The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War
Jeremy Jenkins
I
On some occasions a range of concepts converge to provide a unique opportunity to showcase history. One of these occasions currently taking place revolves around the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and the partnership entered into by a number of European cultural institutions to mark the anniversary of the war by drawing on a range of projects which have been initiated in recent times. Such a collection is testament to the ability of the institutions to build a corpus of work which re-imagines the First World War as it slips from living memory into history: in 2009 with the passing of the last First World War combat veteran Harry Patch1 the human Rubicon between memory and history was crossed. Europeana 1914-19182 is a freely available online resource which combines sources relating to all aspects of the First World War drawn from libraries and archives across the globe. It also contains a rich array of memories and memorabilia supplied by private individuals throughout Europe, consisting of stories, films and historical material, manuscripts and printed items, including items from the British Library collection, all of which are directly related to the conflict. Europeana 1914-1918 carries the subtitle: ‘Explore the untold stories and official histories of World War I in 515,712 items from across Europe’.3 It is a corpus hosted on a .eu domain which offers a neutral transnational space and makes it possible to explore national collections in a wider framework than the confines of the owning institution’s web space. The contributions to Europeana 1914-1918 by private individuals should be regarded as stories. In this context the term ‘stories’ is used as a technical term to describe individual contributors’ submissions. This is because of the difficulties that surround narratives which have been passed down through families and as such should be approached with care in terms of a historical source. By using the .eu domain Europeana 1914-1918 moves the context away from the demarcation of traditional memory institutions along national boundaries. Furthermore, the neutral space that the resource occupies gives a voice to other groups who for a range of reasons may not have examined their role in the conflict prior to this. One clear example is the contribution by individuals and institutions from Ireland whose involvement in the First World War remained overshadowed by later events in Anglo-Irish history. This Great War collection provides a framework in which different aspects of the conflict can be explored and contrasted. This is possible simply thanks to the huge range and diversity of material within the collection, ranging across artefacts, printed items, manuscripts, trench
1 Florence Green, who served in the Women’s Royal Air Force as a steward and was the world’s last surviving First World War veteran to have seen active service from any country, died on 4 February 2012. 2 Europeana 1914-1918 – Untold Stories & Official Histories of World War One http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en Accessed: 4 June 2014 https://perma.cc/ZPP8-A63K [Created 18 August 2017]. 3 Ibid.
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Fig. 1. Europeana 1914-1918. https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/collections/world-war-I
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and other war art, and photographs. By drawing on contributions from citizens, Europeana 1914-1918 has augmented traditional institutional collections with a rich resource of personal collections and narratives which can be woven into the historiography of the War. It allows descendants to see their ancestors’ stories in the greater context of contemporary events. Such a broad backdrop of collecting and connecting presents a unique opportunity to shed light on the past and learn some of its lessons.
II
Memorialization as a concept in general and of the First World War in particular are a well explored subject both within and beyond the academy. The most notable manifestation is the public programme of events which take place annually in mid-November, on the anniversary of the armistice which marked the end of hostilities. A central construct we associate today with memorialization and more specifically remembrance are the lines from Laurence Binyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’ which appeared in The Times in September 19144 in an ominous premonition of events to come and the following century of remembrance. Binyon concluded:
We will remember them.
Inevitably though, this work, often quoted on monuments and during memorial services, now refers to a time which has slipped beyond memory. Thus in the centenary observances of the outbreak of the First World War we find ourselves at a starting point for a new type of enquiry. When engaging with the concept of memory from an institutional perspective a possible useful starting point is to examine how the British Museum Library dealt with the memorialization of the War in the years following the conflict. An indication of the cataclysmic effect of the War on society can be seen in the way the acquisitions of books relating to the European War 1914-1918 received their own subject index. Published in 1922, this work offered the largest bibliography of the War for the time.6 Interestingly the final section of this volume entitled ‘Peace and Reconstruction’7 makes little or no mention of memorialization, containing titles concerned mainly with the political and economic ramifications of the War. Despite this it is possible to find an overlap between reconstruction and memorialization. Nestling in our collections is a thin fifteen-page pamphlet published by the Remembrance Association Committee in 1920. This work echoes the general desire throughout the country for local memorialization of the fallen. Reprinted from the journal King’s Highway and entitled Roads of Remembrance, the work suggests the transformation of suitable existing highways to the ‘dignity of roads of remembrance, adorned with trees.8 The scheme outlined the building of ‘highways of exceptional dignity and beauty, with open spaces at intervals as special memorials of the Great War.’9 The central argument is that
