The State's agreed they spend money, they like borrowing money, they go to war. All these demands are things that have shaped the world for modern world for centuries. That was Quasi Quarteng talking about the lessons that we can learn from looking at the history of money. What fascinated me is how these people put on with what they did and when I can feel, when I can see, when I can read that these people are no different from me from my best friends. And it really does give you a sense of awe. And that was Richard Fanendon speaking about his new book that features the words and photographs of soldiers in the First World War.
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The volatile nature of global financial markets since 2008 has made money a hot political topic. But as historian and conservative MP quasi-quarting argues in his new book More and Gold, the historical relationship between international politics and finance has much to teach us about the present situation. He spoke to a book editor Matt Elton about 500 years of conflict conquest in currency.
So the book opens with a conquest of Peru by the Spanish. What effect did the discovery of the new world have on the European economy? I think it was hugely transformational and I mentioned John L. L. K. he talked about it. And if you look at what happened, you will see that lots of silver and gold flooded Europe. And essentially what that did was push up prices. And in the course of the book I refer to contemporary accounts of people discovering, I mean they knew themselves that actually the influx of gold and silver had pushed up prices. And so there are people saying, well, you could buy a loaf of bread for one, you know, copper piece and now it's one gold piece or that sort of thing.
I mean, we call it inflation. But they were very aware, I think, of the fact that these new discoveries push up prices. And of course there's a wider argument to which Keynes actually made was that the increase in prices was a great stimulus to business activity. So if you're opening a shop or you're a business or whatever you're doing, economically if in an environment where the prices are going up, you're quite a little incentivized to its great spur to trade. Because you can always make money. Yes.
And there's always more money and it's all very expansionary. And I think in many ways the discovery of the new world did give that kickstart to the European economy. I think whilst fascinating about the book though is that you argue that although I had this seemingly positive effect on the economy, it had a series of negative effects on political and I guess social aspects. Yes.
But I think with Spain there was what's called, I mean, you see it actually, I didn't make the point of the book. You see it in oil rich countries now. They call it the curse of oil. So they have all this limitless resources. But as a consequence of limitless resources, as a lot of corruption, they are overly dependent on oil because it's so easy to make money from oil so they don't diversify their industry. They don't diversify their businesses and they become dependent on this one commodity.
And to a lesser degree, I suppose you can make that argument about Spain. They relied on these imports of silver and gold and Spanish industry as an argument that's just Spanish industry and actual agricultural rest of it sort of fell behind as they were completely sort of addicted to endless flows of silver and gold. And of course the one thing about being quite rich is that you feel that you've got lots of money so you spend it. So the fact that they were getting more money in prices were going up, they were had to spend more money as it were. Yes, I see.
And the whole thing, and actually, I made this book at this point in the book, just at the moment when they were getting all this silver and gold, that was when what we call the military revolution was taking place. And the military revolution, I could have spoken a bit about more, I'm not a military historian, but military revolution essentially, you know, a lot of the kit, the hardware of fighting, becomes a lot more expensive, it sort of gums, artillery, all of that sort of thing. And just at the moment when they were getting richer, the costs of what they were trying to do, the loot. Right, okay.
And so in the end, they resulted in borrowing money to try and make the shortfall. So they become addicted to spending at a time when spending became increasingly important? Yes. That's right, that's exactly right.
And also, so you've got this situation where, and also, I mean, this is where the politics comes in. Charles V, essentially, inherits a vast empire through a series of dynastic alliances, made by his grandfather and his parents. So he inherits the Holy Roman Empire, which is based around some central Europe, German speaking Europe, Vienna. And he also inherits Spain.
And so the big question, I suppose, in the early 16th century, and you see it in things like the tutors and the big backdrop is obviously the emperor. And he's emperor and king of Spain. And that was, that forms the backdrop to, you know, after the war, that's familiar to us in terms of British history.
And the big question there was, how do we accommodate this big superpower, this big monarch who is king of the Holy Roman Empire, and that sort of, as sort of the frontrunner in a way, Charles V has to spend a lot of money. He has to keep up lots of armies. He's got lots of, he's operating lots of different theatres of war. And that, in a sense, puts a very difficult heavy strains on his kingdom.
So I mean, is it true to say that it's the kind of the international rivalry that leads Spain to, well, the Spanish Empire to overspend? Yes, I mean, it's all about that sort of strategic dominance over Europe. And yes, you're absolutely right. I mean, what's driving the spending is this bid for mastery, if you like, this Germanic role that the Spanish has planted. And of course, the other empires in Europe are trying to drag them down.
And that's, in a sense, what British foreign policy at the time was about. It was about to try to contain and limit over my tea powers in Europe. And the same pattern from the British point of view is repeated through the 17th century through the 14th and beyond.
