Pens at War

Abstract

This chapter examines the part played by writers in wartime. Reference is made to the involvement of several in the Boer War, but the chief concern here is the First World War, when many writers lent their pens for propaganda — either independently or surreptitiously co-ordinated by the government department at Wellington House led by C. F. G. Masterman — in which Sir Gilbert Parker and Anthony Hope were prominent. Arnold Bennett and John Buchan held other official appointments; but a good deal of writing arose from spontaneous patriotism, a conviction that Germany was foremost responsible for the war, and a belief in the overall justice of the Allied cause, although reservations were expressed by more than one. Writers whose positions are analysed include William Archer, J. M. Barrie, Hilaire Belloc, Robert Bridges, G. K. Chesterton, Conan Doyle, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, Elinor Glyn, Thomas Hardy, Keble Howard, Henry James, Jerome K. Jerome, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, John Masefield, A. E. W. Mason, Somerset Maugham, Siegfried Sassoon, George Bernard Shaw, Mrs Humphry Ward, and H. G. Wells.