4 Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War (London, 1996), p. 294. The Times, Monday 21 Sept. 1914, p. 9. 5 This manuscript of ‘For the Fallen’ does not appear in Europeana 1914-1918 as its creation date of 1938 put it out of scope. However, Edward Elgar: Manuscript sketches and drafts, can be consulted via Europeana. Vol. 15 (Add. MS. 47908, ff. 141-148) contains rough sketches of ‘For the Fallen’, op. 80, no. 3; rough sketches. ff. 149-163; incomplete proofs of the octavo edition of no. 1 (ff. 164-166) and proof title page of ‘With Proud Thanksgiving’ adapted from ‘For the Fallen’ for performance at the dedication of the Cenotaph. ff. 164-167, 168-169,
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Fig. 2. Laurence Binyon: ‘For the Fallen’, autograph. BL, Add. MS. 45160. 5 http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_45160_fs001r
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these memorial monuments should play a functional role in improving the infrastructure such as replacing a weak and dangerous hump-backed bridge with a piece of ‘dignified masonry’ bearing the inscription:
This Bridge was rebuilt to commemorate the Heroes of the Great War.10
This utilitarian aspect of the Roads of Remembrance scheme would allow war memorialization and highway improvement schemes to be combined. In the last section of the pamphlet twenty- one suitable schemes are outlined including a by-pass on the London to Portsmouth road ‘to avoid the narrow and congested roads of Kingston.’11 The editor of the King’s Highway, one of the leading forces behind the scheme, points out in his introduction: ‘It seems to us that the first principle of a war memorial should be that everyone can participate in any benefits which it confers; secondly and hardly less important, that it should be of a permanent character – something that will last of all time. Roads and bridges comply with these two conditions.’12 In 1921 Shelbourne Street which runs through Victoria and Saanich, B.C. was the first of at least seven Roads of Remembrance created by Canadian cities.13 The creation of these roads may have influenced the discourse in theKing’s Highway. When exploring how institutional memorialization intersects with more universal concepts it becomes clear that the sacrifice of individuals from a community played an important role in remembrance in geographical areas such as towns and villages. Ultimately, the fallen of the Great War were to be immortalized in a more poignant physical representation taking the form of a war memorial of some description in a place of prominence with a geographically relevant intersection. These representations are almost second nature to the urban geography of conurbations and in so many cases they represent one of the hallowed markers which elicit an emotional response to past actions and events. One such marker can be seen today as you enter the staff entrance of the St Pancras building: on the right, there is an oak memorial inscribed ‘In Memory of the British Librarians Fallen in the War MCMXIV- MCMXVIII’. This was a memorial to all librarians in Britain and not just British Museum staff. It contains amongst the lists the names of six members of the Museum’s library departments:
I. A. K. Burnett Assistant in the Department of Printed Books who was killed in action in 1917. F. Derrett, an Attendant in the Reading Room who died in Salonika in 1917. C. R. Dunt, an attendant in the Department of Manuscripts who was killed in 1916. H. Michie died in 1916, an attendant in the Department of Printed Books. J. F. Nash, Attendant in the Department of Printed Books. A. C. Stewart, an Assistant in the Department of Manuscripts both of whom were killed in 1918.14
Previously this memorial was mounted at the entrance of the Round Reading Room in full public view.
10 Ibid., p. 10. 11 Ibid., p. 13. 12 Ibid., p. 3. 13 Canadian Geographic (Nov. Dec. 1997), pp. 51-2. 14 P. R. Harris, A History of the British Museum Library 1753-1973 (London, 1998), p. 465.
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Fig. 3. Roads of Remembrance as War Memorials. BL, 20033.c.13. http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/socialscience/2013/11/roads-of-remembrance.html
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Fig. 4. British Museum War Memorial (BL Corporate Archive).
As with many other institutions during this period by the end of 1914 sixty-one members of the British Museum Library staff at Bloomsbury were serving in the armed forces, just under half of whom volunteered. By December 1916 no men under twenty-seven years who were medically fit were still working in the Museum.15 By the end of the war 137 out of a total of 384 members of staff had served in the Army or Navy.16 War memorials emerged in the early nineteenth century: the fallen have been immortalized by monuments standing in public places and pantheons used to record a nation’s sacrifice along with their deeds and achievements.17 They added to what George Mosse describes as the myth of war experience ‘designed to mask war and to legitimize the war experience; it was meant to displace the reality of war.’18 It is difficult to explore the development of the war memorialization without underlining the importance of the work of Holger Hoock. His The King’s Artists spans the events leading up to the foundation of the Royal Academy and the important role that institution played in defining national iconography.History, Commemoration, National Preoccupation: Trafalgar, a collection of essays edited by Hoock, picks up the notions of commemoration and remembrance and how they shifted from memory and narrative particularly in the 1905 centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. Most recently David Crane’s Empires of the Dead charts the Imperial and then the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. All offer a sound foundation from which to contextualize an examination of Europeana 1914-1918 as more than repository for digital items, but as a work of commemoration. Either institutionally or individually, inclusion in Europeana 1914-1918 places the content in the public realm with a digital marker which uniquely identifies an individual who witnessed or
15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers (Oxford, 1990), pp. 6-7. 18 Ibid., p. 7.
