The “Firsts” World War: A History of the Morale of Liverpudlians as Told through Letters to Liverpool Editors, 1915–1918

Abstract

Notwithstanding being dismissed as the work of an unrepresentative few, some studies conclude that letters to the editor can be considered fairly representative of non-writers. Given that very little research has been conducted into their content in the UK, this article gives letter-writers their voices back in an attempt to gauge civilian morale in Liverpool during the Great War. Liverpudlians experienced four novel phenomena in the four-year period 1915–1918, what I term the “Firsts” World War, and this paper chronologically examines each – the First Blitz (1915), the First True War Documentary (1916), the First Battle of the Atlantic (1917), and the Landing of the First US Contingent (1917–1918) – before concluding that the views expressed by letter-writers in Liverpool were largely typical and generally representative of the experiences of non-writers in other towns and cities.