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CONCLUDING REMARKS
War Buries All
W. A. S. Colthurst

It is one of the great questions of British history. What would David Lloyd George have done with his premiership if the Great War had not intervened to dominate all things just over a year after his entry into No 10? However, it is only one of a hundred thousand such questions. Millions such questions. In addition to those whose plans and hopes were interrupted by the war, those whose prospects were changed by success or failure in the fight, those for whom the war changed their understanding of the entire world as they knew it, and, most of all, those who never came back.

The relative calm of politics in the time between the resolution of the 1909-10 Constitutional Crisis and the outbreak of war often lulls even historians of the era into seeing the major issues as solved. The war therefore interrupts a peacefully embedding settlement, upending the world and creating the issues of the post-war world. From diaries, news articles, novels, and other publications though, we can see the Britain of late 1910 and early 1911 was obsessed with the meaning of the Act of Union 1910, and of the future it would lead to.

Colin Ryan, officially leader of the INP after Redmond chose to retire with the 1910 General Election, wrote in his diary that the combination of a Dublin government and a successful Westminster INP could guide the way forward. If they remained kingmakers, and Dublin sufficiently diverged in its legislation and systems, then the argument for Dominion would become stronger and stronger. He himself was planning on standing down by the second Irish Commonwealth Election to run for First Minister. Instead, he would bleed out in Flanders on a cold night in September 1914, in the arms of an Englishman Ryan had come to consider his closest friend, begging him to send on a letter to the Englishwoman he was planning to propose to on his next leave from the front.

In the Liberal Party, Winston Churchill, Minister for the Federation before he was moved by an apoplectic Lloyd George to the Admiralty over his solution to Canadian Accession, was Ryan’s opposite counterpart. In his diaries and personal letters, he spoke of unifying the Federation through legislation that would create taxation and social programmes on the federal level, either through extension of National Insurance or a new scheme of its own. His fortunes would rise and fall more than once during the long years after he entered the Admiralty, hoping to modernise the Royal Navy and use it as a base to argue for the unification of the various services that were the legacy of Responsible Government.


decadence - Copy.jpg

Lady Ellinwood with Lord and Lady Baring, 1911

In the Conservative Party, Alexander Courtenay rose to leader after the resignation of Lord Brunel, who felt he could not possibly be PM from the neutered Lords. Courtenay began his tenure arguing for a rollback of Federation altogether, returning to Responsible Government and Ireland to full integration with the UK. By the end of the war, Courtenay would have turned the Conservatives into the Party of Federation.

In Canada, the First Ministers of the Canadian Commonwealths convened the inaugural Council of Canada. Meant to ensure that Canada could still speak as one voice in Westminster, even if parliamentary representation began to trend towards the Liberals and Conservatives as in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, the Council broke up with little agreement in August 1911. By 1918, the Chairman had become the unofficial Prime Minister of Canada.

Outside the question of Federation as well, debate on the settlements of the previous decade was still very much alive. On women’s rights, Christabel Pankhurst and the Women’s Club found they could influence Prime Ministers, and were very much prepared to build on the victories Lloyd George had given them in his attempt to shore up the women’s vote. Indeed, the reason he was so eager to secure it was that he intended to call an election to gain his own mandate. Only an outright revolt in an early 1911 Cabinet meeting convinced him a third election in as many years would see the Conservatives sweep into power. The Liberals would need to be seen as more than constant reformers to win an election outright; they had to prove they were a steady hand on the tiller, unsteadied only by the government’s reliance on the INP.

Labour too, had finally hit upon what they hoped was a long-term strategy for power under Ramsay MacDonald. It is often said that the war made Labour, but they did not enter it completely lost. They had begun to court the middle class, and the Trade Disputes & Unions Act had forced the trade unions to come to them, flipping the old power dynamic and solving the internal conflict that had consistently pulled Labour ‘too left to win.’ In the 1911 Manchester West by-election, they received their best result since 1891.


olympics - Copy.jpg

Steeplechase at the London Olympics, 1908

Culturally, there were finally signs of an end to the long conservative dominance that defined the era, which plays such a strong role in the public view of pre-Great War Britain. Artists who had come back from European tours were beginning to consider importing continental influences. Artists who had never been outside of England, but were showing early signs of innovative thinking, would have that instinct supercharged by the war. And yes, there are those for whom the war would prove a total break in mindset.