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was otherwise connected with the conflict. These identifiers placed in the digital landscape can be perceived as twenty-first century memorializations. The user now has the ability to explore content in a federated digital environment. In the years following the Great War these physical manifestations provided the nuclei of the act of remembrance in an effort to ‘draw the sting from death in war and emphasize the meaningfulness of the fighting and sacrifice.’19 Nevertheless, a report in the Manchester Guardian from 12 November 1920 notes the palpable shift of focus away from the monoliths of state and church towards the inner feeling of the silence at 11 o’clock the previous day:
Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of ‘attention.’ An elderly woman not far away, wiped her eyes and the men beside her looked white and stern. Every one stood still; no one sought his neighbour’s eye or passed remark. The stress of movement had passed from the street and given way to the stress of emotion – emotion displayed awkwardly perhaps, but deeply felt.20
Fig.5. Cenotaph: a book of poetry and prose. BL, 12298.a.9.
This newspaper piece highlights the perceived disjunction between the personal awkwardness of emotion and grief felt in a stoic silence. These public monuments would have been an
19 Ibid. 20 Cenotaph: A Book of Remembrance in Poetry and prose for November the Eleventh, compiled and edited by Thomas Moult (London, 1923), p. 38.
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important focus for this grief of the individual up and down the country, by turning civic architecture into a hallowed space. They performed an important function for many around the country whose fallen son, brother or husband did not have a grave where they could mourn their loss. Why is this important? Simply because more than twice as many men died in action or of their wounds in the First World War as were killed in all major wars between 1790 and 1914.21 Clearly this had a cataclysmic effect on society, to such an extent that it appears that these hallowed focal points literally carved into the geography of the nation’s landscape acted as punctuation for the national consciousness. This can be seen in the use of these sites in art works and photographs in the popular press in the years following the conflict. Despite this there were more pressing needs in the years after the war. This was illustrated in the need for former servicemen to have practical help in the form of jobs and homes.22 One such example is of the Memorial issue of the Illustrated London News, dated 20 November 1920. A large portion of its content is devoted to covering the Remembrance Day Commemorations of the second anniversary of the armistice with Germany.23 Amongst the pages are interspersed illustrations which attempt to capture the national mood. In one such, entitled ‘A Nameless Grave in Britain’s Valhalla – symbol of the Supreme Sacrifice of the Empire’s Manhood’, symbolism intersects with sacrifice. The watercolour makes a clear connection between the tomb of the unknown soldier and its placing in Westminster Abbey as ‘Valhalla’, the Hall of the slain in Norse mythology. This strong and martial headline contrasts with the picture’s caption describing the image in terms of a resting place of pilgrimage.24 As George Mosse comments:
The actual presence of martyrs was always important for the effectiveness of places of pilgrimage; though the German Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was empty, it still radiated the atmosphere of an actual burial place, while the Cenotaph served only as the focus for official ceremonies.25
Nevertheless, here we are dealing with a national basilica and sacred space therein containing ‘the grave of the Unknown Warrior buried in Westminster Abbey’26 in the company of the royal dead of the nation. The presence of the Unknown Soldier in the Abbey fuses the religion of nationalism and the national narrative. To draw this into focus certain similarities can be drawn between war monuments and War monuments. Jay Winter points out that war museums inhabit ‘a semi-sacred space not dissimilar to the memorial monuments. These sites consist of the combination between the sacred and the profane’.27 In so far as this is true it raises a number of issues regarding how such museums and their collections fit into the political, cultural and sociological landscape of a particular time. Some of the issues raised by Winter find their echo in a digitized collection such as Europeana Collections 1914-1918. There are two further factors which will resonate; firstly,
21 Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, p. 3. 22 The Bulletin (The D.S.S. Bulletin): the official organ of ... the National Federation, etc. vol. 1. no. 1 (March 1919) – vol. 3. no. 46 (April 1921). 23 On 11 November 1920 a permanent Cenotaph was unveiled by King George V. It replaced the wood and plaster temporary installation erected for the Peace Day Parade in July 1920.
