 690 square miles (1,800 km2). Here, the ground remained saturated with unexploded ordnance. High concentrations of heavy metals and chemicals in the soil further increased the risk to life and limb. For reasons of safety and sanitation, these areas were strictly off-limits for housing, farming, and even forestry.

By 1927, the Red Zones had been reduced by 70 percent to around 190 square miles (490 sq/km), in part due to pressure from local farmers, who wanted to return their fields and pastures to productivity and profit.

An Innocent Looking Trail—But Access Forbidden

Today, the Red Zone archipelago has shrunk to about 40 square miles (100 sq/km), about the size of Paris. Yet it’s unlikely that these islands will disappear soon. They are the most tenacious residue of a long-lasting environmental problem.

Sources: "La terre des régions dévastées"–Journal d'Agriculture Pratique 34 (1921);  Big Think, 7 February 2021; Atlas Obscura

Growing Concern in Germany—Intelligence Reports About Russia in 1910 & 1911

Tsar Nicholas II Inspecting Pilot Candidates for the Expanding Imperial Air Service

By Terence Zuber

The best indicator of the improvements in the Russian political, economic, and military situation in 1910 and 1911 is to be found in the German intelligence summaries. The Germans thought that the Russians had not only repaired the damage from the Manchurian War and internal disorders of 1904–05 but were also in the midst of industrial economic take-off, the Russian economy booming and providing vastly improved material conditions  for the Russian military. 

The German 1910 intelligence summary said that the combat power of the Russian army had increased significantly. The Russians had conducted a massive reorganization: reserve cadres and fortress garrisons had been transformed into maneuver units. Together with some existing active-army formations, this allowed the creation of four new corps in European Russia (XXIII–XXV and III Caucasus), as well as two new corps in Siberia (IV and V Siberian), producing a significant gain in combat power with no increase in peacetime strength. The peacetime garrisons of a number of units were moved out of Poland to the east to co-locate with their recruiting districts, allowing a faster mobilization. Although there was little improvement in the Russian rail net in the west in 1910, most of the new construction being in the east, the Russian rail net was so far developed that a peacetime concentration of units in Poland was no longer necessary—they could be deployed from the interior quickly by rail. The shift to peacetime garrisons in the interior of Russia therefore did not reduce the Russian threat to East Prussia.  

The Russians were de-emphasizing fixed fortifications in favour of mobile warfare. The Russians—still replacing stocks of equipment drawn down for the Manchurian War—allotted 100 million gold marks for this purpose in 1911. The Russians expanded the use of large-scale practice mobilizations: only 86,000 marks had been allocated to this purpose in 1910, while 259,000 marks were was also allocated in 1911. 

Russian  Model 1910 107mm Siege Gun

Their  artillery improving at lightning speed. By the end of 1911 the field artillery batteries were equipped with modern systems (recoil brakes, armoured shields, aiming circles). By the spring of 1911 each of the active-army corps would be equipped with a section (two batteries) of Krupp 12cm howitzers. On order for delivery in the spring of 1912 were 180 Schneider 15cm howitzers, which would give the Russians a capability similar to the German heavy field artillery (Schwere Artillerie des Feldheeres), which was one of the trumps of the German army. On order for the Russian siege artillery were 180 Schneider 10.7cm cannons. The gun was initially developed and produced by the French arms manufacturer Schneider, but was later built by the Putilovski and Obukhov plants in Saint Petersburg.

Internal security and in Russia was good. Discipline in the army continued to improve, although there were still incidents of revolutionary agitation. The harvests in 1909 1910 had been good, and for the first time in many years the Russian government enjoyed a budget surplus. Overall budgetary spending in 1911 was to increase by 230 million marks. The nationalistic majority in the Duma had approved increasing defence expenditures without demur.  

