This thesis examines the experiences and impact of wartime mobilization in the county of Devon. It argues that a crucial role was played by the county’s elites who became the self-appointed intermediaries of the war experience on a local level and who took an explicitly exhortative role, attempting to educate Devonians in the codes of ideal conduct in wartime. These armchair patriots, defined by the local commentator Stephen Reynolds as ‘provincial patriots’, superintended the patriotism of Devon’s population, evaluating that patriotism against the strength of their own. Through a critical exploration of Reynolds’ definition of Devon’s elite as the police-men and women of patriotism, this thesis reveals the ambiguities, constraints and complexities surrounding mobilization and remobilization in Devon. The evidence from Devon reveals the autonomy of Devon’s citizens as they attempted to navigate the different challenges of the war while they weighed-up individual and local interests against the competing requests that the ‘provincial patriots’ prescribed for them. In many cases, their responses to the appeals and prescriptions from Devon’s elite were informed by what they considered to be an appropriate contribution to the war effort. Therefore, the choice to participate in the measures introduced in the name of war effort in Devon was not a binary one. A tension between individual survival and national survival in the county was apparent in the encounters between Devon’s elite as agents of mobilization and the county’s populace during the war. Through various campaigns of superintendence in order to police the patriotism of Devon’s people, the ‘provincial patriots’ attempted to navigate through the terrain of these competing priorities and resolve this tension. In their endeavours to mobilize Devon’s populace, the authority of Devon’s elite was criticised and they faced constant negotiation between individual priorities and those of the nation. This analysis of the complexity of the Devonian experience of the First World War is sceptical about the ‘total’ nature of the First World War because the war to some Devonians was not the pre-eminent issue and did not absorb all of the county’s efforts. Rather, a significant part of Devon’s population was primarily concerned with individual priorities and that of the county throughout the war years.

La Grande Guerre n’est pas seulement une histoire de fantassins combattant au prix de lourdes pertes dans le no man’s land ou de pilotes se battant au-dessus des champs de bataille. Plus méconnus, les tunneliers sont une part essentielle de la guerre de tranchées. Spécialisés dans le creusement de sapes, ces soldats du génie britannique combattent directement sous les tranchées.Première unité créée en dehors du Royaume-Uni, en septembre 1915, la compagnie de tunneliers de Nouvelle-Zélande débarque à Arras, en mars 1916, devenant par la même occasion la première force néo-zélandaise sur le front occidental. Ce corps particulier s’appuie sur les compétences des recrues sélectionnées pour une guerre nouvelle et secrète. Ainsi, à partir de l’étude des 937 tunneliers néo-zélandais, les données personnelles, familiales, professionnelles et militaires proposent un portrait de ces hommes, avant, pendant et après la guerre.Issus des milieux de l’industrie minière de l’or et de la houille, les engagés de cette compagnie présentent une mixité sociale et culturelle européenne, reflet d’une société néo-zélandaise encore attachée à l’Empire. Recrutés pour faciliter leur formation, les tunneliers mènent leurs missions dans la craie blanche de l’Artois, d’abord pour défendre le front au nord d’Arras, puis pour aménager des dug-outs dans la cité artésienne et ses alentours. Ils vivent un combat différent qui rythme une vie bien distincte de leurs homologues de l’infanterie. À bien des égards, ce conflit secret renvoie, dans leur foyer, des individus désormais voués au silence, alors que le comblement de leurs ouvrages enfouit les dernières traces de leur travail, dès la fin de la guerre. / Accounts of soldiers fighting in trenches and pilots fighting in the air over the battlefields have long become the norm in what we read and watch when considering the history of the Great War. Lesser known is a war within a war that took place deep under the battlefields, the tunneling war. Specialized in working underground, the British tunnellers fought directly beneath the trenches. The first such unit created outside the United Kingdom, in September 1915, the members of the New Zealand Engineers Tunnelling Company which arrived in Arras in March 1916, were at the same time the first New Zealanders on the Western Front. This particular corps relied on the skills of recruits selected to take part in a new and secret war. Thus, by examining the personal, family, professional and military histories of the 937 New Zealand tunnellers, it has been possible to construct a portrait of these men before, during and after the war. From the gold and coal mining fields, recruits of this company had a European social and cultural diversity, reflecting a New Zealand society still attached to the Empire. Recruited to make their training easier, the tunnellers took their mission into the hard white chalk of the Artois, first to defend the front north of Arras, and then to develop dug-outs in and around the artesian city. They fought a different type of war which dictated a way of life distinct from their brothers in arms of the infantry. In many ways, this secret warfare led to demobilized soldiers condemned to silence at home, burying the last traces of their wartime experience as they returned to their former occupations underground.

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la configuration des rapports qui existent entre la France, la Roumanie et la Serbie, réunies autour du Banat pendant la Grande Guerre. La perspective épistémologique est orientée par l’histoire de la Première guerre mondiale sous tous ses aspects: diplomatiques, militaires, culturels, discursifs, de la mémoire etc. Notre cadre d’analyse vise d’abord l’histoire régionale de la Grande Guerre parce que le territoire du Banat se relève à la fois comme une donnée des pourparlers diplomatiques et comme une réalité à l’issue de la guerre, comme un objet à réclamer par les Roumains et par les Serbes au nom du droit de propriété et comme un sujet à débattre en présence de l’aréopage de la paix. Tous ces traits sont étudiés en fonction de rapports diplomatiques, politico-militaires et de propagande de la Roumanie et de la Serbie (du Royaume des Serbes, Croates et Slovènes) avec la France, Paris étant la capitale du « Grand Allié » et le lieu vers lequel se livrent les attentes et les espérances de la réalisation de leur union nationale. / The aim of this thesis is to configure the relationships that have been established between France, Romania and Serbia on Banat during the First World War. Epistemological perspective is guided by the history of world conflict in all its aspects: diplomatic, military, cultural, discursive, memoirs, etc. Our analysis framework first aims the history of the great war, since the territory of Banat appears at the same time as a source of diplomatic negotiations and as a reality at the end of the conflict, as a territory claimed by the Romanians and Serbs on behalf of the right of ownership and as a topic of discussion within the peace forum. All these characteristics are studied regarding the diplomatic, political and military relations of Romania and Serbia (Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) with France, Paris being the capital of the "Great Ally” and the place that awaits the expectations and hopes of achieving their national union.

Thesis advisor: Andrew Von Hendy / This thesis deals with literature of the Great War and examines the situation of women in this period through the characters in fiction works of the period with the support of non-fiction works by Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas) and Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. Through literature rather than direct historical approach, this thesis looks at the ways in which the war impacted the lives of women. The five fictional works dealt with are Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Aldous Huxley's short story “Farcical History of Richard Greenow,” Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier, Edith Wharton's Return of the Soldier, and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Chapters are on the following topics: “Women in the Soldier's Life” and chapters on women of the Great War and the following topics, education, work, class, and sexual liberation. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This research examines the relationship between masculinity and recruitment at the University of Toronto during the Great War. Through a gendered framework established by historians such as Judith Butler, masculinity is approached as a constructed process that encompasses a variety of complex relationships between the individual subject and social processes. The following questions are explored: What motivated the administration the University to instate policies that first encouraged, and then forced, male students to enter active service? How did dominant discourses of masculinity influence recruitment efforts and the subsequent movement towards mandatory military training? The research reveals that gendered understandings of war and recruitment on campus presented active service as the defining moment of manhood. Enlisting, then, was understood as more than a willingness to take up arms; it publicly signified that a man was committed to the defense of democracy and to securing the freedom of generations to come.

This research examines the relationship between masculinity and recruitment at the University of Toronto during the Great War. Through a gendered framework established by historians such as Judith Butler, masculinity is approached as a constructed process that encompasses a variety of complex relationships between the individual subject and social processes. The following questions are explored: What motivated the administration the University to instate policies that first encouraged, and then forced, male students to enter active service? How did dominant discourses of masculinity influence recruitment efforts and the subsequent movement towards mandatory military training? The research reveals that gendered understandings of war and recruitment on campus presented active service as the defining moment of manhood. Enlisting, then, was understood as more than a willingness to take up arms; it publicly signified that a man was committed to the defense of democracy and to securing the freedom of generations to come.