This book has not set out to say that the Great War did not create such breaks. Rather, it has set out to prove that the era before them mattered. Any understanding of the consequences of the Great War will be incomplete if it does not understand the world it was visited upon. To consider the late Victorian world a stagnant, unchanging Eden of innocents is to rob its inhabitants of their agency, agency which they had used before the war to create a vastly different world from that of the mid-Victorian Era

It also robs agency from everyone who fought the war. When it came in October 1911, millions took up arms, and millions more would continue to do so, even as the full brutality and terror of modern warfare had long become apparent. They did so not because the war was some ravenous monster that had come out of nowhere, devouring souls that had no choice, but because the world they had made, or wished to make, meant something to them.

The war itself, the hopes and dreams of its participants, and how they changed or came to be as a result of the war, are not for this work. We will leave you thus with a poem by John Francis-Scott, who enlisted the day of the declaration of war, and made it through almost the entire conflict before losing his life, months before the end, at Bastogne:


When I Come Home

When I come home,
On Whitehall we’ll be marching.
The flags will be unfurled,
The bugles will be sounding,

When I come home,
I will walk down our street,
The residents will cheer,
The cheers, graciously, I’ll meet.

When I come home,
I will wake you with a kiss,
I will tell you of the battle,
And you will tell me what I missed.

When I come home,
I will go up to the heath,
Lay me down beside still waters,

And then, I will sleep.
 
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He himself was planning on standing down by the second Irish Commonwealth Election to run for First Minister. Instead, he would bleed out in Flanders on a cold night in September 1914, in the arms of an Englishman Ryan had come to consider his closest friend, begging him to send on a letter to the Englishwoman he was planning to propose to on his next leave from the front.

Jesus. War is a horrid thing, so I sing and sing…

Good job on the conclusion. This next decade is going to be awful. Can’t wait to read about it.
 
Excellently written as ever. It's always an unbelievable thing when the numbers on the casualty reports turn into people with hopes and dreams.
I've poured myself a stiff drink and I am now ready to see how hope and glory turn to mud and death. Sing to me o Muse...
 
Mm. Let's kill the germans and fulfill our destiny to become a one world federation.
 
Rather, it has set out to prove that the era before them mattered. Any understanding of the consequences of the Great War will be incomplete if it does not understand the world it was visited upon. To consider the late Victorian world a stagnant, unchanging Eden of innocents is to rob its inhabitants of their agency, agency which they had used before the war to create a vastly different world from that of the mid-Victorian Era.

Beautifully - lyrically - put.

Culturally, there were finally signs of an end to the long conservative dominance that defined the era, which plays such a strong role in the public view of pre-Great War Britain. Artists who had come back from European tours were beginning to consider importing continental influences. Artists who had never been outside of England, but were showing early signs of innovative thinking, would have that instinct supercharged by the war. And yes, there are those for whom the war would prove a total break in mindset.

As was evidenced in our own timeline when Americans (many African Americans) were formed into military bands and encountered the loud and raucous saxophones, not seen anywhere outside French military bands until wartime. One of the cross-cultural pollinations that helped transform jazz and take it international, create swing and launch the 'big band' that defined popular music until the Radio Age and amplification...

There were a lot of Americans who received musical training and experience in the Great War... and when they came home and needed jobs they launched the American school band movement, which now sees a marching band with saxophones as an integral part of the school curriculum.

The world is sometimes a very strange place.



"Diplomacy is the art of saying, 'Nice Doggy!' until you can find a stick."
There doesn't seem to be any way to satisfy German ambitions outside of war. So... as terrible as it must be, if Germany will not be dissuaded in any other way - then let war happen.
 
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And so we reach the end of the Era and as @DensleyBlair suggest the next decade does indeed look horrid. I thought a six year (six!) Great War was bad, but some of things you are threatening us with;

It is often said that the war made Labour
War may well be a terrible thing, but I submit it is nowhere near as fearsome as it's consequences.

Artists who had come back from European tours were beginning to consider importing continental influences. Artists who had never been outside of England, but were showing early signs of innovative thinking, would have that instinct supercharged by the war
Does the horror never end? Where is a German machine gun nest when you need one?
 
Does the horror never end? Where is a German machine gun nest when you need one?

Don't worry, most of them will be killed in the next 6 years. Does mean that it's even more likely that foreign stuff will be imported over cos of the culture gap...and quite likely that this stuff will be amercian...
 