Ready to March–Russian Infantry

The German intelligence estimate for 1911 noted that the Russian army was making great efforts to speed up mobilization and deployment, adopting procedures similar to those of the French army. It was estimated that the Russians would mobilize 34 reserve divisions in European Russia and three in East Asia. The 1911 practice mobilizations were thought to have produced good results. The Russian active army consisted of 37 corps (74 divisions), so that with the 34 reserve divisions the Germans expected the Russian army—fully deployed in the west—would included 108 divisions. In the 1910–11 Aufmarsch I Ost [Deployment Plant] the Germans intended to deploy 15 divisions in the east and the Austrians had 48 divisions, for 63 divisions in total. The Austro-Germans would be effectively outnumbered 2 to 1.

From 1912: "Planning for War" by Terence Zuber, Journal of the World War One Historical Association, Fall 2012

A One-Man Wave of Terror Struck America in 1915

Bomb Damage in the U.S. Senate

Shortly before midnight on Friday2 July 1915 police responded to the U.S. Capitol where an explosion had just rocked the Senate wing. Fortunately they found no fatalities–a byproduct of the fact that Congress was not in session and the building was lightly staffed at night. But, there was plenty of destruction and, obviously, great concern about security.

The next evening, Washingtonians opened their Evening Star newspaper to find a peculiar letter under the headline "Letter Received by the Star Thought to Have Bearing on the Explosion." The diatribe began "Unusual times and circumstances call for unusual means" and quickly moved into a critique of American businesses supplying warring European countries with armaments.

Paradoxically, the letter claimed that the attack on the Capitol was a call for peace "Europe needs enough noncontraband material to give us prosperity. Let us not sell her EXPLOSIVES! Let each nation make her own man-killing machines. Sorry I had to use explosives. (Never again.) It is the export kind and ought to make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for blood money. This explosion is the exclamation point to my appeal for Peace!"

The letter was signed, "R. Pearce" and included a postscript: "We would, of course, not sell to the Germans either, if they could buy here." It had been postmarked less than two hours before the bomb went off.

Beside the letter ran an account of the other big news of the day.

The morning after the Capitol explosion, banker J.P. Morgan had been attacked in his summer home on Long Island, New York, by an assailant who carried two revolvers and a briefcase packed with dynamite. Morgan suffered two flesh wounds before house servants overpowered the man and tied him up on the front lawn to await police.

Erich Muenter

When Glen Cove, New York, detectives arrested him, the gunman identified himself as Cornell University German Professor Frank Holt. He told authorities that he had never intended to hurt Morgan–he just wanted to scare him. In a statement to the Justice of the Peace, Holt claimed, "My motive in coming here was to try to force Mr. Morgan to use his influence with the manufacturers of munitions in the United States and with the millionaires who are financing the war loans to have an embargo put on shipments of war munitions so as to relieve the American people of complicity in the deaths of thousands of our European brothers.

District of Columbia Chief Detective Robert Boardman found the similarities between Pearce's letter and Holt's statement curious. After applying pressure the investigators got Holt to confess. It turned out that his name wasn’t even Frank Holt. . .  or R. Pearce. It was Erich Muenter. And Erich Muenter had quite a past. He was a committed German Nationalist and connected with Germany's network of saboteurs in America. Unfortunately, on 6 July he committed suicide in his jail cell and took many secrets with him.

Source article from WETA Television Network's Blog

Remembering a Veteran: Captain D'Urban Victor Armstrong, 151 Squadron RFC/RAF

Born in the Colony of Natal on 26 July 1897, and educated at Hilton College, D'Urban Victor Armstrong joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1915. He was assigned to No. 60 Squadron the following year; while with them, he scored his first victory on 9 November 1916. His next posting was to No. 44 Squadron on home defense duties. His last assignment was to 151 Squadron.

He was one of the first night fighter victors in aerial warfare, as 151 Squadron was the Royal Air Force's first night fighter squadron. Armstrong was credited with four nighttime victories between 29 June and 17 September 1918, including a Gotha G bomber on 24 August near Bouvincourt-en-Vermandois, France. Two days after war's end, Armstrong was killed in a flying accident while flying aerobatics in his Sopwith Camel. He was awarded the DFC for a night patrol in a driving rainstorm. The citation described him as "a brilliant pilot of exceptional skill."

