ABSTRACT
Throughout the first half of 1914 the political agenda in Britain was dominated by Ireland and controversy surrounding the third Home Rule Bill. Would Ulster fight?, that was the great question of the hour. There was of course talk of war with Germany. Yet it seemed unreal somehow, equally unthinkable and inevitable. The prospect of the civilized nations of Europe destroying each other was altogether too perverse to contemplate. Concerned voices were raised. Graham Wallas, among others, foresaw a terrible catastrophe ahead, smoldering on for as long as thirty years: ‘What will be the population of London, or Manchester, or Chemnitz, or Breman, or Milan, at the end of it?’, he asked. In the jingoistic press a different picture was painted, in which the Hun was dealt a bloody nose and the heroic boys would all be home by Christmas. The Edwardian summer was too long, the faith in progress and in the invincibility of the British Empire too deeply set for the warnings of cranky professors and their kind to be taken seriously. If only the Ulstermen could be persuaded to drop their unreasonable demand for partition, if some arrangement could be reached with the suffragettes, then life would be all gold and honey. It is something of a caricature, but in a sense it was a generation that hanged itself on the expectation of plenty. In the event, the coming troubles in Ireland, terrible though they were, were something of a local diversion amidst the greater tragedy of total war.
