WORLD WAR I

Britain was not the only European country with an empire. France, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Hungary were all imperialist powers, and other countries such as Italy also had dreams of empire. British industry no longer enjoyed the total domination of world markets that it had in the 19th century; Germany was rapidly becoming the dominant economic power in Europe.

The rivalry between the great European powers led almost inevitably to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was the bloodiest war in history. When it ended in 1918 in victory for the Allied Powers of Britain, France, America and Italy, more than 10 million men had been killed. In Britain, the only positive outcome of the war was that women’s contribution to the war effort had been so important that it was impossible to deny them the right to vote in the 1919 elections.

One of the strangest phenomena of World War I was the wealth of literature and poetry produced by young, upper-class officers serving in the British Army during the war. Read and study one of the most famous of these poems, written in 1914 by Rupert Brooke who died in 1915 while on active service in the Royal Naval Division.

The Soldier

1 If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

5 A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

10 A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven