The First World War ended a relative – though certainly not absolute – century of peace, global economic growth and European world hegemony. Conflict had been detonated by aggressive acts from states determined to make themselves stronger and more secure; but it destroyed those primarily responsible – the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russia empires – and weakened all the combatant countries except America, which only joined the struggle in 1917.
War imposed huge strains on the societies involved, and all felt the consequences, including the United Kingdom: Ireland broke away, and the empire began to fissure. Infinitely more traumatic were the fates of central and eastern Europe and the Middle East, where the collapse of the empires that had ruled them gave opportunities for independence to new nations, but caused years of bloody conflict and revolutionary violence that destroyed many millions of lives and led to mass ‘ethnic cleansing’. Some of the consequences still fester today.
The human cost for Britain, though less than for several other countries, had been immense: the line of mourners for the inauguration of the Cenotaph in Whitehall stretched for seven miles. People wanted victory to be for more than selfish reasons: in the novelist H.G. Wells’s phrase, they wanted it to be “a war to end war”. Only this seemed to make the terrible sacrifice bearable.
Although there was anger against the enemy, and a popular demand to ‘make Germany pay’, there was a countervailing desire for reconciliation and a new peaceful world – an aspiration that earlier generations would have thought impossible, but which we have never abandoned. A League of Nations was created to keep the peace. King George V declared that war should be consigned to “a dead past“.
Many progressives, with the economist John Maynard Keynes as their spokesman, deplored what they saw as excessively harsh treatment of the now democratic Germany, which was made to pay economic “reparations”. Here was the origin of the policy of “appeasement” – to satisfy German grievances – which was generally accepted in Britain. Support for the League and for general disarmament was strong in all parties and sections of society. The Oxford Union famously voted in 1933 that “this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country“.
Our modern political landscape was created by the war. The once dominant Liberal Party split, and Labour replaced it as a major party. Wartime solidarity led Britain to take its final steps to democracy, giving the parliamentary vote to all adult men and eventually all women. The then prime minister, David Lloyd George, promised “homes fit for heroes“. Welfare benefits rose faster than ever before or since, despite the huge public debt created by the war.
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