Martel Gordon. A Companion to Europe 1900-1945

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selﬁsh interest, but . . . in defense of principles the maintenance of which is vital to

the civilization of the world.” The violation of Belgian neutrality represented a moral

issue of the kind to which British liberalism would habitually respond. The war now

became a crusade to be fought by crusaders.

Only the Manchester Guardian

remained implacably opposed to the war. For the rest of the press it was now a matter

of honor and if the response to the initial recruitment drive is anything to go by then

it would appear that British public opinion was resolutely behind its government’s

war aims.

The armies of continental Europe were made up of conscripts and they really had

little choice about going to war. The British army in contrast was made up of volun-

teers and professionals. If the eagerness to go to war was manifested by volunteering

alone then the ﬁgures are revealing. August 3, 1914 was a Bank Holiday and as such

the recruiting ofﬁces were closed. But for the rest of that ﬁrst week of war there was

an average of 16,000 volunteers a day. Between August 4 and September 12, 478,893

men enlisted.

The spontaneous response would suggest that the fears, hopes, anxiet-

ies, and illusions that had buffeted Britain during the July crisis were swept away in

support for a noble and just war. Or were they?

Mobilization began on August 4 and almost immediately the British Expeditionary

Force (BEF) became an auxiliary of the French army and marched proudly and con-

ﬁdently to the music-hall song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” – although few would

have known or cared where Tipperary was. The silent ﬁlm and photographic evidence

of volunteers and families waving cheerfully at the cameras tells only part of the story.

Marc Ferro has made the telling point that: “They marched off to war, their faces a

picture of delight. Film is of course deceptive and a more searching examination

would show other images – the anguish of the father, a ﬁancé, or a husband.”

Furthermore, as the testimonies that have been cataloged in the Imperial War

Museum reveal, the motives for going to war in 1914 were many and complex and

cannot be explained simply in terms of exhilaration and jingoism – although that is

not to deny that these were not present at the time. There were a variety of reasons

for volunteering: patriotism, the desire for adventure – particularly the belief that

they would share this adventure together with friends – peer pressure, and the ever-

present pressure from newspapers, the pulpit, and the accusing ﬁnger of Kitchener

that stabbed at young men (and women) on every bill posting. (Remember, also,

that in France less than 2 percent of men called to the colors in 1914 failed to respond

to the call.)

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that there existed a general euphoria in these early weeks

of war, no doubt partly due to the release of tension now that war had ﬁnally arrived

after all the declarations, ultimatums, and preparations. However, the notion that

belligerent states entered the war in euphoric unanimity requires qualiﬁcation. Jean-

Jacques Becker’s work on (mainly) rural France can be applied to most of the bel-

ligerent states: the traditional view of popular opinion when mobilization orders were

received was distorted by the failure to account for the consternation felt by substan-

tial sections of the population. There is considerable evidence to suggest that negative

responses, ranging from helpless grief to sober resignation, permeated sections of the

august 1914 209

population. In fact – with the exception of Austria-Hungary – when mobilization

orders were ﬁrst received, enthusiastic responses were rare, although not entirely

absent. For Britain, the catalyst was clearly the German invasion of neutral Belgium.

However, by the time the soldiers departed for the fronts those who had previously

held misgivings about mobilization swung behind the war and supported the menfolk

and war aims. That is not the same as the claim made by some historians that the

peoples of Europe were swept up by a wave of enthusiasm for the war – a sort of

“war fever” – as the troops mobilized.

Such shifting responses are not unique to August 1914: one only need think of

the widespread anti-war feelings and demonstrations that were generated in Britain

in the run-up to Gulf War II in 2003 – however, once the soldiers began leaving for

Iraq, opinion swung – not in favor of the war – but in support of the soldiers sent

to ﬁght the war. In 1914 most of the soldiers who marched to war put on a brave

face for the newsreel cameras and crowds who had formed to send them off. Yet

while many left willingly, convinced that they had a duty to perform, and some

undoubtedly felt enthusiastic about the war, they were not typical. Flag waving and

bravado are more commonly associated with the need for solidarity and unity in the

face of a common enemy, than wholehearted approval of war. It is too simplistic to

make sweeping generalizations about the “spirit of war.” While the scenes in London,

Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and St Petersburg that accompanied the announcement of war

appeared to be indistinguishable, there were many different August experiences, and

anxiety was as widespread as jubilation.