Don't worry, most of them will be killed in the next 6 years. Does mean that it's even more likely that foreign stuff will be imported over cos of the culture gap...and quite likely that this stuff will be amercian...
You forget the Yanks are in this from the start, so fingers crossed Ezra Pound and Co can get mowed down before they do any real damage. We may at least be saved that particular horror.
 
You forget the Yanks are in this from the start, so fingers crossed Ezra Pound and Co can get mowed down before they do any real damage. We may at least be saved that particular horror.

Certainly going to change the future of movies if everyone in german and amercian early cinema dies...
 
Somehow, BTC's first response to The Lamps Go Out didn't make it into the multi-quote, so I will respond to it now. @TheButterflyComposer, please accept my sincerest apology for this oversight.

Have expressed interest. Must watch.

Super majority labour gov across the UK is a big moment, sure. Defiantly ushered in a new wave of politics too. Birth of the 21st century and all that.

The sooner both the US and UK get out of the splendid isolationist mindsets, the better for either country.

What, landed aristocracy slowly get more power, the liberals return en mass because the king is in danger, the unions dissolve in favour of feudalism and the empire keeps expanding?

Especially if the federation is open for business and expanding, which it definitely looks poised to do, especially in the Pacific. Its also a way to invest in South amercia without going through Washington...

point Bob?

Jesus christ...that is awful.

Italy is huge! Hungary tiny...Serbia big too. How are the ottomans?

That might actually work, unlike the otl plan. Attack from three directions all at once would probably work anyway, to be honest. At the very least, makes the naval war a LOT more complicated than otl.

Huh...Italians budding up with the ottomans. Interesting. Also, very silly excuse. So the balakns are all in the war and need to be protected? That might be a problem. The naval war just got even worse for the entente, for sure. At least gallipoli can't happen...no nations to impress to bring into war, and the balkans are already in the war.

Ooo...war blaming already? Thats not good for future relationships...

The amercians at least should know it'll be bloody and horrible. Hopefully they told the british so we can make enough shells this time.

I hope you have already. It's damned good stuff.

We'll have history books about the New Labour Era, we won't have that about the 2012 Olympics era.

Amen.

Don't give me ideas.

Money makes the world go round...

That's fair. I did not intend to make a Pinafore binge sound, in any way, a bad thing.

Seeing it in-game was awful, so it makes sense that trying to justify it is equally awful.

The Ottomans are actiually almost exactly like IOTL in terms of territory pre-War.

As I replied to the Director, the French are very aware of this though. The naval war is the focus of the first bit of FAWHA for a reason.

On the one hand, no one to impress with Gallipoli. On the other, Russia is even more isolated than IOTL, so the route to reinforce them through the Dardanelles is even more tempting.

But War Guilt Clauses are so much easier than taking any responsibility!

Never enough shells, my dear BTC. Never enough.
 
We'll have history books about the New Labour Era, we won't have that about the 2012 Olympics era.

You know, I’m really not so sure. Granted, I don’t think there will be a book just on 2012 in the way there are books just on 1997 – but I think as this weird Blairite hangover exclave in the Cameron years it sort of monumentalises an awful lot of why we are where we are today, and how we’ve got here over the past forty years.

I (non-trained historian) would be interested to read a book about it, at least.
 
Somehow, BTC's first response to The Lamps Go Out didn't make it into the multi-quote, so I will respond to it now. @TheButterflyComposer, please accept my sincerest apology for this oversight.

He said, immediately getting the name wrong..
;)

You know, I’m really not so sure. Granted, I don’t think there will be a book just on 2012 in the way there are books just on 1997 – but I think as this weird Blairite hangover exclave in the Cameron years it sort of monumentalises an awful lot of why we are where we are today, and how we’ve got here over the past forty years.

I (non-trained historian) would be interested to read a book about it, at least.

Hmm...someone is going to do it. It will be pointed out that the Conservative party was essentially destroyed and comatose for several years post-97, and there effectively was no opposition. This naturally had a massive impact on both parties and the country, and after 2010, when Labour just barely got taken out, there was not only a party that had not been in power for nearly a century but a party with a very fractured foundation wondering what to do with itself. There will be studies on how this affected votes, the rise of UKIP and the desperate search for an appealing and popular Conservative leader that took several elections and a parliamentary shutdown to finally emerge.

