The Imperial War Graves Commission's Proposals for

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There are two further aspects of the Commission's history that will be examined. ... publications, The King's Pilgrimage (1922), War Graves of the Empire (1928) ...
George Williams

Dec 2017

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The Imperial War Graves Commission’s Proposals for the Treatment of the Great War Dead,1917 to 1920: Public Reaction and the Meaning of the Fallen Historiography One of the largest British imperial projects to commemorate the Great War’s fallen was the construction of war cemeteries around the globe.1 This vast project, commemorating over one million dead, was undertaken by the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), which was formed in 1917 to meet the demands from relatives for the proper care of the graves of the fallen.2 As virtually every person in Britain was touched by a death from the Great War, historians have looked at how the public sought to remember the dead.3 This essay will examine the historiography of the IWGC (known today as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), with emphasis on the British public’s reaction to the Commission’s plans for dealing with the fallen of the Great War.4 It will be argued that, with greater academic access to the Commission’s archive, a re-evaluation of the public reaction to the IWGC’s proposals for the treatment of the fallen should be undertaken. In two CWGC endorsed histories of the organisation, criticism of plans for the war cemeteries has focused on the Commission’s choice of a headstone rather than a cross to

Fabian Ware, ‘Building and Decoration of the War Cemeteries’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 72, (1924), 344-353 (pp. 345346). 2 Fabian Ware, The Immortal Heritage: An Account of the Work and Policy of the Imperial War Graves Commission during Twenty Years 1917-1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), pp. 25-26. 3 Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory Armistice Day 1914-1946 (Oxford: Berg, 1994), p. 19. 4 Today the IWGC is known as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). Except with reference to its archives or where it is an action by the CWGC, the terms IWGC or Commission will be used throughout this essay as the title for the organisation. 1

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mark individual graves, and the ban on relatives erecting personal monuments over the graves of their loved ones.5 It will be demonstrated that, through a largely uncritical historical narrative, objection to the Commission’s plans has centred on these two facets; as reported in The Times and Spectator, Lady Florence Cecil’s petition to the Prince of Wales, and the parliamentary debate of 4 May 1920. However, the Commission’s long-running correspondence with the British War Graves Association (BWGA), and the BWGA’s letters in Leeds newspapers regarding repatriation of the fallen, warrant further investigation.6 The BWGA’s concerns were very different from that of the correspondents to The Times and Spectator. They claimed to represent many who could not afford to visit the graves, and campaigned for repatriation of the bodies.7 Nor was parliamentary activity confined to the debate of 4 May 1920. Between February 1919 and May 1920, the government faced over twenty written and oral questions, and further debates on 9 April and 17 December 1919, all objecting to the Commission proposals.8 Furthermore, the Countess of Selborne wrote to several local newspapers during the 1918 election campaign asking voters to impress on candidates the need to oppose the Commission’s bans on repatriation and personal monuments, and its choice of a headstone rather than a cross to mark the graves of the fallen.9 This suggests that further questions about the nature, extent and motivations of critics of the Commission need to be explored. There are two further aspects of the Commission’s history that will be examined. Firstly, what does the current historical narrative tells us about the support the Commission

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Philip Longworth, The Unending Vigil The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2010), pp. 44-55, and Julie Summers, Remembered The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (London: Merrell, 2007), pp. 24-26. 6 Commonwealth War Graves Commission Archives (hereinafter referred to as CWGC Archives), WG 783 PT1 and PT2, War Graves Association, and Noel Reeve, ‘A Leeds Woman’s Story: The British War Graves Association’, Legacies of War [accessed 7 Nov 2017]. 7 CWGC Archives, WG 783 PT1, War Graves Association, Petition to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, undated. 8 For the Parliamentary questions see Hansard, Fifth Series House of Commons, vols 112 to 127 on various dates between 18 February 1919 and 24 March 1920. The two debates can be found in Hansard, Fifth Series House of Lords, 9 April 1919, War Graves, vol 34, cols 223-240 and Hansard, Fifth Series House of Commons, 17 December 1919, Imperial Graves Commission, vol 123, cols 485-512. 9 ‘Graves of Our Heroes’ The Globe, 3 December 1918, p. 7, ‘Our Heroes’ Graves: Lady Selborne’s Criticisms’, The Yorkshire Post, 4 December 1918, p. 8, ‘Our Heroes’ Graves’, The Leeds Mercury, 4 December 1918, p. 3, ‘The Graves of Our Heroes’, Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury, 5 December 1918, p. 8, and ‘Our Heroes’ Graves: Lady Selborne’s Appeal to Women Electors’, The Nottingham Journal and Express, p. 2.