What conclusions then can be drawn about popular attitudes to war during the

crisis of 1914? All governments had a stated purpose for going to war and these war

aims were largely supported by those required to make the sacriﬁces. Every nation

framed support for the war in terms of a righteous cause and the need to defend its

own against external aggression. Most civilians and soldiers went to war in the belief

that they were ﬁghting for a just cause. However, popular attitudes did not in

themselves make war inevitable. Propaganda came of age during the conﬂict and has

been associated unfairly with pejorative associations ever since. Public opinion is an

amorphous thing at the best of times. In a crisis it tends to coalesce around tradi-

tional, unifying themes and symbols. The acceptance of war aims did not necessarily

mean that the people of Europe were enthusiastic or indeed that there existed a

“war fever.” What united them was the belief that this war would be clinical, control-

lable and victorious, and be over by Christmas. This, more than anything, explains

the bitterness of postwar recriminations. Having been led to believe that the war

would be of short duration, it is remarkable that combatants and civilians continued

to endure stoically such unspeakable deprivation and suffering. It is surely not sur-

prising that in the postwar years so many writers and poets should take refuge and

comfort in a world that was allegedly more innocent, secure, and self-conﬁdent.

The idealization of 1914 has become part of European mythology – in more ways

than one.

NOTES

1 Geoffrey Marcus,

Before the Lamps Went Out (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965),

p. 284

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2 The clearest pressure for war to “solve” internal difﬁculties was to be found in Austria-

Hungary. Arno Mayer’s pioneering comparative study of this period suggested that during

the early years of the century, the “erosion” of the Center exacerbated the “symbiotic

growth of domestic and international tensions” leading to a “diversionary war.” See A.

J. Mayer, “Causes and Purposes of War in Europe, 1870–1956: A Research Assignment,”

Journal of Modern History 41 (1969): 291–303.

3 For a further discussion, see Caroline E. Playne,

The Pre-War Mind in Britain

(London, 1928).

4 See Ian Beckett’s magisterial synopsis of these issues,

The Great War 1914–1918 (London:

Pearson, 2001), pp. 18–34

5 See Derek W. Spring, “Russia and the Coming of War,” in

The Coming of the First World

War, R. J. W. Evans and H. Pogge von Strandmann, eds (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1988), pp. 57–86. For Austria-Hungary, see Samuel R. Williamson, Austria-

Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (New York, 1991) and Fritz Fellner’s

brief but perceptive “Austria-Hungary” in Decisions for War, Keith Wilson, ed. (London:

UCL Press, 1995), pp. 9–25.

6 J. C. G. Röhl, “Germany,” in Wilson,

Decisions for War, p. 35.

7 Niall Ferguson, “Germany and the Origins of the First World War: New Perspectives,”

Historical Journal 35 (1992): 734–42. Ferguson has claimed that Germany’s leaders acted

out of a “sense of weakness” in 1914: Germany believed it had lost, or was losing, the

arms race, “which persuaded its leaders to gamble on war before they fell behind.” See

Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: Penguin, 1998).

8 Gerard J. De Groot,

Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London:

Longman, 1996), p. 2. See also Michael Gordon, “Domestic Conﬂict and the Origins of

the First World War: The British and German Cases,” Journal of Modern History 46

(1974): 191–226.

9 John Keiger, “France,” in Wilson,

Decisions for War, p. 122.

10 Lancelot L. Farrar, Jr, “Reluctant Warriors: Public Opinion on War during the July Crisis,

1914,” Eastern European Quarterly 16 (1983): 436.

11 For a discussion of the September Program, including the actual wording of the program,

see David Welch, Moder n European History 1871–2000: A Documentary Reader (London:

Routledge, 2000), pp. 76–9.

12 For a more detailed analysis of these events in Germany, see David Welch,

Germany,

Propaganda and Total War 1914–1918: The Sins of Omission (London: Athlone, 2000),

pp. 1–10.

13 G. Bourgin, J. Carrère, and A. Guérin,

Manuel des partis politiques en France, 2nd edn

(Paris, 1928), p. 13. Cf. Gerd Krumeich, Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve

of the First World War (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1984), p. 8.