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Fig. 6. Peace Day Celebrations, July 1919. IWM Collections, Q 28762. http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205219020
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Europeana Collections 1914-1918 is reflective of the traditional memory institutions which Winter describes as ‘repositories of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how we have come to be who and where we are.’28 However, because of the space it occupies, it does so outside of the national framework of a traditional cultural sector. This alone changes the dynamic in which this material is engaged, because it is being accessed via a federated search interface not directly connected to any body, aside from the agreement to supply metadata and provide access to the digital renditions of the items. Hence it is fair to conclude that Europeana Collections 1914-1918 represents a unique neutral space for the exploration of materials relating to the conflict from a non-partisan standpoint. Historically we have grown familiar with seeing and exploring items in the context of a semi-sacred place. The shift away from the traditional construct of a state religion has extended this concept beyond mere reverence for institution or artefact.29 Now the citizen may enter the library, museum or exhibition and be presented with a selection of items which are mediated by their space and informed by their provenance. An example of this from World War Two in the British Library’s collection might be the SHAEF: Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force collection.30 These factors are important in the process of exploration of past events because the location of a specific item in a collection influences how we interact with it. An item can be catalogued and kept within the walls of the British Library, while another copy of the same item may lie undiscovered on the shelves of say, a charity shop. Naturally the copy in the library or museum has a value enhanced by its context which exceeds that of the same item in the charity shop. Making an item available within a national repository for academic research, educational enquiry or plain interest endows it with an aura. As was outlined above in the introduction, now that the events of the First World War have passed from memory to history it can be argued that an important cultural shift has occurred from memorialization in the form of symbolic silences and march-pasts to the primary sources, be they written, photographic, illustrative or sound recordings. Now it is in these sources where the voices of the First World War reside rather than in the reminiscences of veterans. This is precisely why Europeana 1914-1918 is of prime importance. It passes content from traditional memory institutions freely to whoever is interested. These institutional collections have then been enriched with valuable contributions brought by the general public from across Europe to roadshows organized by Oxford University and co-funded by the European Union.31 Europeana 1914-1918 is in a position to offer a diverse snapshot of the culture and history of the 1914-1918 conflict with minimal consideration for national or social boundaries. In one area a direct comparison can be made between Europeana 1914-1918 and an earlier collection of works relating to the First World War. The subject arrangements of the Subject Index of the Books relating to the European War, 1914-1918 acquired by The British Museum 1914-1920 may be contrasted with the topic arrangement on Europeana Collections. The Subject Index is divided into five distinct categories:
28 Ibid, p. 152. 29 Ibid. 30 This collection comprises eleven to twelve thousand books seized from German libraries during the campaign in North-Western Europe from June 1944. Predominantly on military matters, it came to the British Museum (now British Library). Without straying into later conflicts the provenance and content of this collection offers an extra facet which places the item in a time and place. See A. D. Harvey, ‘Confiscated Nazi Books in the British Library’, eBLJ , 2003, Article 4. 31 ‘Thousands come to show and tell at World War One Roadshow,’ The Irish Times (14 July 2014)
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I. – Bibliography; II. – Military and Naval History; III. – Political and Social History; IV. – General and Miscellaneous Works; V. – Peace and Reconstruction.32
Categories two to five are subdivided into further sub-categories with nestled sub-sections directing the reader to the appropriate page where the publication details are listed in columns with an accompanying British Museum pressmark.
Fig. 7. Topics - Europeana Collections- Explore our Collections by topic, theme or genre.
As illustrated in Figure 7 the arrangement of topics in Europeana 1914-1918 attempts to engage the user in very different ways. From one perspective it clear that this has been done to accommodate the range of different formats which are supported by the resource. In this centenary Europeana 1914-1918 opens the door and facilitates the move toward micro-history, the way in which the lives of individuals, and their regiments, endured life at war. This provides an overview which is of utmost importance for understanding these lives in the wider political, social and economic context of the time. By facilitating this interchange between micro- and macro-histories this collection offers great potential for further enquiry.
III
By the 1960s the intellectual framework in which the First World War was viewed had shifted, to a degree influenced by contemporary conflicts such as the Vietnam War. During this period the British perspective on the war acquired the most resounding mythology of the Great War
32 Op. cit., p. v.
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yet, that of the construct of lions led by donkeys. While this concept can be traced to antiquity in some form, General Ludendoff in April of 1918 ‘confessed that he would take off his hat to the English for their absolutely undaunted bravery.’ And continued: ‘The English Generals are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much science as their officers and men had courage and bravery. They are Lions led by donkeys.’33 Correlli Barnett comments: ‘Almost all books on the Western Front that have appeared in the past thirty years have repeated this theme – from The Donkeys by Alan Clark (1962) to The Great War & Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (1975) and David Woodward’s Lloyd George and the Generals (1983)’.34 Now with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War there is an opportunity to examine the resources in an effort to re-evaluate the conflict. The resources digitized in the Europeana 1914-1918 project suggest a number of possible contextual focuses this could take. In the current framework of research various groups have attempted to contextualize the First World War by focusing on individual narratives which resound in the national consciousness. In contrast Europeana 1914-1918 by its very nature allows us to move beyond such unidimensional interpretations of the conflict to a broader spectrum where wider perspectives can be juxtaposed. A striking visual example of this comes from two collections within the British Library’s visual Collections, the India Office photographs and the Canadian Copyright Photographs. In