The funny thing is, the fractued foundation of the party still isn't fixed. The current cabinet are the current cabinet only because of BREXIT. They were third or fourth choices for power otherwise. But everyone is still reeling from 1997, which changed the balance of parliamentary seats everywhere. Scotland was never going to be Labour's secret weapon again, and now is rather solidly unified behind the SNP, the new third party in British politics. The working class vote was finally and totally abandoned by everyone in favour of the middle class. Etc. Etc.

TLDR, both parties and really the whole system is still feeling the affects of that landslide in 97, and neither party has really recovered from it since. 2012 Olympics made this particularly clear by how much of a success it was and yet how poorly the Conservative Government ended up looking throughout the process.
 
The eternal "what if the armageddon did not happen" ... a future slaughtered in the abattoir of battle just as much as the soldiers and sailors who died.
 
Jesus. War is a horrid thing, so I sing and sing…

Good job on the conclusion. This next decade is going to be awful. Can’t wait to read about it.

'Oh, God, that's awful! More please.'

Thanks.

Excellently written as ever. It's always an unbelievable thing when the numbers on the casualty reports turn into people with hopes and dreams.
I've poured myself a stiff drink and I am now ready to see how hope and glory turn to mud and death. Sing to me o Muse...

Thanks. Hopefully I'll manage to keep the terror behind the numbers somewhat in focus.

I need to take another stab at actually finishing The Iliad...

Mm. Let's kill the germans and fulfill our destiny to become a one world federation.

Onwards, upwards, and through Hell to Salvation.

So, we are having a sequel about the Great War then?

We are indeed.

Beautifully - lyrically - put.

As was evidenced in our own timeline when Americans (many African Americans) were formed into military bands and encountered the loud and raucous saxophones, not seen anywhere outside French military bands until wartime. One of the cross-cultural pollinations that helped transform jazz and take it international, create swing and launch the 'big band' that defined popular music until the Radio Age and amplification...

There were a lot of Americans who received musical training and experience in the Great War... and when they came home and needed jobs they launched the American school band movement, which now sees a marching band with saxophones as an integral part of the school curriculum.

The world is sometimes a very strange place.

"Diplomacy is the art of saying, 'Nice Doggy!' until you can find a stick."
There doesn't seem to be any way to satisfy German ambitions outside of war. So... as terrible as it must be, if Germany will not be dissuaded in any other way - then let war happen.

Thanks. I can't, off the top of my head, say exactly which historians it was I owe that passage to, but I know it wasn't entirely original, so shouldn't take too much credit.

I will say that For All We Have and Are, particularly the introduction, owes the most to Trevor Wilson and The Myriad Faces of War.

Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force. ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

That I only know that quote because of Community is an indictment of me, and should also work as an exhortation to go watch Community.

And so we reach the end of the Era and as @DensleyBlair suggest the next decade does indeed look horrid. I thought a six year (six!) Great War was bad, but some of things you are threatening us with;

War may well be a terrible thing, but I submit it is nowhere near as fearsome as it's consequences.

Does the horror never end? Where is a German machine gun nest when you need one?

Evidence for the ability of government to organise entire societies to drive towards one, clear goal is, sadly, too often taken as evidence that government can organise society as a whole.

Don't worry, most of them will be killed in the next 6 years. Does mean that it's even more likely that foreign stuff will be imported over cos of the culture gap...and quite likely that this stuff will be amercian...
You forget the Yanks are in this from the start, so fingers crossed Ezra Pound and Co can get mowed down before they do any real damage. We may at least be saved that particular horror.

I'm afraid artists are like the heads fo the Hydra, every one you kill in their creative infancy inspires two more to get elegiac.

Certainly going to change the future of movies if everyone in german and amercian early cinema dies...

Perhaps All Quiet on the Western Front won't be a film ITTL, so much as a description of the film industry.

You know, I’m really not so sure. Granted, I don’t think there will be a book just on 2012 in the way there are books just on 1997 – but I think as this weird Blairite hangover exclave in the Cameron years it sort of monumentalises an awful lot of why we are where we are today, and how we’ve got here over the past forty years.

I (non-trained historian) would be interested to read a book about it, at least.