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received for its proposals? One of the IWGC’s commissioners was the trade union official Harry Gosling. As the representative of four and a half million working people his role in shaping and supporting the Commission’s proposals needs to be examined.10 For example, he was instrumental in persuading the Commission to be clear about its proposals and in rallying support from Labour MPs.11 The second matter concerns what the dead meant to the IWGC and the relatives of the fallen. Sir Frederic Kenyon’s report into the cemeteries claimed the proposals achieved a balance between satisfying the needs of relatives and providing a fitting national memorial.12 Bound up with this are questions, not only of personal choice as expressed by objectors to the Commission’s proposals, but also more fundamentally who the dead belonged to and their purpose. To understand how these issues have been treated, the historiography of the meaning of memorials and the dead will be examined. The final section of this essay will consider a methodology for investigating the gaps that have been identified in the narrative of the public’s reaction to the IWGC’s proposals for the treatment of the Great War dead. Early accounts of the Commission’s work can be found in three non-academic publications, The King’s Pilgrimage (1922), War Graves of the Empire (1928) and The Silent Cities (1929).13 These commemorative publications all served different purposes. The first helped raise funds to facilitate visits by relatives to the graves overseas; the second, War Graves of the Empire, produced by The Times marked the 10th anniversary of the Armistice; and the third, The Silent Cities, provided a photographic record of every cemetery in France and Flanders and a guide to locating them. These works were followed in 1937 by a book

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Commonwealth War Graves Commission Archives (hereinafter referred to as CWGC Archives), WG 999, Mr Burdett-Coutts, The Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee petition to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, 28 May 1919. 11 CWGC Archives WG 9, Commission Meeting NO.02 – Shorthand report of 2nd meeting, undated, and WG 183 Commission Meeting NO.06 – Shorthand report of 6th meeting, undated, and ADD/1/1/5, Headstones – Documents, Mr Harry Gosling’s Letter to Labour Members, 21 April 1920. 12 Frederic Kenyon, War Graves. How the Cemeteries Abroad will be Designed (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1918), p. 4. 13 Frank Fox, The King’s Pilgrimage (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922), The Times, War Graves of the Empire (London: The Times, 1928), and Sidney C. Hurst, The Silent Cities An Illustrated Guide to the War Cemeteries and Memorials to the ‘Missing’ in France and Flanders: 1914-1918 (London: Methuen, 1929).

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from the IWGC’s Vice-Chairman, Fabian Ware, marking the 20th anniversary of the Commission. The Immortal Heritage was a slightly expanded and heavily illustrated reproduction of a report made to a meeting of the Imperial Conference in London on 23 April 1937.14 While different in character and purpose, these books are all uncritical of the work of the IWGC. The book by The Times, one of the central historical sources of public outcry, makes no reference to the public and parliamentary objections which had been raised.15 Similarly, Ware’s account does not dwell on public criticism of the Commission’s plans and policy. Instead, he noted that after the debate of 4 May 1920 the Commission could proceed with ‘their labours with the practically unanimous support of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and in the Dominions’.16 The uncritical nature of these books is understandable as the events of the Great War were, at the time of their publication, still within most people’s living memory and experience. Also, both authors and publishers would have been mindful of not wishing to give offence to the relatives of the fallen and their heroic status. Yet this tone was to pervade and influence the history of the IWGC, in which the historical narrative of the Commission’s work has been set within an uncritical framework. While there is much academic work on the memorialisation and commemoration of the Great War, the academic interest shown in the work of the IWGC is limited to a few books and a handful of narrow academic articles.17 One of the most commonly cited works on the history of the Commission is Philip Longworth’s The Unending Vigil, produced to mark

