As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists and  Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate  ….            

Dr Dan Todman considers how remembrance and memorialisation have been used by nations and communities to negotiate the overwhelming losses of World War One.

Soldiers of the Magre who fell for their country in the world war 1914-1918

Publication printed in 1919 in Italy commemorating the soldiers from the small town of Magrè who died in the war.

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The scale and nature of the First World War both required and complicated its remembrance. The war was an immensely complex event. It was global in its reach, generated extremes of experience and emotion, and involved conflicts within as well as between nations. On the battlefronts, millions were left disabled or dead in prolonged battles of attrition. Many of those who died had no known grave. At home, societies underwent immense pressures: mass bereavement and prolonged separation, invasion and occupation, shortages and starvation, rebellion and revolution. But there was also a strong sense of living through a historic moment that needed to be recorded. What the war meant and how it would be remembered in the future were both matters of concern whilst the fighting was still going on, and remained so during the uneasy peace that came after.

The war’s changing meanings

In every combatant country, the war’s meanings changed as it was fought, and remained subject to debate after it had finished. Individuals and communities tried to work out what was happening to them and sought recognition of their sacrifices. Politicians, generals and governments attempted to justify losses and enthuse their populations for greater endeavours. Churches, charities and local civic leaders played an active role: providing solace by explaining the purpose of suffering was both a responsibility and a reinforcement of their position in society. Journalists, manufacturers, designers, sculptors, writers and publishers all responded to war as a creative stimulus and a commercial opportunity. Some of these responses were extremely modern in form, others reached back to more traditional representations of war, sacrifice and heroism in the search for comfort and understanding.

- See more at: http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/remembrance-and-memorials#sthash.QRj4gn4T.dpuf