His death was strikingly described in Cecil Lewis's Sagittarius Rising 

I suppose everyone who saw him would agree that Armstrong was the finest pilot in the Force. He was a past master at that most dangerous and spectacular business of stunting near the ground. He would take his Camel off and go straight into a loop. The Camel, if the engine held, gained about ten feet on it. If the engine spluttered or missed, he was for it. . . Then, one day, he was spinning down to the ground, with him a favorite method of descent; but he left it too late, pulled out, thought he had not enough room, jerked back the stick before the machined had flying speed, went into another spin, and struck the ground. He was killed outright. They found his tongue on the engine.

 

Sources: Biographical sketch from Wikipedia, photo from the Imperial War Museum.

 

French Generals of the Great War: Leading the Way

Tomb of Maréchal Foch, Les Invalides

Edited by Jonathan Krause and William Philpott 

Pen & Sword Military, 2023

Roy A. Prete, Reviewer

This book is designed to fill a significant gap in the literature on French generals who led the French Army to victory in the First World War and to assess how they adapted strategically, operationally, and tactically to the changed condition of industrial war. Drawing on the rich material now available in French military and political archives, this pioneer volume, written by a team of experts, gives us a fresh appraisal of the performance of 12 French generals, from the highest to less prominent levels of command.

To those schooled in the notion that the French Army started out in the First World War with a mistaken idea of modern warfare—that the appropriate response to increased firepower was l’offensive à outrance—and was slow to adapt to the demands of the new industrial warfare of the 20th century, the subtitle, “Leading the Way,” in this volume on French generals may come as a surprise. But interpretations have changed, particularly over the last two decades. The publication in 2003 of Anthony Clayton’s Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914–18 gave a quite favorable portrayal of the performance of the French Army in the First World War, while the paradigm-changing volume of Michel Goya in 2004, La chair et l’acier: l’armée francaise et l’invention de la guerre moderne (1914–1918) (available in translation since 2018), affirmed that “France created the first modern army” with more tanks and airplanes in 1918 than any other.

Appraisals of the performance of the French Army and the quality of its leadership have continued to rise since these publications, with the outstanding scholarly studies by Robert A. Doughty and Elizabeth Greenhalgh on the French Army in the First World War, and the latter’s excellent tome on Ferdinand Foch.  The French Army, in fact, was the mainstay of the Entente coalition, and even after the mutinies of 1917, played a decisive role in 1918, in repelling German advances north of the Somme and on the Marne and in the subsequent Allied march to victory.

The transformed army was able to respond to German infiltration tactics, and with its British and American allies, smash through German trenches in a victorious counteroffensive. In this optic, the performance of French generals, their challenges, their defeats and their triumphs, and their adaptation to the new conditions of trench warfare is entirely apropos.

Order HERE

Distinguished British scholars Jonathan Krause and William Philpott have originated and edited this notable volume. Krause, who is known for his work on the development of French tactics in the Second Battle of Artois in 1915, fittingly wrote the chapter on General Philippe Pétain. Known for his extensive publications on the First World War, including Anglo-French command relations, attrition warfare and his two books on the Battle of the Somme, Philpott has contributed four chapters on French generals, including those on Joseph Joffre, commander-in-chief of the French Army through 1916 and Marie Émile Fayolle, who was Army Group Commander next to the British Army in 1918. In a first-rate introductory chapter, the book’s editors explore in detail the “Leadership and Learning” process of battlefield experience, the evaluation of successes and failures, and adaptations that lay at the base of the transformation of the French Army. Their assessment is that, given the size of the problems associated with the maneuver of mass armies and the increased firepower on the battlefield, these leaders used a fruitful method of assimilating evidence learned from courses taught at the École supérièure de guerre [Superior War College] to develop the tactics, tactical organisation, technologies and logistics to breach the trenches and restore movement on the battlefield. . . 

While this treatment of 12 generals does not exhaust the list of French generals who contributed significantly to the French war effort, it provides a major contribution to the literature representing the “range, ability and achievement of the men who led France and her allies to victory” (p. x).

