THE FIRST WORLD WAR: A DOCUMENTARY RECORD
Series One: European War 1914-1919, the War Reserve Collection from Cambridge University Library

Part 10: The Memory of War

The First World War: A Documentary Record is a major microfilm series which makes available for the first time the riches of the Cambridge War Reserve Collection. This collection is acknowledged to be one of the finest sources of documentation concerning the First World War in the world, with much unique, rare and ephemeral material.

Professor Jay Winter, Department of History, Yale University, is the Consultant Editor for the microfilm edition. The emphasis is on the inclusion of materials unlikely to be held in most libraries.

Part 10 consists of material drawn from across the subject codes of the War Reserve Collection, and provides literary and graphic reflections on the conflict, featuring poetry, cartoons, contemporary paintings, photographs, pictures of statues, records of grave sites and memorial tributes. Such memories of war have now become an important research topic. There is material covering:

• The literature of war – from collections of poetry to Good bye-ee!
• Cartoons and comic strips collected together after the War;
• Popular illustrated chronicles of the War;
• Pictures of memorials and grave sites;
• Photographic records of the devastation caused by war;
• Souvenir books produced by individual services and regiments.

What is remarkable about the First World War is the extent to which it gave birth to a special literature of commemoration. According to Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory, the war forced writers to create a new language – often bitter, wistful, ironic and deeply subversive – in order to express their experiences, preparing the way for modern literary movements in the process. This collection features poetry, prose and song from a variety of nationalities and cultures, including material in French, German, Spanish and Italian and from across the British Empire. The tone of this material varies widely, from humour to sadness, and from bitterness to patriotism:

• France, A. Sur la voie glorieuse. Paris, 1915.
• Gourmant, R. de. Pendant l'orage. Paris, 1915.
• Ross, J. A. The Awakening: A tragedy in three acts. Sydney, 1915.
• Naik, D. A. India's Ode on War. Bombay, 1915.
• The Bond of Sacrifice. Vol 1. London, 1917.
• Williamson, H. The patriot's progress. London, 1930.
• Brophy, J. (ed.) Song and Slang of the British soldier. London, 1930.
• Stilgebauer, E. Inferno: Roman aus dem Weltkreig. Basel, 1916.
• Herpel, O. Die Frommigkeit der deutschen Kriegslyrik. Giessen, 1917.
• Collected War Poems. Ely, 1915.
• Lambe, J. F. War forced upon us. A Poem. London, 1914.
• Grenfell, J. & Perry, H. A. Into Battle. 1918.
• Cone, Helen Gray. A Chant of Love for England
• Payne, J. England's death or glory boys are British volunteers.
• Chapman, J. J. Ode on the sailing of our troops for France. London, 1917.
• Seymour, A. Good Bye-ee! London, 1919.

The literature contained in this collection is complemented by the large number of cartoons, graphic arts and paintings reproduced here, allowing study of how the power of visual representation influenced popular memory of the war. Included are works by W. Heath Robinson, Will Dyson; Louis Raemaeker and CRW Nevinson. The collection also contains a large number of postcards and photographs from the Front, chronicling the devastation and atrocity caused by war.

As well as the personal memories of war forged by artists and writers of the period – often bitter, wistful, ironic and deeply subversive – this collection also contains much material covering acts of official or public commemoration. There are numerous accounts of war memorials erected in villages and towns throughout Britain and Europe, as well as books of remembrances published by schools, universities and workplaces to commemorate the war and the loss of life it entailed. These memorials emphasised the universality of loss and often reaffirmed the values of the cultural traditions and values for which the soldiers had been sacrificed. There are documents relating to the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission, as well as a British guidebook to the war cemeteries in France and Flanders. Also included are a number of souvenir books produced by services and regiments, such as Black Square Memories: An Account of the 2/8th Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment 1914-1918, as well as accounts published by friends and family of heroic personal sacrifices

The way in which collective memory was exploited by government and media during the war can also be explored through this collection. There are accounts of heroic deeds and sacrifices which captured the popular imagination and were endlessly recounted and recalled through all varieties of media during wartime. For example, there are a number of items in the collection chronicling the life and notorious death of Nurse Edith Cavell in a variety of languages, such as Essi e Noi: Commemorando Edith Cavell and The Death of Edith Cavell. The process of memoralising Cavell as a war heroine helped to maintain the morale of an increasingly disaffected wartime population.