14 Zara Steiner,

Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1977),

p. 153; Beckett, Great War, p. 27. The term was ﬁrst coined by David French,

“The Edwardian Crisis and the Origins of the First World War,” International History

Review 4 (1982): 207–21. The ﬁrst historian to emphasize the restlessness and

disharmony in Britain from the late nineteenth century was George Dangerﬁeld.

Writing in 1936, Dangerﬁeld challenged the romanticism that had characterized

the period leading to 1914 as one of contentment and stability: The Strange Death of

Liberal England (London: Constable, 1936). Trevor Wilson subsequently went even

further and claimed that the British government was saved from a potentially ruinous

position in 1914 by the outbreak of war: The Downfall of the Liberal Party (London:

Collins, 1966).

15 De Groot,

Blighty, p. 7.

16 Quoted in Marcus,

Before the Lamps Go Out, p. 307.

august 1914 211

17 See Colin Veitch, “‘Play up! Play up! And Win the War!’ Football, the Nation and the

First World War 1914–15,” Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 363–78.

18 All quotations taken from Welch,

Germany, Propaganda and Total, pp. 14–19.

19 Jeffrey Verhey,

The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 94.

20 Jean-Jacques Becker,

1914: Comment les Francais sont entrés dans la guerre (Paris: Robert

Laffont, 1977, 1983); see also Becker, The Great War and the French People (Oxford:

Berg, 1993); P. J. Flood, France 1914–18: Public Opinion and the War Effort (London:

Macmillan, 1990).

21 Sadly, I cannot claim this as an original phrase. I have taken it from De Groot,

Blighty, p. 9.

22 See Clive Emsley’s excellent summary of these issues in

Total War and Social Change

1914–1955 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2000), pp. 45–53.

23 Marc Ferro,

The Great War 1914–1918 (London: Routledge, 1973), p. xi.

24 For examples of different layers of experience during the August crisis outside the capital

cities of Europe, see Michael Stöcker, Augusterlebnis 1914 in Darmstadt: Legende und

Wirklichkeit (Darmstadt: E. Roether, 1994).

25 A theme expanded by Mark Connelly, “‘Never Such Innocence Again’: Grossbritannien

und das Jahr 1914,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 29/30 (2004): 13–20.

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (Oxford: Berg, 1993). A wealth of

information on popular attitudes in wartime France.

Ian F. W. Beckett, The Great War 1914–1918 (London: Pearson, 2001). An impressively wide-

ranging comparative analysis.

John M. Bourne, Britain and the Great War (London: Arnold, 1989). Particularly strong on

the military and political aspects.

Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon: The First World Experienced (London:

Leo Cooper, 1996). A wide-ranging collection of essays.

Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1998). A thoughtfully written study of the military, political, and social

effects of the war.

Geoffrey J. De Groot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman,

1996). Intensely thought-provoking analysis based on considerable scholarship.

Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: Penguin, 1998). Provocative generalizations, par-

ticularly strong on economics.

P. J. Flood, France 1914–18: Public Opinion and the War Effort (London: Macmillan, 1990).

Well-researched treatment of the French experience.

Patrick Fridenson, ed., The French Home Front 1914–1918 (Oxford: Berg, 1992). Ten percep-

tive and wide-ranging essays.

Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 (London:

Arnold, 1997). A comprehensive treatment that has the beneﬁt of including analysis of

Austria-Hungary.

David Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004).

An impressively written and researched global history of the conﬂict.

Hew Strachan, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1998). A good general introduction, heavily illustrated and

analytical.

212 david welch

Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2000). A systematic analysis of German public opinion and the

myth of the “spirit of 1914.”

David Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War 1914–1918: The Sins of Omission (London:

Athlone, 2000). An examination of the interaction between politics, propaganda, public

opinion, and total war, drawn from a wide range of archival sources.

Keith Wilson, ed., Decisions for War (London: UCL Press, 1995). An authoritative and com-

prehensive collection of nine essays that examine the weeks of crisis management that led

to the outbreak of war.

Chapter Fourteen

The War in the Trenches

Tim Travers

Land warfare in World War I included many variations, but the most intense and

signiﬁcant campaign occurred on the western front, and within the western front the

warfare that most soldiers experienced was trench warfare, so that topic will be the

focus of this chapter. Trench warfare comprised daily life in the trenches, interspersed

with trench raids against opposing trenches, also rest periods and training behind the

front lines, and the constant fatigues – such as carrying up supplies or bringing

forward artillery shells, or digging fresh trenches, or repairing destroyed wire and

trenches. Soldiers could expect to spend about one third of their time in the front

line trenches, otherwise they could be in reserve trenches, at rest, training, or very

occasionally, on leave. Most stressful was participation in major offensives, which

could last for weeks and months. Soldiers living in the trenches could also expect to

be bombarded by enemy mortars and artillery, raked by machine gun ﬁre, gassed by

gas shells or drifting gas waves, and shot by sharpshooters if any part of the body

was exposed above the trench.

When the soldier was ordered to take part in an offensive, there would ﬁrst be

training to familiarize the participants in the tactics to be used, and the aims and

conditions of the attack. Toward the end of the war, artillery preparation for the

attack could last just a few hours, but in the ﬁrst years of the war, a week or more

before the date of the offensive a continuous preparatory artillery bombardment

would start, in order to cut enemy wire, destroy enemy trenches opposite, and disable

as many enemy machine guns and artillery pieces as possible before the offensive

began. Some half an hour before the actual time of the attack, the artillery bombard-

ment would intensify into a drumbeat of shells, and then as the troops went over the

top, the offensive artillery barrage would start, leading the attacking troops forward,

either moving ahead in “lifts” in the early stages of the war, or “creeping” ahead in

later stages of the war. The attacking waves of troops learnt to “lean” on the barrage

by keeping close to the moving rain of their own shells, since the barrage would

protect the attackers across the dangerous open ground before reaching the enemy

trenches. It was always safer to sustain a few casualties from one’s own barrage than

to “loose” the barrage ahead of the troops, as this would expose the soldiers to the

214 tim travers

enemy’s defensive artillery barrage, machine guns, and riﬂes. If all went well, the

troops would reach their objectives, dig in, and get ready for the likely enemy

counter-attack. The wounded and dead would be dealt with, and the troops would

try to hold onto their territorial gains before the next attack or “push” would com-

mence, sometimes within hours, or perhaps days later. If the attack did not go well,

casualties would be heavy and the troops would likely ﬁnd themselves back in the

trenches they had started from.

Trench warfare actually began in France and Belgium around mid-September

1914, after the battle of the Marne. The opposing trenches crept across the country-

side until they covered the whole front line between Switzerland and the sea, extend-

ing some 350 miles long. Soon entire armies and millions of men were concealed in

the earth in a strange subterranean existence. Veterans particularly disliked the daily

conditions of mud and rain, lice and rats, lack of sleep and poor food, frost in the

winter, hosts of ﬂies in the summer, and the diseases that went along with trench life,

such as trench foot. It would be possible to write an entire book about trench life, but

in this chapter the focus will be on certain aspects of trench warfare: ﬁrstly, the danger-

ous moments when enemy soldiers might be captured or killed; then the emergence

and treatment of shell shock; the controversial problem of executions during the war;

the attempt to escape trench warfare through self-inﬂicted wounds; the question of

fraternization with the enemy; and the ofﬁcially encouraged trench raid.

Capturing Prisoners of War

One of the largely unwritten stories of trench warfare concerns the treatment of

prisoners of war at the point of capture.

In this situation, while an attack or large-

scale offensive was under way, the offensive spirit of the troops was at its height, and

unfortunate incidents sometimes took place. The well-known writer and junior

German ofﬁcer in World War I, Ernst Junger, described one such incident during

the German offensive of March 1918: “No quarter was given. The English hastened

with upstretched arms through the ﬁrst wave of [German] storm troops to the rear,

where the fury of the battle had not reached boiling point. An orderly . . . shot a

good dozen or more of them with his 32 repeater. I cannot blame our men for their

bloodthirsty conduct,” wrote Junger, and explained that

the defending force, after driving their bullets into the [German] attacking one at ﬁve

paces’ distance, must take the consequences. A man cannot change his feelings again

during the last rush with a veil of blood before his eyes. He does not want to take pris-

oners but to kill. He has no scruples left; only the spell of primeval instinct remains. It

is not till blood has ﬂowed that the mist gives way in his soul.

Here Junger sees the problem as one of warlike instinct. The same warlike instinct

was alleged against the Turks in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, who were thought

not to take prisoners as a matter of course. Hence, the Turks responded with a leaﬂet

in June 1915:

We hear from the prisoners we made lately, that your ofﬁcers try to make you believe

that we Turks kill and massacre our prisoners. Not just the international law, but also

the war in the trenches 215

our religion as well tell us to treat prisoners and wounded kindly. Be sure, English sol-

diers, that we will receive every single man of you who come to us friendly, that he will

return safely home to wife and children.

