The Great War: 1914, The British Campaign in France and Flanders, Vol. 1

The History of the Great War #1

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle was one of the greatest narrative writers in English history.

Most famous for his Sherlock Holmes stories, he was incapable of penning a dull word.

Nowhere is that more true than in his 'History of the Great War', now re-published as a series of e-books, with an introduction by the leading historian of the First World War, Nigel Jones.

The first volume of his magisterial history of the war deals with the events of 1914, and covers the British war effort in Belgium and France.

Doyle had a personal stake in the war - as well as being deeply patriotic.

His son Kingsley and his brother Innes both served in the Army, and his brother-in-law Malcolm Leckie disappeared early in the war, and was later confirmed killed.

When the war broke out, Doyle wrote to the War Office offering his services in any capacity. He found it in Wellington House, writing anti-German propaganda. He swiftly churned out two penny pamphlets 'To Arms!' and 'The German War' which blamed the 'barbarian Huns' for engineering the war and urged all civilised people to support the Allied cause.

He moved on to research and publish his full length histories, detailing the battles and campaigns of the Great War.

He built up his narrative from letters, diaries, and ‘interviews from the hand or lips of men who have been soldiers in our armies, the deeds of which it was my ambition to understand and to chronicle’.

As well as interviewing ordinary soldiers, Doyle managed to get Haig and fourteen other generals to give him access to their diaries and papers, allowing him to create a full and informed overview of the Great War.

Doyle remained sturdily patriotic throughout the war despite experiencing personal tragedies and yet his narrative could not remain untouched by the horrors of what he described.

'The Great War, Vol 1' is a rich, extensively researched account of the early battles, chronicling the reasons for the outbreak of war through to the ‘Winter lull’ at the end of 1914.

It is certain to fascinate a new generation of readers.

Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books

234 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2009

About the author

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.

Reviews

[James Bailey]

The man remembered for Sherlock Holmes was not only a novelist, but a contemporary historian as well.

Searching for a good history of WWI in the Widener Library, I stumbled across his 5-volume his of the war. I decided to see whether his writing ability carried over to this new field.

One might expect that a man famous as a novelist would deliver a gripping narrative full of beautiful prose, but one lacking in historical accuracy and a thorough understanding of the political situation and military tactics.

One would, however, be wrong on all counts.

Conan Doyle wrote 1914 like a traditional historian. His prose mostly consists of precise descriptions of military actions- X unit attacked Y place on D date for R reason, and sustained ABC casualties. But he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of tactics, strategy and politics.

1914 was written and published in 1916, while the war still raged. Conan Doyle admits that his narrative is handicapped by a lack of information about the enemy and the allies. For this reason, his focus is on the British Expeditionary Force.

For a book written during an ongoing war, it is surprisingly fair. The author continually praises the courage of the German forces. He admits that “Germany was grievously handicapped at sea, and that she deserves the more credit for whatever she accomplished.” The book is not exactly wartime propoganda. His criticisms of Germany are restricted to the same sort impartial people made in hindsight- that invading a small, neutral country, sinking civilian ships, and wearing enemy uniforms are not good things to do. When he does editorialize, however, his words are passionate:

“The German representative at Brussels was perjuring his soul”

“The long-meditated crime had been done, and, with loud appeals to God, Germany began her fateful campaignby deliberate perjury and arrogant disdain for treaties. God accepted the appeal, and swiftly showed how the weakest State with absolute right upon its side may bring to naught all the crafty plottings of the strong.”

The author, like so many others, struggled to understand why the war started, and especially what could have brought English and Germans to fight each other.

“Up to the year 1896 there was a great deal of sympathy and of respect in Great Britain for the German Empire. It was felt that of all Continental Powers she was the one which was most nearly allied to Britain in blood, religion and character.”

He expressed continued consternation that two branches of the German race should be warring against one another, that the Saxons who went upriver should, after only 1500 years, be so different from those who went across the sea. He notes how English regiments would find on the corpses of their Hanoverian enemies insignia matching their own, from campaigns when they had served together.

He lays the blame for the English-German estrangement on the Kaiser, the construction of a massive German navy- and on the most dangerous people of all, fellow writers.

“a number of writers, of whom Nietzsche and Treitschke are the best known, had inoculated the German spirit with a most mischievous philosophy, which grew the more rapidly as it was dropped into the favourable soil of Prussian militarism. Nietzsche’s doctrines were a mere general defence of might as against right, and of violent brutality against everything which we associate with Christianity and Civilization….. The typical brute whom he exalted was blond, but a brute of any other tint would presumably suffice. It was different in the case of Treitschke….. he taught the rising generation of Germans that their special task was to have a reckoning with England and to destroy the British Empire, which for some reason he imagined to be degenerate and corrupt.”

Writing often exerts a power of the minds of men. With such power comes the potential for great danger. Why is it that the German writers of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche, Trietschke, and Marx, could sow so much sorrow in the twentieth? Will books of such power, for good or evil, ever again be written?

Moving back to more definite matters. As he wrote this book in 1916, Arthur Conan Doyle could still speak unashamedly of war in terms of honor and chivalry. He constantly praises self-sacrificing courage on the part of the troops. He refers hundreds of times to “gallant” officers, even as the absurdly high casualty rate meant that most references were to their deaths. Modern war, with its accurate rifles and its machine guns, did not permit many people to survive long enough for a real narrative to coalesce around them. But the author tries his best to see purpose and courage and avoid the words like “pointless”, “futile”, and “stupid”, to which men would soon turn. He could still speak of

“the days when the high gods of virility would smile as they looked down upon the chosen children of Odin, the English and the Germans, locked in the joy of battle.”

[Amy]

I was not aware that Conan Doyle had written a series on the First World but seeing as I love his Sherlock Holmes series and am interesting in WW1 I was really interested by this book.

This classic account was all the more interesting because it was written at the time - the first volume, chronically the lead up to the war and the battles of 1914 was written in 1916. I am used to reading books from a modern perspective making use of hindsight, so I really enjoyed reading something from closer to the time.

This isn't the book to go for if you are looking for the stories of individuals or detailed descriptions of the horrors of life on the front line, but it is a thorough and fascinating step-by-step analysis of the major battles, with Conan Doyle placing the Great War in context (particularly in relation to The Boer War) and providing insights on where he thought warfare was heading. I would definitely recommend reading this if you are interested in the period.