This is not to imply the objectors themselves didn't show extraordinary courage in their own way. One problem (if that's quite a sufficient word for it) is the facts themselves: despite the horrific slaughter of 1914-18, instances of loyalty to the cause, and of unwavering bravery in the face of impossible odds, remain vastly more numerous and often more compelling than the occasions of dissent. On the other hand, Hochschild's ambitions to write revisionist history are hampered. His attention to refuseniks of one kind and another is striking, too: the story of fighting in France is punctuated at regular intervals, throughout its long and winding course, with well-furnished accounts of people who challenged Kitchener's assertion that their country needed them to fight: Bertrand Russell and Emily Hobhouse Keir Hardie and Charlotte Despard Stephen Hobhouse and Sylvia Pankhurst. On the one hand his strong feelings about the war (foolish and mad) provoke him into writing with a sense of personal commitment to its myriad tragedies – and this makes his book feel charged and moving.

To End All Wars, we suppose, is a history of dissent, an account of pacifist movements, conscientious objectors and deserters who (we also suppose) created much more difficulty for the authorities than we are generally led to believe.ĭoes Hochschild deliver on the implications of his questions? Yes and no. Put together, and combined with the subtitle of his book, they promise a powerful controlling argument.

The first asks 'Why does it bring a lump to the throat to see words like sleep, rest, sacrifice, when my reason for being here is the belief that this war was needless folly and madness?' And the second: 'If we were allowed to magically roll back history to the start of the 20th century and undo one – and only one – event, is there any doubt that it would be the war that broke out in 1914?' Either one of these would give a pretty clear idea of the attitude Hochschild takes to his narrative. A dam Hochschild opens and closes his history of the first world war with a couple of questions.

To end all wars by adam hochschild