Shellshock live paper archive#

The success of the voluntary recruitment campaign represented, at least in part, the triumph of Victorian ideals of manly behaviour. There was to be no cry of decadent artist, of effeminate aesthete, of weak-kneed degenerate.’ He asked ‘nothing better to end in honourable battle for my King and Country’ (Sinfield, 1994, p.126). He believed that ‘first and foremost, I must be a man. Oscar Wilde’s eldest son Cyril was perhaps more worried than most men about how others might judge his ability to live up to masculine ideals, but his explanation of his decision to join up is nonetheless telling. These are complex and contested historical questions, but it is clear that deeply embedded ideas of honourable masculine behaviour guided the actions of many men. One hundred years after the outbreak of the First World War, it is difficult to understand what motivated men to fight, and how they possibly withstood the horrors of the trenches. Although the First World War is often remembered as a war of conscripts, 2.5 million men from the UK enlisted in the armed forces without any form of legal compulsion. Over the next two years, the second-largest volunteer army in the history of the nation was raised (Gregory, 2008). In 1914 Britain was the only major European power without a system of conscription in place.

Shellshock live paper archive#

View our archive for much more on Charles Myers and shell shock. Editor's note: This article is from the forthcoming March edition, published early today to mark 100 years since the publication of Charles Myers' seminal Lancet paper.