The glory of war is dead, and the Great War killed it. Soldierly dignity, heroism, and proper field chivalry; all laid to waste by a single mortar round at Arras. This ethos—a vestige of Greek warrior worship—stood little chance against the trenches. It either drowned in the fecal trench muck at the Somme or staggered back—in tatters, if that—a broken soul; another victim of the so-called “Good Fight.” And there were many victims. An entire generation, even, lost to the trenches. But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that home front in England didn’t even get it.

This dissertation examines the modes of individual and cultural grieving that characterize the British literature of the Great War and its aftermath, 1914-30. Combining archival research, cultural history, and genre theory, I identify the war literature’s expression of a poetics of grief and grievance: one that is melancholic, in that it resists redemptive mourning, and accusatory, in that it frequently assigns blame for war and suffering on civilian spectators or the writer himself. In order to trace the development of the anti-elegiac in the literature of the Great War, my dissertation provides: (a) a publication history of the war poems of Wilfred Owen, (b) a comparison of the manipulation of the pathetic fallacy and pastoral mode in the works of combatant poets and Virginia Woolf, and (c) a detailed assessment of the reception of the controversial war memoirs and novels of the late 1920s. My findings challenge the widely held assumption that the pervasive irony and disenchantment of the literature of the Great War is primarily a product of the historical rupture of the event. I emphasize that the ironic mode developed during the war- and inter-war periods is an expression of personal and social anxiety attached by writers to the subject of individual mortality. Additionally, I argue that the literature of the Great War focuses on the limits of language that addresses atrocity, and the instability of the idea of consolation in an era of mass, industrialized death. / text

In May 1915 British soldiers stationed near Victoria instigated a retaliatory riot against the local German community for the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. The riot spanned two days, and many local residents eagerly took part in the looting and destruction of German owned businesses. Despite its uniqueness as the city’s largest race riot, scholars have under-appreciated its importance for Victoria and British Columbia’s racial narrative. The riot further signals a change in how Victorians understood Germanness. From the 1850s onwards, Victoria’s British hegemony welcomed Germans as like-minded and appropriate white settlers. I argue that race and colour shaped German lives in Victoria, for the most part positively. During the war however Germanness took on new and negative meaning. As a result, many Germans increasingly hid their German background. Germans maintained their compatibility with the British hegemony, largely thanks to their whiteness, well after German racial background became a liability. / Graduate

Lorsque la guerre de 1914-1918 éclate, les écoles nationales et conservatoires de musique français ne sont pas les institutions les plus désignées pour participer à l’effort de guerre. Cependant, à Paris ou à Calais, à Toulouse ou à Lille, pourtant en zone envahie, on poursuit l’enseignement de la musique. Cette étude montre comment cet enseignement français s’est mobilisé. La diversité des situations initiales fait varier les modalités de l’adaptation aux conditions de la guerre. Les enseignants et leurs élèves participent à l’édification d’une culture musicienne de guerre : il faut à la fois bannir la musique de l’ennemi et fortifier la sienne. La part prise par les écoles de musique dans les œuvres de guerre laisse voir de quelles manières on a adapté les impératifs de guerre à la situation locale. Les sacrifices consentis par la profession, qu’ils soient ceux des combattants ou ceux des personnels restés mobilisés sur le front domestique, ne trouvent pas, après l’armistice, et malgré une mobilisation collective, à être récompensés par les améliorations attendues. Néanmoins, la Grande Guerre a convaincu de l’utilité de la musique : elle forge le sentiment national, elle est aussi une arme de propagande. / When the First World War started, the French national schools and the French conservatoires of music were not the most likely institutions to participate in the war effort. Meanwhile, in Paris or in Calais, in Toulouse or in Lille (throughout occupation), the teaching of music continued. This study shows how the teaching of music in France got involved in the war effort. The diversity of the initial situations leads to many different ways of adapting to the conditions of war. Teachers and their students participated in the construction of a musical war culture: you had to banish the enemy's music whilst fortifying your own.The part played by the schools of music in the war-time works shows how the obligations of war were adapted to the local situation. The music teachers, whether they were soldiers or other mobilized personnel on the Home front, made huge conscious sacrifices that were not rewarded by the expected improvements, after the armistice and despite a collective mobilization. Nevertheless, the First World War convinced people of the utility of music as it reinforced the national pride and it was a tool for propaganda.