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.

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.

Sir Henry Wilson remains one of the most controversial British Army generals of the Great War. A colourful character in life, he attracted admirers and detractors in equal measure; in death, his reputation was ruined by a biography based on his personal diaries. The Wilson of the historiography is, at best, a politician rather than a soldier, at worst an ambitious Francophile intriguer. This thesis looks beyond this accepted characterisation, reassessing his role in the formation of British and Allied strategy in the final months of the war. Wilson attained influence, and subsequently power, when Lloyd George consulted him after failing to persuade Britain’s leading generals to change their strategic focus. The thesis re-examines Wilson’s policy critique, which led to the creation of the Supreme War Council, and negated plans for a major Allied offensive on the Western Front in 1918. This thesis aims to shine new light on Wilson’s work on the Council, with an analysis of its policy recommendations. The research will also explore the manpower crisis, the key issue for the entente in this period, and Wilson’s contribution to the establishment of Allied unity of command. The diplomatic skills Wilson deployed to defuse serious strains between the entente powers will be examined, with particular reference to his time as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. His contribution to the debate on Britain’s post-war imperial grand strategy will also be evaluated. The thesis will refute the long-established onedimensional view of Wilson and suggest that he played a more influential role in British strategic development than has hitherto been acknowledged.

Par les sentiments qu’elle a suscités, les discours ou les images qu’elle a générés, la baïonnette offre à l’historien une entrée intéressante pour étudier les imaginaires à l’épreuve de la Première Guerre mondiale. Elle permet de s’interroger, par-delà la diversité des supports, sur les modèles dominants et leur remise en cause, avant et pendant la guerre. Pourquoi l’assaut et le combat « à la baïonnette », topoi de la représentation du combat avant 1914, tiennent une place prépondérante dans le discours de guerre qui se met en place dès les premières semaines ? Ancré dans des pratiques bien établies avant 1914, favorisé par le contexte spécifique des entrées en guerre, l’engouement pour la baïonnette se heurte cependant à la violence des affrontements qui ne lui laisse qu’une place très marginale. Les autorités militaires et les principaux producteurs de biens culturels se détournent au fil des mois des ressorts héroïques du début de la guerre pour amorcer, selon une chronologie propre à chaque acteur, un tournant discursif vers davantage de sobriété et de réalisme. La baïonnette témoigne donc de l’évolution du discours dominant. Cette arme invite également à travailler sur la réception par les contemporains de cet imaginaire, avant et pendant la guerre. Si la plupart des mobilisés étaient imprégnés de représentations conventionnelles du combat avant 1914, la réalité des assauts se révèle nettement plus éprouvante. Le positionnement des combattants face à cet imaginaire est complexe, oscillant entre colère, résignation et appropriation plus ou moins consciente, plus ou moins affichée, d’une représentation de la guerre erronée, certes, mais incontestablement puissante. / Through the feelings it aroused, the speeches or pictures it created, the fixed bayonet gives an opportunity for the historian to study the ideals underpinning the Great War. Media portrayals of the bayonet as a field weapon changed during the war. The effectiveness of the bayonet as a weapon of war challenged prevailing official attitudes both before and during it. In the early stages of the conflict, it was a cliché and yet true, that battles using fixed bayonets played a prominent role in war speeches. As a typical cliché of warfare before 1914, it was rooted as a well-established practice. However, the fixed bayonet model did not match the requirements of the more violent clashes of the new conflict. As time progressed, military officials and all branches of the media started turning their back on what was considered as heroism at the beginning of WWI. Over a period of time the different media started delivering information that was more sober and realistic. The way fixed bayonets were portrayed reflects the evolution in mainstream official speeches. A focus on the weapon also provides an opportunity to take into account how contemporaries dealt with the varying representations before and during the war. Whilst most soldiers were influenced by common preconceptions about fighting at the front pre-1914, the down-to-earth reality proved much more demanding. Soldiers’ reactions towards official war representations were complex, ranging from anger to resignation. With assumptions that were more or less conscious, more or less expressed, soldiers began to consider the realities of war and consequently saw the representations as being false and yet undeniably powerful.

The most popular game all over the world has entered the territory of Bohemia already in the last decades of the 19th century, when especially in the cities and suburbs of Prague many Czech or German societies, engaged in new game from England called "football", was founded. Sudden and long lasting interruption of positive development of young sport by mobilization in the summer of 1914 and deep political and social changes after conflict isolated prewar events and made unique relict environment that creates the main sources for ideas of work. However chapters leaving sport performances aside and try to describe the period culminating after year 1900, when profesional player was born of student-enthusiast and when club loyalities based on nationality or social inclusion of spectator have been created. To achive a comprehensive view is also important to describe ideological orientation and economy of clubs, topography of Prague grounds or relationships between biggest clubs SK Slavia, AC Sparta, SK Viktoria Žižkov and DFC Prag, which was litmus paper of attitudes with German etnicity. Keywords Football, Prague, Czechs, Germans, Slavia, Sparta, The Great War

L’ampleur globale des destructions sur le Chemin des Dames (Aisne) est incontestablement sans précédent au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale et justifie une étude à part entière sur sa reconstruction. La gestion et la digestion de « l’événement ruine » et par là même la Reconstruction de ce pays rural apparaissent fortement contrastées. L’immense machine administrative d’après guerre digère plutôt bien tous les cas particuliers grâce à ses formulaires et répond aux besoins les plus pressants confirmant une tendance à un changement de nature de l’Etat sur le Chemin des Dames. Les inégalités demeurent néanmoins bien présentes confirmant ce que certains appellent dès 1921 « Le scandale des régions libérées ». De cette interaction des cultures, des droits, des techniques ; de ce subtil mélange de tradition et modernisme, permanence et mutation ; de cette confrontation à un milieu, va naître une société des ruines dont cette thèse tente de dresser le portrait. / The global scale of the destructions on the “Chemin des Dames” (Aisne) is unmistakably unprecedented after the First World war and justifies a full study on its reconstruction. The management and the digestion of "the event ruins" and there even the rural Reconstruction of this country seem strongly contrasted. The bureaucratic machine according to war digests rather well all the particular cases thanks to its forms and meets the needs the most pressing confirming a trend to a natural change of the State on the “Chemin des Dames”. Nevertheless, the disparities remain very present confirming what some people call from 1921 "The scandal of the released regions". This interaction of the cultures, the rights, the techniques; this subtle mixture of tradition and modernism, durability and transformation; this confrontation in a middle, is going to be born a society of the ruins this thesis of which tries to paint a portrait.