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Fabian Ware, The Immortal Heritage, pp. 11-13. The Times, War Graves of the Empire, p. 25. 16 Fabian Ware, The Immortal Heritage, p. 30. 17 For the body of work on British memorialisation and commemoration of the Great War see for example: Mark Connelly, The Great War Memory and Ritual Commemoration in the City and East London 1916-1939, Peter Donaldson, Ritual and Remembrance: The Memorialisation of the Great War in East Kent, Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory Armistice Day 1919-1946, and Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance. For the academic work on the IWGC see for example: Philip Longworth, The Unending Vigil, David Crane, Empires of the Dead How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s War Graves, Michèle Barrett, ‘Subalterns at War’ in Interventions (9:3, 2007), Michèle Barrett, ‘The Imperial War Graves Commission in East and West Africa, 1918-1939’ in Bodies in Conflict Corporeality Materiality and Transformation, Michael Heffernan, ‘For Ever England: The Western Front and Politics of Remembrance in Britain’ in Ecumene (2:3, 1995), John Lack and Bart Ziino, ‘Requiem for Empire: Fabian Ware & the Imperial War Graves Commission’ in Empires in World War I : Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict, Thomas W. Laqueur, ‘Memory and Naming in the Great War’ in Commemorations, Mandy S. Morris, ‘Gardens ‘For Ever England’: Landscape Identity and the First World War British Cemeteries on the Western Front’ in Ecumene (4:4, 1997), Antoine Prost, ‘Les Cimetières Militaires de la Grande Guerre, 1914-1940’ in Le Mouvement Social (237, 2011), Gavin Stamp, ‘The Imperial War Graves Commission’ in Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada (33:1, 2008), Caroline Winter, ‘First World War Cemeteries: Insights from Visitor Books’ in Tourism Geographies An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment (13:3, 2011), and Caroline Winter, ‘Ritual, Remembrance and War: Social Memory at Tyne Cot’ in Annals of Tourism Research (54, 2015). 15

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the Commission’s 50th anniversary in 1967.18 Since its original publication the book has been reprinted and revised several times, and the latest 2010 edition now covers the Commission’s work up to the early 1980s. Longworth’s account is a straightforward chronological retelling of the Commission’s origins, development of its guiding principles, and implementation thereof. As an academic account, the book draws heavily on the Commission’s archives, and the recollections of those involved in its development, but is largely unreferenced.19 The book represented a more detailed and revealing account of the challenges faced by the IWGC and how it dealt with them, but its purpose was to explain the origins and work of the Commission.20 Longworth suggests the Commission’s work has withstood the test of time, and while the ideas and principles of the Commission belonged to an Edwardian age, ‘We are the beneficiaries of those who were sacrificed, and we still owe them that awful debt’.21 Despite its updating, the book remains an uncritical history. Longworth did, however, tackle in greater detail the early difficulties the Commission faced in securing public acceptance of its proposals for the treatment of the Great War dead. He suggests the public had three main reservations concerning the Commission’s proposals, namely: repatriation, use of the Commission’s headstone rather than a cross, and no personal monuments.22 Much of the evidence considered by Longworth centres around the Cecil petition to the Prince of Wales, letters to The Times and Spectator, and the parliamentary debate of 4 May 1920. As with Ware’s 1937 account, Longworth agrees the May 1920 debate is the point at which serious criticism of the Commission was laid to rest.23 In focusing on these narrow sources, public criticism of the Commission was seen in terms of the upset caused by the decision to ban any personal monuments and the choice of a headstone, as opposed to a cross, to mark the graves of the fallen. The issue of repatriation was pushed to the background, and the complaints of the BWGA received no coverage by

