During the war, the holders of power in all countries found it necessary to bribe the populations into cooperation by unusual concessions. Wage-earners were allowed a living wage, Hindus were told they were men and...

Now beginFamines of thought and feeling.

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead”When you see millions of the mouthless deadAcross your dreams in pale battalions go,Say not soft things as other men have said,That you’ll remember. For you need not...

When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next...

At the beginning of the war…I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow…What do you think he was doing…what the hell do you think he was...

Yea ! by your works are ye justified–toil unrelieved ;Manifold labours, co-ordinate each to the sending achieved ;Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremitting, unfeigned ;Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known,...

This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took...

A story is a wondrous invention.

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After ‘Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

In each succeeding war there is a tendency to proclaim as something new the principles under which it is conducted. Not only those who have never studied or experienced the realities of war, but also...

The untried recruits learned about fear. It wasn’t some occasional leap of terror, a startled response; it was the unbearable tension of being forced to remain in a terrifying place, your mind the only thing...

On the face of it, no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of Edwardian drawingrooms into the manifold horrors of the First World...

Surely, though, I must have stolen into the future and landed in an H.G. Wells-style world – a horrific, fantastic society in which people’s faces contained only eyes, millions of healthy young adults and children...

Do you know why? Because there will always be bigots and cowards and power-mad devils in positions of omnipotence. Look around you. There has been war here since time began. It’s nature. Animals kill each...