It seems likely that the Allied troops were not persuaded.

In other contexts there was sometimes a more deliberate intention. Hence, in

September 1916 on the western front, one Canadian soldier claimed that he and his

comrades were given

strict instructions to take no prisoners until our objectives had been gained. The reason

for this was that so often in British advances, when the Germans had thrown down their

arms in surrender and our men had moved through them, at the same time indicating

to them to go to our rear where they could be collected as prisoners, the Germans had

picked up their riﬂes again and shot our men in the back.

In fact, rightly or wrongly, British troops were always on the alert for German “tricks”

throughout the war. Hence, in August 1918, orders for the major Allied offensive

of August 8, 1918 listed common German ruses: the white ﬂag; men shamming

death; machine guns concealed on stretchers; and Germans shouting “Retire!” in

English. In regard to this last trick, it was ordered that any ofﬁcer or man giving this

order would be shot at once.

The fear of German treachery was a common attitude. But revenge was a

nother frequent motive for killing prisoners of war. In this context, a Canadian

soldier went on to tell a poignant story which occurred during operations in

September 1916:

One young German, scruffy, bareheaded, cropped hair, and wearing steel-rimmed

glasses, ran, screaming with fear, dodging in and out among us to avoid being shot,

crying out “Nein! Nein!” He pulled out from his breast pocket a handful of photographs

and tried to show them to us (I suppose they were of his wife and children) in an effort

to gain our sympathy. It was all to no avail. As the bullets smacked into him he fell to

the ground motionless, the pathetic little photographs ﬂuttering down to the earth

around him.

Other soldiers in this same attack bayoneted Germans trying to surrender, and in

this case, it seems that the motive was revenge for German mines ﬁred under the

Canadian trenches, or for Canadian losses sustained earlier at St Eloi and Mont-

Sorrel. As a result the senior general in charge of this particular division wrote later:

“The men were not looking for prisoners, and considered a dead German the best.”

Even at the very end of the war, on November 2, 1918, revenge among some soldiers

was a reason for killing German prisoners of war, in this case because the men had

spoken to French civilians and had heard stories of German abuses.

In fact, fear of enemy treachery, or actual enemy treachery, seems to have been

the most common rationale for killing potential prisoners of war. Yet other reasons

existed also. Sometimes, relief at escaping death provided a reason for killing soldiers

who wanted to surrender. One such case occurred during Passchendaele in 1917,

when a junior British ofﬁcer was trapped in no man’s land between British and

German trenches, with his own attack failed, and death imminent. Suddenly, British

216 tim travers

reinforcements arrived, and then fortunes reversed as the German troops began trying

to surrender:

I saw straight to the front and a hundred yards away a crowd of men running towards

us in grey uniforms. Picking up another riﬂe, I joined . . . in pouring rapid ﬁre into this

counter-attack. We saw at least one drop . . . then we noticed that they were running

with their hands up. Laughing, we emptied our magazines at them in spite of that.

On other occasions, there were more “legitimate” reasons for killing potential

prisoners of war, as Ernst Junger relates of two British soldiers killed at Guillemont on

the Somme: “Two members of an English ration party who had lost their way appeared

at dusk on No. 1 platoon front. Both were shot down at point blank range.” Junger

explained that “None of the men would take prisoners, for how could we get them

through the barrage? It was bad enough on our own without prisoners to see to.”

In summary, it appears that the killing of potential or actual prisoners of war took

place among all armies through reasons of fear of enemy treachery or actual treachery,

because of feelings of revenge, through ofﬁcial or unofﬁcial orders, from relief at

one’s own survival, because of the inability to control prisoners during enemy attacks,

or simply because of hate of the enemy. Yet although the killing of prisoners did

happen, it was certainly more common for soldiers to be able to surrender. Usually,

the upraised arms, the taking off of military gear, and throwing down one’s weapon,

were sufﬁcient to be taken prisoner safely. If the situation seemed particularly threat-

ening, the extra supplication of going down on one’s knees, and the production of

a cruciﬁx or bible, or showing photographs of family, or the circumstance of being

wounded, all meant greater likelihood of immediate survival.

Shell Shock: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Not surprisingly, given these experiences, and the stress of trench life, there developed

in the soldiers of all armies what has more recently been called post traumatic stress

disorder, or as it was initially known in World War I: shell shock. There was consider-

able difﬁculty in understanding and treating mental breakdown, so different terms

were used to describe the problem. The British army used shell shock because it was

thought to be associated with the nearby explosion and concussion of a shell. Later

on, a more open term was used: “Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous).” In the French

army, similar confusion as to the causes of mental stress led to the use of a number

of terms, such as “commotion cerebrale,” “accidents nerveux,” “obusite” (shell-it

is), and ﬁnally, simply “commotion.” The German army used a number of terms also,

usually around the word “neurose” (neurosis), such as “kriegsneurose,” meaning

battle neurosis.

In all armies, symptoms of shell shock manifested themselves in a number of ways.

In about 70 percent of all cases, there was anxiety or fear, revealed by shaking and

trembling limbs, tremors and tics, crying, headaches, dizziness, confusion, stumbling

gaits, and often temporary unconsciousness. In about 20 percent of cases, there was

mutism (lack of speech), and various forms of paralysis. One such case of paralysis

was reported when a certain Private C. M., aged 32, was near a shell-burst a few days

after going up the line. He was blown up, and when he got up, he was ﬁxed in the

the war in the trenches 217

attitude called camptocormia, meaning a bent over state. Early suggestion produced

some improvement, but then there were rapid relapses. As late as 1920, Private

C. M. was still bent over, and was quite sure that his back was dislocated. The ﬁnal

10 percent of cases related to various situations such as intense mental confusion,

amnesia, dissociation, and neuroses.

The German army tried to ignore shell shock, but eventually treatment stressed

immediate attention at the front, because it was thought necessary to remove symp-

toms before they became “ﬁxed.” As in the British army, there was an attempt by

the German army to keep the patient as close to the front as possible, to give the

patient the sense that he was still at war, and so prevent him from giving up the will

to ﬁght. But as elsewhere, this was found to be only partially successful, and patients

would in the end have to be evacuated from the front. Meanwhile, French ideas

about treatment were complicated by a refusal to accept the legitimacy of non-organic

war injuries, and by a fairly strict military attitude to mental stress, which also included

treatment close to the front. French treatment generally seems to have varied between

a rather harsh approach which favored isolation, and the use of the electric battery

to cure mutism, paralysis, and the more severe cases, and a relatively mild approach,

using warm baths and extended rest.

Perhaps the best-known literature on mental stress during World War I comes

from the British army. Here there were two basic schools of thought, although they

were not mutually exclusive. One was the discipline approach, and the other, the

analytic therapy approach. The ﬁrst, the discipline treatment, might include scolding,

a regimented existence, a milk diet, bromides, the use of ether or chloroform followed

by massage and manipulation of limbs, electrical faradizations, and even the inﬂiction

of pain in cases of longstanding neglect or suspected malingering. On the other hand,

the analytic therapy approach tended toward psychoanalysis, and the “talking cure,”

such as free association conversations. Hypnosis might also be used to reach the

patient’s buried fears and repressed memories, which could be gently brought to the

surface.

An example of the analytic therapy approach would be Charles Myers, a medical

specialist in nerve shock who served in France in 1915, and then created four special

centers for the nerve shocked in 1916. Myers argued that when shell shock occurred,

the normal personality was replaced by an emotional personality, representing the

emotional experiences of the shell shock episode. After a period of time an apparently

normal personality returns, but this is the normal personality without memory of the

shell shock episode. This apparently normal personality was frequently disturbed by

the dissociated emotional personality, working subconsciously beneath the apparently

normal personality. The treatment, according to Myers, was to restore the emotional

personality, deprived of its pathological character, to the apparently normal personal-

ity, which had been ignorant of the emotional personality until the treatment. With

this integration of the puriﬁed emotional personality with the apparently normal

personality, the completely normal personality then returns. Myers’ normal method

to achieve this rather complicated “cure” was to use suggestion, aided if necessary

by hypnosis. If this did not work, then in extreme or obstinate cases, it might be

necessary to apply electrical faradization or an anesthetic.

Myers’ recommended treatments seemed to have wavered between a more pro-

gressive analytic therapy approach, and a more aggressive physical approach. Thus,