{"id":880628,"date":"2022-11-11T09:13:57","date_gmt":"2022-11-11T09:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/11\/veterans-day-britain-wwi-history-country-fit-for-heroes\/"},"modified":"2022-11-11T10:27:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-11T10:27:46","slug":"this-armistice-day-lets-salute-britains-attempt-to-build-a-country-fit-for-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/11\/11\/this-armistice-day-lets-salute-britains-attempt-to-build-a-country-fit-for-heroes\/","title":{"rendered":"This Armistice Day, Let\u2019s Salute Britain\u2019s Attempt to Build a Country \u201cFit for Heroes\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The phrase \u201ca country fit for heroes\u201d expressed the spirit of social reform that was seen as WWI veterans\u2019 just reward for service. It was a promise of health and well-being for everyone \u2014 a tonic against the forces of austerity that we should revive.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Wounded WWI soldiers in wheelchairs waving the Union Jack flag down the streets of London, 1916. (Daily Herald Archive \/ National Science & Media Museum \/ SSPL via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

In a speech on November 24, 1918, Prime Minister David Lloyd George posed the following<\/a> to his fellow Britons:<\/p>\n

What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in. I am not using the word \u201cheroes\u201d in any spirit of boastfulness, but in the spirit of humble recognition of fact. I cannot think what these men have gone through. I have been there at the door of the furnace and witnessed it, but that is not being in it, and I saw them march into the furnace. There are millions of men who will come back. Let us make this a land fit for such men to live in. There is no time to lose. I want us to take advantage of this new spirit. Don\u2019t let us waste this victory merely in ringing joybells.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The speech was delivered after a war that did not go according to plan. Intended to last just a few months (it was believed by many that it would be \u201cover by Christmas<\/a>\u201d), World War I dragged on from July 28, 1914, to November 11, 1918. It was the first war in which the United Kingdom used mass conscription. Its troops suffered the harrowing conditions of the trenches, widespread disease, infestations, and low morale. Their lives were consumed by the industrialized war machine of mustard gas, heavy artillery, and tanks, ultimately costing Britain close to a million lives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lloyd George had become prime minister<\/a> of Britain in 1916 after the Battle of the Somme<\/a>, which killed nineteen thousand British troops in the first day. The battle achieved almost nothing of strategic importance for the Allies. It did, however, hasten the collapse of the previous government, led by Herbert Henry Asquith, which had approved Britain\u2019s involvement in the disastrous military operation.<\/p>\n

Soldiers that survived WWI, to be demobilized and sent home, enjoyed little glory, as documented by the BBC and the Imperial War Museum in the 1960s and \u201970s in scores of interviews and captured in Peter Jackson\u2019s WWI documentary<\/a>. The end of the war was described by one veteran as \u201cone of the flattest moments of our lives.\u201d Another veteran said, \u201cIt was a most difficult thing to realize that you are of no commercial value.\u201d Mass unemployment and poverty were to be the reward for thousands of servicemen returning to the UK.<\/p>\n

After the postwar election of December 1918, Lloyd George continued to preside over a coalition government. Although he was a member of the Liberal Party, his support during the reconstruction period depended heavily on the party\u2019s coalition partner, the Conservative Party.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Unfit Heroes<\/h2>\n \n

Conscription in Britain revealed the precarity and ill health that afflicted millions of ordinary people. Conservative domination of the House of Commons acted as a brake on Lloyd George\u2019s efforts to improve living conditions.<\/p>\n

In a speech in Manchester<\/a> in September of 1918, with victory in sight, Lloyd George made the problem of poverty and widespread poor health quite clear:<\/p>\n

We have done great things in this war. . . . We could have accomplished greater if this country had been in condition; and a war, like sickness, lays bare the weakness of a constitution. What has been our weakness? Let us talk quite frankly. We have had a Ministry of National Service, and carefully compiled statistics of the health of the people between the ages of 18 and 42. . . . Now, that is the age of fitness, the age of strength. . . . You have these grades, I, II, and III, and all I can tell you is the results of these examinations are startling, and I do not mind to use the word appalling. . . . What does it mean? It means we have used our human material in this country prodigally, foolishly, cruelly. I asked the Minister of National Service how many more men we could have put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been properly looked after. I stagged at the reply. It was a considered reply, and it was \u201cat least one million.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lloyd George\u2019s coalition government set itself the task of confronting two of the great scourges of post-WWI Britain: inadequate housing and insufficient health services \u2014 and not just for ex-servicemen. Reforms were intended to improve the health and well-being of everyone. Christopher Addison, Liberal MP for Hoxton, was appointed the UK’s first minister of health. He held the post for less than two years and yet, in that time, initiated what was to become one of Britain\u2019s signal achievements of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n