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Abstract
Towards and into the Second World War, New Zealand society exhibited a habit of relating contemporary circumstances to aspects of the Great War. Indicating diverging interwar assessments of 1914–1918, this recurring commentary broadly divided over whether the last war should be understood as an exemplary model, a warning against war or as a lesson for a new war effort to learn from. This article outlines New Zealand’s major interwar interpretations, investigates their relation to outlooks on the Second World War and offers some preliminary thoughts on how the conceptual shifts of this period have informed more recent comprehensions of 1914–1918.
Notes
1. Hynes, A War Imagined, 283.
2. Worthy, “‘Light and Shade’,” 40.
3. Loveridge, Calls to Arms.
4. Evening Post, 2 May 1923, 5.
5. For example, Mark Sheftall’s comparative study of the United Kingdom and the Dominions notes: ‘the understanding of the war’s meaning that emphasised the exemplary qualities of the nation’s soldiers, and the achievement of an elevated national status that their outstanding battlefield performance helped to bring about, survived in Canada, Australia and New Zealand during the interwar-years as the dominant national representation of each nation’s war experience. Interpretations that emphasized loss or some other negative element of that experience were successfully relegated to the cultural margins in the Dominions to a degree not replicated in the Motherland.’ Sheftall, Altered Memories of the Great War, 185. Likewise, Jock Phillips has claimed that conventionally patriotic remembrance effectively silenced the ‘soldiers’ view’ of the war, which he holds was based around a shared cynical outlook. This has been a recurring point within his work. See Phillips, “War and National Identity,”91–109; Phillips, “The Quiet Western Front,” 231–48; and Phillips, “Lest We Forget,” 228–40. See also Krueger, “Murky Waters,” 89–110.
6. Tomorrow, 17 February 1937, 231.
7. As another editorial within Tomorrow put it: ‘In 1914 we fought the Germans, who had not harmed us, and our men spread themselves over France, Belgium, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Holy Land, a tenth of our total population fighting for some abstraction. For peace, for humanity, to protect our womenfolk (by destroying their logical protectors) for any old cause that we were thoughtless enough to swallow … What have we done for peace? Nothing! The League group, with its consistent warlike attitude, has forced the Fascist nations to arm to the teeth and become self-sufficient. I am satisfied they do not want war. But we are intensely ignorant of foreign affairs; easily gulled and therefore a grave menace.’ Tomorrow, 29 September 1937, 763.
8. Worthy, “Communities of Remembrance”; and Sharpe, “Anzac Day in New Zealand.”
9. School Journal, Part III (November 1929), 296. For further analyses see Openshaw, “Patriotism and the New Zealand Primary School”; and Malone, “The New Zealand School Journal,” 12–27; and Jenkins, Social Attitudes in the School Journal.
10. For a New Zealand context see Locke, Peace People, 68–96.
11. For a transnational account of this development see Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities 1914, 366–75. For a study touching on the New Zealand context see Openshaw, “Patriotism and the New Zealand Primary School,” 205–10.
12. Wood, The New Zealand People at War, 11. Certainly, the Communist Party had a limited sway; Party membership in 1935 stood at 353, increasing to 690 in 1941, and electoral performance never exceeded or repeated the high watermark of 6.15% of the total vote in the Auckland electorate in 1931. The party’s newspaper People’s Voice had a weekly circulation of 6760 in July 1939 which increased to near 10,000 in February 1940 before its suppression in May 1940). Likewise, Tomorrow has been noted as ‘by no means a popular publication in terms of either the size of its audience or the background of its writers, or by intent.’ Taylor, “The Communist Party of New Zealand,” 284; Taylor, The Home Front, 212; Roth, “The Communist Vote in New Zealand,” 27; and Barrowman, A Popular Vision, 31.
13. Bracco, Merchants of Hope.
14. Auckland Star, 7 August 1935, 10.
15. Jones, “‘The Shadow of That Earlier War’,” 68. The major titles within this canon are Hyde’s, Passport to Hell; Lee’s Civilian into Soldier; and Baxter’s, We Will Not Cease.
16. For examples, see Reed’s, Armageddon; and White’s, The War Makers. For further analysis see Green, By the Waters of Babylon, 49; and Martin, New Zealand Images of War, 97–101.
17. Wood, The New Zealand People at War, 26.
18. Openshaw, “Patriotism and the New Zealand Primary School,” 126–247; Malone, “The New Zealand School Journal,” 24–6.
19. School Journal, Part III (June 1932), 136, 138.
20. New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 225, 15 August 1930, 303.
21. Park, A Fence Around the Cuckoo, 15; Cox, Eyewitness, 22; Edmond with Milward, Women in Wartime: New Zealand Women Tell Their Story, 251; and Parr, Home, 41–6.
22. McNeish, Dance of the Peacocks, 66.
23. Tomorrow, 10 November 1937, 32.
24. Mulgan, Report on Experience, 26–7, 34. Fredrick Wood makes the comparable point that ‘It was not so easy in the 1930s as for their fathers in 1914 to feel absolute certainty as to contemporary issues, or equal confidence that successful warfare would establish moral values or even solve basic political problems.’ Wood, The New Zealand People at War, 148.