So how far can we say that the decline of the Spanish Empire was caused by gold and overspending? I think, obviously, there are no more mormacles or sort of reasons in history. There was a multiplicity of reasons, some more important than others. But clearly, that was a factor, I think. The fact that there was over what modern strategists call overreach, the imperial overreach. And that's a theme of the book. People get all these responsibilities, great powers.
What was the situation in England and France in the 17th century? So the 17th and the 17th century said that the first, and then maybe actually I could have bought it out a bit more. But the reason why I think Spain failed was that they had all this silver and gold, but they didn't really have the institutions to manage it. OK.
And so what's interesting about the second chapter is, really, you've got a bank of England, which was essentially a kind of stepchild of the bank of Amsterdam, Dutch finance. So what from a history of finance, one to view, 1688, which we know is, since 1989, is the greatest revolution.
It becomes interesting because you have essentially a William III who's a Dutch prince coming over his king. And what he did was he introduced Dutch finance. So the Dutch were at the head of sort of financial innovation. He comes into Britain rather England and introduces a lot of the measures.
So they've got to raise money again to fight war. And one of the things that they discover, or the devises the Bank of England, which itself is modeled on the Bank of Amsterdam, and lends money to the government, that's its principle function.
And so what you have in England is, for the time, a very well-developed financial sector. And that's what essentially propels the growth of England and the growth of Britain as a power.
在英国,你所看到的是目前非常发达的金融行业。这本质上推动了英国的增长和英国作为强国的发展。
France, by contrast, it's very interesting. It's very interesting to study. And one thing that the most important thing to remember about the history of the period, that people forget. But because today, and this is why they forget it, today Britain and France have very similar populations in terms of numbers.
We're both roughly 60, 65, whatever million. We're pretty much equal. In 1700, the population of France was about 20 million. And the population of England was about 5 million. So you're looking at a 4-to-1 ratio. So in all, you know, even as the ladies 1815, the ratio was probably not that far off 2-to-1.
So what people don't realize in terms of the, you see it in Shakespeare and Henry V. All of that against France is that it's the little plucky England against the big minor France, because to the 16th century and the 17th century London, an Englishman. France is a big, beast, it's a big power. Very big physical countries it is today, but actually had many more people and actually more resources, ostensibly to draw from.
But one of the things that England had in this period, suddenly at the end of the 17th century that France didn't, was a much more sophisticated financial system. And so the financial system is more, it's pure leverage in the sense that the smaller part can become much bigger and can command bigger and better resources, which sort of draws of the balance equalise the balance between England and France.
What effect did the introduction of paper money have on global finance? I think paper money is one of the great inventions and some people might say they're great curse, because once you, if your currency is linked to a commodity, there's a natural limit to how much money you can have. So things like the gold standard means that the currency, the paper money which you have, the paper notes, are linked to a gold standard. In what's called a theat money system, you can literally just print money. And that's essentially the system that's operated since 1971, which is one of the big sections of my book, The Last Barad, is that we've been able to essentially allow central banks to print money. And that's what they do, things like QE, lots of different fancy words for it. But that's essentially what they're doing.
And I think what that means is that, so credit, you can have credit bubbles. I mean, that's one of the points I'm making the credit bubbles are much more frequent now than they probably were before 1971. You could borrow money very easily, because there's no, what they call, a frasional reserve, which means that the bank has to have a certain amount of reserve. And in the old days, it was a gold, good, good, you know. So all things like that mean that paper money makes debt a lot easier to raise debt. Right. But the flip side of it is it's a lot easier to have these bubbles where people are borrowing money, buying stuff and forcing prices up. So it's a lot more unstable in that sense? Yeah, it is. I think that's a very, I think it is.
I think that's generally accepted. Now the practicalities of going back to Gold Standard are such that that's not very unlikely to happen. But I think there was a stability in gold, which perhaps we've lost in this area of paper money. I mean, following the introduction of paper money, people seem to kind of cling onto the idea of gold, and even the gold standard. That's right.
I mean, one of the things that's happened over the last 40 years is that the price of gold has shot up. So the old Bretton Woods price of gold was $35 an ounce. Today, it's about $1300 an ounce. So you can see over that period of time how gold has essentially increased in value, I guess, against the dollar. Larger, I think, because of this paper money issue. But also, I mean, people in Bretton today, there are people alive in Bretton today who certainly remember pounds, shillings and pounds. And some people, older people, would have had experience. Not of the gold standard, but they would have been sort of aware of it. You know, Bretton left the gold standard in 1931. 83 years ago. It's a very long time ago. But it's not so long ago that it's something that we can't imagine.
And actually, another point about paper money is that, you know, if you look at things like house prices, before 1970, let's say, inflation wasn't, it existed, but it wasn't rampant. So if you read Dickens or Emma, sorry, Jane Austen, Emma, the sums of money there are roughly, they're quite stable. And then it was only really, the inflation only really got going in the 70s. Right. And you see that in house prices and all of that. So we had a big effect, this kind of shift from gold to paper. Yeah, I think at the time, I think it's been a fundamental shift. I think, you know, big inflation, house price boons, access to credit, credit cards, all of that sort of thing. I think it's been, you know, it's transformed the world we live in.
I mean, we'll come back to the modern era a bit later. But kind of heading back, I suppose, to the early part of the 20th century. And then you know, you know, you know, the first world war, obviously a big, a big thing, this year with the anniversary. I mean, how can we understand it in purely financial terms? What effect to have on your.
Well, I think the first world war was probably the big watershed in terms of, you know, financial history. Because up to that point, essentially, the 50 years before the first world war, you had the establishment of the gold standard around sort of the western world. And it went back to the gold standard in 1919. But in the late 90th century, you're getting countries like Germany, I think Japan, United States, adopting the gold standard really for the first time in many ways.
The Americans had it at the end of the 18th century, but obviously it was suspended in the Civil War. But they went back to it. And so you have this very old period, and we're columnists, refer to it, of sort of, you know, proto-globalization.
Between about 1819, 1914, I described that world through the eyes of John Maynard Cain because he lived through it and was very articulate describing it. You have a world in which, you know, there's free movement of labour, then there are really strong immigration rules. And that's all something I talk about, but there's certainly free movement of capital.
You can pick up a phone and buy a share of it. You didn't really have passports before 1914. So you have this sort of liberal world where capital and goods and people could live freely. And the first world will change all of that. So the first one of the first things in the first world war, the banks stop paying gold. There is, I think, my argument is that a lot of the financial muscle goes over to America when they didn't stop paying gold. And also Britain, which for about 90 years, 800 years, up to 1915, has essentially been running balanced budgets.
Britain becomes a debt financing country. So in order to win the war, in order to beat the Kaiser, we borrow lots of money. And essentially print money. We come off the gold standard and we borrow lots of selling to buy stuff, to buy things with which to win the war.
Because people might not know about the Bretton Woods situation. Could you explain perhaps that? Yeah, Bretton Woods was a conference in 1944, which was to decide what would happen to the global financial system after the war.
And so if you're sitting in 1944 looking back in the last 100 years, the first, you know, from 1840 to 1914 was the evolution of the gold standard. By 1914, you had a very stable situation at the point just before the first world war. When the first world war starts, lots of deficits, spending, this gold standard is suspended. And so the interwar period is really, they're trying to work out how to get back to some sort of stability.
And so they get back onto the gold standard. And then there's all this credit boom and all the rest of it. And the crash happens. And a whole bunch of them leave the gold standard to try and, because the pain's really said, we're losing our gold and fetters. And so at that point, they just, they have to decide, OK, so what are we going to do?
And I think the really interesting thing about Bretton Woods is that this, you know, very chic, I suppose it was then, resorting in New Hampshire. You have people, I think, from our 40 different countries, 39 different countries, representatives debating and sort of drawing up measures as to how the world should organize its financial affairs after the war. And what I say is the most interesting thing is, is that they still had quite a big role for gold.
Right. Despite all the agonies of the depression and the traumas of devaluation and the traumas of leaving the gold standard and all of that stuff in the world war, they're still, it's quite curious actually that they still have this, they go back to a system where the dollars essentially pack to gold. And that, you know, it dominates international finance for the 25 years.
So moving forward to the second world war, what effect, how did that change the balance of financial power and stability in your and in America? I think the second world war was fascinating. So in my own view, which comes out in the book, is that after the first world war, America was sort of the top dog. But no one really admitted it. OK.
I mean, it was kind of known, but it wasn't obvious. Because the second world war, it was obvious that the United States of America was the preeminent military and financial and economic power. There was no question. But then after the second world war, America was the number one top nation. And actually Churchill, you know, in his sort of flippant way, said, well, you know, if I would want to get, I'd want to be America.
You know, I mean, he was born in the age of before when Britain was the top. Well, you can see, and actually, you know, I'd quote a figure. I think something like the figure I remember was on that 50% of global GDP in 1945 was America. And so you had this situation where I don't think, and I mentioned this, and I don't think any time the history of the world, maybe Imperial Rome, but I don't know.
I haven't seen the figures. If there are any figures. But I don't think it was very rare that one particular nation should have such a vast share of the global economy. And I think in 45, if you look, if one looked around the world, you would see that America was the, you know, certainly outside the Soviet block, was the predominant power.
