ABSTRACT
If the anti-war movement failed to appeal to working men because of its own intrinsic deficiencies, this does not imply that the issue of the war did not command the same attention and debate within working-class society that it did within the other classes of the nation. It was, without doubt, the issue of the day. Working-class newspapers, like the Morning Leader and Reynolds News, devoted as much of their space to the course of the war as did the Daily Mail or The Times. Of course, their emphasis was different. The working-class press was, on the whole, anti-war; it emphasized the casualties and printed many letters from soldiers which recounted in full the sufferings of the ordinary Tommy and the incompetence of the officers. Thus, wherever working men gathered, the topic could hardly be avoided. Awareness of this is tantalizing for the historian. The present-day sociologist interested in working-class attitudes is well equipped to investigate his subject. He needs only a tape recorder and an entrÉe into the confined circle of a working-class pub, and he can gather invaluable source material for the future historian. Our task is not so easy. We have to rely for our evidence upon the impressionistic printed word which reported the limited atmosphere of a lecture or public meeting within a working-class institution. The available evidence for determining the dominant characteristics of expressed working-class attitudes to the war is, of course, very scanty. And it is often uncertain just whose opinion is being recorded. Similarly, lack of evidence has prevented the development of an in-depth and detailed profile of one or several representative working men's attitudes toward the war. What results is, therefore, subject to the severe limitations of the source material and methodology. Nevertheless, if these limitations are accepted, it is possible for us to identify some broad generalizations. That these generalizations have some validity is strengthened by the fact that they will be seen to be part of a pattern confirmed elsewhere in this study.
