Over There: War Scenes on the Western Front

by Arnold Bennett

Personal observations of World War I. According to Wikipedia: "Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 - 27 March 1931) was an English novelist. ... He won a literary competition in Tit-Bits magazine in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism full time. In 1894, he became assistant editor of the periodical Woman. He noticed that the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine was not very good, so he wrote a serial which was bought by the syndicate for 75 pounds. He then wrote another. This became The Grand Babylon Hotel. Just over four years later, his first novel A Man from the North was published to critical acclaim and he became editor to the magazine. From 1900 he devoted himself full time to writing, giving up the editorship and writing much serious criticism, and also theatre journalism, one of his special interests. ...In 1903, he moved to Paris, where other great artists from around the world had converged on Montmartre and Montparnasse. Bennett spent the next eight years writing novels and plays. His most famous works are the Clayhanger trilogy and The Old Wives' Tale. ... Bennett believed that ordinary people had the potential to be the subject of interesting books. In this respect, an influence which Bennett himself acknowledged was the French writer Maupassant whose "Une Vie" inspired "The Old Wives' Tale". As well as the novels, much of Bennett's non-fiction work has stood the test of time. One of his most popular non-fiction works, which is still read to this day, is the self-help book "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day". "

Genres: History, World War I, War, Historical, Nonfiction

Library Binding

First published July 8, 1915

About the author

Enoch Arnold Bennett was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboration with other writers), and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day.
Born into a modest but upwardly mobile family in Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, Bennett was intended by his father, a solicitor, to follow him into the legal profession. Bennett worked for his father before moving to another law firm in London as a clerk at the age of 21. He became assistant editor and then editor of a women's magazine before becoming a full-time author in 1900. Always a devotee of French culture in general and French literature in particular, he moved to Paris in 1903; there the relaxed milieu helped him overcome his intense shyness, particularly with women. He spent ten years in France, marrying a Frenchwoman in 1907. In 1912 he moved back to England. He and his wife separated in 1921, and he spent the last years of his life with a new partner, an English actress. He died in 1931 of typhoid fever, having unwisely drunk tap-water in France.
Many of Bennett's novels and short stories are set in a fictionalised version of the Staffordshire Potteries, which he called The Five Towns. He strongly believed that literature should be accessible to ordinary people and he deplored literary cliques and élites. His books appealed to a wide public and sold in large numbers. For this reason, and for his adherence to realism, writers and supporters of the modernist school, notably Virginia Woolf, belittled him, and his fiction became neglected after his death. During his lifetime his journalistic "self-help" books sold in substantial numbers, and he was also a playwright; he did less well in the theatre than with novels but achieved two considerable successes with Milestones (1912) and The Great Adventure (1913).
Studies by Margaret Drabble (1974), John Carey (1992), and others have led to a re-evaluation of Bennett's work. The finest of his novels, including Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910) and Riceyman Steps (1923), are now widely recognised as major works.

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over There: War Scenes On The Western Front by Arnold Bennett clearly sets out to offer a mildly propagandist view of the First World War. Within a few pages of the start of its survey of sites of recent action in France and Belgium, we have learned that - apparently immutably - on the one hand France and its culture represent just about the pinnacle of human achievement, while on the other everything German is barbaric, aggressive and wantonly destructive. But by the end of the book, even Arnold Bennett seems no more than merely exhausted, merely bombed-out, like the skeletal remains of the city of Ypres he was then describing. It is this transformation through the progress of this short book that makes it still worth reading.

Where Vera Brittain’s Testament Of Youth sees the consequences of the first World War’s conflict in generally human terms, Arnold Bennett approaches his descriptive task with the sentiment and mission of a propagandist. He was there to fly the flag, there is no doubt. But he had already lived for several years in France and was also a professional journalist. Over There: War Scenes On The Western Front is therefore less of a personal reflection and more of an attempt to provide a - theoretically, at least - dispassionate, if committed and one-sided view of the conflict.

Today, passages that scorn German tactics because they seem bent on the destruction of architectural heritage read as merely quant. We all know that the reality of war demands destruction, especially of symbols of power and identity. As an example, one wonders what the strategic value was of bending flat a grotesquely over-sized metal Saddam Hussein? Precisely none, since this was clearly an act driven by its symbolism. We also know that scruples are not ammunition in war and that defenders and aggressors alike often hide behind the communally sacrosanct, first for potential cover and second for the potential propaganda value should the first aim fail. When Arnold Bennett expresses anger at German shelling of Gothic cathedrals in places such as Rheims, one wonders, given the opportunity, what he might have made of carpet bombing of German cities in World War Two? We know that his view would have remained partisan, but such a stance was only to be expected, given his journalistic associations and the politics of his employers.

