World War I

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/pdfs/1303305402406379.pdf

In an article by Francis Grierson called "Woman's New Era" that can be found on pg. 10 in The New Freewoman, Grierson states that in the past fifty years there have been five great movements - one of which was "the awakening of women after a slumber of three thousand years". Grierson goes on to assert the belief that women have been "revolving in a vicious circle around a centre composed of social, political, and religious negations and not until recently have they possessed sufficient illumination to help themselves". Now, while Grierson believes that this "illumination" is the result of cyclic thinking that can only come from psychic spirituality (which if I'm being completely honest, sounds like absolute balderdash), it is Grierson's assessment of the suffrage movement that I found to be the most important (and incidentally, illuminating) opinion in the article.

Grierson seems to believe that a great deal of suffrage issues at the time were the fault of women themselves and states that "mere votes will never be of any great service to women if the old order of materialistic control is permitted to continue". While this statement can be understood in many different ways, reading it in context I think that Grierson was saying that while women are still controlled by their husbands or fathers through materialistic means and refuse to think for themselves, they will vote in the same manner as their male overlord and the primary aims of suffrage will never be realized. What interests me most about this perspective is that it does not really blame males for the problems of the female, but rather blames females for their present condition and calls on them to become independent thinkers. Additionally, the idea of changing the condition for women by merely learning to think rather then relying on sentimental opinions is unorthodox to say the least.

Grierson begins to conclude the article by saying that "with the passing of ancient Greece, the world lost its sense of reason and took to sentimental opinions, and an opinion holds the same relation to truth that sentiment holds to a sum in arithmetic". This I think, perfectly sums up the argument that Grierson was making and serves as a call of sorts to revert to Ancient World reason while forging on towards a new era for women.

I happened upon this blog post (about shame and male sexuality) and found it to be an interesting juxtaposition to our reading this past weekend (specifically pg 376 from The Freewoman).  Disclaimer: it's a bit of an awkward blog post from some guy who writes about masculinity.

(Makeup for the third blog post)

So many key moments in Testament of Youth have stood out to me that it is difficult to put them all together; however, I would say that what stood out the most was the overwhelming sense of wasted and stolen youth.  I found it was best summed up in the statement "Although they would no doubt have welcomed the idea of a League of Nations, Roland and Edward certainly had not died in order that Clemenceau should outwit Lloyd George, and both of them bamboozle President Wilson, and all three combine to make the beaten, blockaded enemy pay the cost of the War." (470) (Taken from the aptly titled chapter "Survivors Not Wanted")  Not only had an entire generation been either wiped out or deeply scarred, but the end result had not been the accomplishment of any particular goal, but the cleaning up of the mess made by the war itself.  Nothing of actual value had been accomplished, and no one was even quite sure why the war had been fought.  By the end of the war, the object was no longer even that of the original players—nations fought simply to make sure that the resources sunk in the war were compensated for, with a net result of loss on every side.

I honestly wish this book could become required reading in schools across the world, because I cannot express how monumental it has been in revealing exactly what war in the modern day is like, and what we are getting into when we vote for violence.  Not so much because we should never go to war, but because I've realized just how clueless many of us are about what war means to a nation.  The wars we have gotten involved in over the past few decades do not seem to be much better, albeit on a smaller scale—we never actually manage to get to the point where we feel comfortable withdrawing troops, for fear of situations reverting and letting our work go to waste; yet as long as we continue policing in such a manner, that work cannot be completed.  Tangent aside, Testament of Youth really drives home the importance of taking war seriously, both in its payoff and its consequences.

(Making up the second blog post, finally!)

What has most stood out to me in the Very Short Introduction readings so far is the huge part nationality played in the war.  While I have traditionally taken for granted the natural part that language, race, and nationality seem to play in a war, it has been interesting to realize that these factors were not always so central.  The lack of regard for nationality that the ruling aristocracy displayed in the past took a major role in the motivations behind continued conflict; while different countries joined the war for different reasons, a lot of the issue boiled down to border disputes.  On the part of the aristocratic rulers, lands needed to be retained in order to demonstrate their power.  On the part of the people themselves, however, the desire to be united with others of their tongue and ancestry became a driving ideal.

