912 Ch. 22 • The Great WarA year later, a British soldier was executed for ignoring orders that such an
event was not to recur. There were even occasional informal arrangements
between units that had been facing each other across no-man’s-land for
several months, agreeing not to fire during mealtimes, or entertaining each
other in verse or song. A British writer later recalled calmly discussing
Nietzsche with a German he had captured just minutes after almost killing
him. One prevalent rumor in both trenches had an entire regiment of Ger
man, French, and British deserters living under no-man’s-land in tunnels,
coming out only at night to rob corpses and steal food and drink from both
sides. They, many soldiers said, were the lucky ones.
It was impossible to hide the effects of the war. In all combatant coun
tries, women in mourning clothes were an increasingly frequent sight,
clutching telegrams that began, “Be proud of X, who has just died like a
brave man... .” Illegitimate births rose rapidly. In Germany, state govern
ments, except for that of Prussia, for the first time allowed “illegitimate”
birth certificates and gave unmarried or widowed women the right to call
themselves Frau (Mrs.) instead of Fraulein (Miss).
As casualties mounted and the fighting ground on, opposition to the war
emerged, particularly in Britain. Elsewhere in Britain, a relatively small
number of pacifists and conscientious objectors protested against the war.
Some of them were prosecuted and imprisoned. In 1916, when Britain
adopted military conscription, pacifists became more vocal. In No Conscrip
tion Leaflet No. 3, the writer Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) warned, “The
Cat kept saying to the Mouse that she was a high-minded person, and if
the Mouse would only come a little nearer they could both get the cheese.
The Mouse said, Thank you, Pussy, it’s not the cheese you want, it’s my skin.”
Irish Republicans opposed Britain in order to gain Ireland’s indepen
dence. The Germans encouraged Irish Republican preparations for an
insurrection in Dublin set for Easter Sunday, 1916. Sir Roger Casement
(1864-1916), an Irish nationalist who had denounced the brutal condi
tions under which indigenous laborers worked in imperial colonies, tried
to form an Irish Legion and urged the Germans to send military assistance
to those working for independence in Ireland. But seeing that the Germans
had no plans to offer substantial help, he landed on the Irish coast with
the help of a German submarine with the goal of convincing Irish Republi
cans to call off the insurrection, but was arrested immediately. The Easter
Rising went ahead, but ended in dismal failure after five days of bloody
fighting with 450 insurgents killed. Casement was among those executed,
traitor to the British, hero to many Irish.
In Germany, Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), a militant socialist, went to
jail because she refused to stop denouncing the war and tried to mobilize
working-class women against a struggle between capitalist states that pit
ted worker against worker. Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish socialist living in
Germany, also went to prison for her efforts to turn more members of her
party against the war.