the opening months of the war much was made of the gallant and professional defence by the British Expeditionary Force, which by November 1914 numbered just over 200,000 officers and men, against vastly superior numbers of enemy troops.35 Nevertheless, a series of photographs from the Library’s India Office Collection, taken at Brighton in 1915 by H. D. Girdwood,36 help to elaborate another side of this story. The photographs show the Dome, Brighton, originally stables and later assembly rooms, which was converted into a hospital holding 689 beds for soldiers from Indian regiments wounded in action in the winter battles of 1914-15.37 This little collection presents a number of images which offer the familiar iconography of war, such as a wounded veteran with a battlefield souvenir and wounded troops being entertained and tended by a different socio-economic group. What such imagery illustrates at a superficial level is the true global nature of the war from the outset. Even in the summer of 1915 before the conflict was a year old the so-called ‘European War’ was shattering lives from beyond the confines of the continent which stretches to the Urals. However these photographs betray other ways in which the conflict upended the social norms of the Edwardian period. One stark example is the sight of white nurses and orderlies in attendance on Indian soldiers. The diverse nature of the British Expeditionary Force which found itself in mainland Europe in that first year of the War is also illustrated by one of the key sources from the Official Publication collections, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War. 1914-1920 (London: The War Office, 1922).38 The Divisional
33 Evelyn Blucher, An English Wife in Berlin (London, 1920), p. 211. 34 Correlli Barnett, ‘Did they doctor the Records?’, book review of Denis Winter, Haig’s Command, Times Literary Supplement (19 April 1991), p. 7. 35 Bruce Gudmundsson, The British Expeditionary Force 1914-15 (Oxford, 2005), p. 11. 36 The Girdwood collection is a series of several hundred photographs recording the contribution of Indian soldiers to the Allied war effort in 1915. Canadian-born professional photographer Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood (1878-1964) had a connection with India. In 1903 he photographed the Delhi Durbar, the royal tour of 1905- 06 and the Delhi Durbar of 1911. In 1908 he set up a photo agency called Realistic Travels, specializing in stereoscopic photography. With the outbreak of war in 1914, Girdwood returned from India and in April 1915 was given permission by the India Office to photograph the work of the Indian military hospitals in Bournemouth and Brighton
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Fig. 8. The Dome Hospital [Brighton], Photo24/(1) 1915. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=Photo_24!(1)_f001r
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Fig. 9. 1915, Group of wounded Indian soldiers gathered round a bagpiper. Caption continues: ‘Some with crutches, others with arms in slings, several even on beds, all are enjoying the beautiful sunny days at Brighton, and the sweet strains of the gramophone. So boisterous has been the applause to several of the favourite pieces that some of the sisters have come out to see the party.’ http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=Photo_24!(23)_f073v
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Fig. 10. Indian officer wounded, with German officer’s helmet which he captured at Neuve Chapelle [Brighton]. Photographer: H. D. Girdwood. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=Photo_24!(15)_f029r
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Distribution Charts between pages 28 and 29 indicate that two Indian Army cavalry divisions and a further two Indian infantry divisions were posted to the western theatre by December 1914. One central pillar of the Europeana 1914-1918 programme is the exploration and examination of micro-history, that is, histories of families, of the individual or of groups such as regiments. For such material to be of value it is necessary to examine it in the wider context of the conflict. It is here that Europeana offers a fertile contextual framework which brings together evidence from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. With careful analyses it may be possible to unearth different insights and perspectives beyond tiresome repetition of the established mythologizing. In combining resources from across Europe both on the institutional and micro- level many of the latter are new to the public domain. In an effort to achieve this wider context other voices from the British Library’s collection may be accessed. A case in point is the contrasting memorial sermons delivered two years apart. One such example is the Sermon preached in Winchester Cathedral on 4 August 1918 (then Remembrance Day) by the Rev. Canon Vaughan. In this sermon Vaughan goes further than remarking on the necessity of continuing the conflict against Germany but describes the events of that day four years previously ‘when England declared war upon Germany. It was I venture to say, the finest and worthiest moment in the history of Great Britain.’39 As Canon Vaughan’s words rang out from the pulpit in Winchester Cathedral his sentiments echoed key themes drawn from the national narrative reminding the congregation ‘in our rough island- story, the path of duty was the way to glory.’40 The opening of this sermon offers an interesting insight and even contrast to how Remembrance Day is represented in the modern age. Nevertheless, the reason for referring here to Canon Vaughan’s sermon is not to explore the debate on memorialization. It is rather to compare and contrast the document with another which has been added to Europeana 1914- 1918. Thirteen months earlier, while the second week of the Battle of the Somme raged in France, the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and the Rifle Brigade gathered at Winchester Cathedral for a Memorial Service for those ‘who have fallen in the War between August 5th 1914 and June 30th 1916’.41 Earlier that same week on 10 July the 13th (Service) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade went into action on the Somme resulting in the loss of twenty officers including the Commanding Officer, Adjutant, all the Company Commanders and 380 other ranks.42 It is not difficult to imagine the sombre atmosphere that afternoon in Winchester Cathedral while the congregation remembered their fallen comrades from the first twenty-two months of the war: it cannot have escaped them that many of their comrades were still facing and to face great dangers on the western and other fronts at that very moment. It is clear the Memorial Service of 1916 contrasts with the Remembrance Day sermon of 4 August 1918 because the service sheet shifts the focus on to the individuals who fought. It is a long list of names and must be typical of countless other similar lists across Europe and the world. Each name here is a memorialization which marks a stepping stone to a transformation from an old world into the modern world we inhabit today. These names give extra depth and meaning to the imagery of silhouetted khaki-clad figures which shift the emphasis on to them and away from us. Europeana 1914-1918 offers a mediated space in which these names can be explored, and in some cases given voice.
