ABSTRACT
In April 1915, the British authorities adopted a policy of non-repatriation of their war dead. An order to this effect was issued by the Adjutant-General at the instigation of Major Fabian Ware, the founder the Army’s Graves Registration Commission, and later to become the charismatic Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC). Though naturally inclined towards the Conservatives, Ware had read the works of many progressive philosophers and political thinkers and was anxious for social reform. Moreover, he sensed the new and democratic mood in the Army, the result of the comradeship bred by the life of hardship and horror in the trenches. It was a feeling that ignored all barriers of class, position or rank (Longworth 1967: 13).
