Part IX - The Great War 1914–1918

Summary

Propaganda and poets

Truth is the first casualty of war and it was not surprising that an early step of government was to set up a war propaganda bureau to promote British war aims. Secret conferences were held involving men of letters and poets to see what they could do to underpin the war effort. Housman does not seem to have been recruited; he was not moved to identify himself publicly with pro-war or anti-war groups, or use the war for purposes of self-promotion and self-advancement. It is known that those involved included the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, Laurence Binyon, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, Owen Seaman, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling.

Nor was Housman signatory to The Writers Manifesto in support of the war published as a letter to The Times by Professor Gilbert Murray on 18 September 1914 and signed by most of the same literary luminaries, Granville Barker, Barrie, Bridges, Chesterton, Conan Doyle, Galsworthy, Hardy, Kipling and Masefield.

Like Housman, neither G.B. Shaw nor W.B. Yeats (both Irishmen) added their names to the manifesto:

The undersigned writers, comprising among them men and women of the most divergent political and social views, some of them having been for years ardent champions of good will towards Germany, and many of them extreme advocates of peace, are nevertheless agreed that Great Britain could not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war.

Gilbert Murray had been chasing Housman for a decision; Housman wrote on 14 October 1914: ‘I suppose I ought to have written, and I am sorry I gave you the trouble of telegraphing. My chief objection was not to the terms of the manifesto but to signing any manifesto at all.’

It was always unlikely that Housman would lend his hand to the simplifications of war propaganda, or deal in the big words – glory, honour and sacrifice – or evoke other big words – patriotism, religion, empire, chivalry or freedom – in the cause of war; his own knowledge and feel for words was too precise and demanding. He was too concerned with meaning; he was not a man to be seized and motivated by irrational emotions.