It is when Arnold Bennett is touring the destroyed city of Ypres that the doubts really begin to surface. Bennett was a believer in the worth of everyday experience. As a novelist he at least aspired to the basing of his work on quite ordinary lives, believing them to be inherently of interest because of their simple humanity. In Ypres he describes the wrecked houses of ordinary people who were forced out, bombed out, chased away or merely killed. Questions clearly arise in his mind about the nature of war, but they never quite become explicit enough to demand answer.

Over There: War Scenes On The Western Front by Arnold Bennett is a short book that is worthy of re-reading today for two reasons. One is Arnold Bennett’s journalistic ability to describe what he saw. Through this he is able to provide a vivid and reasonably accurate account of day-to-day warfare in the trenches. But secondly, Arnold Bennett writes from the committed, partisan position of a man of his times. There is no detachment in his view, only commitment and conviction. This reminds us that in times of war, at least for the protagonists, there is no scope for detachment, since taking sides is part of the action.

[Liam O'Shiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arnold Bennett was a prolific and talented writer whose merits have become better appreciated in the last few decades. His description of the destruction of France's historic towns and countryside in 1915 is vivid and heartbreaking. Bennett, who was British, was unashamedly a Francophile and loathed what Germany had done. (In 1915 he was hardly alone in this view.) This is a gem of a book, captivating from cover to cover. Illustrations are by Walter Hale, who also wrote a book covering the same basic tour of the trenches. (See my review of Hale's excellent book.) Warning: it is not a happy story, but one that should be read for what it says about mankind's capacity to use technology for the obliteration of great art.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some journalistic takes on how the early days of the war looked to an English civilian visiting the front near Ypres. Nice observation and good writing. A little early for the horrors that were later to come although the casualties are played down and the barbaric shelling of towns played up, for home consumption. Bennett is a good enough writer allowing you to read between the lines of the necessary propaganda approach.

[Red · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay. A lot of it is just about war in general. How the Germans shattered civilization because war tends to destroy a lot of buildings. Good thing the French and British if given the chance wouldn't have destroyed any buildings in Germany...

[Carl Cook · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting

Interesting but not able to keep my attention. Didn't grab me like other books written from this perspective of military action.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting historical work

Very enlightening visitors eye view of the way of life in key areas during the early days of World War One

[Perry Whitford · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read novels by Arnold Bennett before and enjoyed them. I may even go as far as to say that The Old Wives' Tale is close to being a masterpiece. That said, I've also read some journalistic stuff by him and didn't care for his glib, self-satisfied tone at all.

As such, I approached his despatches from the front line during WWI with a little bit of trepidation. I couldn't imagine him hitting the right note in the face of the utmost seriousness. Not that he was frivolous, just too flip to be a war correspondent.

Anyway, he soon proved my point. In this passage he describes visiting the heavy guns shelling the enemy day and night. Is this the appropriate tone to adopt?:

'The “seventy-five” is a very sympathetic creature, in blue-grey with metallic glints. He is perfectly easy to see when you approach him from behind, but get twenty yards in front of him and he is absolutely undiscoverable. Viewed from the sky, he is part of the forest. Viewed from behind, he is perceived to be in a wooden hut with rafters, in which you can just stand upright. We beheld the working of the gun, by two men, and we beheld the different sorts of shell in their delved compartments. But this was not enough for us. We ventured to suggest that it would be proper to try to kill a few Germans for our amusement. The request was instantly granted.'

I'm not sure about his assessment of the mood in the trenches either. Maybe he decided on some cheery propaganda for the folks back home, or maybe he was just fooled in the same way the board of directors get fooled whenever they visit the factory floor, but this doesn't ring true:

'We had been to the very front of the front, and it was the most cheerful, confident, high-spirited place I had seen in France.'

Other sights he saw included the battered cathedrals at Rheims and Arras, the utterly devastated town of Ypres, deserted German trenches with the corpses of dead soldiers still lying there under the soil. Bennett loved France and the sheer wanton destruction by the invaders got to him:

'I am against a policy of reprisals, and yet—such is human nature— having seen Arras, I would honestly give a year’s income to see Cologne in the same condition.'

Even in rage he expressed all too glibly for my tastes.