When did the Edwardian Age begin and end?
Obviously, in the literal sense it spanned Edward VII’s reign, 1901-10. Cultural historians, however, have long extended it beyond those dates, because the nexus of attitudes and values that we call ‘Edwardianism’ began to form before 1901 and died years after 1910. Thus Samuel Hynes, author of one of the most influential books about the period, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (1968), placed the beginning at ‘roughly the turn of the century’; some would even date it to the ‘naughty nineties’; Roy Hattersley (The Edwardians, 2004) dated it from Queen Victoria’s death; I perceive it setting in after the Queen’s jubilee of 1897. Hynes wrote that ‘the end of the Edwardian age is as certain as it was sudden — 4 August 1914’ and Hattersely agrees.
But 4 August 1914 is merely symbolical. We all know that Britain went into World War 1 with its Edwardian attitudes intact; that was part of the problem. Last year I followed the Gallipoli campaign on Calderonia from day to day and we could see that it was compounded of ponderousness and mental rigidity, wasteful false heroism, woefully arrogant misplaced self-confidence, dedicated amateurism, and lack of realism, to name but a few attitudes. The failings of the Edwardian officer-class were all too obvious to the ANZAC troops. A tougher new breed of soldier like General Charles Munro, who replaced Ian Hamilton and recommended evacuation, could also see them. I felt then that the Gallipoli disaster not only epitomised the worst of Edwardianism, it marked a turning point in it; the beginning of its end. My own working time-frame for the Edwardian Age became 1897-1915 (one has to spell these things out in one’s Introduction).
However, I don’t now believe that Gallipoli fundamentally changed attitudes. Its failures led to the fall of the Liberal government in May 1915, of Fisher and Churchill, and criticism of the campaign from the Australian journalist Keith Murdoch shook some people’s confidence, but the actual evacuation of January 1916 was seen as a triumph, the nation was still focussed on ‘gallantry’, defeat was not accepted as defeat. It was, I believe, the Battle of the Somme, which was launched at 7.30 a.m. today one hundred years ago, that triggered the break up of the Edwardian mindset.
The Battle of the Somme shared several features with Gallipoli, for example meticulous planning and preparation combined with complete inflexibility, a lack of intelligence analysis combined with a lack of risk analysis, and a belief in ‘heroism’ that made men totally expendable. Meticulous planning and preparation — complete military professionalism — were a good thing, of course. But if there was no plan B, no way of changing from plan A if it went awry, no use of intelligence and risk assessment, then as at Gallipoli meticulous orders could simply make self-destruction more efficient.
George and Kittie Calderon’s twenty-five-year-old friend Dick Sutton, who had been wounded twice by June 1916 and was now ADC to General Sir Henry Rawlinson, commander of the Fourth Army at the Somme, wrote in his diary on 30 June 1916:
In my opinion everything depends on the infantry following upon the heels of the artillery barrage, which will go up in front of them in each task. The weather appears to be favourable, which is an enormously important factor in modern battles. There are, however, two things which may defeat us; or rather, I should say, not two, but a combination of both. These are the magnificent fighting qualities of the enemy and his ever-present machine-guns. No matter how long or how heavy the bombardment it is impossible to knock out every machine-gun, or kill all the detachments. One machine-gun may hold up a whole Brigade if it is properly handled, and a quantity of machine-guns may hold up our whole attack, and slaughter us in thousands.
As we know, that is what happened. Rawlinson ignored intelligence about the depth and strength of the Germans’ dugouts, believed that the long preliminary artillery barrage had destroyed the German front line, and insisted on his own rigid plan. By the afternoon of today the scale of the disaster was clear, but neither Rawlinson nor Haig could change their plan… By the end of today, the British Army had sustained more casualties than on any other day in its history — 57,470, of which 19,240 dead. When the Battle ended in November, the casualty figure was over a million from both sides.
Yet the effects of the Battle of the Somme were quite different from those of Gallipoli. The army did enter a learning curve. They had invented the ‘creeping barrage’, as Sutton’s diary indicates, but it and the artillery plainly needed improving. Tanks were first used at the Somme in September, but the army had to learn how to combine them with the creeping barrage and infantry assault. This would eventually be a war-winner. The Somme also demonstrated the almost complete irrelevance, if not counter-productivity, of the cavalry. I have the clear impression that defeat on the Somme at last shook military and popular attitudes to the core. As Peter Hart has written in his Gallipoli (2011), the ‘casual arrogance’ that lay behind the Dardanelles disaster was ‘finally exorcised by the Germans on the gently rolling ridges and valleys of the Somme in 1916’.
Edwardianism died at the Somme. This was a very positive development.
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The Bishop of London in his address in Westminster Abbey pointed out something I had not realised. After going over the top the normal (and obvious) thing to do was to run a few yards, throw yourself onto the ground, then go on like that until you got close to the enemy lines. At The Somme the troops had been ordered to WALK across No Man’s Land, on the assumption they would not meet any opposition. To make matters even easier for the German machine-gunners, everyone blew their whistle at 7.30 to let them know we were coming. Madness!