In terms of the post-second world war period, which global powers do you see as emerging on the world stage as having a huge impact on the way the finance? I think China is obviously the big story of our time, the last 25 years. And we'll probably continue to be a big, more big story in the next sort of period.
I mean, essentially, you've got vast numbers of people who are all aspiring to a kind of middle-class lifestyle, a large section of whom are aspiring to a middle-class lifestyle. They were, you know, 49, the communists took over. For 30 years after that, it was a communist sort of command economy. The same shopping comes in in 78 and essentially completely reforms the nature of the Chinese state and some of the only economic side of things. And so in the last sort of 30 years, 35 years, you've had this growing economic powerhouse essentially, they've given up the Marxist organization of their society, the strictly Marxist, I mean, the party is normally Marxist, but they're essentially bureaucrats.
And they've tried to unleash, you know, this capitalist sort of giant. On this huge scale, so that's had massive impact across the world. I mean, I could have taught you, you could write a whole book of that length about this, you know, across Africa and across, you know, parts of the developing world, large deposits, don't know, well, and also within their inspiration for insinuation.
I mean, I suppose the other big story post-war has been the establishment of the year. That's right. So that was another thing. I mean, it's quite an extraordinary process, I mean, I think the euro, I think it was, again, I mean, I try to bring it out in the book. It was a long project. I mean, it wasn't something that was dream-drawn by people, you know, in the 80s and 90s. It was something that was a long-drawn-out project. And actually, you know, whether you love a loath for European Union and the European project, you have to admire the strategic vision of things like the single currency.
And actually that's one of the things I try and tease out of the book. For British politicians, we don't really have that sort of strategic view that they have in the sense that we think they're coming up with all these madcap schemes. And actually there's a sort of method to the madcap. It's part of a much bigger, much longer story, a bigger architecture than we're conscious of as politicians in Britain. I mean, you do see as being the winners and the losers of that whole big massive challenge.
I think the Germans have done well out of it. Because I think they always understood the nature of what it would mean. I think they knew that the euro would be, that they essentially had a strong currency and in order to compete, they would have to lower their cost because the euro would be a weaker currency. So their exports would be more expensive to other people. So they planned and adapted themselves to that situation. The people who did very badly out of it were the fringe euro countries. It's more particularly Greece and Spain to a lesser degree. And essentially what happened, I talk about it in the book.
If you're a bad credit and you want to borrow money, you have to pay a lot of high interest rates. So in the, in the draftment days and the lira days, these governments would say, look, you know, it lenders 100 million lira or whatever it was over five years. And the investors would say, okay, well, charge you 10%. They'd get 10 years, well, charge you 10%. High interest rates. As they joined the euro, because it was all the same currency, their interest rates, that they could, they could borrow at were much lower. Okay. So what you would do, I think what a rational person would do in that situation, if their interest rates were getting lower, they would try and borrow the money and pay off debt. Whereas they just simply borrow money.
And I mean, conversely, you like that this whole story has been characterized by moments of madness. Yes. And there has been one particular period of being really negative or confusing. And it's, I think, well, I think you could argue the period of between about 71 more broadly, but lastly, the last 15 years, up to 2008, there was some pretty crazy stuff.
And when I talk about, you know, these mortgage lenders in the United States, you know, people who were essentially writing out checks for people who didn't have an income, so they couldn't pay the interest on these loans. That was a moment of madness. The Spanish sort of bid for world, Germany and power was probably a moment of madness. The South Sea bubble was a sort of moment of madness. Yeah, there are lots of moments of madness in the course of the book. And I think that that's part of the sort of dynamic of the book.
I mean, I mentioned the preface that my original title was Order and Chaos, because I see the periods of chaos falling order. And it's quite, you know, the last of three or four hundred years. That's probably quite a good moral of thinking about it. And I think at the moment we're kind of probably trying to come to the end of the period of chaos. We're going to try and work out more stable system paths.
And given the whole sickening nature that you're describing in the book, how do you think we can escape? Yeah, I think. I mean, I tend to have an orthodox view in that I think government expenditure needs to be addressed. And I think that's something that people would find probably more acceptable in an earlier time. And that's clearly an important factor. I also think that access needs to be slightly more regulated, probably, this is key.
What was the thing that surprised you the most? In researching the book, I think the repetition, you know, one thing that I discovered, which I didn't think it was, has touched on, is that the. If you look, there was a minor crisis in 1825. It was quite a big crisis at that time. It was exactly the same in many ways as what happened in 2008. It had a low interest rate environment.