39 The Rev. Canon Vaughan, Remembrance Day 1918: A Sermon preached in Winchester Cathedral on August 4th 1918 (Winchester, 1918), p. 3. 40 Ibid, p. 4. 41 Memorial Service held at Winchester Cathedral Saturday July 15th 1916 for the Officers, Warrant Officers, Non Commissioned Officers and Private Riflemen of the Kings Royal Rifle Corps and the Rifle Brigade who have fallen in the War between August 5th 1914 and June 30th (1916)
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Fig.11. The Rev. Canon John Vaughan, Remembrance Day 1918: A Sermon preached in Winchester Cathedral on August 4th 1918. BL, 04478.df.38.
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Fig.12. Memorial Service held at Winchester Cathedral Saturday July 15th 1916 for the Officers Warrant Officers, Non Commissioned Officers and Private Riflemen of theKings Royal Rifle Corps and the Rifle Brigade who have fallen in the War between August 5th 1914 and June 30th. http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/3610
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A further approach to these documents is to explore them through a statistical lens, by examining battle causalities of officers by weeks at the period in which these two services occurred. The statistics for the week of 10 July 1916, when 2,011 officers were either killed or wounded,43 supports the reports of the 13th (Service) Battalion, Rifle Brigade that same week who reported the loss of 20 officers in a single assault. This data is also presented graphically in ‘Table (iii) – B.E.F.- France, Battle Casualties in Officers by Weeks’. For it is longer on this fold out that the words of ‘The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori’44 are writ large. On a micro-scale, by comparing and contrasting items from Europeana 1914-1918 and other traditional print items which have not made it into the digital collection we can add context and a new depth of richness and granularity. Europeana makes it possible to combine the perspectives of rhetorical public orations with the apparently dry facts of statistics. Furthermore, it provides an opportunity to undertake such a comparative study and examine, for example, a German sermon for a similar period in the conflict. Europeana 1914-1918 contains a collection of sermons sourced from the Statesbibliothek zu Berlin including Maria u. Martha by Professor D. K. Müller on 24 September 1916 on the warfare of the Reformed Covenant.45
IV
The final part of this exploration examines the use of the British Library collections in the context of a wider scholarly study. Its aim is to demonstrate that the inclusion of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces photographic albums which were acquired by colonial deposit and found their way into Europeana 1914-1918 offered a corpus which could be analysed and explored in the traditional academic media, such as publications and conference papers. It is clear that the selection of the CEF photograph albums collection for Europeana digitization helped facilitate the further dissemination and exploration of this rich archive of the Canadian experience during the First World War.46 We now turn from the memory to the archive: as outlined earlier, with the passage of the Great War from memory to history the archival sources increase in importance. They provide an important token of events which are transferred to new ways. One particular element is the use of the photographic image. Photography has been used in recording battlefield images since the nineteenth century. It is important to bear in mind the usual caveats about the nature of war photography and its implication in the propaganda war, as the use of photographic equipment at the front was closely monitored to prevent potentially valuable information falling into enemy hands. Nevertheless, the specific Canadian Official War Photograph albums offer a rich resource and a snapshot of the life led on the Western Front by the Canadian volunteer soldiers.47 This section will explore how a digital collection can be included in and enhance a traditional work of academic scholarship. In his ground-breaking study of the British Library’s Canadian Copyright Photographic Collection Framing Canada Philip J. Hatfield48 outlines the importance and continuing relevance of these collections. The images of battalions of the Canadian
43 ‘Table (iii) – B.E.F.- France, Battle Casualties in Officers by Weeks’, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914-1920, between pages 252 and 253. 44 Jon Stallworthy (ed.), The Oxford Book of War Poetry (Oxford, 1988), p. 189. 45 Ernst Friedrich Karl Müller, Maria u. Martha Predigt über Joh. 11,5 gehalten im Dom zu Halle am 24. September 1916 zur Kriegstagung des Reformirten Bundes
20 eBLJ 2018, Article 1 The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War . Table (iii) – B.E.F.- France, Battle Casualties in Officers by Weeks. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914-1920 (London: War War 1914-1920 (London: of the British Empire during Great Weeks. Statistics of the Military Effort France, Battle Casualties in Officers by (iii) – B.E.F.- Table . Fig.13 Office, 1922), between pages 252-3. BL, 9085.h.13.
