Reference no: EM133291619
Question: How bloody people seem to be in England about peace and peace meetings. I suppose they are getting rather Prussian in the country, but are all peace meetings always broken up by soldiers (who've probably never been here at all)? I have contracted hatred and enmity for nobody out here save for soldiers generally and a few non-commissioned officers in particular. For the Hun I feel nothing but a spirit of animal fraternity that the poor man has to sit just like us and do all the horrible and useless things that we do, when he might be at home with his wife or his books, as he preferred. Well, well; who is going to have the sense to begin talking of peace? We're stuck here until our respective Governments have the sense to do it...
How did West feel about his German opponents? Why?
Why did he think he was fighting? Explain.
The War Illustrated, 5 September 1914 British war correspondents in Belgium have seen little murdered children with roasted feet. The tiny mites were hung over a fire before they were slain. This was done by German troops-men with children of their own at home, or with little brothers and sisters of the same age as the innocents they torture before killing them...The things done to Belgian girls and women, before their tortured lifeless bodies with battered faces were thrown into a ditch, are so unspeakably dreadful that details cannot be printed. London Times, 27 August 1914 One man whom I did not see told an official of the Catholic Society that he had seen with his own eyes German soldiery chop off the arms of a baby which clung to its mother's skirts. One of the most widespread stories was that German troops habitually cut off the hands of Belgian and French children. In addition, nearly every Allied paper carried stories of raped Belgian nuns and babies skewed on German bayonets. After the war, despite the efforts of relief agencies, not a single example of such atrocities was ever found. Soldiers feared that propaganda seemed to be working among the civilian population.
These are examples of wartime propaganda (tales that are told to motivate troops and civilians to continue fighting). How can you tell these stories are not true? Do you think people who read the stories in 1914 believed them? Explain why or why not.
Why do you think both stories refer to women and children-what was the point of focusing on women and children? What sort of feelings (and in whom) were the authors of these stories hoping to elicit? Explain how warfare was gendered in this historical period.