And what happens in low interest rate is that bankers and people want to get higher returns. I think it's their point by government securities. I can only get 2%. So why don't we buy Argentinian government railway bonds? That's 7%. And they described these Victorian. They don't even even talk about their pre-Victorian bankers. They described this crazy search for yield, which encourages people to do the speculative investments. And then, of course, they all come. They all blow up.
And there were descriptions. And that. It was very similar to what happened, actually, in the last period before 2008. You have very low interest rates because there was. You know, people wanted. After 9 and 11, people were trying to stimulate the economy. The Fed had low interest rates in Greenspan and all that sort of stuff. And as a consequence, if you're a bankersitting in Iowa, you don't want to buy a US government debt and get 2%, but you want to lend to Mexicans who are going to promise you to. Who are you going to say? They're going to. Borough, Temperson. Yeah. And then you get the yield. And of course, it all works fine and done until they can't pay. And so the whole.
The railing has to be written now. But that's. Not that really interested me as a sort of historian of the economy of fighting that really interested me. And there were other instances where the same sort of patterns, you know, after walls, you know, you print money and then once the walls won, you try and go back to some sort of orthodoxy.
And the only way to kind of tie things together at the end, I suppose, is that we're saying the links are between wall and expansion. Yes. So wall and. What I would say is that you have a gold standard, let's say, the model starts its stability. And then you have to fight a wall for whatever reason. And the problem of thinking about walls is that they're bloody expensive. And so the only way you can actually really buy stuff is by printing your own money.
So you say, forget all that gold standard stuff. We're going to borrow as much money as we can, sort of pick the money and then spend it on stuff. And then the one thing finance it, they think we're in a bit of a bother. We need to try and get fiscal orthodoxy again. And it's this sort of cycle that I try and describe throughout the book. And that's what shapes an artist.
Fantastic. And finally, what do you understand of the story of money or finance? Would you like me to leave this book? I just like to think. You know, I think the most important thing is, if you think it's happened before, it probably has happened before. Because in terms of finance and the way people are, there's an incredible close connection I think between what's happening in the past and what's happening now. Largely a function of human nature. In terms of how we try and survive, how states and nations try and conduct themselves. And I think looking at history is a classic case in which the past does inform what's going to happen in the future. And who gives you an idea of what's going to happen in the future?
Because states are greedy. They spend money. They like borrowing money. They go to war. All these demands are things that have shaped the world for the modern world for centuries. And I think understanding the sort of dynamic between these two is very important to understanding what the future might bring. That was Quasi Quarting. War and gold, a 500 year history of empires, adventure and debt, is out now published by Bloomsbury in the UK and public affairs in the US. And in Quasi we'll be talking about his book at our History Weekend Festival, for which tickets are still on sale. Visit historyweekend.com for tickets and information. And if you'd like to read more from Quasi and Matt, you'll find an interview in the July issue of BBC History magazine, which is now on sale.
Also this month we take a look inside the mind of Rich the Third, we explore some myths of the Wild West, we find out why the Battle of Bannockburn became so integral to Scottish history, and discover the story of the Victorian letter scammers. You can get hold of our July issue now in all good news agents and digitally. For our July issue we've launched a fully interactive iPad edition, especially designed for the format. If you do happen to have an iPad, this would be a great time to give it a try. You can find the BBC History magazine app on the new stand, or iTunes, or else fire our website, and if you take out a subscription your first issue is free.
在这个月,我们深入了解Rich the Third的内心世界,探讨一些西部荒野的神话,了解Bannockburn战役为何成为苏格兰历史不可或缺的一部分,并发现了维多利亚时期的信件诈骗故事。您现在可以通过所有好的新闻代理商和数字渠道获取我们的七月份杂志。对于我们的七月份杂志,我们推出了专为iPad设计的全方位交互式版。如果你恰好有一个iPad,那么现在是尝试一下的好时机。您可以在新的展台、iTunes或者我们的网站上找到BBC历史杂志应用程序。如果您订阅新杂志,第一期将会免费。
Much has been written in this centenary year about the causes of the First World War, its huge scale and many consequences. But what was day-to-day life like on the front line? That's the subject of Richard Van Menden's new book, Tommy's War, which collects soldiers first-hand accounts and photographs to tell their stories. Matt Elson spoke to him earlier this month, and started by asking him what prompted him to write this book.
