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1917: Books and Literature

Sep27

The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917. One of the first prizes awarded was for editorial writing, and the first winner was an editorial about the war and the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania.

This editorial by Frank J. Simonds appeared in the New York Tribune on the first anniversary of the torpedoing of the Lusitania cruise liner. Read the entire editorial and see if it reminds you of anything nowadays. Could you not have substituted the words “Islamic extremist” for “German” and “Germany” in this editorial and published it, almost unchanged except for a few references to contemporary events and specifics, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11?

“This war in Europe on terrorism is going on until the German the Islamic terrorist idea is crushed or conquers. The world cannot now exist half civilized and half German Islamic extremist. Only one of two conceptions of life, of humanity, can subsist. One of the conceptions was written in the Lusitania 9/11 Massacre, written clear beyond all mistaking. It is this writing that we should study on this anniversary; it is this fact that we should grasp today, not in anger, not in any spirit that clamors for vengeance, but as the citizens of a nation which has inherited noble ideals and gallant traditions, which has inherited liberty and light from those who died to serve them, and now stands face to face with that which seeks to extinguish both throughout the world.”

While We’re Far Apart by Lynn Austin

Sep27

I read this book because it’s one of the many novels that has been nominated for the INSPY Award in the category of General Fiction. Also, I like historical fiction,and this book set during Word War II sounded interesting. In fact, I gave it to my mom to read first, thinking she might like the time period setting; she actually remembers the end of World War II. She says she remembers marching around her front yard banging with a spoon on an old pan to celebrate VE Day or VJ Day, one of the two.

However, for my mom the book was a non-starter. She read a few chapters, but since the main characters, or at least one of the main characters, is a twelve year old girl, the book felt too juvenile to her. She suggested I give it to Betsy-Bee who is also twelve years old.

However, since it’s classified as adult fiction, I thought I should read it myself. I’m glad I did. There’s not much in there that a mature 13 or 14 year old wouldn’t understand and appreciate, but the book, especially the pacing, is probably more suited to adults. It doesn’t move too quickly, but rather it’s what I would call a character-centered story. Esther, the twelve year old, is a love-starved little girl who’s just on the edge of adolescence and growing into adulthood. Her mother has died in a car accident, and her father is so absorbed in his grief that he has little or no emotional strength to give to his children. Esther’s brother, Peter, is just as confused and needy as Esther, but he expresses his suffering by becoming mute. The two children are further traumatized when their father decides to volunteer to go to war in order to escape from his memories and from the pain of his wife’s death.

Then, the most interesting character enters the story. Penny Goodrich is the girl next door who’s always, unbeknownst to him, had a crush on the children’s father. When their grandmother refuses to care for the children (she’s a hoarder and has her own issues), Penny steps up, hoping to make Eddie Shaffer, the dad, fall in love with her as she cares for his children. I thought at first Penny was going to be border-line mentally impaired, but as the story progresses, Penny is only very sheltered and a bit slow on the uptake because of her peculiar background and discouraging and over-protective parents who have always told her that she is as “dumb as a green bean.”

I liked figuring out Penny, and then the Jewish characters who show up in the story are also intriguing. Mr. Mendel, the Shaffers’ friend, neighbor, and landlord, is waiting to hear from his son who was trapped in Hungary at the beginning of the war. Mr. Mendel also lost his wife in the same accident that killed Esther’s mother, and he is quite bitter towards “Hashem” the name he uses to speak of God. The book includes lots of questioning about the goodness of God and His role in suffering and evil. “If God is good, why does He let bad things happen?” No easy answers are given, but Mr. Mendel eventually realizes that he cannot leave his faith, or else his faith in God and community will not leave him.

I liked it. If the setting and characters sound like somewhere you would like to visit and people you would like to get to know, if only briefly, check it out.

1916: Art and Entertainment

Sep26

On May 20, 1916, artist Norman Rockwell publishes his first cover for the magazine Saturday Evening Post. The picture was called Boy With Baby Carriage., and it shows a boy who is having to push a baby in her carriage while his friends go off to play baseball.

Also, during 1916 and until his death in 1926, Claude Monet continues to paint his murals of water lilies even though he develops cataracts on his eyes and is unable to see as clearly or paint in such detail as he was in his earlier work.

Christina Bjork (b. 1938) is author of the beautiful book, Linnea in Monet’s Garden. In the book, Linnea, a young girl, and her neighbor, Mr. Blom, get to visit Paris and Giverny and see the places where Monet created his paintings. The book is a wonderful introduction to impressionist art and to the work and life of Claude Monet.

1916: Books and Literature

Sep26

Seventeen A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family, Especially William by Booth Tarkington; illustrated by Arthur William Brown, published by Harper and Brothers, 1916, is a humorous novel about a seventeen year old boy’s first love. Mr. Tarkington’s novels were very popular in the first part of the twentieth century.

Listen to W.B. Yeats’ poem, Easter, 1916 about the Irish Uprising that occurred in Dublin, Ireland on Easter Monday of that year. The rebels proclaimed Irish independence and an Irish republic, but they were forced to surrender to superior British forces on April 29, 1916. Over 300 Irish died, and over 2000 were imprisoned by the British.

Here’s the last verse of the poem which celebrates those Irish heroes who died in the Easter Uprising:

'Thomas MacDonagh - Easter Rising 1916' photo (c) 2008, William Murphy - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

1916: Events and Inventions

Sep26

January, 1915. Austro-Hungarian forces overrun and take the small country of Montenegro.

February 21, 1916. German guns fire on the French positions near the fort of Verdun in the beginning of a major assault on the French line. The French, who have concentrated their armies elsewhere along the front, retreat before the German onslaught.

March, 1916. The Austrian War Dog Institute and the German Association for Serving Dogs begin training dogs as guides for the blind.

'Villa, Raoul Madero (LOC)' photo (c) 1914, The Library of Congress - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/March 15, 1916. 4000 U.S. troops under the command of General John Pershing cross the border into Mexico in pursuit of Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa. Villa and his Villistas have been raiding towns along the border in Arizona and New Mexico. Some say he is purposely trying to draw the Americans into the continued civil war in Mexico. The picture on the right is Pancho Villa and some of his men in 1914.

April 24, 1916. The Easter Rising. Irish nationalists in Dublin stage an uprising against British rule on the Monday after Easter Sunday. The Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein, two nationalist organizations, lead the rebellion and attempt to declare Ireland to be an independent republic. The British government sends reinforcements to the army in Dublin to fight and capture the rebels.

May 31, 1916. British and German Dreadnoughts clash at Jutland off the coast of Denmark. Called the battle of Jutland, the fight ends in a German retreat but greater losses of men and ships for the British.

July 1, 1916. The Allies launch an attack on the German lines near the Somme River in northern France. Over 57,000 Allied soldiers and 800 Germans die in the first day of the offensive. The Battle of the Somme will end in November after more than a million deaths on both sides.

August, 1916. Romania, neutral until now, joins the Allies and invades Austria-Hungary.

September 15, 1916. Great Britain’s army reveals its new secret weapon: the tank. 32 tanks are deployed on the Somme, and German machine gunners scatter in their path. 2000 Germans are taken prisoner.

December, 1916. Cutex, the first liquid nail polish, is introduced in the U.S. by Northam Warren.

December, 1916. The ‘turnip winter’ in Germany and Austria sees food shortages caused by the Allied naval blockade and a high mortality rate among the civilian population.

1915: Art and Entertainment

Sep25

On March 3, 1915 the D.W. Griffith film The Birth of a Nation premiered in New York City. It was three hours long, a silent movie about the Civil War and Reconstruction, and many critics thought then and many still do that the film itself was a masterpiece of cinematic art.