25. Press, 22 April 1933, 10.
26. Evening Post, 17 December 1935, 12.
27. Red Worker, 14 September 1931, 1.
28. Workers’ Weekly, 15 August 1936, 2.
29. Duff, New Zealand Now, 108; and McLeod, Myth and Reality, 18.
30. New Zealand Observer, 24 April 1935, 3.
31. Jones, “The Shadow of That Earlier War,” 77; and Sharpe, “Anzac Day in New Zealand,” 99.
32. Loveridge, “Not so Quiet on the New Zealand Front,” 23–40.
33. Evening Post, 27 November 1929, 7.
34. Auckland Star, 28 April 1936, 6.
35. Cunningham, “The Reactionary and the Radical,” 180.
36. Light on the Legion, 5–6, 13. In a particular appeal to women’s groups, Legion member Edith Willoughby argued that citizens’ movements were a continuation of women’s patriotic efforts during the war: ‘Wake up, women citizens! You answered the call for help to the nation in August 1914. Now, once again, use your powers and do your bit in this August 1933.’ Cunningham, ‘The Reactionary and the Radical,’ 165.
37. Evening Post, 20 May 1936, 10.
38. New Zealand Free Lance, 26 April 1939, 5.
39. Auckland Star, 24 April 1939, 11.
40. New Zealand Herald, 26 April 1939, 17.
41. Southland Times, 27 April 1939, 6.
42. Fernleaf, 15 May 1939, 4.
43. For an assessment in the British context see Connelly, We Can Take It, 61.
44. Dominion, 7 September 1939, 5.
45. Evening Post, 7 November 1939, 33.
46. Fernleaf, 15 April 1940, 1.
47. For Australian studies on this dynamic see Seal, Inventing Anzac, 145; and Ziino, A Distant Grief, 158–62. The RSA made a regular feature of noting the service of re-enlisted veterans particularly prominent figures such as William John (Jack) Lyon, A.S. Falconer, Howard Kippenberger, Bernard Freyberg, Reginald Miles, and James Hargest. RSA Review, 1 December 1941, 3.
48. A copy of this poster is available within the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collections (Reference GH015835) and is available online at http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Object/780935. For further analysis on the production and themes of New Zealand’s Second World War poster see Gibson, “Display Folk,” 7–27.
49. New Zealand Free Lance, 24 April 1940, 3; The Standard, 26 December 1940, 9.
50. New Zealand Herald, 24 September 1940, 6.
51. Taylor, The Home Front, 117.
52. For example, see New Zealand Observer, 11 February 1942, 3.
53. Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1943, 4.
54. People’s Voice, 10 November 1939, 1, 4.
55. Tomorrow, 11 October 1939, 784.
56. Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), MS-Papers-8752-204, “Proposed Book on the Security Intelligence Service.”
57. Tomorrow, 10 January 1940, 141, 149.
58. Archives New Zealand (ANZ), R23246723-ADMO-21007-W5787-1-33/14/1/1-1, “Peace Organisations.”
59. ANZ, R23246723-ADMO-21007-W5787-1-33/14/1/1-1, “Peace Organisations.”
60. People’s Voice, 24 November 1939, 7. This poem is attributed to Mason in Jones, “The Shadow of That Earlier War,” 76.
61. ANZ, R23246723-ADMO-21007-W5787-1-33/14/1/1-1, “Peace Organisations.” For further analysis of Burton’s pacifism see Crane, I Can Do No Other.
62. ANZ, R23246723-ADMO-21007-W5787-1-33/14/1/1-1, “Peace Organisations.” A similar point was made by Alun Richards who argued that this ‘Great War part 2’ would inevitably lead to a ‘part 3’. See What are We Fighting For?.
63. For further analysis on Holland’s views on war see O’Farrell, Harry Holland, Militant Socialist, 46, 65–7. For the most recent account of the party’s formation and wartime history see Franks and McAloon, Labour, 68–74.
64. For the evolution of the Labour Party’s position. See Taylor, The Home Front, 76; McIntyre, New Zealand Prepares for War, 141–92; and Wood, The New Zealand People at War, 22–4.
65. 1916 Sedition Trials: Robert Semple, Fred. R. Cooke, James Thorn, Peter Fraser and Tom Brindle, 5.
66. The National Newsletter, August 1941, 5.
67. McIntyre and Gardner, Speeches and Documents on New Zealand History, 356.
68. People’s Voice, 29 March 1940, 1.
69. The National Newsletter, August 1941, 5.
70. Wood, The New Zealand People at War, 111.
71. ATL, MS-Papers-0270-005, “Conscription.”
72. See note 71 above.
73. New Zealand Herald, 24 May 1940, 10. Echoes of this dynamic reappeared in 1948 when ex Labour Party member John A. Lee, reprinted the pamphlet 1916 Sedition Trials ‘to show the abyss between 1916 and 1948’. When Labour Fought Capitalism and Sung ‘The Red Flag’: A Pamphlet Reprinted to Recall the Stirring Days of 1916 When Robert Semple, James Thorn, Tom Brindle, Peter Fraser Stood Trial for Sedition, 1.