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Philip Longworth, The Unending Vigil, p. xiii. Ibid, p. xiii. 20 Ibid, p. xiii. 21 Philip Longworth, The Unending Vigil, pp. 253-254. 22 Ibid, p. 46. 23 Ibid, pp. 46-55. 19

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Longworth. Nor did Longworth seek to cast his net further to explore whether criticism, or support, of the Commission was confined to correspondents to The Times and Spectator. This created the impression that criticism of the Commission came from a narrow social elite. Given Longworth’s use of the Commission’s archives and the absence of any consideration of papers relating to the activities of the BWGA, Harry Gosling and the petition submitted by trade unionists represents a gap in the historical narrative.24 Furthermore, the Commission’s policy of equal treatment of the war dead, with no distinction being made between officers and men, had implications for different social groups within Britain. As the Commission was keen on achieving equality, the perceived success of that policy needs to be tested against a broader range of public responses than those of correspondents to The Times and Spectator. Michael Heffernan has examined the ‘fierce debates’ over memorialisation of the Great War’s dead, and how ‘questions concerning the relative importance of personal and official remembrance’ were resolved. 25 The analysis is, however, restricted to the same sources used by Longworth. Nonetheless, Heffernan moved the narrative forward in recognising the issue of repatriation, providing a more insightful analysis of the motivations of the Commission’s opponents, and the support the Commission received from the trade union movement.26 More recently, David Crane has suggested that opposition to the Commission was not the preserve of a ‘privileged Anglican clique’, but confines his analysis to the ground previously covered by Longworth and Heffernan.27 However, by placing the Commission’s Vice-Chairman, Fabian Ware, at the centre of his narrative, Crane provided an insight into the origins of Ware’s imperial outlook and how that influenced the Commission’s proposals for the treatment of the fallen. Ware’s imperial outlook and how this shaped the work of the Commission has also been explored by John Lack and Bart Ziino.

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CWGC Archives, WG 783 PT1 and PT2, War Graves Association, and WG 999, Mr Burdett-Coutts, The Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee petition to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, 28 May 1919. 25 Michael Heffernan, ‘For Ever England: The Western Front and the Politics of Remembrance in Britain’ Ecumene, 2:3 (1995), 293-323 (p. 295). 26 Michael Heffernan, ‘For Ever England’, pp. 301-305. 27 David Crane, Empires of the Dead How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s War Graves (London: William Collins, 2013), pp.138-165.

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They argued that by separating the work of the Commission from its political origins, historians have been denied the opportunity to understand the processes by which the war graves were created.28 Furthermore, they assert that the Commission’s ideals and principles are not grounded in modernity, but reach back to the traditions of the past, and that the IWGC’s cemeteries and memorials to the dead are a celebration and reinforcement of imperial notions and values.29 This interpretation would suggest that the ideas of the Commission were not as new or innovative as the historical narrative has maintained, but were more grounded in the familiar and traditional. Two further publications have contributed to the uncritical historical narrative of the Commission. The first, Courage Remembered, which was co-written by amateur Canadian historian G. Kingsley Ward and former CWGC employee Major Edwin Gibson, and was motivated by heightened public interest in visiting the cemeteries of the fallen from two world wars.30 Despite the cachet of being co-written by a former employee of the Commission, the book added nothing to matters already covered by Longworth, and devoted little attention to public opposition to the Commission.31 It was followed by Julie Summers’ glossy coffee table book marking the Commission’s 90th anniversary.32 Produced to raise money for the CWGC, the foreword and preface make it clear that the book would be an uncritical re-telling of the Commission’s history.33 Summer’s account of the public debate that arose over the Commission’s plans follows the narrative already established by Longworth.34 The importance of these two books demonstrates that the account of criticism of the Commission’s proposals has become firmly established. It is, however, not enough to see the debate over the Commission’s proposals in terms of support or opposition. The meanings attached to cemeteries changes over both

