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| Royal Irish Rifles in a communications trench on the First Day on The Somme, 1 July 1916. |
- by Joe Curtis, writing from Coral Gables, FL
The world was a different place before the First World War. The world was beautiful. War was beautiful. There was progress, and Faith. But all this was changing. Modris Ekstein uses the ballet "The Rites of Spring" to show this change in his book with the same title. The ballet debuted in Paris and was different from what people were used to. The Rites of Spring did not have beautiful music and perfectly choreographed dances. It instead used complex rhythmic dances that almost never went along with the music to tell the story of a girl who was to be sacrificed to the God of Spring. It was primitive compared to other ballets, but this is what choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky and composer Igor Stravinsky wanted. They wanted to shock people by creating something that went beyond the accepted standards. This was the Avant-garde movement, but it went beyond art and literature.
The Rites of Spring used its primitive style to make the point that there is something beyond what society had accepted. Nijinsky and Stravinsky believed that things would be more authentic and meaningful if they were more primitive. The sacrifice of the girl broke the beliefs of morality. Morality placed limits on humanity, and morality was a western creation. The western world, some believed, had placed limits on human potential. This is how Germany felt prior to WWI. They wanted to break through the boundaries placed by England and France. They did not want to play the "game" anymore.
This view that morality placed limits on people was also the belief of a German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that everyone made their own moral code. He called this "might makes Right", or the Will to Power. Will was something I mentioned in part one, it was what Vince Lombardi used to separate winners and losers. In the real world, to the Germans at least, it signified that they were above the western powers of England and France. Nietzsche admired “greatness”, talent, skill, and resourcefulness. He argued that in order to succeed you must be creative, assertive, bold, strong-willed, competitive, and determined. These were the characteristics of his Ubermensch. These were the characteristics of Germany.
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote:
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
The sand of the desert is sodden red -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
This is Sir Henry Newbolt’s famous 1898 poem “Vitai Lampada”. The poem connects the sport mentality of the playing field, and the battlefield. On July 28th, 1914 the game made the transition from one field to the other. This was the beginning of a war that would change the world, physically, and emotionally.
The game of football entered its modern state in the 19th century, but the world wouldn't enter its modern state until the 20th century. For football it was the creation of rules, or laws. For the world, the birth of the modern age was World War I. This "War to End All Wars" was also a war to end the "Old World". The German Empire had grown tired of the "Old World" and its beliefs and values. They were tired of the sense of duty to the team. They wanted a new world, with new freedoms. A world of the individual, and not the "team".
Germany were supporters of the avant-garde movement. The Germans were not just innovative when it came to art and culture, their innovation followed them onto the battlefield, just like the "game" followed the British. The Germans were the first to use submarines and planes in warfare. They were also the first to use chemical weapons and flamethrowers. Why did the Germans use all these different methods of warfare? Well, they had to. They were fighting a two front war. France and Great Britain in the West, and Russia in the East. Their original plan was the Schlieffen Plan, created by Alfred von Schlieffen. This strategic plan was designed to win a possible two front war and involved moving troops from the north through Belgium and invade France. Once France was defeated and secured, the army would rotate back to the Eastern Front and attack Russia as they finished mobilizing their army.
While Germany is fighting a war to change the world, Britain is fighting a war to preserve the world. To the British, Germany's use of unconventional methods of warfare were seen as "unsporting". Germany was nothing more than an "insensitive, regimented brute" that "was incapable of playing the game". The reason why Germany was seen this way was because of their innovative methods of war. Using planes, chemical weapons, and flamethrowers were not playing by the rules.
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| British and German troops meeting in No-Mans's Land during the unofficial truce. |
Playing by the rules was important to the British. The Christmas Truce of 1914 was an example of them "playing by the rules". Giving the Germans the opportunity to enjoy Christmas was "playing fair". The truce is important for another reason, it also shows how different the world was before and at the start of World War I. To the British the Germans were an opponent, not an enemy. They were just the other team they were playing against in the game that was WWI. There was no real hatred for the other side, and this made it possible for something special to happen. This allowed for a Christmas day football match in no man's land. This would only be possible in a world that had not seen the horrors of the First World War. A world that had not begun to split between the Left and Right of the political spectrum. A world were you were either "with us or against us".
The war went on and the death toll began to rise. Over time soldiers would forget what it was that they were fighting for. They lost their connection with reality. The world they lived and fought in was nothing like anyone had seen before. War had made the land barren, it made the earth look like another planet. Nothing but death surrounded them all day, every day. Even through all this, the game continued to united the British and keep their morale up. In 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, Captain W.P. Nevill lead his men across no man's land by dribbling a football. Just like Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem, Nevill wanted his men to "Play up! Play up! And play the game!".
Part Three Coming Soon.
