The First World War and the brotherhood of man

John Keegan's fine account of the Great War confronts the great mysteries of love and sacrifice, says William Barlow
The First World War by John Keegan, Hutchinson £25
JOHN KEEGAN THINKS that A.J.P. Taylor was wrong to describe the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 as war by timetable. Yet the Germans did have a master plan, for a short war adhering to a precise schedule. So what is Keegan's point? Well, he believes that Taylor is right only at a certain level — a flippant and superficial one — and that this won't do. His aim, therefore, in writing this admirable general history of the Great War, is to invite us to look more deeply, not merely so as to learn what happened, or even to understand it — he does not think that is possible — but to have some idea of the magnitude of the catastrophe which befell Europe in 1914.
It is this which makes the book so worthwhile. For whilst Keegan is an accomplished military historian totally in command of his subject, well able to write about it simply for the benefit of the general reader, his real gift lies in something else entirely. He sees war, and the Great War especially, as a mystery with, at its centre, a greater mystery still, that of Man. It is this deeper aspect that one is constantly reminded of, no matter how factual the story may be.
Keegan believes the war to have been unnecessary and a tragedy. He contends that, had goodwill prevailed, there would have been no inevitability about the events leading up to the war, which is said to have "come out of the blue". Not everyone will agree. It can be argued that the Germans wanted war, though not the ordinary people, who didn't have much say. It was the Kaiser and his generals who, wary of the Russians, believed that pre-emptive action would protect their interests. The British, too, saw the Germans as a threat to their maritime supremacy, which they regarded as a stabilising influence in the world. Men certainly fought believing that the Kaiser had to be defeated, and they held that conviction even with hindsight 70 years later.
The war was indeed tragic, its consequences far-reaching, and Keegan eloquently weaves them into the fabric of his narrative like a blood-drenched backdrop to the battles he so meticulously describes. Europe, he says, proceeded to its destruction "as if in a dead march and a dialogue of the deaf'.
The casualties were staggering. The French alone, after only four months of war, suffered nearly a million dead and wounded. Keegan, though, does not dwell on numbers. He translates the statistics into war cemeteries and village war memorials. Not for him the demographer's response, which sees losses made good by natural increases of population. Such complacency cannot be reconciled with, for example, the Somme, which "marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered".
As for the war's political consequences, these, Keegan says, scarcely bear contemplating. There was a loss of confidence in all that made for civilised life. Much followed from this, including Hitler, whose rise to power made of the Second World War a continuation of the First. Structurally, the book lacks balance, the final stages of the war being covered only rather briefly. However, the war beyond the Western Front, in the East, in the German African territories, in Italy and at Gallipoli, is also described and expertly handled. So too is the account of the war at sea, with Keegan declaring quite rightly that Jutland was a British victory. His judgements are invariably sound and fair and he sensibly sees the generals, Haig included, as men of their time. "The problem of command," he says, "in the circumstances of the war was inevitable. The war had become bigger than those who fought it." It had taken on a life of its own, forcing Keegan to ask why the combatants committed their nations' manhood to pointless destruction.
PERHAPS KEEGAN IS SIMPLY trying to make sense of sinful man in a fallen world. He wonders why men kept fighting with conviction though faced with death. In Burma, much later, John Masters pondered this too. "No man who saw the 14th Army's dead, the black, white, brown and yellow lying in their indistinguishable blood can ever doubt that there is a brotherhood of man, or fail to say, what is man that he can give so much for war, so little for peace."
Both Keegan and Masters are speaking about the love and sacrifice which regimental loyalty made possible and which, Keegan believes, brings us nearer to understanding the meaning of life. He is right, because what he has seen is a light shining in darkness and not being overcome by it. The light is in man himself, inspiring him to die for others so that love triumphs. It is a light which witnesses to the fact that, even in war, man is never far from the Kingdom of God. This is the ultimate mystery which Keegan has discovered and which he wishes us to understand.