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Journal of Historical Geography, 25, 1 (1999) 3656
Article No. jhge.1998.0106, available online at
http://www.idealibrary.com on
The spectacle of memory: Irelands remembranceof the Great War,
1919
Nuala C. Johnson
The New Armies formed during the Great War comprised of three
Irish Divisions; the10th and 16th Irish and the 36th Ulster.
Although Irelands role in the First World Warhas received scant
historiographical attention, this paper contends that the history
ofremembrance of Irish soldiers lost in the war exposes the
manifold allegiances whichIrish society experienced in the
immediate aftermath of the war. By treating the PeaceDay
celebrations of 1919 as public spectacle, I suggest that the
construction of a post-war memory directly confronted the paradox
of attempting to inaugurate an intelligiblebasis for remembrance in
a society unsure about its political future within the
UnitedKingdom. 1999 Academic Press
IntroductionLife springs from death; and from the graves of
patriot men and women spring livingnations.[1]
This extract from Patrick Pearses renowned oration of 1915 at
the graveside ofthe Fenian Jeremiah ODonovan Rossa in Glasnevin
cemetery reminds us of thepowerful political and symbolic role of
public commemoration in the politics ofeveryday life in Ireland in
the early twentieth century. The previous century hadprovided a
number of important precedents for commemorating the death of
politicalleaders as the funerals of OConnell, Parnell and MacManus
lay testimony.Commemoration, however, was not confined to
individual leaders. The politics ofmemory generated by the
centenary celebrations of the 1798 rebellion, representedthrough
the fusion of the heroic priest-leader and the archetypal peasant
in publicstatuary, illustrates that collective memory could also be
aroused through theremembrance of an anonymous rebel-soldier.[2] As
Whelan, in his examination ofoYcial and popular readings of the
rebellion puts it: besides its Catholic-nationalistreading, the
centenary was pivotal in knitting together the strands of
nationalistopinion which had unravelled in the acrimonious
aftermath of the Parnell split.[3]
Over two decades later, commemorating the dead who had served in
Irish regimentsin the First World War would similarly challenge
cultural allegiances in Ireland,both in nationalist and unionist
quarters. The peace parades of July 1919 establishedthe initial
framework for commemoration. The public spectacle staged in cities
andtowns around the country in 1919 provides insights into how the
war was calibratedin the popular imagination at a moment when the
Home Rule crisis was not yetresolved and the Easter rebellion of
1916 was fresh in the publics memory.
3603057488/99/010036+21 $30.00/0 1999 Academic Press
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37THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
Although the war has been treated by some scholars as a deciding
juncture inprovoking a modern memory, in the Irish case popular
interpretations of the conflictcannot be easily disentangled from
the pre-war political conditions on the island. Asone historian has
put it honouring the dead was not simply a matter of paying
duerespectsit forms a potent element in the endorsement of a
particular political cultureor the creation of an alternative
one.[4]
This paper examines how the memory of the dead of the First
World War in Irelandwas articulated through an analysis of the
Peace Day parades of July 1919. Irish menand women participated in
significant numbers in the war. Although there were markedreligious
and regional patterns to enlistment, this paper contends that the
circumstancesunder which Irish people participated in the war
partly explain the significance thatwould subsequently be attached
to the war through public commemoration. The paradesthemselves
represent the first attempt in Ireland to attach cultural and
political meaningto the war and as such they laid the foundations
for the manner in which futuregenerations would make sense of the
war. Drawing particularly from Roland Barthesanalysis of the role
and meaning of public spectacle, this paper analyses the paradesas
spectacles where what is expected is the intelligible
representation of moral situationswhich are usually private.[5]
While remembering the dead is frequently conceived as aprivate,
personal aVair, commemoration of war dead became a public,
collective eventwhich implicated the society as a whole. Through
analysing commemoration as a large-scale spectacle it is suggested
that collective memory is maintained as much throughgeographical
discourses as historical ones. Spectacle constructs the spatial and
temporallimits to popular understandings of the past, and in so
doing it underlines how universalprinciples of bereavement are
locally mediated.
This paper is divided into four parts. The first section
positions this study within alarger academic literature on the
Great War and the politics of memory. The secondsection discusses
the concept of spectacle, especially as it has been developed by
Barthesin his analysis of wrestling. The third part of the paper
provides an overview ofrecruitment where particular emphasis is
placed on the pre-war existence of unoYcialarmies and on the
strategies adopted in the Irish poster campaign. Using
Barthesanalysis of the role and function of spectacle as a guiding
framework, the final sectionof the paper interprets the Peace Day
parades of July 1919 as a moment when confusedallegiances were
brought sharply into focus, and where remembrance of the dead hadat
once a unifying and disintegrating eVect on public
consciousness.
War and public memory
Although in his writings James Joyce made only one direct
reference to the Great War,literary historians have contended that
Ulysses constitutes a response in content andform, not only to
World War I, the Easter Rising, and other upheavals, but to
thepreceding quarter of a centurya period of intensified imperial
and national rivalries,of technological innovation, of social
change.[6] The novels principal character StephenDedalus complains
that history is a nightmare from which he is trying to escape.
