“We’ve
laid down the hammer and picked up the gun, Put down the saw
for the sword, Britons world over are fighting the Hun, See
where their blood is outpoured; Close up the ledger and put
down the pen, Hark to the trumpet call! Britain is fighting
for freedom men, and Britain needs us all.”
Canada Fall In!, WWI 10
“Think
of the girls of Canada Not one minute they waste each day
For they work on farm or they work in factory All for those
who have gone away.”
The
Hearts of the World Love Canada, WWI 22
“So
let us be up and doing Yes doing our bit alone For we can
knit socks for our soldier boys and keep the fires burning
at home.”
Here’s
to the Boys of the 1-6-0, WWI 24
These
are only a few examples of the kinds of lyrics in this World
War I song collection and they are indicative of a larger
theme to be found within this archival material. All of these
quotations make reference to the idea of World War I as a
total war. Most First World War scholars agree that World
War I was the world’s first total war. But what does this
mean?
Before
World War I, any war that Canada engaged in involved only
professional soldiers, who went elsewhere to fight. Those
who were fortunate enough to return home came back to a country
that was relatively unchanged. Civilians were unaffected by
the war for the most part and, with the exception of the absence
of the soldiers, life carried on as it always had. With the
onset of the First World War, the experience of war was no
longer vague and abstract for those at home. As much as the
soldiers fought for the cause on the front lines, civilians
contributed to the war effort on the newly named ‘home front’.
For the first time, non-combatants were just as involved in
the war as the soldiers and were, in fact, absolutely necessary
to the success of the fighting forces. This new reality is
evident in the following quotation taken from a speech of
Lloyd George, the prime minister of England, in 1918:
“To
Every Civilian – Your firing-line is the work or the office
in which you do your bit; the shop or the kitchen in which
you spend or save; the bank of the post office in which you
buy your bonds. To reach that firing-line and become an active
combatant yourself there are not communications trenches to
grope along, no barrage to face, no horrors, no wounds. The
road of duty and patriotism is clear before you; follow it,
and it will lead ere long to safety for our people and victory
for our cause.”1
Canada,
too, found that this war affected the civilians who remained
at home. For the first time, Canadian citizens felt the affects
of a war that was not fought on Canadian soil. In a statement
from Veteran’s Affairs Canada, the war is described thus:
“The
war of 1914-1918, unlike those which preceded it, involved
not only arms and men, but whole civilian populations a well.
Although Canadians at home were spared the direct ravages
of war, they nevertheless felt some of the burdens and suffering
of the conflict. Canadians from farm to factory were called
upon to make their sacrifices for the war effort.”2
Those
living in Canada during the First World War could not escape
the sudden pressure to ‘do one’s bit’ and help assure an Allied
victory, nor the enthusiasm for the war that swept the country.
As one woman said, “Everybody wanted to be there; you were
in the swim of things; everything was war, war ,war”.3 Through
taxation, conscription, volunteering, war bonds, munitions
work and so much more, the war effort involved everybody on
the home front. This brought about many changes in Canadian
society.
One
major change was the increased use of propaganda to influence
public opinion. Caroline Playne describes how “The war of
1914-1918 was very popular, but even the most popular war
has to be stimulated by vigorous public propaganda”.4 Governments
gradually realized that efficiency at the front was dependent
on efficiency and morale at home and this led to the birth
of the propaganda machine, intended to direct the civilian
response to war.5 Since this war was to involve non-combatants
as never before, Canada, like England, distributed official
propaganda in the form of posters and pamphlets, urging civilians
to do their part for the war. Unlike in any previous conflict
in which Canada had been involved, the First World War brought
to bear the powerful influence of propaganda, bringing about
a change in the relationship between government and governed.
A
second important change that came about was in attitudes towards
religion. For many, the trials of war resulted in strengthened
faith and renewed reliance on the church. Richard Schweitzer
has even speculated that World War I may have brought about
a revival of religious faith.6 During the war, people turned
to the traditional comforts of religion, looking to God for
answers to the unanswerable in the midst of such inexplicable
hardship.7 There was also a sense of moral righteousness in
fighting evil that borrowed very heavily from religion. It
was rumoured that the Germans had rejected Christianity for
old pagan gods, that Germany had sold itself to the Devil,
even that Kaiser Wilhelm was the Antichrist.8 All of this helped
people to accept that the war the necessary. However, there
were some people, particularly in Canada, who observed a noticeable
decline in traditional religious life. One man observed during
the conflict that the war had led to the end of church life.9
This woman’s statement is even more emphatic:
“It
was the First War that shot religion high, wide, and handsome,
as far as a great many of us were concerned. We just lost
faith in it. I mean, after all, you could pray your head off,
but it didn’t mean you were going to have your men come home
to you. Oh a great many people stopped going to church. I
think most of the people who came home from the war stopped
going to church…God’s not on anybody’s side in a war.”10
While
there were many people who continued to put faith in God,
and this song collection reflects that continued reliance
on religion, clearly the horrors of war shook some people’s
faith and made them question what they had previously accepted.
