The University at War, 1914-25

Britain, France, and the United States

T. Irish

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137409447
• eBook ISBN: 9781137409461
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: History

Drawing on examples from Britain, France, and the United States, this book examines how scholars and scholarship found themselves mobilized to solve many problems created by modern warfare in World War I, and the many consequences of this for higher education which have lasted almost a century.

Part I
Mobilizing for War

1

The University Goes to War

Shortly before midnight on the evening of 25 August 1914, German soldiers set fire to the library at the University of Louvain using petrol and inflammable tablets. The blaze soon took hold and within ten hours the seventeenth century building was reduced to ‘four walls and ashes,’ its 300,000 volumes incinerated. Many of the other university buildings were destroyed in the process. The destruction of the library took place amidst rampant atrocities committed by German troops not only in Louvain – where 248 civilians were killed in three days – but at points across Belgium during the German Army’s advance in mid-to-late August 1914. There was no one cause for this violence against civilians; in some instances it was intended to deter civilian resistance, in others as reprisals, while in some cases it emerged from misplaced fears of civilian aggression. In some instances it emerged organically while in others it was ordered from above.¹

The grisly and still-shocking story of German atrocities committed in August 1914 placed a university at its heart. The University of Louvain could rightfully boast of being one of Europe’s ‘ancient universities’; dating from 1425, it claimed fraternity with institutions of a similar vintage across the continent who saw themselves as embodying the Republic of Letters. The library’s special collections were significant in their own right, and, by the beginning of September 1914, gone forever.² The destruction of the university library of Louvain quickly came to epitomize German violence, and transgression of the norms of war, in Belgium; amidst all of the atrocity stories and rumours which circulated in allied and neutral countries, this one had the most resonance and the greatest longevity.

The events at Louvain quickly became central to the war’s narrative. The images of the burnt-out shell of the university library demonstrated that universities were on the front line; knowledge was literally at war. After all, the university was a site of cultural, not military significance. News of the incident travelled quickly, outraging learned and non-learned opinion alike; it was a rallying point in an escalating propaganda war. That the institution in question was a university was significant for two reasons. First, the destruction of the library by definition engaged an international audience, such was the networked and transnational nature of the university world. Second, and more pertinently, it immediately rendered the university – and the wider academic world – participants in the war, whether they desired it or not.

* * *

Europe went to war on 4 August 1914, the culmination of a complex diplomatic crisis which rapidly encompassed all of the main European powers. The outbreak of war came as a shock to the academic world; universities were on their summer vacation and scholars were scattered across Europe and the world enjoying their time away. There was a staggered response to the outbreak of war; scholars had their travels disrupted and were immediately engaged with the war’s issues. At the same time, universities – as institutions – had a period of almost two months to decide the nature of their engagement with the conflict.

The outbreak of war was a surprise. It also came with a number of assumptions. In the French case, the war was more tangible as France was invaded, but it was still initially expected to be relatively short. From October 1914, with the stabilization of the fronts, people began to conceive of a longer conflict.³ While there was greater physical distance between Britain and the war, the latter immediately made its presence felt across all strata of society, through the mobilization and departure of troops, encounters with refugees and injured soldiers, and the phenomenon of the ‘enemy within.’⁴ People speculated over the probable duration of the war in Britain, with most hoping that it would be over sooner rather than later and assuming it would end decisively.⁵ American distance from the war – allied to their neutrality until 1917 – facilitated ‘unique opportunities for reflection,’ and American elites were quickly consumed by the European conflict and what it could mean for their country.⁶

Scholarly responses must be understood in their specific national contexts as well as in the wider international context. Most academics in these countries shared a sense of outrage at news of German atrocities in Belgium and specifically in Louvain. At the same time, their responses were frequently shaped by their membership of distinct national communities and the context in which each nation entered – or did not enter – the war.

Fernand Baldensperger wrote that at the Sorbonne, ‘no sudden passage … from ordinary activities to new emergencies was noticeable’ with the German invasion on 4 August 1914.⁷ Given the summer vacation, most students and many staff were away; the real transformation was to follow. However, the character of Paris immediately changed; young men, conscripted into the armed forces, left the city en masse and it became, in the words of one observer, ‘impossible to walk down any street or avenue in the city without feeling the sting of sudden tears.’⁸ The invasion of France, taken in tandem with the fact that France had a system of compulsory military service, meant that there was little reflection upon support for the war. The stakes were simply much higher in France in the early weeks of war, and people quietly but resolutely accepted what needed to be done.

The sense in which the war came as a surprise was encapsulated by H.A.L. Fisher, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield, who wrote ‘there has never been a great war with so little antecedent preparation of public opinion.’⁹ At Cambridge University, a prominent anti-war movement had been building in the weeks before 4 August. A manifesto featuring the names of professors from Cambridge, Oxford, Aberdeen, and Harvard universities was issued on 1 August claiming that ‘at this juncture we consider ourselves justified in protesting against being drawn into the struggle with a nation so near akin to our own,’ and pointed out that British academic culture was indebted to German scholarship.¹⁰ Sixty-one academics signed a manifesto on 3 August urging Britain to remain neutral in the ‘existing situation,’ adding that ‘at the present juncture no vital interest of this country is endangered such as would justify our participation in a war.’¹¹ The German invasion of Belgium on 4 August changed everything.