However, the film is also racist and glorifies the Ku Klux Klan while portraying black people as foolish at best, violent and sexually predatory at worst. The movie’s heroes are Klansmen who rescue the innocent young Lillian Gish, daughter of the Confederacy, from the evil black men, played by white actors in black-face make-up, who intend to despoil her.

Film critic Roger Ebert: “Certainly The Birth of a Nation (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet.”

I find it difficult, if not impossible, to separate a work of art from its message. If a piece of music or a painting or a film or a book, says something that is evil or depraved, then it may well be worth viewing or reading in order to understand how some people think—if the person consuming the art is able to remain untainted and unswayed by the message. However, a work of art cannot be truly “good” if its intent is evil, no matter how technically adept and talented the artist.

What is your opinion about “good” art with an evil intent or message?

1915: Events and Inventions

Sep24

February 4, 1915. In response to the British blockade of Germany, the Germans announce that they will begin to attack any vessels, neutral or not, sailing in the waters of the British Isles. Although the British navy controlled the ocean’s surface and the british were already searching for and confiscating any goods bound for Germany that could possibly be helpful in the war effort, German U-boats (submarines) and their policy of unrestricted submarine warfare would prove to be a valuable weapon for Germany.

'A trench in the low flat country near La Bassee Ville' photo (c) 1918, National Media Museum - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/April 22, 1915. The Germans introduce the use of poisoned gas as a weapon in the war in the Battle of Ypres on the Western Front. The first poisoned gas is not very effective, but the Germans promise that “more effective substances can be expected.” Anti-chlorine gas masks are issued to British troops.

April 30, 1915. Allied forces, mostly British, Australians, New Zealanders and French, land on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey in an attempt to force an entrance through to the Black Sea and supply weapons and goods to Russia through her ports there.

May, 1915. In spite of a German warning that “a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies”, the Lusitania leaves New York bound for Liverpool, England. The Germans advertise in the New York newspapers, “Vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction . . . travelers sailing in the war zone . . . do so at their own risk.” Passengers filled the ship anyway, and on May 7, just off the coast of Ireland, a German U-boat fired on the Lusitania and caused it to sink. 1,198 people died, and 128 of them were Americans. Many Americans advocate war against Germany, but President Woodrow Wilson continues to counsel and pursue peaceful negotiations with the Germans.

May 23, 1915. Italy leaves the Triple Alliance (Central Powers) and goes to war against Austria-Hungary, joining the side of Britain, France, Russia, and Serbia.

June, 1915. Armenians, a Christian minority in a mostly Muslim Turkey, are seen as traitors and potential rebels. So the Turkish government begins a program of deportation and secret genocide for the Armenians. The Road from Home by David Kherdian tells the story of the author’s mother, Veron Dumehjian, who was a 15 year old survivor of the Armenian holocaust. It’s an excellent book.

July 29, 1915. 400 U.S. Marines land in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to protect American lives and property as revolution and civil war rage throughout the small island country in the Caribbean.

September, 1915. Bulgaria enters the war on the side of Austria and Germany and moves its troops eastward toward Serbia.

November 14, 1915. Tomas Masaryk, a professor of philosophy exiled by the Austrians, calls for a free Czechoslavakia —combining the two parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into one free country.

December 20, 1915. After eight months of fighting, Allied forces retreat from Gallipoli Peninsula leaving it in Turkish hands. Newspapers call the retreat the biggest setback of the war so far for the Allies.

December, 1915. German physicist Albert Einstein publishes his new Special Theory of Relativity.

World War I: The Poems

Sep23

Sonnet V: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. Brooke died in 1915 of blood poisoning due to a small wound, left unattended.
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.”

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.
“If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

As the war dragged on, men became disillusioned, and the poetry became darker and more pessimistic.

Dulce et Decorum by Wilfred Owen. Listen to this poem by a British soldier who was killed in action in 1918 a week before the war ended.
“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.”

Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon.
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

American Alan Seeger foretold his own death in the poem, Rendezvous.
“I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade . . .”

This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong by Edward Thomas.
“I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.”

World War I: What They Said

Sep22

Primary Source Accounts of World War I by Glenn Sherer and Marty Fletcher.

As I looked through this book and the websites to which it referred, some of the words of soldiers and civilians jumped out at me. It truly makes the time period and the Great War itself take on new meaning when you experience it through the eyes of those who were there.

Borijove Jetvic, fellow terrorist of Gavrilo Princip, the man who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his wife: “Princip made an appeal to the prison governor: ‘There is no need to carry me to another prison. My life is already ebbing away. I suggest that you nail me to a cross and burn me alive. My flaming body will be a torch to light my people on their way to freedom.'” SE: He thought he was a hero and had no idea of the horror that he had unleashed.

French lieutenant: “Humanity . . . must be mad to do what it is doing. What scenes of horror and carnage! . . . Hell cannot be so terrible.” SE: Yet, hell is worse, and we go there willingly and stupidly, just as men went to war thinking it would be an adventure.

American survivor of the sinking of the Lusitania, Charles Jeffrey: “There was a thunderous roar, as of the collapse of a great building on fire. Then the Lusitania disappeared, dragging hundreds of fellow creatures into the vortex. Many never rose to the surface, but the sea rapidly grew black with the figures of struggling men, women and children.”

American poet Alan Seeger who volunteered to fight with the British before America entered the war: “”If it must be, let it come in the heat of action. Why flinch? It is by far the noblest form in which death can come. It is in a sense almost a privilege. . . . If you are in this thing at all it is best to be in to the limit. And this is the supreme experience.” SE: Is there such a thing as a noble death, or is Death always and forever the enemy, to be endured perhaps stoically and even nobly, but always the enemy of the resurrection life that God has for his children? The ‘supreme experience” is not death, but rather Life.

Teddy Roosevelt in 1917 after the torpedoing of two American ships by the Germans: “There is no question about going to war! Germany is already at war with us.”

Joyce Lewis, American soldier wounded in the Battle of Belleau Wood: “The surgeons came out, finally, and seeing me, exclaimed, ‘What, ain’t you dead yet?’ Then they took me to the hospital, fixt me up as best they could, and sent me to Paris in an automobile ambulance.”

Private William Bishop, Jr.: “Pleasure around here isn’t much except reading your shirt, which means to look it over for cooties. An as for rats, they are the size of a five year old tomcat. You can’t scare them. They crawl all over your bunks, and if you knock them down they just come right back again.”

Colonel Thomas Gowenlock on the Armistice and the end of the war: “All over the world on November 11, 1918, people were celebrating, dancing in the streets, drinking champagne, hailing the armistice that meant the end of the war. But at the front there was no celebration. . . . All were bewildered by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers. . . . What was to come next? They did not know and hardly cared. Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace.”

To read more about the Great War the book suggests the following website:

PBS: THe Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.

Reading about World War I

Sep20

Nonfiction for children and young adults:
Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy. World War I and the Christmas Eve, 1914 spontaneous cease-fire. Reviewed by Betsy at Fuse #8.
The War to End All Wars: World War I by Russell Freedman. Reviewed at Bookish Blather.
Primary Source Accounts of World War I by Glenn Sherer and Marty Fletcher. From a series on various American wars published by MyReportLinks.com (Enslow Publishers).
Remember the Lusitania! by Diana Preston. A children’s/young adult version of the adult nonfiction title by the same author. The books includes lots of personal anecdotes about individuals who survived the sinking of the Lusitania and stories of some of the people who did not. It’s a solid, brief (89 pages with pictures) introduction to the subject, but it felt a little rushed. I hardly had time to get to know the characters that the author spotlighted before the entire episode was over and done with.
Unraveling Freedom: The Battle for Democracy on the Home Front During World War I by Ann Bausum. Reviewed by Betsy at Fuse #8.