在百年纪念一战的这一年里,关于其原因、规模和后果已有许多文章写就。但是,前线的日常生活是什么样子的呢?这是Richard Van Menden新书《汤米的战争》的主题,该书收集了士兵的第一手描述和照片,讲述了他们的故事。Matt Elson本月早些时候采访了他,并开始询问他撰写这本书的动机是什么。
Well, I'm always keen to look for new angles when writing about the Great War. I mean, so many people say to me, it must have been written out by now, every general has been talked about, every battle has been examined. But actually, there are many, many new stories you can look at, and one that absolutely fascinated me was to try and put together a book which I felt had never been done before, in which you put together contemporary documents, contemporary memoirs, contemporary writings by the veterans themselves, with the photographs that they themselves took. So these men who took a cameras to the war, they took photographs throughout the 1418 period. So they took a look at them to marry those together with the words that they wrote, sometimes under fire, sometimes maybe a week afterwards. But there was not a single story in this book that goes beyond the Great War.
Talking about these photos and these records, where did you find them? What sort of sources did you use to find these accounts? Well, I have bought over many, many years, I mean, not dozens, but hundreds of out-of-print memoirs, books that were written during the course of the war or shortly afterwards from Darius, written by these men. And these books have literally been lost. I mean, they've just been out of print for 60, 70, 80 years. No one really knows about them. So a lot of the material came from those sorts of books, which I felt were just completely unexplored. Plus, also documents from the Imperial War Museum, from regimental archives, from the national archives. And from friends as well, you know, when you've been in the sort of first world or industry as I have for over 30 years, you make great contacts and you have people who say, look, I've got this wonderful selection of letters, would you like to use them? So it's really a collection from all over the place built up over, as I say, over three decades.
So what impression do we get of the men who made these documents in these photographs? Well, the impression you get is very strongly that they are just like you and me. I mean, you hear their voice at the time, you hear about their fears and concerns, their anxieties for their own sort of well-being and those of their families. And you hear two from men who were clearly desperate to survive, but men who also understood, you know, they're sort of duty, not just to their country, but to their comrades. And they sort of, that comes across very, very strongly throughout the book that these men, you know, they're no different from us.
You know, this is only a hundred years ago. So it's really helping, you know, what fascinates me is how these people put up with what they did. And when I can feel, when I can see, when I can read that these people are no different from me from my best friends, then it really does give you a sense of awe as to what they put up with. And that, I think, is the greatest impression I get from these accounts.
So what's an opinion of the accounts cover? They cover right from the outbreak of war all the way through to the armistice. As I say, every single story has to be written before the end of the Great War. So you've literally got men joining up in 1914, talking about and listening to some very, very funny stories from individuals queuing up in the sort of London in the centre of London, trying to enlist with people without, you know, people standing next to them, that shoes on others with bowl of hats, you know, they're all, everything from the old, with, with, with, really, buddies, with the Hoi Palloy right up to the, the great and the good, really.
I mean, everybody joined up and, and, and, and so you get stories like that all the way through to their training, to their first experiences in France. As I say, all the way through to the great battles of the Sarm and, and, and 30, through to the armistice. And what impression then I suppose do we get of people's first experiences of the war, kind of being on the front line for the first time? Well you get a sense of wonder.
I mean, a lot of soldiers, I mean, one of the things that, that, that, that, that, so many soldiers did and didn't, didn't, lived to see the following morning, it was, it, it's that kind of childlike interest in what, and everything that was going on around them, that first time in the trench, I mean, there's one soldier who writes about, you know, the kind of, wow, here I am, I mean, the front line trench, there is, there, there, I mean, there's nothing between me and the Germans.
Now the, the temptation for these men to look over the top and have a quick peep at the trenches was enormous and a lot of them sadly got picked off by snipers. But that's the sort of, the, the, that sense of going to wonder, I'm abroad. I mean, many, many of these men, many of these, it, not just offices, not just other ranks, but offices too, had never been abroad.
So the sense of this standing there I am on the continent of France, here I am to, you know, to save, to save Europe from this tyranny of the Germans. But, you know, also this kind of complete wonderment, the fact that they have finally got over there and there they are going towards the front line. Yes, they can hear the gunfire in the distance and I'm sure, you know, there's, they're butterflies in the stomach.
But there is this childlike enthusiasm which does sadly diminish as time passes. I was going to say, do we follow some characters right through the war? We do. I mean, some characters all the way through to, and so sadly they're death. I mean, some of the books I used for this, for this, for Thomas War, are letters and dyrus put together by grieving parents. So they wrote these sort of memorial books.
So you can follow an individual, you can hear his, his own sort of authentic voice, being at the front, writing to his parents, talking about every day life. And you know, as you go through that this person is going to die in 1916. Others do go almost all the way through the war. I mean, it's fairly rare for someone to literally join up in 1914 and still be on the front line in 1918. But I have a couple of, a couple of examples of that.
Do we get a sense then of people's character changing as they face the horrors of war? Very much so, very much indeed. There's one man in particular and he sadly does die, a man called Lieutenant Southwell. And he's a very sort of literary man, a very intelligent man. He goes to France and again, you get this sort of sense of, you know, I'm doing my duty, I'm with my friends. This is a wonderful experience. And very soon he gets, he's in the battle of the psalm and you just see this just black depression come over him.