It seems rather incredible in this day and age that the aristocracy would be so far removed from its holdings that it would fail to understand the motivations at those lower levels.  We are so used to discussions about race or about international conflicts, that it is rather difficult to relate to a time when nations might be more or less motivated because of divisions where their cohabitants were so radically different.  The United States and Great Britain, for example, despite all their different views at home, were able to rally much more entirely for war than Austria-Hungary, which grew very quickly tired of the consequences it had not expected to deal with.  I can't help but wonder whether this unity plays a major role in the fact that our country today is losing its grip on its superpower status—we have grown so divided, especially on the subject of foreign policy and war.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/4902821079/

This poster struck me as comparable to the emotions of Vera Brittain in "Testament of Youth" because it portrays the woman as a strong, almost masculine figure and calls on her sense of duty or loyalty to her men and her country. It makes it look like the "Victory Girls" are fighting for their country in some way, when in reality they would be performing more domestic or work-force tasks in their home countries or foreign hospitals. I found it interesting how masculine the woman is made to look in comparison to how feminine most of the men in the war posters are portrayed to be. I think advertisers are certainly appealing to different emotions for the sexes. It seems with the men, they're appealing to parents and wives/girlfriends and families to be protective of their "boys", but with the women, they're portrayed as the strong care-taking figure with a strong sense of duty for their country and their "boys". This Victory Girl is portrayed in a more masculine manner than most of the men in the WWI posters I've seen.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/4903405890/in/set-72157624742434942

This poster shows a girl with the slogan "REMEMBER THE GIRL BEHIND THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN". This poster reminded me very much of Vera Brittan's Testament of Youth. The first thought that popped into my head was of Vera and Roland. As soon as Roland decides to join the war Vera decides to stand behind him and be a nurse for the fighters. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/4903407812/in/set-72157624742434942

This poster is an appeal to women in the United States to buy War Bonds. It features a matron-like woman with her arms streached out to the public, while the sea with men in boats are behind her. The way I read this poster based off of James' observations is this is one of the final calls to buy war bonds and the creators of this poster are really reaching out to those left behind by the war. It's meant to hit incredibly close to home and it seems to guilt the women left behind into doing something productive when their men are gone aka buy war bonds. 

I found und that I could relate this poster to Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, even though it is an American poster. Thos poster showcases the idvivuality of each human and the strength apprars. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/4900307826/

I chose this image because I think it presents an interesting (or to use James' words, "Janus-faced") perspective correlating lore about America's past with a then-contemporaneous parallel. He notes that "posters were 'the medium for the construction of pictoral rhetoric...of national identities'" (James 3).  Certainly, the image also plays on the emotions of its viewers rather than appealing to higher reason.  By illustrating a comparison between the Revolutionary War "Minute-Man," and the modern WWI soldier, the poster-maker argues a case for legitimacy and pride in the war.  I tried to find where the "Plattsburg" that the poster is reffering to is located...and I'm not entirely sure whether it is speaking of Plattsburg, MO or Plattsburgh NY (which does have a military base even though the spelling is slightly different).  I imagine that by convincing the American people that WWI was a war in the same vein as the Revolutionary War, that the poster-maker hoped to influence young men to enlist, proffering patriotic pride/guilt(?) as a reason for involving oneself in the War.

The only connection I can think of between this poster and Vera Brittain is that it depicts "doing something about the war" as what should be the primary concern for citizens.  Brittain, of course, worked as a nurse during the war because she wanted--she needed--to do something.

Possible things to consider with this poster:

symmetry, phallic shapes, masculinity, selling the war (with sex), simplicity, pop art

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/4903406228/in/set-72157624742434...

This poster plays on the technique of "using strategies suggesting that "the unenlisted man would suffer social embarrassment and personal guilt if he did not serve" (30). It clearly implies that all able men who don't join the British ranks are, in a sense, the enemies of their nation. I think it's a good example of the whitewashing that the realities of war often recieved. It's a very picturesque image: a man with his weapon and flawless uniform, standing alone out in the open. In reality soldiers were manning machine guns in close quarters and would have balked at the idea of standing above their trenches.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/4903407668/in/set-72157624742434942

This poster plays on guilt.  With the caption, "Shall we be more tender with our dollars than with the lives of our sons", it is not a mystery who this ad is targeted to.  This poster is asking for people to buy Liberty Loans but they are not just asking anyone, they are asking parents.  With the largest number of soliders being young men, and that number being so large, it only makes sense that the parents of soliders would be a huge and popular target demographic.  However callus this ad seems, you have to admit that it is buisiness smart.  At a time when the number of senseless, random deaths is astounding and unheard of, a common sentiment among the people is one of a loss of control.  I cannot imagine how parents of soliders must have felt knowing there was not anything they could do to feasibly help save their sons lives.  This poster plays on this.  Parents are willing to grasp onto anything that can give them any ounce of hope and make them feel as if they are contibuting as much as they can to bringing their son home safe.  It makes them feel like they are at least a tiny bit in control.  By the phrasing of the sentence, it seems that the aim is also to guilt people into buying these loans.  Asking if people are going to make money more of a priority than their sons lives is an effective way to strike a cord and get people to open their pocket books.