Fight or Pay: Soldiers' Families in the Great War (review)

Despite the extensive historiography on both the First and Second World Wars, a number of topics, such as the experience of service families in wartime, have remained largely unresearched. However, in the age of mass mobilisation, the home front had a direct bearing on all belligerents' abilities to prosecute the war. As Desmond Morton suggests, to persuade men to volunteer for service, it was necessary to reassure them that their families would be well looked after in their absence. As a result the whole issue of service allowances for both wives and other dependants was a contemporary topic of great concern and one with immediate consequences for the war effort in countries where a volunteer army was recruited.

In this book, Morton approaches the development of allowances for the dependants of Canadian servicemen in a largely chronological order from September 1914, when Canada followed the British example in approving separation allowances for servicemen's families. The opening chapters highlight the way in which, for both Britain and Canada, what had initially appeared to be straightforward solutions to the questions of family allowances became immensely convoluted when faced with all the complexities of human relationships, such as 'unmarried wives' and dependant fathers. In addition, the bureaucracy associated with these allowances, and the levels at which they were set, often led to hardship for the families concerned. As a result, charitable organisations began to play a significant role in supporting service families. In Canada, this role was largely fulfilled by the Canadian Patriotic Fund (CPF), described as "the hardy perennial response to a variety of wartime needs" (p. 53) and the main focus of Morton's research lies in the role played by this organisation.

The book draws on a wide range of sources, including a number of private papers and provincial archives, and one of its strengths is its use of individual case studies to illuminate political and administrative issues. As a result, the book demonstrates much more clearly than Gillian Thomas's research on service allowances and pensions in the same period in Britain, the immediate impact of delays in administration and low levels of payment on the everyday lives of the families concerned. As such, it provides useful background information for all those interested in the experience of families in wartime and, for those of us with a more specific interest in the experience of service families, it provides a solid basis from which to begin to construct international comparisons.