Introduction

The outbreak of the First World War was marked not only by the booming of cannons across Europe, but also by the frantic scratchings of pens and the clattering of typewriters, as the literati of the combatant nations set about damning their adversaries. Big guns were also wheeled out for this battle. A statement supporting the war “against the rule of ‘Blood and Iron’” was published in The Times on September 18, 1914 and signed by fifty-three writers. The signatories included H. G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Quiller-Couch, John Masefield, Arnold Bennett, Gilbert Murray, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. The counterblast to this and similar attacks by various groups of British writers and academics was not long in coming. On October 4 the Aufruf an die Kulturwelt was published in ten languages and signed by a distinguished collection of German cultural luminaries. The Aufruf rejected the charges of militarism and barbarism leveled by the British critics, insisted that: “Ohne den deutschen Militarismus wäre die deutsche Kultur längst vom Erdboden getilgt,” and concluded: