World War I Reference Library

213 Pages·2001·7.97 MB·english

by  Sara Pendergast

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World War I
Primary Sources
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World War I
Primary Sources
Tom Pendergast
and Sara Pendergast
Christine Slovey,Editor
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s Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast
e
Staff
c
r Christine Slovey and Allison McNeill, U•X•L Senior Editors
u Carol DeKane Nagel, U•X•L Managing Editor
o Tom Romig, U•X•L Publisher
S Pamela A.E. Galbreath, Senior Art Director (Page design)
Jennifer Wahi, Art Director (Cover design)
y
r Shalice Shah-Caldwell, Permissions Associate (Text and Images)
a Robyn Young, Senior Editor, Image Acquisitions
m Pamela A. Reed, Imaging Coordinator
Dan Newell, Imaging Specialist
i
r Rita Wimberly, Senior Buyer
P Evi Seoud, Assistant Manager, Composition Purchasing and Electronic Prepress

: Linda Mahoney, LM Design, Typesetting
I
Cover Photos: Rosa Luxemburg (Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.);
r
Ernest Hemingway (Corbis Corporation. Reproduced by permission.); Propa-
a
ganda poster (Corbis Corporation. Reproduced by permission.); Germany sur-
W
renders (Corbis Corporation. Reproduced by permission.)