As
a final example, the First World War also had important consequences
for the way in which women were viewed by society. With the
absence of so many men, women were forced to take on many
of the roles that had traditionally been filled by men. Indeed,
many women felt an obligation to step into these roles on
account of the war.11 For some women, this was an opportunity
to prove to a patriarchal society that women were capable
of doing ‘men’s work’ and thus advance the cause of women’s
suffrage.12 To a certain extent, Canadian society was ready
to accept this new role for women from the standpoint of sheer
necessity; according to one government official it was acceptable
not only because it freed men for the front lines but also
“resulted in a considerable saving by the Canadian Government”.13
In spite of the necessity for women to step into traditionally
male roles during the war, however, in most cases women were
expected to give up these roles to the men who returned when
the war was over. Women’s suffrage was achieved during the
war, but to a limited extent, since the vote was strategically
granted only to those women serving overseas or related to
a soldier, when Prime Minister Robert Borden sought re-election
on a conscription platform.14 Ultimately, the war did not effect
major changes on the place of women in Canadian society. Rather,
for most women, their connection to the war was through the
men in their lives, through a brother, son, husband or sweetheart
serving in the army. However, the war did create the circumstances
in which women could tentatively try out non-traditional roles
in the absence of these men and laid some of the groundwork
for future social change.
How
do historians go about researching these kinds of social trends?
What are the major sources of information that tell us about
what was going on in Canadian society during World War I?
To a great extent, we are dependent on the first hand accounts
of those who lived through the war. The last several paragraphs
draw particularly on Caroline Playne, whose two books describe
her experiences living in London during the war and Daphne
Read, who edited a collection of statements taken in the 70’s
from Canadians who lived through the war. The problem with
reliance on these kinds of resources is that we are fast approaching
a time when there will no longer be any people who remember
the First World War from personal experience and as new questions
emerge, there will be nobody to turn to for answers. To a
certain extent we can rely on the history books, but as the
pursuit of social history is a relatively young discipline,
it is hard to find any comprehensive descriptions of the conditions
on the home front, accounts of important battles and their
accompanying casualties more often taking precedence.
It
is for this reason that this archival collection of sheet
music is such a valuable resource. World War I was a seminal
period in Canadian history, and increasingly, scholars agree
that to learn about this period it is just as important to
understand the daily experience of the average civilian, as
it is to catalogue the battles in which Canadian soldiers
fought. Ultimately, this kind of study leads to a better understanding
of the fundamental changes in Canadian society that have their
root in the First World War because it considers the social
conditions that sparked these changes. War songs are an ideal
medium in which to preserve this era of Canadian history.
Unlike the study of personal accounts of the war, music is
a permanent resource to which we can always refer back. Songs
can tell us much about the society for which they were composed.
While a person’s memory may be faulty or biased, a song gives
an unadulterated picture of circumstances in which it was
created. More importantly, because music is an emotional medium,
it preserves more than mere circumstance. It gives us a window
into what Canadians lived through in the war and into what
it felt like to live in Canada at the time. Ultimately, these
songs do not reflect the idea of war as it is commonly thought
of in popular imagination: battlefields, trenches and heroic
charges; these songs were not written, for the most part,
for the soldiers. Instead they reflect the daily experience
of the Canadians who remained at home during the war and the
way people thought about the effect the war was having on
their lives and their country. They do not address changes
in society explicitly; instead they go deeper, preserving
Canada’s visceral response to the war as it was happening
around them. This music offers a more intimate picture of
the conditions out of which post-war Canada grew.
Notes
1.
Lloyd George as quoted in: Caroline Playne. Britain Holds
On: 1917-1918. (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1933),
255.
2.
Veterans Affairs Canada: http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar.
3.
Read, Daphne, Ed. The Great War and Canadian Society: An
Oral History. (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1978), 156.
4.
Caroline Playne. Society at War: 1914-1916. (London:
George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1931), .292
5.
Cate Haste. Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in
the First World War. (London: A. Lane Publishers, 1997),
48.
6.
Richard Schweitzer. The Cross and the Trenches: Religious
Faith and Doubt among British and American Great War Soldiers.
(Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003), 150, 157.
7.
See Caroline Playne: Society at War: 1914-1916, 259; Britain
Holds On: 1917-1918, 43, 253, 254.
8.
Albert Marrin. The Last Crusade: The Church of England
in the First World War. (Durham: Duke University Press,
1974), 118, 252, 98.
9.
Read, 216.
10.
Read, 217.
11.
See eg: Read, 156.
12.
Playne: Society at War: 1914-1916, 127.
13.
Bindon, 132.
14.
Serge Durflinger. French Canada and Recruitment During
the First World War. http://search.civilization.ca/dwesearch.asp?showDoc=96227&page=1&resultsetToken=IKT000012562.1149356611&Lang=en&docType=
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