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Expeditionary Force depicted in ‘panoramic photograph perspective performs two functions, allowing regimental photographs to operate as useful records for the group as a whole and the individuals within them, while also conveying the scale and drama of an event such as troops departing Canadian shores.’49 Thanks to the superior quality of these exposures a wealth of information is preserved in crisp and microscopic detail, unlocking so many important aspects for researchers in a range of disciplines:
Uniforms, ranks and faces can be seen clearly without the aid of any magnification and the sheer amount of people captured in each frame makes it impossible not to think about the number of individuals who did not see Canada again.50
This important aspect is worthy of highlighting, as once again it feeds back into the cultural exchange between the micro-historical analyses referred to above. Hatfield’s work on the panoramic image of the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the point of its departure for the Great War provides a series of pictorial templates against which researchers may compare and contrast their own findings about a battalion, regiment or individual soldier. In essence what Hatfield has done is to remove this material from the constraints of the establishment archive and place it in a mediated space in which it can be used by the growing cohort of parties interested in exploring aspects of the First World War. To see these photographs in the context of the first volume of Tim Cook’s The Sharp End, Canadians Fighting in the Great War, where ‘the central arc of the books traces the evolution of the Canadian Corps from an ill-trained and unruly group of colonials into an elite and battle hardened force of “shock troops’’’51 instantly enriches the extraordinary collection of panoramic photographs drawn from the departing army. When the collection is examined it is clear that it fits into the wider historiography of patriotic Canada at war. However, Hatfield also unveils aspects of Canadian culture and society which are often referred to as forgotten; however it could be described as simply ignored by the narrative of time. The Canadian Copyright Collection offers an insight into the groups which ‘stand out in particular: those of Canada’s First Nations people and Canada’s internment camps that sprung up during the war.’52 This collection and Framing Canada provide a clear route to bring these groups, along with the important role played by women, from the peripheries of the historical record into clearer focus. Hatfield identifies a further group who did not necessarily fit:
French Canadians were often ambivalent to the conflict and the many European immigrants who had arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were viewed with suspicion from the Canadian state.53
The reputation of the Canadian forces as the elite ‘shock troops’ of the British Expeditionary Forces was constructed in part by Sir Max Aitkin as head of the Canadian War Records Office in London. These publications were pushed through the rigours of the censor: for instance, the contents page of the December 1917 issue of the Maple Leaf Magazine (BL, P.P.4039.w.d.(6)) notes in bold and underlined text that is was ‘Passed by Press Bureau’. The Maple Leaf Magazine itself is an interesting case in point. It began as a publication of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Pay and Record Office in support of Canadian prisoners of war. It was intended to appeal to the general public when promoting Canada’s war effort. It included short fictional articles,
49 Philip J. Hatfield, Framing Canada: Copyright, Collections and the Image of Canada, 1895-1924 (London, forthcoming 2018), p. 135. 50 Ibid., p. 134. 51 (Toronto, 2007), reviewed by David Mackenzie, War In History, xviii:2 (April 2011), p. 267. 52 Hatfield,Framing Canada, p. 136. 53 Ibid, p. 137.
22 eBLJ 2018, Article 1 The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War . The officers and members of the 26th Battalion Second Canadian Expeditionary Force. No.4. Photographer: D. Smith Reid. BL, HS.85/10/30184. . Fig.14 http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=hs85!10!30184_f001r 23 eBLJ 2018, Article 1 The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War
battle reports written by participants, humorous pieces and poetry. It also raised funds for the Canadian Prisoners of War Tobacco Fund, which provided Canadian soldiers and prisoners with cigarettes in conjunction with British American Tobacco to distribute the products. The parcels of cigarettes contained a postcard addressed to the sender so the soldier might acknowledge receipt of the gift. Clearly this is illustrative of the importance of supplying products such as cigarettes and this was recognized by the command at an early stage as an important factor to maintain morale at the front. The Maple Leaf in 1916 claimed ‘A parcel of smokes from home makes a man happy for days’. Another publication of the Canadian War Records Office was the Canadian War Pictorial (BL, 9085.ff.4), issued from 1916 to 1918, which illustrated the soldier’s life on the western front with pages of photographs interspersed with short essays. The English edition sold out within a week and printings of the Canadian edition could not keep up with advance orders. Similarly, another pictorial newspaper Canada In Khaki (BL, 12355.k.23) was so popular that on its launch in January 1917 it sold 40,000 copies in the UK leaving none available for the Canadian market.54 It was made up of fictional short stories, humorous pieces, patriotic poetry accompanied by photographs by the official photographer in both black and white and colour, but it also contained cartoons by famous illustrators such as W. Heath Robinson. This demonstrates the wide-ranging manner in which memorialization is used both to remember the deeds of a protagonist and to develop discourses on how groups and indeed nations engage with and revaluate their collective memory of the past. Indeed the use of photography in these official publications played a central role in introducing characters such as the First World War aces and aviators Billy Bishop and William Barker to the Canadian and British public. Their considerable war contribution framed how Canada was perceived. Following the conflict they utilized their skill as aviators and aerial photographers by offering a fresh new perceptive of the Canadian