Book contents
- The British Home Front and the First World War
- The British Home Front and the First World War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables and Charts
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on the Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 The United Kingdom in 1914
- Part I Government
- Part II Resources
- Part III People
- Part IV Production
- Part V Social Impacts
- 24 Press and Propaganda
- 25 Pacifism
- 26 Homes and Families in Wartime
- 27 Crime and Policing
- 28 Children
- 29 The ‘Home Front’ as War Front
- Conclusion
- Index
29 - The ‘Home Front’ as War Front
from Part V - Social Impacts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2023
- The British Home Front and the First World War
- The British Home Front and the First World War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables and Charts
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on the Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 The United Kingdom in 1914
- Part I Government
- Part II Resources
- Part III People
- Part IV Production
- Part V Social Impacts
- 24 Press and Propaganda
- 25 Pacifism
- 26 Homes and Families in Wartime
- 27 Crime and Policing
- 28 Children
- 29 The ‘Home Front’ as War Front
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
Shortly after a deadly aerial attack on Great Britain in 1917, Ethel Bilbrough, a forty-seven-year-old woman living in Kent, recorded her reactions in her diary: ‘the cowardly wickedness of such raids is almost incredible; to think of defenceless innocent women and children, and old men and boys being ruthlessly murdered and mutilated by these devils in the air is unspeakably horrible. But as someone said the other day, “There are no civilians now, we are all soldiers.”’1 This somewhat startling assertion – that civilians had somehow ceased to exist and that instead all inhabitants had acquired the status of military participants – would have been unimaginable without the transformative qualities of the First World War. The extent to which air power, in particular, as well as a range of other innovations, could shape Britain’s so-called home front into a war zone remains a crucial and often underestimated aspect of this war.
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- The British Home Front and the First World War , pp. 583 - 598Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023