John Lack and Bart Ziino, ‘Requiem for Empire: Fabian Ware & The Imperial War Graves Commission’ in Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict, ed. By Andrew Tait Jarboe and Richard S. Fogarty (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), pp 351-375. 29 John Lack and Bart Ziino, ‘Requiem for Empire’, p. 370. 30 G. Kingsley Ward and Major Edwin Gibson, Courage Remembered (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989), p. xi. 31 Ibid, pp. 51-52. 32 Julie Summers, Remembered The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (London: Merrell, 2007). 33 Julie Summers, Remembered, p. 7, 9 and 192. 34 Ibid, pp. 24-26. 28

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time and space, and this study is also concerned with the public’s attitudes and response to the Commission’s proposals for dealing with the Great War dead between 1917 and 1920.35 Within the Commission, and as part of the public and parliamentary discourse, there was an ongoing debate as to what the war meant, and what the cemeteries represented. The latter part of this dissertation will, therefore, explore the part played by the ‘´Big Words`…. God, Empire, King and Country’ in shaping the Commission’s proposals, how they approached building support for them, and the public’s response.36 Michael Heffernan’s 1995 article, For Ever England, dealt with the politics of remembering the British War dead.37 In a critical analysis, he concluded that the process of commemorating the Great War created conditions in which the living could forget the realities of war.38 A few years later, Mandy S. Morris examined what the British ‘garden cemeteries’ of the Great War meant in terms of national identity.39 By careful planting and landscaping of the cemeteries, havens of peace were created where previously great violence had taken place.40 In doing so, this covered up the horrors of the war, and helped to root British national identity in a piece of foreign soil, which had taken on a special, and perhaps sacred, meaning for the relatives and governments of the dead.41 These historical interpretations have focused on the political motivations of the memorialisation of the dead. The political significance of the dead and their memorialisation has led George Mosse to argue that this process has created a ‘myth of the war experience’ and a ‘cult of the fallen soldier’ as a hero. He suggested that, in Germany, the memory of the Great War had been reshaped to mask harsher facts about the war and how it was experienced.42 Central to this, was the role of the dead and how they had been transformed into sacred heroes with strong religious connections that the National Socialists were able to exploit politically and shape what the Great War meant.43 The British cemeteries of the Great

Julie Rugg, ‘Defining the Place of Burial: What Makes a Cemetery a Cemetery?’ Mortality, 5:3 (2000), 259-275 (p. 259). Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory Armistice Day 1919-1946 (Oxford: Berg, 1994), p. 24. 37 Michael Heffernan, ‘For Ever England’, pp. 293-323. 38 Ibid, p. 314. 39 Mandy S. Morris, ‘Gardens “For Ever England”: Landscape, Identity and the First World War British Cemeteries on the Western Front’, Ecumene, 4:4 (1997), 410-434. 40 Morris, ‘Gardens “For Ever England”’, p. 428. 41 Ibid, p. 429. 42 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 7. 43 Ibid, p. 7. 35 36

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War were in character and nature an imperial project carried out by an imperial body, the IWGC.44 The cemeteries also, as Churchill noted in May 1920, served a wider political purpose of reminding people of ‘the efforts and glory of the British Army, and the sacrifices made in that great cause’.45 This clearly marked out the work of the Commission as having a wider political and imperial significance. Other historians, such as Paul Fussell and Modris Eksteins have argued that the Great War represented a rupture with tradition, heralding a new age of modernity.46 In such models, a more realistic, unglamourised, and unheroic narrative of the Great War was created. Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning challenged Mosse’s traditional political view of transforming the war dead into heroes. He also suggested that a narrow intellectual elite drove the modernist view of the Great War’s memory.47 In doing so, Winter’s work seeks to bring to the fore how ordinary Europeans created their own understanding of the Great War.48 By focusing on private and public expressions of mourning he argued that rather than looking forward ‘sites of memory’, such as war cemeteries with their cross of sacrifice and stone of remembrance, were grounded in traditional and recognised symbols of the past.49 Winter accepted that his work was to provoke questions and provide a steer for further cultural and comparative historical investigation.50 This baton was taken up by Carine Trevisan and Elise Julien. They investigated how the cemeteries of the war dead were used by those who had suffered the loss of a loved one, and the changes that took place in mourning practice by those who did not have a grave they could visit.51 Their work shows that the bereaved, who were separated from their dead either by distance from the grave site