Roy A. Prete

Source: Prete, Roy A. Review of  French Generals of the Great War: Leading the Way  edited by Jonathan Krause and William Philpott. Canadian Military History 33, 1 (2024)

The Great War on the Italian Front–A Chronology

Prosperity in War—Uncertainty in Peace: The Case of American Wheat Farmers

Idaho Wheat Farmer c.1920

Robert Marcell, Homestead National Monument of America

Once war erupted in Europe in 1914, farmers in the United States stood to make significant financial gains from the fighting going on across the Atlantic. In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan wrote that:

[N]o group of people took a more dramatic leap in lifestyle or prosperity, in such a short time, than wheat farmers on the Great Plains. In less than ten years, they went from subsistence living to small business-class wealth, from working a few hard acres with horses and hand tools to being masters of wheat estates, directing harvests with wondrous new machines, at a profit margin in some cases that was ten times the cost of production. In 1910, the price of wheat stood at eighty cents a bushel, good enough for anyone who had outwitted a few dry years to make enough money to get through another year and even put something away. Five years later, with the world grain supplies pinched by the Great War, the price had more than doubled. Farmers increased production by 50 percent. 

When the Turkish navy blocked the Dardenelles, they did a favor for dryland wheat farmers that no one could have imagined. Europe had relied on Russia for export grain. With Russian shipments blocked, the United States stepped in, and issued a proclamation to the plains: plant more wheat to win the war. And for the first time, the government guaranteed the price, at two dollars a bushel, through the war, backed by the wartime food administrator, a multimillionaire public servant named Herbert Hoover. Wheat was no longer a staple of a small family but a commodity with a price guarantee and a global market.

During the war, many small wheat farmers were making more money than the factory workers on Ford assembly lines (and about eight times more at that). Wealthier farmers, such as Kansas farmer Ida Watkins with her 2,000 acres of wheat, could do even better. Watkins bragged that she had made a profit of $75,000 one year, which was “bigger than the salary of any baseball player but Babe Ruth and more money than the president of the United States made.”

When the Dust Bowl Came to American Farms c.1930
(Bettmann/Getty)

The reason that this is in Egan’s award-winning book on the Dust Bowl is, of course, because this ramped-up farming—continued well after the end of the war—is what led in part to that great environmental catastrophe. . . Indeed, one of the questions raised by this paper is what role did [the war] play in the “Plow-Up” of the 1920s that led in part to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s? Nevertheless, with the future unknown, for the period of the war itself and in the years that shortly followed it seemed like a very good time to [farm].

Source:  Adapted from "World War I and the Homestead Act of 1862: When Farmers Fought and Soldiers Farmed for America’s Homestead States," by Robert Marcell, National Park Service Website

Reconsidering Reds

By Editor/Publisher Mike Hanlon 

It has been [over] 40 years since the release of Reds, the much-honored 1981 glorification of the Russian Revolution produced, written, directed, and starred in by Warren Beatty. It's rather hard for a proud former Cold Warrior like myself to recommend a film that was produced by people who apparently had neither read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago nor grasped the catastrophic costs of the Russian Revolution—20 million deaths in the Soviet Union, 94 million worldwide, according to the authoritative Black Book of Communism. Nonetheless, I think a view of the film (with some major qualifications) might be worth the 3 hours+ investment of your time to view it, even—maybe especially—if you saw it four decades ago.

Beatty plays a left-tilting Harvard-educated journalist from Portland, OR, named John Reed, who found himself in the middle of the Russian Revolution and won fame for an instant-history of that catastrophe, titled Ten Days That Shook the World. His sympathetic treatment earned him the distinction of being the only American buried within the Kremlin walls. 