74. For an analysis of Labour’s strategy on this issue see Taylor, The Home Front, 76. This silence was never total. For example, Webb’s remarks on inspecting Christchurch Central Police Station’s lock-ups were widely reported: ‘Ha! This is more like what I had to live in, a few years ago … Two blankets in a cold stone cell – I still shiver when I think of it’. Evening Post, 23 June 1941, 6.
75. New Zealand Herald, 28 September 1938, 17.
76. Grant, Out in the Cold, 119. For further analysis on Semple’s attitudes regarding pacifism and militarism see Hickey, “From Coal Pit to Leather Pit,” 240–88.
77. Bassett with King, Tomorrow Comes the Song, 186–7. In regard to Fraser’s past sentence for seditious utterances a 1941 Security Service files note ‘These are facts which Pete would hate to become general knowledge’. ATL, MS-Papers-11459-054, “Security Intelligence Bureau.”
78. The Standard, 29 February 1940, 7.
79. ATL, MS-Papers-6703, “Price, Hugh Charles Llewellyn, 1929–2009: Papers relating to the People’s Voice.”
80. People’s Voice, 15 July 1941, n.p.
81. “Compo”, The Military Strength of the Soviet Union, 8. ‘Compo’ was the pseudonym of H. Winston Rhodes.
82. “Compo”, The Military Strength of the Soviet Union, 11.
83. “Compo”, The Military Strength of the Soviet Union, 38–9; People’s Voice, June 20, 1941, n.p.
84. People’s Voice, 27 June 1941, n.p.
85. Modern assessments of the Red Army in June 1941 observe a ‘stumbling colossus’ whose five million troops were largely ‘poorly trained, badly led, inadequately supplied and equipped and mal-deployed.’ The capacity to conduct effective modern operations was hampered by low command initiative, the result of political purges and a relatively low degree of technological familiarity across the mass of the Red Army, the consequence of a predominantly peasant society. The resulting military situation was worse than 1914: ‘rather than losing 2 armies and 245,000 men as the Tsarist Army had done in one month of battle at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in 1914, the Red Army lost 3 armies and 747,850 men during the first two weeks of Operation Barbarossa.’ By December 1941, Soviet losses totalled 4.5 million military casualties 20,000 tanks, 17,900 aircraft and 101,000 guns and mortars. At this time the Wehrmacht had advanced some 1200 km into the Russian interior captured key cities, population centres and production facilities and stood poised to strike at Moscow. It would be the Soviet regime’s capacity to endure massive human costs, rather than its humanitarian credentials, that made the Red Army a principle instrument in grinding down the German war machine over 1942–1945 with Soviet deaths in the Great Patriotic War overshadowing the combine losses of all belligerents in the Great War (28 million against 15 million). Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front, 30; Glantz, Before Stalingrad, 194, 200; Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed, 391.
86. Auckland Star, 6 May 1940, 6.
87. Evening Post, 24 January 1940, 4.
88. New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 260, 10 September 1941, 573. It has been noted however that ‘New Zealand faced its conscientious objectors and defaulters with attitudes largely derived from the First World War.’ Taylor, The Home Front, 244.
89. Caddick-Adams, Monte Cassino, 171.
90. Atkinson, The Day of Battle, 470.
91. Wood, The New Zealand People at War, 10. Various observations have cast the atmosphere in September 1939 as a sombre contrast to August 1914. Writing in 1941, Oliver Duff claimed it would be ‘a bold observer’ who would claim to know what exactly was going through the minds of those answering the call to war but stated that ‘There was certainly a deeper scepticism in general in 1939 than there was in 1914’ Duff, New Zealand Now, 121. An official history notes ‘There was no gloom, but the wild and hysterical enthusiasm witnessed during the Great War was absent.’ Taylor, The Home Front, 69.
92. Some aspects of this process are evident within Robinson, “Lest We Forget?” 76–91; and Loveridge, Calls to Arms, 247–55.
93. Malthus, ANZAC, 18.
94. Malthus, Armentiéres and the Somme, 14. Conversely, for a New Zealand account deeming the wars as comparatively immoral see Foote, Passing Bells, 23.
95. Connelly, The Great War, Memory and Ritual, 8. See also Todman, The Great War, 135; Gregory, The Last Great War, 4; and Reynolds, The Long Shadow, 247–80.
96. Mulgan, Report on Experience, 34. For further analysis of Second World War troops positively assessing their service against imaginings of the First World War see Sheffield, “The Shadow of the Somme,” 29–39.
97. Phillips, “Lest We Forget,” 240. A 2015 Labour History Project Bulletin similarly noted that ‘April this year is the centenary of that bungled attempt to invade Turkey in the early years of the First World War, the senseless war. It’s also the 70th anniversary of the deaths of two New Zealand soldiers killed in the last weeks of the noble war – the Second World War.’ Parker, “The Noble War,” 37.