He loses his best friend or be it, this best friend is serving in another battalion. But he writes home to his mother saying, this is just beyond the pale, I can't take this anymore. You know, and yet at the same time he knows his duty, he knows he's got to continue, he's got to look after the men under his command. But you do get this sense of total depression leading up almost to the day before he's killed in action on the summer and September.
Some of the photos in the book which I've seen an early version of are striking, incredible photos. Are there any photos for you that stand out? Yes, I mean, there are so many. And there's one I was just looking at before we started talking and it's a remarkable image, not for what it, in a sense what it shows. It's a picture of a sky and you would think, well, that's nothing much.
But actually it's taken at 3.45 AM by a private with a camera. Now, cameras were banned by Christmas in 1914. So we're very fortunate that a lot of officers and men chose to ignore that ban and face court marches and keep their cameras with them. And this was a private in 1917. And he's taking a picture of the opening bombardment to the third battle of EEP. And the sky is literally lit up with gunfire. The whole night sky is just as almost daylight and yes, it's 3.45 AM. And it's such an extraordinary image to have taken. That in itself you look at and go, okay, well, that's a sort of night sky all lit up. But when you know what it is, it is absolutely incredible.
And there are others that there's another one of some men just climbing onto a bus in 1914 and there's a old, omnibus taking them up to the front line. And what's so unusual is that the man who's taking the photograph is just climbed up the sort of outside stairs of this omnibus and he's standing on the top and he's taking a picture of the men in front of him climbing on the bus in front of him. And it's such an unusual, it's a beautifully constructed image and it's also taken on the hoof.
And that's split second, no one's posing for the photograph, no one's looking around and smiling. It's just, I'm just going to take my camera and click this picture. And so it's really, really unusual. And then one other picture of I may mention one other, it's a picture I came across, again, I bought it on a sort of online website and I looked at it and the man wanted a lot of money for this picture.
And at first I thought, no, no, that's too much. And then I looked at it again and I thought, you will never, ever see a photograph as extraordinary as that again. And in 30 years, I've never seen a picture like it. It's taken in the British front line trench on the 21st of March 1918 on the first day of the German march offensive. And this German has jumped into the British front line trench in the middle of the fighting.
It's a horrible picture in many ways, so two British soldiers dead, literally, of just being killed. And he's had the sort of calmness, the presence of mine to take out his camera, put his rifle up on the sort of side and take a photograph of this melee, of this moment in this, in, in, and you can see you can see the smoke, you can see that the carnage is going on at that split second. And yet he's taking his camera out to take a photograph. And that is so rare, that is so extraordinary. That book, I mean, I've given it a double page spread in the book. It is, you will not see another image like it.
Talking about the ways in which the soldiers dealt with the things that they witnessed and experienced. How important was humour in this? humour is critical to the mental survivor, survival of men on the Western front. There's no two ways about it. It might be the blackest humour imaginable. I always remember reading a story of a man who, after the Battle of Luce, said that his men were putting heads to, back to, rolling them like a sort of a temp in bowling, back to their heads of decapitated men.
And it was, he just said it was the darkest, darkest humour imaginable. But it was the only way of coping. And this was incredibly important. You're under extraordinary strain on a daily basis. It doesn't matter if you're under shell fire, if you're being machined, if you're even going over the top, but just daily life. When you're in the front line, you know your life is on the line, every moment imaginable.
The germs can open, shelling, they can drop a couple of mortars straight into your trench and you can be dead at any time. So the strain was unimaginable and therefore humour was critical. And there's a lot of humour in the book. I just felt, well, I don't want to make this book the dark, miserable, read. I want people to think that yes, actually men did have fun. They did enjoy themselves.
There's a wonderful, wonderful court martial in the book. Not a court martial, it's not nobody facing the death penalty or anything like that. It's an individual who's been court basically shooting farmers' chickens. And the writer wrote it within days of this court martial and it is one of the funniest things I've ever read.
I wrote it to a great friend of mine and I tears rolling down my face and I promised you that was true. And basically this private is coming up with the most fatuous excuses for how he managed to shoot these chickens, all of which he's basically saying, you know, he was mucking around with his gun and playing with a bullet in the breach and the bullet and the rifle went off and happened to shoot six chickens at all standing in a row.
You know, and he put them in the instant, he chewed it pocket to go and tell the farmer that he'd accidentally done this and he was going to compensate him. I mean, it was just so ridiculous. And even the judge says, look, do you want to go and think about your story before we pass any judgment on this? And it is hysterical because you have witnesses bought in utterly inarticulate witnesses who don't know how to give evidence and they start going off on one and the judges are trying to tell him to be quiet. It is just, it's something which only a person who was there who could write about it at the time could recreate a court martial like that. It's just, it's wonderful.