For me, the outstanding quality of the movie—and which makes it worth re-watching (despite what I'm writing otherwise)—is Beatty's directing, for which he was deservedly awarded the "Best Director" Academy Award. He shows an impressive feel for the scale of historical epic film-making and the need to coherently tie many elements and points-of-view together neatly. The movie still has a fresh look, like it could have been filmed last week, and his on-location selections of Helsinki for Petrograd and Spain's Sierra Nevada for the Caucasus work perfectly as well. The viewer can't help feeling he's watching a grand and important story, artfully presented. When I viewed it again recently, I had the sense I was experiencing an interpretation (the winning side's view) of the Russian Revolution complementary to David Lean's Dr. Zhivago.

Director Beatty interweaves four elements to tell his story, which I will describe and comment on separately:

1. The Love Story: Reed's affair and marriage with Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) is the pervasive narrative, permeating the entire movie. It's not a compelling or interesting relationship for me as Louise implausibly morphs from candidacy for the "Most Annoying Girlfriend on Earth" title (first hour) to "Most Devoted and Heroic Lovemate" (third hour).

2. Interminable, Boring, and Pompous Radical Intellectual Debates and Arguments: Talk, talk, talk. Fast forward through these scenes. (Better yet, just skip the first hour. It's filled with Louise and Greenwich Village posers.)

3. The Russian Revolution: After that dreadful first hour, Jack and Louise arrive in Russia just in time for the October Revolution. This is the best part of the movie, beautifully filmed, capturing the intense energy of the moment, and revealing the collective awareness of the participants and observers that important history was being made.

4. The Witnesses: The main narrative is supplemented with documentary-style, talking-head cut-ins and voice overs by 32 elderly, mostly left-wing, political and literary "celebrities" who were around at the time of the revolution, some of whom knew Jack or Louise. They are uninhibited and often informative, with on-point anecdotes, bitchy gossip (wow, lefty women have really long memories), and out-of-the-blue non sequiturs. I particularly enjoyed a still sex-addled Henry Miller, the astute Dame Rebecca West, and Georgie Jessel singing his favorite World War One tunes.

Available by DVD or streaming for a fee from Amazon and Netflix.

Source:  Originally presented in the May 2020 St. Mihiel Trip-Wire

Conan Doyle Visits the Argonne Forest

Warfare in a Forest by the Editor of the Daily Chronicle

With the French Army in the Argonne

Along the battle-line in the West, stretching from the Belgian coast to the Swiss frontier, the war is carried on under varying conditions. The configuration of the country and the nature of the soil determine the weapons mostly in use and the tactics employed. Artillery duels take place over the whole line; but the form of attack and defence, when the contending forces come to close quarters in the trenches, depends on the nature of the ground. Take, for example, the forest-clad mountains of the Argonne, where the fighting has developed on special lines. I have just spent several days with the French armies on this romantic and picturesque battlefield. The Argonne links up with Verdun on the East and with Champagne on the West, but unlike these historic names, will not be the scene of another big battle.

Where War Might Last a Century

The great forest consists of sturdy oaks and beeches and firs, with a thick tangle of undergrowth, mountain, valley, and plateau alternating. The soil is soft clay, admirably suited for entrenching, tunnelling, and mine warfare — when it is dry. As an outside observer, I do not see why the war in this area should not go on for a hundred years, without any decisive result. What is happening now is precisely what happened last year. The only difference is that the trenches are deeper, dug-outs better made, tunnels are longer, and the charges of explosives heavier. The armies are fighting Nature in the Argonne. The great oak and beech trees have to be completely destroyed before any advance can be made. Shells smash the trees, but leave broken trunks and torn and twisted branches as an impenetrable barrier between the foes.

They cannot be destroyed by liquid fire, as there is equal danger to both sides from such a conflagration. Explosives — and sometimes there are fifty tons — tear up the trees by the roots, hurl them into the air, and excavate a huge crater; but obstacles remain which make an immediate advance almost impossible.

Fate of Picturesque Villages

Machine guns and rifle bullets would be like a hail storm amid the trees, but would cause few casualties unless men exposed themselves.

There was very severe fighting for the possession of the forest in the autumn of 1914, after the retreat from the battle of the Marne, and before trenches could be dug and big guns brought up. The French drove the army of the Crown Prince and the Wurtemburgers back with rifle and bayonet, in the struggle for the possession of the forest. Some of the most beautiful villages, old, quaint, and picturesque, were burnt by the retreating enemy, and many of them were afterwards destroyed by the furious fighting which took place in this region. The line of. battle, as finally settled, cuts across the forest, leaving the great part of it in the hands of the French.

Thatch Huts for Poilus

Burden of the Helmet

Let us visit one of the divisions which have held-back the enemy in the Argonne. Starting from Sainte Menehould you are motored along the valley, passing villages which have been burnt by the enemy or have suffered from his artillery. There are many soldiers on the road. There are encampments in the woods where huts have been built or tents erected — "nigger villages" as the French call them.

You notice that the huts are in some cases planted on the hillsides and great underground dwellings constructed. Leaving the car you are led up a mountain- side along rough paths. Everywhere there are trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, where they are least suspected, and all the complicated arrangements for defence. You soon have to take to the trenches. They are very deep, very narrow, and very wet. Streams of water run at the bottom. You must walk over wooden ladders made of the rounded branches of trees, and have difficulty in keeping your feet. When nearing the summit the visitor has to put on one of the steel helmets which the French army officer's and men all wear. It is very heavy.

The sun is very hot, and you realise the additional burden which the gallant French soldiers have to bear.

The nearer one gets to the front the more mysterious and wonderful become the methods of defence. You are allowed to peer through an observation post towards the German trenches a few hundred yards away. You see absolutely nothing but a mass of brushwood, broken trunks of trees, hanging branches and barbed wire. At one point we are only ten yards from the enemy. "The Boches are just on the other side of the road," said our guide. You look through a periscope, but see no sign of life whatever. You can just identify the enemy trenches. They have snipers on both sides to catch the unwary, and just as we are looking a French soldier, on outpost duty, is hit.

We return down the hill-side again by devious trenches to safer quarters.

 

Forest Trench

Mountains as Mole Hills

Operations of defense in the Argonne forest are of course very largely of an engineering kind. Dug-outs and underground refuges are capable of holding a large force. Huge tunnels are driven through the mountain-sides and they are lit with electric light.

Presumably the Germans adopt similar means. "The whole mountains," said an officer, "are burrowed like a mole-hill." On another part of the front we had a similar experience of exploring the Forest, but in this case the lines of contending trenches were on a slope. The Germans were about four  hundred yards up the hill; we came down the opposite slope, trudging through trenches to the valley near the Four de Paris, the scene of a fierce battle in 1914.

Shells had left their imprints in the. Valley quite recently. The soldiers were encamped at the foot of the hill. Their kitchens and huts were at the base, barbed wire and entrenchments behind them. We wanted to know why the Germans, having what appeared to foe the advantage of position, did not attack at night. We were told that the French guns on the opposite hill were trained on the enemy trenches, and at the first signal of a movement they would pour a shower of shells into them. The enemy tried an attack by gas recently, but it rolled back on themselves. Every now and then trenches change hands in the Argonne. The French capture a first trench partly for the purpose of securing a few German prisoners.

Scenes from the Argonne 1

Continuous Bombardment

The guns are always at work. On the day of my visit to this area there was an almost continuous bombardment going on. The shells were hurtling over our heads. You heard the sharp discharge, and then the explosion of the shell. You saw nothing. The sound re-echoes through the woods and valleys like rolling thunder. The French fire six rounds to the enemy's one. The object of the. Cannonading is to disturb any work going on behind the enemy lines, to destroy transport, or interfere with any activity or movement which observers report to be going on.

We watched the system at work from the safe security of an observation post. The concealment of observation stations in the Argonne is complete.

The Boches occupied an exposed position about a mile and a-half away. They were at work in; a quarry above the French trenches. "Give them a salvo of ten," telephoned the Lieutenant to the guns perhaps a couple of miles behind us. The first shell fell short. The Lieutenant telephoned the direction in metres and the gunners soon got the exact range and planted their shells in the quarry. "We saw a German band hobbling along over there in a bunch the other day," said the Lieutenant, "and we planted a shell in the middle of them. You should have seen them roll down the hill," he added. "They didn't all gather themselves together again."