Frederic Kenyon, War Graves. How the Cemeteries Abroad will be Designed (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1918), p. 2 and 4, and Antoine Prost, ‘Les Cimetières Militaires de la Grande Guerre, 1914-1940, Le Mouvement Social, 237 (2011), 135-151 (p. 144). 45 Hansard, Fifth Series House of Commons 4 May 1920, Imperial War Graves Commission, vol 128, col 1970. 46 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) and Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (London: Bantam Press, 1989). 47 Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 2-3. 48 Ibid, p. 5. 49 Ibid, p. 223. 50 Ibid, p. 224. 51 Carine Trevisan and Elise Julien, ‘Cemeteries’ in Capital Cities at War Paris, London, Berlin 1914-1919 Volume 2 A Cultural History, ed. by Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2007), pp. 428-467. 44

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or because there was no grave to visit, developed new forms of ‘collective remembrance’.52 Trevisan’s and Julien’s work is also supported by David Cannadine’s earlier study of mourning in modern Britain. He challenged the idea that bereavement practices had been in decline since their high point in the Victorian era, and argued that the Great War had a profound effect on funerary practices.53 By their very design, the cemeteries, with the inclusion of shelters and plans to locate individual graves, were meant to be places that relatives of the fallen could visit.54 This study is not about the pilgrimages mourners made to the cemeteries which has been well covered by David Lloyd.55 It will, however, seek to explore the extent to which the Commission’s proposals for the war cemeteries served the personal mourning needs of the relatives of the fallen, and the imperial aim of creating a lasting memorial.

Methodology It was not until 1993, following Jay Winter’s cataloguing of the archive, that the CWGC decided to make its papers available for wider historical examination.56 Historians have also focused on correspondence to The Times and Spectator as the sole source of criticism of the Commission. Though relevant and useful sources, they only reflect the views of a narrow section of society; thus, it may be an over-generalisation to rely on these as being wholly representative of wider public reaction to the Commission’s proposals for the treatment of the Great War dead. As part of their studies into war enthusiasm during 1914, Jeffrey Verhey and, more recently, Catriona Pennell, have fused contemporary local newspaper reporting with other

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Ibid, 467. David Cannadine, ‘War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Mirrors of Mortality Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. by Joachim Whaley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), pp. 188-189. 54 Antoine Prost, ‘Les Cimetières Militaires’, p. 145. 55 David Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain Australia and Canada, 19191939 (Oxford: Berg, 1998). 56 Alex King ‘The Archive of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’, History Workshop Journal, 47 (1999), 253-259 (pp. 253-254). 53

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sources to show that public reaction to the outbreak of the Great War was more nuanced, and not so popularly welcomed.57 In an age where public opinion polls did not exist, this has proved to be a successful technique in gaining a broader understanding of wider public opinion and attitudes beyond the confines of capital cities. With historians of the IWGC concentrating on the coverage of complaints to The Times and Spectator, the scale of opposition remains firmly rooted in the idea that a small unrepresentative section of British society led it. This narrow narrative means that alternative voices have been overlooked. While reliance on newspapers does have drawbacks in terms of editorial choice and political bias, they can, if used judiciously, provide a good source of what issues concerned people at that moment in time. Notwithstanding the bias produced by any political or editorial preferences, newspapers would have contained news items and views of interest to their readers. Furthermore, newspapers in the early 20th century were the main source of news and opinion. It is therefore proposed to sample local newspapers from: Leeds and Sheffield, the power base of the BWGA; Liverpool, a large urban area with a significant Catholic population; Birmingham, as it had a significant Muslim population whose religious practices would have very different expectations of the treatment of the dead from that of Christians; Chatham, a large and important naval base whose dead would have no prospect of being returned or having a grave; and Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast and Dublin, to explore any regional differences in attitude to the Commission’s proposals. Debate on the Commission’s plans was not confined to the columns of newspapers. From the beginning of the 1919 through to the debate of 4 May 1920, the government faced a number of probing questions, as well as debates in the House of Lords in April and the House of Commons in December 1919.58 Given that the House of Commons contained one hundred and eighty-nine veteran M. P.s, following the December 1918 election, the issues

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Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914 Militarism, Myth and Mobilisation in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Pennell, Catriona, A Kingdom United Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 58 Hansard, Fifth Series House of Lords 9 April 1919, War Graves, vol 34, cols 223-240, and Hansard Fifth Series House of Commons, 17 December 1919, Imperial Graves Commission, vol 123, cols 485-512.

