Thrills of Horror and Waves of Outrage: Diffusing Propaganda

Abstract

Phillip Knightley has written that during the Great War ‘more deliberate lies were told than in any other period of history, and the whole apparatus of the state went into action to suppress the truth’.³ The enormous and emotive widespread reaction to Cavell’s death provides an important example of how knowledge was constructed to serve the interests of Allied governments. Cavell’s corpse became a prop for the performance of patriarchal warfare — grounded in men fighting for king, country and empire, protecting their families from enemy invaders. This chapter picks up the immediate reaction to Cavell’s death, summarizing the major discourses, and tracing how news of the execution spread around the world. The motivations behind those expressing outrage are probed, from the state to individuals who felt a personal sense of loss — a response that was often influenced by the version of Cavell’s death that they had heard about, seen or read in newspapers, artwork and other rapidly published documents. These sources were all subject to the influences of propaganda. In particular, the use of Cavell’s death as a part of the propaganda machine for promoting recruitment and military conscription is a major theme. Other themes are how Cavell’s fate became an atrocity story linked to the sinking of the Lusitania and the Bryce Report, and the contested part that her death played in America’s entry into the war.

There was much in the surroundings of the trial and execution to stir the wrath and pity of the world — wrath against the men who had by a military technicality done a brave woman to death, and pity for the nurse who had paid the penalty of her life for her work of mercy.¹

But is it possible that there is one young man in England to-day who will sit still under this monstrous wrong? …. God’s curse is on the nation that tramples underfoot and defies the laws of chivalry which once relieved the horrors of war.²