Do we get any sense of how they viewed the wider war and if they had any criticisms of it? Soldiers didn't tend to view the wider war. We like to think that they should have done. But no, I mean, they were in a trench, their vision of view was in a matter of 20 yards, 50 yards on either side if they were behind the lines, well, okay, they were in a nice billet somewhere and what they were concerned about was resting and recuperating and getting themselves mentally prepared to go back up the line again.
Very few soldiers at the time, in fact, I'm say this and I don't think there's one individual that I read from these contemporary sources who ever mentioned people like Hague, you know, General of Field Marshal Hague. There was no criticism of the senior command. There is criticism of local attacks of individual, of situations where clearly the men shouldn't have gone into action at this particular point and they suffered very heavily and there is criticism there. But it's very localized criticism. You know, it's only what these men can see at that particular moment. It's not saying, well, I'm going to extrapolate from that and criticise the high command that just isn't the nature of soldiers in the Great War.
If you could travel back to the period and ask a question of some or just one of the people involved in these stories, what's the thing would you ask them? How do you cope? How do you cope with what you put up with? That's why I studied the Great War. That's why I've been fascinated for 30 years because I always joke with friends. I would have been the first person executed for cowardice because I don't believe I could have put up with it. Maybe I could have done.
Maybe I'd have been a good soldier. I just don't know. And I found heavens that I will never be tested because these men were tested to the nth degree and it fascinates me. It fascinates me that, yes, OK, they really had no choice. Had they run away from the trench that had a face of fire and squad, they had to put up with it. So my question would be, how do you cope?
Why do you think it's so important to approach the war from the viewpoint that you've done? Do you've taken? I just think this is something that's not been looked at before. I mean, there are books out there which are sort of companions of soldiers' writings from the 1920s, 50s, 70s. But actually, let's go back. Let's go all the way back. Let's go back to the war and say, what is it? What were these soldiers talking about in 1914, 15, 16, 17?
What mattered to them? Not with any sort of revisionism. Not with any sort of, you know, I mean, bought up believing that perhaps, you know, having read in the 60s about butchers and bungalows and incompetent generals. Now, let's go back to what they thought at the time. And let's illustrate it with their own photographs. So really, you take me out of the narrative.
You know, obviously, I do have to link these stories together. You take me out. We are really hearing and seeing from the soldiers themselves. And I do not believe I'm certain that that has never been done before. So what do you impression do you hope that we just leave this book with? Of the war? I take, I hope, I just take the impression of, you know, of, you know, what we owe to that generation, you know, I hope they go away thinking, yeah, that was my grandad. That was my great-grandfather. He might not be named in this particular book, but in essence, this is what my grandfather did.
Now, I begin to understand perhaps a little bit more of the way he was. Maybe I can, I can see why he was irassable when he was in his old age. Maybe I can see why he never talked about the war. Maybe I can see exactly why he talked about the war.
I just would like people to go to read the book and then think, yeah, okay, I understand a little bit more about my family about where my family has come from because let's face it, the vast majority of British people had relatives who were in the Great War. And it doesn't really matter what, almost what ethnic background you are too. There were tens of thousands of Indians on the Western front. There were men for the West Indies all over and all over China. So I really think it's a book that everybody in Britain can take something from.
That was Richard Van Enden. Tommy's War, The Western Front, in soldier's words and photographs, is out now published by Bloomsbury in the UK and the US.
这是Richard Van Enden。汤米的战争,《士兵的话语和照片中的西线战场》已经由布卢姆斯伯里在英国和美国出版发行。
Well, that is almost all for this week's episode. You get in touch with your views on podcast at historyextra.com and we will try to read out some of your messages in the future.
One listener who got in contact recently was Michael Ranser over in California. Michael says, I'm just writing to say how much I enjoyed your interview with Adam Tews on the consequences of the First World War. I think it was one of the most informative interviews I have heard in five years of listening to your podcasts.
The interview tied together so many loose ends on the aftermath of that war, with a focus on the later actions by the Western Allies and insight into the intentions of the National leaders, Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemsso. It's clear that the forces of World War I were still being felt well after World War II and I would add certainly up through the fall of communism in 1989 and even today in some places. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for that Michael and if you missed the interview with Adam Tews, you can still download it from all the usual places. It was in the episode First Broadcast on the 12th of June this year.
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Next week we will be joined by Hugh Thomas to discuss the Spanish Empire while Michael Scott will be exploring the history of Delphi. Make sure to tune in for that.