Introduction: ‘They Had Been Taught to Howl’

Abstract

In his ‘Reflections on the First World War’, the distinguished military historian Michael Howard suggests that those examining the origins of the war would do well to consider what he calls its ‘real’ causes. He recommends that they ‘look beyond’ diplomatic documents, great power rivalries, invasion scares and naval arms races, and study the works of military thinkers, pre-war editorials, speeches at prize awards and contemporary military literature. In doing so, historians would learn ‘far more about the causes of the First World War than in a lifetime of reading diplomatic documents’.¹ Howard states that though ‘the elder statesmen did their feckless best to prevent war… the youth of the rival countries were howling impatiently at their doors for immediate war’. It is this ‘howling’, along with the way that youth ‘had been taught to howl’, that must be examined.²