Most people believed it was glorious to die for king and country. And, to an extent, it was, in the old days when war was very different. There were no guns and soldiers fought with swords and other hand-to-hand weapons. However, the First World War was a very different war. Guns had been invented and heavy artillery was developed a lot more. Soldiers then faced a new kind or war; trench warfare, it was the only way to protect yourselves from guns and it was not glorious at all. Other weapons had also been invented like poison gas, which was very deadly, and the sufferer usually died an agonising death. A gas attack is described in one of Wilfred Owen’s poems. So many people changed their minds about the war after it had started.
There are many poets for the war like Rupert Brooke who was very passionate about fighting for king and country, Jessie Pope who encouraged people to sign up for the army and Alfred Tennyson who wrote patriotic poems about British wars. On the other hand, there were poets against the war like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy. Some poets wrote poems that might be for war or might not be, like John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’. Also, some Poets have ambiguous views like CH Sorley.
The poets that I have studied that was for war are: Jessie Pope and her poem ‘Who’s for the Game?’ Alfred Tennyson’s ‘The revenge’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ and Rupert Brooke and his poems ‘The Soldier’ and ‘Peace’. All of these poets are for war and wanted or encouraged other to fight in a war whether it was the Crimean war or the First World War.
Alfred Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ where an elite Calvary force won a Pyretic Victory. Even though a lot of men were lost, they were ‘honoured’ and their deaths were glorious, “When can their glory fade?” and “Honour the charge they made! Honour the light Brigade!” This poem has agrees with ‘The Old Lie’ a lot and also uses many positive words when describing the light brigade making their charge glorious and patriotic. Also in ‘The Revenge’, also written by Tennyson, it describes how the brave Sir Richard Grenville fought with one ship against the fifty-three Spanish ships. It also says how Sir Richard was very brave to fight for his country against all odds and how he had a glorious and patriotic death. This view from The Crimean War of a glorious death lead on to the view being agreed by most people in at the beginning of the First World War.
Rupert Brook, who I have mentioned earlier, thought is was great to fight and die for your country. He joined up for the First World War but never got to fight because he died of Malaria whilst he was travelling to fight on a boat. Brooke, although saw the aftermath of a war, still believed it was glorious to fight for your country, unlike Owen. This was probably because Brooke never saw what happens during a war like Owen but only saw what it was like after a war. So Brooke did not see all of the horrific scenes of someone coughing up their lungs in a gas attack like Owen did.
Rupert Brooke felt that the only way to peace is through war and that going to war will be less painful than not going to war. This may sound a bit stupid but Brooke believed that if you did not serve for your country, you would have a mental pain that will scar you for life, if you went to war, you may get some physical pain if you are shot in the leg but that is less painful than mental pain. In Brooke’s poems, there is a lot of reference to death and the afterlife and how he believes that only death will bring you true peace, so he wants to fight and die in a war so he can find his “Release”. I think that Brooke’s patriotism is more zealous than Tennyson’s because was actually looking forward to fight for his country whilst Tennyson only honoured people that fought but did not fight himself. Also, in Brooke’s poem ‘The Soldier’, the word used most is England, and also he implies how England is better than the other countries and if he dies on foreign soil, that bit of land will be a part of England. Although there are poets who are for and against war, there are some that might be or might not be for war, these are ambiguous poets, one of which was CH Sorley.
In Sorley’s poem, you do not know if he is being against war or if he is merely being sarcastic. The poem could be pro war or against war, just just reading the poem in a different tone of voice can change this. The poem suggests that Sorley is being sarcastic with phrases like ‘So be merry, so be dead’ and ‘On to the road of death, sing!’ On the other hand, Sorley mentions people like Christ in his poem suggesting that maybe it is a pro war poem, because you would not joke about people like Christ. There is a lot of sarcasm in Sorley’s poem but also, if you look at it in another way, it can be quite serious in places. All of this makes Sorley’s poem ambiguous and no one really knows whether he was for or against war.
There are other poems that at first glace is a pro war poem but if read carefully may change some minds. An example of a poem like this is ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae. The last verse in this poem has lines like ‘Take up our quarrel with the foe’ making it seem like a pro war poem, saying let’s carry on and fight the enemy. However, the rest of the poem talks about how people die in war and how there are many poppies representing blood in Flanders Fields. So some people think that this is defiantly a Pro war poem whilst others may say that maybe it is no, maybe it is talking about the horrors of war.
In contrast to the Pro war poets, I have also studied a few of the anti war poets. There was Wilfred Owen and his wide collection of anti war poems including ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, Siegfried Sassoon and the ‘Memorial Tablet’
In conclusion, I think that the name ‘The Old Lie’ is a right name for the view that it is ‘glorious’ to die for your country because in reality the deaths are really horrific and that it is not glorious.