When the Governor of Malta announced the outbreak of hostilities on August 5, 1914 which was, unbeknown to those listening, to signal the start of World War I, the Daily Malta Chronicle reported that “it evoked a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm amongst all classes of the population”. The crowd “broke out in rapturous applause and gave loud and resonant cheers for the the Union Jack”.
I have been rereading extracts from Michael Refalo’s excellent translation of Herbert Ganado’s evocative social history, Rajt Malta Tinbidel, and I thoroughly enjoyed his description of the general mobilisation of his father’s regiment, the Royal Malta Artillery, on the outbreak of the war with his deployment to man the guns at Fort Bingemma and the equipping of the military forts by the regiment.
His descriptions cover the sighting of the German submarine off Gozo, the stand-off between Admiral Troubridge’s Mediterranean Fleet and the German battleship Goeben (and its inexplicable escape), the tragedy of the Dardenelles campaign, including the loss of hundreds of Maltese lives, and the distinction with which many officers served in both combat and support roles.
The war brought years of prosperity to Malta, with its boost for employment in the dockyards and the services. The expansion of hospitals and service medical facilities in Malta to create an impressive 25,000 beds in 27 hospitals, bring home graphically, as only Ganado could, the clear imprint which the Great War left on Malta.
It marked another important brush with history for this island.
It therefore seems most remiss that today’s generation has little appreciation of the part our forebears played, and seems to care less, with not even an official commemoration service to mark the nearly 800 Maltese who lost their lives.
When Great Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, it was committing not only its own men but also those of its empire. The war gave a sense of identity to the British Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Foundland (soon to join with Canada), New Zealand and South Africa. Most entered the war willingly, proud – as, indeed, Malta was – to go to the aid of the empire.
But as the war dragged on, their young died in their thousands: about 60,000 Australians, 55,000 Canadians, 13,000 New Zealanders and 7,000 South Africans, representing a huge human sacrifice as a proportion of their relatively small populations. In the disastrous eight-month long Gallipoli campaign alone, 8,700 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders died, 2,000 of them killed on the first day.
When the war ended they demanded more say and control over their destinies.
A century later, many historians see World War I in hindsight as the former Dominions’ “war of independence” and, by 1931, the British Empire had been recast as a Commonwealth of Nations.
But the Great War also transformed Europe and the world we live in today. When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, it started a conflict that would leave millions dead and wounded, redraw countries’ borders and reshape economies.
Europe’s expenditure on munitions led to a manufacturing boom in America, boosting exports and leading to its emergence as a world power. Germany’s industry was crippled, its economy only returned to its former size 10 years later.
The war destroyed empires and created new countries. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created. Serbia was expunged from the map. Romania was enlarged. The Baltic States became independent. Poland was rebuilt from former Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian territories. Worse, the Great War led directly to the scourge of Soviet communism, the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany, fascism in Italy and Spain, the outbreak of World War I and the Holocaust.
The turmoil in the Middle East today has its roots in the world created by the war.
The Great War transformed Europe and the world we live in today
When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, uttered the famous words, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”.
He was right. Sir Edward, who died in 1933 (as Adolf Hitler consolidated his place as Germany’s Chancellor) never saw a return to the relative normality of the pre-1914 era.
It is fitting that last week Western Europe marked the start of World War I with commemorations, simple ceremonies and prayers of reconciliation. The four years of the war proved that the veneer of civilisation in Europe was paper-thin.
Its collapse was mired in the mud and blood of the trenches of the Somme, Marne, Mons and Verdun. The plains of northern and eastern France are etched into the history and memory of WorldWar I, just as the scars of battle – the remains of the trenches and the hundreds of military cemeteries – mark the French and Belgian countryside today.
France was the main theatre of battle on the western front, where it lost 1.4 million soldiers, more than any other Western allied power. But West Flanders in Belgium also became home, and the final resting place, to people from all corners of the earth. Half a million African soldiers fought for the allies. Troops were despatched from Indo-China, German East Africa and British West Africa. The dead included at least 27,000 Irishmen and 74,000 Indians. More than 140,000 Chinese “contract coolies” were transported to the Western front to bury the rotting corpses.
This was the first industrial war which saw injury and the slaughter of life on an industrial scale. It is understandable – seen from the comfort of our lives today – to reflect on the war influenced by the mores and attitudes that move us today.
It is all too easy to fall prey to the clichés of “wasted lives”, “never again”, “lions led by donkeys” and the “doomed youth” of the war poets. But those who fought on both sides of the struggle did so, as their letters and accounts vividly attest, because they believed it was in an honourable cause.
At this distance, we find it impossible to look at the destruction of tens of millions of lives in the years after the opening battle at Mons and believe that it made the world a safer place. Historians now seem more uncertain than ever about the causes of the Great War. Fritz Fischer, the first historian to examine the entire German imperial archives, believes that German militarism was to blame.
But this has been eclipsed by Barbara Tuchman’s interpretation that the war was the product of a domino effect of political blunders. Popular theories now include reckless pan-European brinkmanship, the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary to Serbia, and Russia’s determination to gobble up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. It was a combination of all of those things.
The last hundred years have been directly affected by what happened in 1914.
As King Phillipe of Belgium said at a moving service outside Liege last week: “The memory of the First World War gives us food for thought about the responsibility of leaders and the decisions they can take to keep the peace and bring nations closer together.” What is going on today in the Middle East and the Ukraine should be a salutary warning to us.