d
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
rl Pendergast, Tom.
o World War I primary sources / Tom Pendergast, Sara Pendergast.
W p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: Provides approximately thirty full or excerpted speeches, diary
entries, novels, poems, correspondence, and artwork related to World War I, with
information placing each in context.
ISBN 0-7876-5478-7
1. World War, 1914-1918--Sources--Juvenile literature. [1. World War, 1914-
1918--Sources.] I. Title: World War One primary sources. II. Title: World War 1 pri-
mary sources. III. Pendergast, Sara. IV. Title.
D522.7 .P38 2001
940.3—dc21 2001053163
This publication is a creative work copyrighted by U•X•L and fully protected
by all applicable copyright laws, as well as by misappropriation, trade secret,
unfair competition, and other applicable laws. The editors of this work have
added value to the underlying factual material herein through one or more
of the following: unique and original selection, coordination, expression,
arrangement, and classification of the information. All rights to this publi-
cation will be vigorously defended.
Copyright © 2002
U•X•L, an imprint of the Gale Group
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in
any form.
ISBN 0-7876-5478-7
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Reader’s Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
World War I Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Words to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Primary Sources
Chapter One: A Soldier’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Rush to War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1914–1918: Voices and Images of the
Great War(Private Carson Stewart) . . . . . . . 9
The First World War: An Eyewitness History . . . . 10
1914–1918: Voices and Images of the
Great War(Joseph Murray). . . . . . . . . . 11
Some Desperate Glory: The World War I
Diary of a British Officer, 1917. . . . . . . . . . 12
Confronting the Horrors of War . . . . . . . . . . 17
1914–1918: Voices and Images of the
Great War(Private W. Hay) . . . . . . . . . . 20
v
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Good-bye to All That . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1914–1918: Voices and Images of the
Great War(Sgt. Gottfried Kreibohm) . . . . . . 21
Sagittarius Rising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1914–1918: Voices and Images of the
Great War(Hans O. Schetter). . . . . . . . . 27
1914–1918: Voices and Images of the
Great War(Pvt. J. Bowles) . . . . . . . . . . 28
Good-bye to All That . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
The Storm of Steel: From the Diary
of a German Storm-Troop Officer
on the Western Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Genocide in Armenia (box) . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Reactions to War’s End from the Front . . . . . . 37
Lines of Fire: Women Writers of World War I . . . . 39
The Storm of Steel: From the Diary
of a German Storm-Troop Officer
on the Western Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
1914–1918: Voices and Images of
the Great War(A. D. Pankhurst). . . . . . . . 43
1914–1918: Voices and Images of
the Great War(Tom Grady) . . . . . . . . . . 45
1914–1918: Voices and Images of
the Great War(C. M. Slack) . . . . . . . . . . 45
Chapter Two: Documents of Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . 49
Secret Treaties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Dual Alliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Franco-Russian Alliance
Military Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
No Separate Peace (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The Willy-Nicky Telegrams . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
The Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum
to Serbia (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
An 1890s political cartoon The Willy-Nicky Telegrams . . . . . . . . . . . 64
depicting the alliance
Germany’s Passage Through Belgium . . . . . . . 71
between France and Russia.
German Request for Free Passage
(Corbis Corporation.
through Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Reproduced by permission.)
Belgium’s Response to the
Request for Passage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
vi World War I: Primary Sources
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Chapter Three: America’s Emergence As A World Power . 79
Woodrow Wilson’s Declaration of Neutrality . . . 83
Declaration of Neutrality . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Woodrow Wilson’s War Message . . . . . . . . . 91
War Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points . . . . . . . 101
Woodrow Wilson (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points . . . . . . 104
Chapter Four: Literature of the Great War . . . . . . . 113
Poetry of World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Rupert Brooke (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Alan Seeger (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
“I. Peace” (Brooke) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
“III. The Dead” (Brooke) . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
“I Have A Rendezvous with
Death” (Seeger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
“Sonnet X” (Seeger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
“Sonnet XI: On Returning to the
Front After Leave” (Seeger) . . . . . . . . . . 121
“Strange Meeting” (Owen) . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Wilfred Owen (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
“They” (Sassoon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” (Owen) . . . . . 124
“Counter-Attack” (Sassoon) . . . . . . . . . . 125
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” (Owen) . . . . . . . . 126
Siegfried Sassoon (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Erich Maria Remarque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Erich Maria Remarque (box) . . . . . . . . . . 134
All Quiet on the Western Front . . . . . . . . . . 134
Ernest Hemingway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 French and British soldiers
A Farewell to Arms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 in a trench on the Western
Front. (Archive Photos.
Reproduced by permission.)
Chapter Five: The Home Front . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
World War I Propaganda Posters . . . . . . . . . 169
Enthusiastic posters from the
beginning of the war . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Attempts to continue support for the war . . . . 175
Contents vii
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Help needed from the home front . . . . . . . 178
Horror of the enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Women’s help needed . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Women’s Suffrage (box) . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Rosa Luxemburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
The Junius Pamphlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
The Russian Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Telegram from the American
Consulate in Moscow to the
U.S. Secretary of State . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Telegram from the American
Consulate in Petrograd to the
U.S. Secretary of State . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Boy Scouts of America (box) . . . . . . . . . . 212
Text Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi
viii World War I: Primary Sources
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Reader’s Guide
World War I (1914–1918) was truly one of the most tragic
events of the twentieth century. The war began over a
terrorist act in the provinces of the fading Austro-Hungarian
Empire and could have been avoided if Germany, Russia, and
France hadn’t felt compelled to obey secret treaties they had
signed years before. Those secret treaties turned a small con-
flict into one that involved every major country in Europe and
eventually many other nations from around the world. In the
course of just over four years of war, nearly ten million soldiers
and civilians lost their lives; billions of dollars were spent on
killing machines—guns, tanks, submarines—and the
economies of most of the warring countries were severely dis-
rupted; two great empires, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and
the Ottoman Empire, collapsed in defeat.
At the end of this terrible conflict, little had changed.
Ethnic conflicts in the Balkan region continued to pit neigh-
bor against neighbor. Attempts to create an international
organization that would ensure world peace collapsed when
America withdrew its support. Germany, though defeated,
remained at odds with its rivals, France and England, and mil-
ix
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itary leaders within Germany longed to avenge their defeat.
Within twenty years of the end of World War I, these simmer-
ing tensions sparked another war, World War II, which
returned death and destruction to the continent of Europe and
to battlefields all over the world.
World War I: Primary Sources offers thirty-three full or
excerpted documents, speeches, and literary works from the
World War I era. Included are the “Dual Alliance” secret treaty
between Germany and Austria-Hungary that set the stage for
war; Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” speech, which
became the outline for establishing peace at war’s end;
excerpts from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, a mov-
ing novel about one soldier’s war experiences; and poems from
leading war poets such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke. A
sampling of World War I propaganda posters, as well as numer-
ous first-person accounts from soldiers who lived through the
horrors of battle, are also presented.
Format
The excerpts presented in World War I: Primary Sources
are divided into five chapters. Each of the chapters focuses on
a specific theme: A Soldier’s Life; Documents of Diplomacy;
America’s Emergence As A World Power; Literature of the Great
War; and The Home Front. Every chapter opens with an
overview, followed by reprinted documents.
Each excerpt (or section of excerpts) includes the fol-
lowing additional material:
• An introductionplaces the document and its author in an
historical context.
• Things to remember while readingoffers readers impor-
tant background information and directs them to central
ideas in the text.
• What happened next. . . provides an account of subse-
quent events, both in the war and in the life of the author.
• Did you know...provides significant and interesting facts
about the document, the author, or the events discussed.
• For More Information lists sources for more information
on the author, the topic, or the document.
x World War I: Primary Sources