landscape in their short-lived post-war partnership in an aerial photography enterprise. These enormously popular titles are not, strictly speaking, what spring to mind when one thinks of official publications. However, their catalogue records in the BL General Catalogue all name the author as ‘Canada: Army, Canadian Expeditionary Force’. While it is quite clear that at the time these fulfilled a propaganda role in boosting morale and maintaining in the public eye the construct of the conflict as an heroic just war, today we might reflect on them from differing viewpoints. In the open environment of the web, resources such as Europeana 1914- 1918 help to unify collections in a range of locations and inform such reassessments. The emergence of Europeana 1914-1918 to coincide with the centenary of the conflict is no coincidence. It plays to the cult of centenary which developed in and grew ever popular in Britain and throughout Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most importantly Europeana 1914-1918, like the cult of centenary, reflects not only a ‘detached interest in the past, but also very contemporary preoccupations. Both the subjects and the scale of the various commemorations were closely related to the current standing of past individuals and events.’55 Europeana 1914-1918, it can be argued, is a democratizing force for information relating to the First World War. For a moment we can leave aside the hyperbole of ‘ius in bello’ and football matches in no man’s land. We can see an emerging pan-European narrative of threads and which are just waiting for any one of us to weave into a rich tapestry of historical experience. The resources are democratic in part because of the bottom-up approach of the Europeana 1914-1918 roadshows led by the University of Oxford, but moreover because this collection is freely available and accessible to all who are interested to use it. Drawn from the collections of institutions and private individuals and organized in thematic categories, it offers fertile ground to further research into the period and the conflict for a very wide range of demographic groups from school children to social and cultural academic researchers and everyone in between across the continent of Europe and beyond.
54 Graham Bradshaw, Where Duty Leads: Canada in the First World War (Toronto, 2008), p. 50. 55 Roland Quinault, ‘The Cult of the Centenary, c. 1784–1914’, Historical Research, lxxi: 176 (Oct. 1998), pp. 303-23 (p. 322).
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Fig. 15. Drawing of Billy Bishop in an aircraft posing with a Lewis gun. The Canadian War Pictorial. A photographic record, no. 4 (1918). BL, 9085.ff.4.
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Fig. 16. Photograph of Billy Bishop in an aircraft posing with a Lewis gun from the Canadian Government’s official photographic series from World War I which the cover illustration on The Canadian War Pictorial is based. BL, LR.233.b.57, vol. iii, f. 12r. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Canadian_Official_War_ Photographs_%28BL_l.r.233.b.57.v3_f012r%29.jpg?uselang=en-gb
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APPENDIX 1
Subject Index of the Books Relating to the European War 1914-1918, Acquired by the British Museum, 1914-1920.
Preface
The present Index registers all the books and printed documents relating to the Great War acquired by the British Museum from the beginning of August 1914 to the close of 1920, including entries already printed in the Subject Index of Modern Works acquired in the years 1911-1915. It also registers the books and documents connected with the Peace and Reconstruction issued and acquired in the same period. It thus forms the largest contribution to the bibliography of the War which has yet been published. The general principles of arrangement which have been found to work well in the previous volumes of the general Subject Index have been applied to this many-sided subject to the best of the ability of the compilers. An effort has been made to break up the larger headings by grouping together books written in the languages of each of the combatant countries and neutrals, and again by keeping together the books of the same year to mark the stages of the conflict at which they were written. A conspectus of the headings and sub-headings follows this Preface, and an alphabetical index to sub-headings is printed at the end of the text. The books having already been entered in the General Catalogue of Printed Books under their authors or the authorities which issued them, the provision of an Index of Authors has been regarded as a luxury of which circumstances do not permit. While the poetry of the War and religious books have been admitted, fiction in the form of war novels is not here registered. Regimental newspapers are entered, but the vast contribution to the literature of the War made by the periodical press of all countries is necessarily excluded.56 Finally, while the Index registers cartoons it omits the war posters used to stimulate recruiting and subscription to war loans. At the beginning of the War some arrangements were made for collecting such posters issued in our own and allied countries, but the effort was abandoned in order not to duplicate work which was being done by the Imperial War Museum. A fine collection of French posters which had been acquired has been transferred, on account of its artistic interest, to the Department of Prints and Drawings.57 This Index has been compiled by Mr. Lawrence Taylor, Mr. Philip Wilson, Mr. W. A. Smith, and Mr. L. A. Sheppard, with the help of Mr. F. D. Sladen for Hungarian books and headings and of Mr. L. C. Wharton for Slavonic. The entire work, including the revision of the proofs, has been done under the superintendence of Mr. R. F. Sharp, Senior Deputy Keeper. Valuable help has also been given by Mr. W. A. Marsden.
A. W. POLLARD February, 1922.
56 The opportunity may be taken to mention that the great collection of foreign newspapers, accumulated at Watergate House for the purpose of compiling the Daily Review of the Foreign Press during the War was presented, when this Department of the War Office was closed down, to the Trustees of the British Museum, and has now been bound and made available for use (note in original). 57 See now Antony Griffiths and Reginald Williams, The Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: User’s Guide (London, 1987), p. 155.
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