And so the intermittent bombardment goes on. The enemy fires every day during the lunch and dinner hours of the French troops in the hope of hitting the supplies on the way to the trenches.

 

French Shelter in the Argonne

 

Tree Broken Like a Match

There is no safety among the trees when a bombardment is taking place. Some time ago, near a chateau which General Humbert had made the headquarters of a divisional command, the Chief Medical Officer said to a friend: "Why do you expose yourself unnecessarily ? Do as I am doing; get behind one of the big trees." A moment later a shell cut the tree in two, as if it had been a match, killing the doctor immediately, while the officer who was advised to hide remained in the open twenty yards away and was unhurt.

We had abundant evidence that the French soldiers are well fed; they have coffee and bread in the morning. Lunch, with soup, meat, vegetables, wine and coffee about 12. Dinner between five and six, with soup, meat and coffee. Soup and bread are the great mainstays of the French army, and the soup invariably contains meat and vegetables.

Poilu's Good Living

The French poilu adds to his fare by a little poaching. The forest swarms with game. Since the war, sport of all kinds is suppressed in France. Game is allowed to increase untouched. There is every kind of game in the Argonne. Wild boars are numerous, but the soldiers are not allowed to shoot them because of the possibility of accidents. Some however have been killed, and game is frequently brought down. The French army utilises everything which comes its way. It is run on economical lines. I visited tripe and sausage shops behind the lines. Everything is utilised. The fat from the army slaughter-houses is made into candles for the trenches. Wounded horses are killed and their meat eaten. Horse sausage is a favourite meal.  

There is economy in other directions. The linen and clothing of the soldiers is cleaned, and mended by slightly wounded and invalided men, who are sent to stations behind the lines to recover. These temporarily disabled men — éclopés they are called — also make a variety of articles required by the men at the front.

"These men," said the Colonel in charge of an encampment of éclopés, "who have little strength and much time, work for the men at the front who have plenty of strength and little time."

Efficiency of the French Army

The whole organisation of the French army has been carried to a high state of efficiency. The French officer is a fine type. He is smart, businesslike, and the pink of courtesy. He is proud of his men and keenly interested in their welfare. There is a comradeship between the French officers and men closer and more ultimate than in any other army. That does not mean there is not discipline. Order is strictly maintained.

The regimental officers near the front are established in very comfortable quarters. They have made bomb-proof dug-outs on the slopes of the forest. The Frenchman's love of flowers and passion for neatness are shown by the window gardens and the beds of flowers in front of the officers' quarters. The qualities of the artist are also seen in the decorations of the rooms. The French officers in the Argonne are all cheerful and confident, determined to see this war through to a finish. No compromise is their policy, no halting half way, no. stalemate peace. "It must be the last war," they say, "however great the sacrifice," and most of them add, "however long the struggle," All were extremely anxious to hear of the English offensive which had not then begun, and rested great hopes on their British comrades.

Scenes from the Argonne 2

French Hospitality

English visitors to the French Army near the firing line are shown the greatest hospitality by the French, officers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and myself had the honour of lunching and dining with all the Generals of the armies in the Argonne.

One General ordered a special dinner in our honour, and one of his orderlies, who has artistic gifts, designed a menu for the occasion, of which a reproduction is given. The medallion at the top represents the Sherlook Holmes coat-of-arms — a revolver, a pipe, and a violin. The lion and the unicorn are seen in the top corners, and the thistle and the shamrock at the bottom, while in the centre are the German and Austrian eagles, represented as being hanged. The dishes are named after the Allies, whose flags were reproduced on the menu.

The fine physical condition of the men is the first characteristic which strikes one. Battalions marching along in firm and measured steps look as if they meant business.

Source: Originally published in The War Budget, 13 July 1916; provided to Roads by Tony Langley from his collection.