That is a fair point. I can definitely see some journalist, playing historian, writing one of those books-

He said, immediately getting the name wrong..
;)

Hmm...someone is going to do it. It will be pointed out that the Conservative party was essentially destroyed and comatose for several years post-97, and there effectively was no opposition. This naturally had a massive impact on both parties and the country, and after 2010, when Labour just barely got taken out, there was not only a party that had not been in power for nearly a century but a party with a very fractured foundation wondering what to do with itself. There will be studies on how this affected votes, the rise of UKIP and the desperate search for an appealing and popular Conservative leader that took several elections and a parliamentary shutdown to finally emerge.

The funny thing is, the fractued foundation of the party still isn't fixed. The current cabinet are the current cabinet only because of BREXIT. They were third or fourth choices for power otherwise. But everyone is still reeling from 1997, which changed the balance of parliamentary seats everywhere. Scotland was never going to be Labour's secret weapon again, and now is rather solidly unified behind the SNP, the new third party in British politics. The working class vote was finally and totally abandoned by everyone in favour of the middle class. Etc. Etc.

TLDR, both parties and really the whole system is still feeling the affects of that landslide in 97, and neither party has really recovered from it since. 2012 Olympics made this particularly clear by how much of a success it was and yet how poorly the Conservative Government ended up looking throughout the process.

Gotdangit!

I'd have to agree. The modern Conservative Party hasn't really figured itself out post-97. There's still a disconnect between a wing that won't admit it's no longer 1987 and undiluted Thatcherism won't be a vote winner, a Cameronite wing that wants to combine social liberalism and individualism with civic community cohesion (despite the somewhat inherent square peg-round hole nature of that) and thinks the economy's fine, and an almost nativist, socially conservative, economically interventionist wing that would fit better with Labour if the latter hadn't - as far as this wing is concerned - gone all-in on social liberalism and internationalism. Brexit has alienated the Cameronites and bound the other two together, but that's temporary. You can't Brexit forever (knock on wood).

Labour, on the other hand, are just going through the eternal argument; to stick to principled, increasingly out-of-date centralised leftism, and lose, or pin all your hopes on technology and economic fundamentals funding a vague agenda of reform (of what? Who knows! But it's more reform than the Tories are offering!), and win.

The eternal "what if the armageddon did not happen" ... a future slaughtered in the abattoir of battle just as much as the soldiers and sailors who died.

'Tis not what has been and gone we mourn, but what could have been. Not the memories we have, but those we will now never make.
 
And the promised preview, which is the Acts of the Drama, as they are currently planned:

PROLOGUE
GOING TO WAR
September - October 1911

ACT ONE
MEETING THE ENEMY
October 1911 - March 1912

ACT TWO
ESCALATION
April 1912 - April 1915

ACT THREE
RAGNARÖK AND ARMAGEDDON
April 1915 - November 1917

EPILOGUE
MAKING PEACE

November 1917 - June 1920

And, of course, the titular Kipling poem:

For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o'erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!
Though all we knew depart,
The old Commandments stand:—
"In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand."


Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old:—
"No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled."
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.


Comfort, content, delight,
The ages' slow-bought gain,
They shrivelled in a night.
Only ourselves remain
To face the naked days
In silent fortitude,
Through perils and dismays
Renewed and re-renewed.
Though all we made depart,
The old Commandments stand:—
"In patience keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand."


No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all—
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?


-

Rudyard Kipling, 1914 (OTL)​
 
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That is a fair point. I can definitely see some journalist, playing historian, writing one of those books-

Oh dear. Yes it would probably be one of the lot Murdoch has on retainer.

Or maybe John Harris. I’m going to go with John Harris.

I'm afraid artists are like the heads fo the Hydra, every one you kill in their creative infancy inspires two more to get elegiac.

Considering how much of 20th century art came out of the horror of the First World War, directly or otherwise, I really don’t think training the guns on the Cabaret Voltaire is really going to do all that much.
 
I'm afraid artists are like the heads fo the Hydra, every one you kill in their creative infancy inspires two more to get elegiac
So we need the Hercules solution of cleansing and searing fire. I'm perfectly happy with that.

I really don’t think training the guns on the Cabaret Voltaire is really going to do all that much
Well it would take out the Cabaret Voltaire, which is a worthwhile achievement in and of itself.

We've also established we need to burn the site down after, in order to prevent anything sprouting on the location. Fire and lots of it, who could object?
 
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?


It is worth mentioning that Kipling's son John died in 1915 at Loos. He had been repeatedly turned down for service because of his bad eyesight and was only accepted after Kipling personally appealed to Lord Roberts.