Over the Top: The Great War and Juvenile Literature in Britain (review)

In the continuing debate over the incompatible "Two Western Fronts," that of revisionist military history versus that of literature and culture, this is a scholarly monograph from a British historian who is comfortable in both worlds, examining British fictional depictions of the Great War of 1914–18 in popular books and magazine stories written for adolescents during the war itself. This wartime juvenile fiction came mainly from successful prewar authors who adapted their existing plots and conventions—the spy story, the science fiction flying machine, or the exploration of the frontier—to the Great War, along with their prevailing stereotypes, particularly that of the Public School boy as a natural leader both of the lower classes and of other nationalities and races.

British propaganda organisations, starting with the famous Wellington House in 1914, sponsored and encouraged this juvenile literature as part of the war effort, as did Lord Northcliffe's publishing empire, although lack of documentation makes it hard to identify specific cases. Subsequent chapters show that the choice of plot and mise-en-scène frequently depended on the progress of the war itself. In 1914, authors depicted Britain as entering the Great War for noble reasons against a Germany that threatened the existence of civilisation, and whose fictionalised representatives were utterly villainous. With the deadlock on the Western Front, authors turned to descriptions of air combat, emphasising its chivalric qualities, and then towards the exotic settings of Gallipoli (where in contrast to their prewar stereotype, Turks were characteristically depicted as "clean" fighters), of Mesopotamia, Palestine, and even Africa, and to the role of the Canadians and Australians in the war, drawing on the further stereotype of the backwoodsman as a natural warrior. Only with the widespread use of the tank in 1918 did the writers return to ground combat on the Western Front, giving this new wonder weapon disproportionate credit for the final Allied victory.

The author regrets lacking space in the book to include a discussion of the war at sea, and the same pressure to publish may be behind his reliance, on a few occasions only, on outdated secondary sources. Otherwise, he makes a convincing case for continuity in the way that authors of juvenile fiction, some of them war veterans themselves by 1918, presented the Great War to British adolescents, rather than any great cultural shift or move towards "disillusionment." As the nature of the real war changed, a few working-class heroes appeared in their writings, or even a few heroines as nurses or spies, and their depictions of conflict became more violent. But the basic themes of a good war fought by young heroes for a just cause did not change. Further, these books continued to sell well and to be presented as school prizes up to the outbreak of the Second World War and even beyond. As the author concludes, British conventions for presenting fictionalised warfare to the young were tested by the Great War, together with the existing stereotype of idealised masculinity, but the war experience modified them slightly rather than destroying them outright.