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they raised on the Commission’s proposals warrant further investigation.59 Parliamentary records will also be used as a source for exploring the government’s reaction to, and public handling, of the Commission’s proposals. Another important source of material will be relevant government papers at the National Archives and the CWGC’s own archives. Apart from providing the official perspective, the CWGC’s archives contain a wealth of material on the public presentation of its proposals. More importantly, unlike most official records, the files of the Commission have not been “weeded” prior to public release, and they contain many handwritten notes and internal comments.60 As such, this provides for a greater insight into the development of the Commission’s policy and views. The archive has not, however, escaped the ravages of time. During the Second World War many records, no longer required, were lost as part of the Commission’s effort to recycle paper. One such notable lost item is material relating to Army Unit comments in response to Lord Derby’s letter seeking views on the form of the permanent memorial to mark the graves.61 By combining official sources with newspaper reports and comments, the aim is to gain a broader understanding of public reaction to the Commission’s proposals, the way in which the Commission built support for its ideas and principles, and the differing meanings that the Commission and public attached to the cemeteries and the role of the fallen of the Great War.

Conclusion To date, the histories of the CWGC have been uncontentious in nature, and a revisionist narrative has yet to emerge. Nonetheless, with improved academic access to the Commission’s archives, and the diminishing likelihood of offending relatives of the fallen, the opportunity exists to undertake a more analytical and critical assessment of the

Richard Carr, ‘Conservative Veteran M.P.s and the ´Lost Generation´ Narrative after the First World War, Historical Research, 85, 228 (2012), 284-305 (p. 288). 60 Alex King, ‘The Archive’, p. 255. 61 CWGC Archives, ADD/1/1/5, Headstone Documents, Lord Derby’s letter to Colonels of Regiments, January 1918. 59

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Commission’s work, and the challenges it has faced in adhering to its own principles and meeting public criticism. The review of the historiography of the Commission has identified some gaps in the narrative which require further investigation. In assessing the Commission’s proposals for dealing with the dead of the Great War, historians have focused narrowly on the Florence Cecil petition, correspondence to The Times and Spectator, and the May 1920 Parliamentary debate. Consequently, criticism of the Commission has been reduced to a narrative of the concerns of a small section of Britain’s social elite, and alternative voices may have been overlooked. This study will seek to challenge this narrative by examining alternative sources of criticism and sources of support for the Commission’s proposals. Using a combination of official sources, and newspaper reports and comments, the aim is to demonstrate that the criticism was more nuanced. It will also be shown that, within this debate, there was a struggle taking place over the meaning of the dead; a struggle between the creation of a national memorial, and the personal mourning needs of the bereaved.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Archives Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Archives ADD/1/1/5, Headstone Documents WG 9, Commission Meeting NO.02 WG 183 Commission Meeting NO.06 WG 783 PT1 and PT2, War Graves Association WG 999, Mr Burdett-Coutts

Official publications Hansard, the official report of the House of Commons and House of Lords Kenyon, Frederic, War Graves. How the Cemeteries Abroad will be Designed (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1918)

Monographs Fox, Frank, The King’s Pilgrimage (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922) Hurst, Sidney C., The Silent Cities An Illustrated Guide to the War Cemeteries and Memorials to the ‘Missing’ in France and Flanders: 1914-1918 (London: Methuen, 1929) The Times, War Graves of the Empire (London: The Times, 1928) Ware, Fabian, The Immortal Heritage: An Account of the Work and Policy of the Imperial War Graves Commission during Twenty Years 1917-1937, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937)

