Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The war that did not end all wars
- 1 Going to war
- 2 Defining the enemy: Atrocities and propaganda 1914–1915
- 3 From spectatorship to participation; From volunteering to compulsion 1914–1916
- 4 Economies of sacrifice
- 5 Redemption through war: Religion and the languages of sacrifice
- 6 The conditional sacrifices of labour 1915–1918
- 7 Struggling to victory 1917–1918
- 8 The last war?
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
5 - Redemption through war: Religion and the languages of sacrifice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The war that did not end all wars
- 1 Going to war
- 2 Defining the enemy: Atrocities and propaganda 1914–1915
- 3 From spectatorship to participation; From volunteering to compulsion 1914–1916
- 4 Economies of sacrifice
- 5 Redemption through war: Religion and the languages of sacrifice
- 6 The conditional sacrifices of labour 1915–1918
- 7 Struggling to victory 1917–1918
- 8 The last war?
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Clad in glittering white
Honour, Duty, Patriotism and clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice, pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.
David Lloyd George, Queen's Hall Speech, 19 September 1914An overlooked advantage of Lloyd George in his bid for power in wartime Britain was his bilingualism. He could talk the esoteric code of political intrigue, but, far more importantly, he was fluent in the language of sacrifice. It distinguished him from his colleagues and rivals. Asquith never could sound like a native speaker, and a notorious sceptic such as Balfour had trouble with even the basic vocabulary. As a son of the manse, Bonar Law should have been able to master it, but his Scots-Canadian Presbyterian accent sounded like a tin whistle compared to a full-throated orchestra rehearsed in Welsh revivalism. There was a little irony in this, because personally Lloyd George did not have to make the greatest wartime sacrifice. By 1917 much of the political elite had suffered the loss of a close family member to the war. The leaders of the main parliamentary parties suffered heavily. The Conservative leader Bonar Law lost two sons. Asquith, still officially leader of the Liberals, lost his beloved son Raymond on the Somme at much the same time that Arthur Henderson, leader of the parliamentary Labour Party, lost his son. In 1917, John Redmond, leader of the Irish Nationalists lost his brother, a close political ally.
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- The Last Great WarBritish Society and the First World War, pp. 152 - 186Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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