I've
never forgotten a book I encountered in my hometown public library
during the early 1960's – and which served as one of my
earliest introductions to the world as
it actually is rather
than how it appeared on
the streets of my hometown:
 |
Fort Smith, Arkansas, Armed Forces Day, 1953. Military parade provided by nearby Fort Chaffee. |
The First World War: A Photographic History was edited and published in 1933 by Laurence Stallings (1894-1968), playwright, screenwriter, novelist, literary critic, and journalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Stallings
"Laurence Stallings introduced The First World War: A Photographic History as a even-handed, unbiased collection of photographs of the Great War. He notes that 'a militarist will be disappointed in [the pictures] for there are not enough pictures of guns' and 'a pacifist will not find enough horror, nor enough of cadavers.' In spite of Stallings' statement of neutrality, the general tone of the work is distinctly anti-war. In fact, Stallings' book not only exposed the senselessness of the war, it also critiques the values and world view that justified the United States' entry into the war and informed the Wilsonian vision of the post-war era. ...
Stallings' criticism of Victorian and Wilsonian optimism and sense of progress is apparent throughout the work. It is, in fact, evident in the title of the book – The First World War: A Photographic History. In 1933, there had only been one world war. Stallings, through his title, implied that there will be more world wars. In addition to its use in the title, the phrase 'first world war' appears twice in the introduction. Also in that introduction he alludes to the next war not being so distant. In addressing Africa's absence from the book he says, 'There should be more pictures of Africa? In the next war, experts assure us, there will be.' " – Aaron J. Gulyas
One can read more about this book here:
http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/hhr5-2.html
What follows is a selection of 47 photographs out of a total of 500 from this now largely forgotten book. Poems by Heinrich Heine, Wilfred Owen and Marina Tsvetaeva have been inserted where it was made appropriate by the captions and subjects of the photographs.
I was born in 1863
The spirit of war surrounded me
Now the spirit of war has come again
And I have a son with – The Fighting Men !
The spirit of war surrounded me
Now the spirit of war has come again
And I have a son with – The Fighting Men !
 |
"Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland; es war ein Traum..."
(I once had a beautiful fatherland; it was a dream...)
reference to Heinrich Heine's poem:
In der Fremde
Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland
Der Eichenbaum
wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft –
es war ein Traum.
Das küßte mich auf deutsch und sprach auf deutsch
(man glaubt es kaum,
wie gut es klang) das Wort: "Ich liebe dich" –
es war ein Traum.
|
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugels calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eye
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
– Wilfred Owen (1917)
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
(It is sweet and glorious to die for one's country)
Killed in action, trying to get his men
across the Sambre Canal.
(note: the above portrait of Owen does not appear in Stallings' book)
"Im Westen nichts Neues" (literal translation: "Nothing New in the West")
reference to Erich Maria Remarque's 1928
World War I anti-war novel: Im Westen nichts Neues
(English title: All Quiet on the Western Front)
The entire 1930 English-language film of Remarque's novel is here:
"Girls" British shell factory at Woolrich
Top:
Making shells in a U.S. munitions factory
Bottom:
Making large calibre guns at Bethlehem, Pa.
Top:
"Russian women" Members of the Russian Battalion of Death
Bottom:
"English women" English women present a petition to the
authorities
Little mushroom, white Bolitus,
my own favourite.
The field sways, a chant of Rus’
rises over it.
Help me, I’m unsteady on my feet.
This blood-red is making my eyes foggy.
On either side, mouths lie
open and bleeding, and from
each wound rises a cry:
Mother!
One word is all I hear, as
I stand, dazed. From someone
else’s womb into my own:
– Mother!
They all lie in a row,
no line between them,
I recognise that each one was a soldier,
But which is mine? Which one is another’s?
This man was White now he’s become Red.
Blood has reddened him.
This one was Red now he’s become White.
Death has whitened him.
– What are you? – Can’t understand.
– Lean on your arm.
Have you been with the Reds?
– Ry-azan.
And so from right and left
behind ahead
together. White and Red, one cry of
– Mother!
Without choice. Without anger.
One long moan. Stubbornly.
A cry that reaches up to heaven,
– Mother!
– Marina Tsvetaeva
(From "Swans' Encampment")
 |
Result of post-war famine in Russia |
(reference to the $10,000 insurance payment made to the families of fallen American soldiers)
 |
"1933" Concluding photos for The First World War: A Photographic
History
… a preview of the next war before most realized
that there would be one.
|
Postscript:
"...And since right could hardly be on either side..."
Several years after discovering Stallings' Photographic History of the First World War (in 1965 – once again, in the public library in my hometown) I made several related discoveries, the first being a two-LP set of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. The library had just acquired a copy of this now-historic 1963 premiere recording with the composer conducting. This, in turn, led to a second discovery: the poetry (and person) of Wilfred Owen, arguably the most significant poet of the English language to devote his art to the subject of war. This was due to the fact that Britten structures his War Requiem around a number of Owen's greatest poems.
The original 1963 recording of Britten's War Requiem was eventually re-issued by British Decca (its original producer) during the 1980's in the compact disc format together with a completely different set of program notes than those which accompanied the original LP set. The notes for the CD edition are much longer (and includes historical photographs of soldiers with military hardware, etc.) – but the anti-war, anti-nationalist, pointedly moral content of the earlier LP notes has either been toned-down or eliminated altogether, as with William Plomer's later omitted Preface to the LP edition. This, however, was to have been expected: since the 1980's "permanent war" has become our only reality.
So – in order that the original notes for Britten's War Requiem do not vanish even further, here they are in their entirety:
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