Articles Ware, Fabian, ‘Building and Decoration of the War Cemeteries’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 72 (1924), 344-353

Newspapers and magazines Leeds Mercury Liverpool Daily Post Nottingham Journal and Express The Globe Yorkshire Post

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Secondary Sources Monographs Connelly, Mark, The Great War Memory and Ritual Commemoration in the City and East London 1916-1939 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2002) Crane, David, Empires of the Dead How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s War Graves (London: William Collins, 2013) Donaldson, Peter, Ritual and Remembrance: The Memorialisation of the Great War in East Kent (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006) Eksteins, Modris, Rites of Spring The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (London: Bantam Press, 1989) Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) Gregory, Adrian, The Silence of Memory Armistice Day 1919-1946 (Oxford: Berg, 1994) King, Alex, Memorials of the Great War in Britain The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford: Berg, 1998) Lloyd, David, Battlefield Tourism Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain Australia and Canada, 1919-1939 (Oxford: Berg, 1998) Longworth, Philip, The Unending Vigil The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, 2010) Mosse, George L., Fallen Soldiers Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) Pennell, Catriona, A Kingdom United Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Summers, Julie, Remembered The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (London: Merrell, 2007) Verhey, Jeffrey, The Spirit of 1914 Militarism, Myth and Mobilisation in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Ward, G. Kingsley and Major Edwin Gibson, Courage Remembered, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989) Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning The Great War in European Cultural History, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Chapters in edited books Barrett, Michèle, ‘The Imperial War Graves Commission in East and West Africa, 1918-1939’ in Bodies in Conflict Corporeality Materiality and Transformation, ed. by Paul Cornish and Nicholas J. Saunders (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 195-217 Cannadine, David, ‘War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Mirrors of Mortality Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. by Joachim Whaley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), pp. 187-242

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Lack, John and Bart Ziino, ‘Requiem for Empire: Fabian Ware & The Imperial War Graves Commission’ in Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict, ed. By Andrew Tait Jarboe and Richard S. Fogarty (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), pp 351-375 Laqueur, Thomas W., ‘Memory and Naming in the Great War’ in Commemorations, ed. by John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 150-167 Trevisan, Carine and Elise Julien, ‘Cemeteries’ in Capital Cities at War Paris, London, Berlin 1914-1919 Volume 2 A Cultural History, ed. by Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 428-467

Articles Barrett, Michèle, ‘Subalterns at War’, Interventions, 9:3 (2007), 451-474 Carr, Richard, ‘Conservative Veteran M.P.s and the ´Lost Generation´ Narrative after the First World War, Historical Research, 85, 228 (2012), 284-305 Heffernan, Michael, ‘For Ever England: The Western Front and the Politics of Remembrance in Britain’, Ecumene, 2:3 (1995), 293-323 King, Alex, ‘The Archive of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’ History Workshop Journal, 47 (1999), 253-259 Morris, Mandy S., ‘Gardens “For Ever England”: Landscape, Identity and the First World War British Cemeteries on the Western Front’, Ecumene, 4:4 (1997), 410-434 Prost, Antoine, ‘Les Cimetières Militaires de la Grande Guerre, 1914-1940’, Le Mouvement Social, 237 (2011), 135-151 Reeve, Noel, ‘A Leeds Woman’s Story: The British War Graves Association’, Legacies of War [accessed 7 Nov 2017] Rugg, Julie, ‘Defining the Place of Burial: What Makes a Cemetery a Cemetery?’, Mortality, 5:3 (2000), 259-275 Stamp, Gavin, ‘The Imperial War Graves Commission’, Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, 33:1 (2008), 5-22 Winter, Caroline, ‘First World War Cemeteries: Insights from Visitor Books’, Tourism Geographies An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment, 13:3 (2011), 462-479 Winter, Caroline, ‘Ritual, Remembrance and War: Social Memory at Tyne Cot’, Annals of Tourism Research, 54 (2015) 16-29

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