ABSTRACT
I was tall for my years. . . . Day after day, I saw men going off to the war and I also saw men coming back from France wounded and read about men who had died in action. My father warned me not to enlist until I was nineteen. All over the country, huge posters, with the picture of Lord Kitchener, and the words ‘Your country needs you’. Went to Dundee and enrolled on 7 Jan. 1915.1
As is clear from the introduction, this is not a chapter solely about patriotism, though patriotism enters into it. Patriotism as a concept and as an organizational tool is both limiting and dangerous: limiting because it focuses only on allegiance to nation; dangerous because its meaning is deeply contested.