Adult nonfiction:
The Proud Tower: A portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman. I’m working on this one–about halfway through. The author spent about 200 pages on the Dreyfus affair in France, and if nothing else, I feel as if I know a lot more about French modern history than I did before. Reviewed at Resolute Reader.
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. I started this book once but didn’t finish. I think after I get through with The Proud Tower, I’ll be ready for guns. The Guns of August won Ms. Tuchman a Pulitzer Prize for history. Reviewed at Resolute Reader.
The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty by Robert K. Massie. I read this classic biography/tragedy back when I was in high school or college, and I remember it as fascinating. It’s since been updated with new discoveries made about the bodies that were found and from information found in Soviet archives.
Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie.
Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie.
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild. Semicolon review here.
The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson. Semicolon review here.
Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy by Diana Preston.

Children’s and young adult fiction:
Fly, Cher Ami, Fly!: The Pigeon Who Saved the Lost Battalion by Robert Burleigh. Based on a true story about carrier pigeons used by the U.S. Army during World War I.
War Game: Village Green to No-Man’s Land by Michael Foreman. A longer picture book story of a soccer game during the Christmas truce of 1914.
Winnie’s War by Jenny Moss. Semicolon review here.
The Best Bad Luck I Ever had by Kristin Levine. Semicolon review here.
When Christmas Comes Again: The World War I Diary of Simone Spencer, New York City to the Western Front, 1917 by Beth Seidel Levine.
Rilla of Ingleside by L.M Montgomery.
Betsy and the Great World by Maud Hart Lovelace. Betsy travels through Europe instead of going immediately to college after high school, and she sees the arms build-up and the beginning of World War I. Reviewed at Library Hospital.
Betsy’s Wedding by Maud Hart Lovelace. Reviewed at Reading on a Rainy Day.
Kipling’s Choice by Geert Spillebeen. I read this book a couple of years ago, but never got around to reviewing it. It’s a fictional account of the death of John Kipling, son of Rudyard Kipling, near Loos, France in 1915. Here it is reviewed at Chasing Ray.
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. Joey, the farm horse, is sold to the army and sent to the Western front. Reviewed at Another Cookie Crumbles.
Without Warning: Ellen’s Story, 1914-1918 by Dennis Hamley. Ellen Wilkins becomes a nurse to follow her brother to war.
A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. In 1918 Boston, Hannah Gold must face her own wartime suffering as the influenza epidemic sweeps through her family and town.
Eyes Like Willy’s by Juanita Havill. A French brother and sister, Guy and Sarah Masson, and their Austrian friend Willy are separated by the war.
After the Dancing Days by Margaret Rostkowski. We read this YA novel for my English/History class at homeschool co-op last year. Annie is a thirteen year old girl living in a small town in Kansas at the end of World War I. As she begins to visit the returning soldiers at the veterans’ hospital where her father works as a doctor, Annie is at first repulsed and frightened by the severely injured men. However, she comes to be friends with them, one in particular, even though her mother is opposed to Annie’s hospital visits and wants her to forget about the war and its consequences.
My Brother’s Shadow by Monica Schroder. This YA novel is brand new, published in September by Farrar Straus Giroux, and I got an ARC from the publisher. It’s about a German boy, Moritz, towards the end of the war in 1918 and how he comes to see the war and its results differently as he grows up in its aftermath. Moritz’s brother comes home severely wounded from the front, and Moritz must choose between his loyalty to his brother and his mother’s new socialist way of seeing politics and the world. I thought the story was good, but the fact that entire books is written in present tense distracted me. I suppose the intent is a “you are there” feel, but I would have preferred the distance and objectivity of past tense.

Adult fiction:
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara.
No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry is the first in her World War I mystery/suspense series. I don’t like her writing in these books as much as I did the Victorian Charlotte Pitt mysteries, but if you’re interested in the time period, they’re worth a try.

Of course, there are many, many more books about and set during World War I, but these are the ones with which I have some familiarity.