Of those who had signed the Cambridge manifesto, only Bertrand Russell, a lecturer at Trinity College, would continue to publicly speak out against the war.¹² There was a volte-face amongst the majority of signatories, even by Denys Winstanley, the Trinity historian who had aided Russell in compiling the document. Winstanley wrote later that ‘it would have been very difficult for this country to have avoided going to war.’¹³ Russell wrote on 5 August that he was ‘terribly alone’ and of how one of his colleagues who had been instrumental in compiling the petition had ‘gone over completely because of Belgium.’¹⁴

The almost immediate and complete dissipation of the Cambridge anti-war movement from 4 August shows how academics had no special foresight into the course of events. However, an important distinction should be made between support for intervention in support of Belgium and support for the war as it developed.¹⁵ Many of the Cambridge academics who changed their position became pro-intervention in that instance; however, their attitude to the war, like that of other scholars, would evolve with the progress of the conflict itself.

The outbreak of war was not such a defining event in American universities. American scholars observed events in Europe with a sense of detachment and were not galvanized into activity until the aftermath of the destruction of the university library of Louvain and the beginning of the cultural war. Initially, American scholars mused about how a European war might impact their day-to-day running. Here, predictions of the probable length of the war became important to the university’s future plans. Harvard University’s exchange professor to Germany for 1914–15, Albert Bushnall Hart, wrote to the university president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, that he expected the war to last six months. Consequently, he anticipated that professorial exchanges could be suspended for a year.¹⁶ As such, cautious observation of the European situation marked initial American responses to the outbreak of war.

What is a university?

The question of a university’s function has vexed theorists and administrators alike from John Henry Newman in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.¹⁷ This was very much a live debate in the early twentieth century; in 1907, Arthur Balfour’s inaugural address as Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh made an impassioned plea for the full integration of research into university agendas.¹⁸ The outbreak of war and the immediate uses which universities were put to, as well as public discussion of the role of universities in warfare, continued these debates. The early uses of universities implicitly demonstrated what scholars and politicians felt the function of the university was as well as its duties to the state, and, at the same time, expressed an assumed understanding of the nature of the war itself.

In late August 1914, a debate about university function emerged in the letters page of The Times newspaper. Cyprian Bridge, a senior naval officer, argued that British universities should be coerced into having all of their students enlist, either as officers or amongst the rank-and-file, and hinted that if this were done, universities ought to be closed outright.¹⁹ This letter provoked a strong reaction from heads of academic institutions. From Cambridge, Arthur Shipley, the Master of Christ’s College, argued that students were enlisting for the armed forces and as such no coercion was required.²⁰ The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, T.B. Strong, wrote that ‘if I were to “close the university” and turn all our men into the ranks of Lord Kitchener’s army now being enrolled, I should make an inappreciable difference to the recruiting now and extinguish all hope for a succession of officers.’²¹ At this point it was accepted that the universities would train officers; these men of high moral and intellectual qualities would be integral to winning the war.

The institution of Officer Training Corps (OTC) at universities solidified this association. These were first set up in 1907 at universities and Public Schools and provided those who undertook their course of work with a certificate which would facilitate their entry into the Special Reserve of Officers. The University OTCs enabled students to train in artillery, cavalry, engineering, medical and infantry sections.²² They soon became popular for their own sake, and were another site for the cultivation of group camaraderie. Their popularity was also the consequence of rising international tensions; before 1914, thirty per cent of undergraduates enrolled in OTCs at Oxford and Cambridge, and there was great enthusiasm for the scheme beyond the ancient universities.²³

As OTCs already existed at most universities it meant that when it came to the provision of officers for the armies, universities were ready to quickly mobilize their human resources for war. As early as 5 August 1914, a committee formed at Cambridge to deal with the selection and recommendation of commissions for the army. This was the result of a plan implemented two years previously and involved the assessment of current and former cadets of the OTC.²⁴ It was much the same story at other universities; the critical issue in the first months of the war in Britain was manpower, and universities had a key role to play.

Things were different in France. Conscription meant that it was never the responsibility of the university to assess students’ suitability for commissions or to facilitate their entry into the army. As war broke out during the summer vacations, the French university had very little to do with the entry of students into military service.It seems, however, that the French university, and its component institutions, took greater interest and played a greater role in a student’s wellbeing once they had been mobilized. One such example is that of historian Ernest Lavisse, directeur of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.²⁵ He kept detailed records of the activities and whereabouts of former students who had gone to war.²⁶ In October 1914 Lavisse compiled a list detailing the language skills, generally in English or German, held by normaliens. This was communicated to the military authorities, the intention being to recommend those who might be suitable for work as military interpreters or translators.²⁷ While there is no record of the response of the military authorities, this shows again that the École Normale Supérieure had...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Mobilizing for War
• Part II The Consequences of Mobilization
• Part III Legacy
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index