[7]
For European society, the years 191418 can also be seen as a
nightmare out of whichit was seeking escape. The release, however,
was never complete and fragments of thenightmare persisted in the
memory of both the individual soldier and the larger society.The
structuring of this post-war memory, both private and public,
entails some discussionof the relationship between history as past
events, and history as a narrative accountof past events. For the
historical geographer the written account is central but,
asFrederic Jameson points out, the past itself is not a text, not a
narrative.[8]
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38 NUALA C. JOHNSON
For nineteenth-century historians, the text may have been
construed as a straight-forward presentation of what actually
happened. In this century it has been more fullyacknowledged that
the evidence of history cannot be so easily separated from
theinterpretation built upon it.[9] This is especially true of
eVorts to situate the First WorldWar in social, economic and
intellectual history. For instance, feminist historians havebegun
to address the impact of the war on gender relations and they have
drawn quitevaried conclusions. Some have viewed the war as a
deciding moment in the re-articulation of gender roles through
documenting the extension of female social,economic and sexual
freedoms during the conflict.[10] Others, however, have
interpretedthe evidence in a diVerent manner. Using the image of
the double helix, with itsstructure of two intertwined strands,
Margaret and Patrice Higonnet have attempted
to trace the continuity behind the wartime material changes in
womens lives. Thatcontinuity lies in the subordination of womens
new roles to those of men, in theirsymbolic function, and more
generally in the integrative ideology through which theirwork is
perceived.[11]
This example illustrates that our account of past events cannot
rely on the robustnessof the evidence alone; it is also dependent
on the guiding theoretical framework.
Representations of the war and the construction of a collective
memory of the conflicthave also been subject to diverse analyses.
Literary historians have argued that the warrepresented a critical
juncture in the evolution of an ironic modernism,
particularlyexpressed in the visual arts and literature.[12]
Together these studies have focusedattention on elite
manifestations of the war. Alternative views of commemoration
stressthe linkages between post-war memory and the cultivation of
nationalist politics,especially in Germany and Italy.[13] One
historian claims that:
Modern memory was born not just from the sense of a break with
the past, but froman intense awareness of the conflicting
representations of the past and the eVort of eachgroup to make its
version the basis of national identity.[14]
The links between memory and national identity are complex. A
number of studieshave stressed the need for a contextual approach
to commemoration which integratesinto the analysis the voices of a
variety of diVerent actors: soldiers, veterans or-ganizations, the
public and the state.[15] Geographers too have examined landscapes
ofwar and memory where they have stressed the debates underpinning
the commemorationof war dead and the construction of national or
regional identities.[16]
The distinction between modern and traditional memory is perhaps
best representedin the writings of Pierre Nora who has suggested
that modern memory emerged out ofthe economic and political
revolutions of the late eighteenth century and replaced truememory
which has taken refuge in gestures and habits, in skills passed
down byunspoken traditions, in the bodys inherent self-knowledge,
in unstudied reflexes andingrained memories.[17] In contrast,
modern memory is self-conscious, historical, in-dividual and
archival. In terms of war commemoration the validity of the
distinctionbetween traditional and modern forms of mourning has
been recently challenged. Winterhas suggested that traditional
forms of mourning persisted in post-war commemorationprecisely
because such practices had healing powers in ways that modern
ironic responsesto the war did not. Modern memorys multi-faceted
sense of dislocation, paradox,and the ironic, could express anger
and despair, and did so in enduring ways; it wasmelancholic, but it
could not heal.[18]
In terms of the concerns of this paper there are a number of
issues which thisliterature does not directly address. First, most
of the discussion to date does not deal
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39THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
with the ways in which the war was interpreted by more minor
actors in the conflict,whose relationships with the bigger powers
(even as allies) were complex and contested.Second, a focus on the
traditional/modern debate in positioning the war in culturalhistory
tends to over-dichotomize processes of change. While these labels
may be usefulheuristic devices for academic historians to structure
their analyses, the coexistence ofcompeting forms of popular
remembrance and representation, in time and in space,seems critical
for understanding the conflict. This is related to a third
reservation aboutthe existing literature. While a contextualized
approach to historiography is frequentlypropounded, the geographies
of remembrance are generally subsumed by the historiesof memory, in
ways which treat space as epiphenomenal to the historical
process.Consequently the sites of commemorative activity tend to be
treated as reflective of themeaning attached to the war rather than
constitutive in the creation of that meaning.By focusing on a
comparatively peripheral participant, Ireland, and by taking
seriouslythe public spectacle involved in remembrance, this paper
attempts to overcome someof these diYculties.
Analyses of Irelands participation in the Great War, both north
and south of theborder, amount to little more than a handful of
books. Some concentrate on themilitary history of a specific
Division and its role in particular battles;[19] others are arecord
of the memoirs of individual soldiers.[20] Recently there has been
a growth ofinterest by academic historians in documenting Irelands
eVorts to commemorate thewar.[21] Despite the importance of the
36th Ulster Division in Northern Ireland and itsrole in popular
understandings of the past, especially among the unionist
population,academic analysis is still sparse. Most recent
commentators attribute the lack of acomprehensive historiography of
the war to a nationalist political agenda by Irishhistorians. This
may account for the absence of a substantial body of research in
theIrish republic, but it does not account for a similar absence in
Northern Ireland. Amore deciding factor may relate to the practice
of historiography in Ireland. Untilrecently there has been an
overwhelming emphasis on the political history of the
islandespecially in the period leading up to independence and
partition. This may havediverted attention away from the Great War
except as a contextual backdrop to politicalevents at home. The
emergence of economic and social history, however, has broadenedthe
remit of academic studies in Ireland. The blurring of boundaries
between disciplineshas also contributed to an emerging emphasis on
cultural approaches to the pastwhich combine the work of literary
critics, philosophers, historians, sociologists andgeographers.[22]
Together these changes have spurned a renewed interest in the war
andhave shifted emphasis away from the narrower concerns of
regimental histories tobroader themes related to
representation.
The spectacle of memory
Unlike formal academic histories, where an account of the past
is conventionallystructured around the concatenation of episodes
into a narrative, public memory maybe more suitably articulated as
a spatial arrangement of objects around a spectacle.The Dutch
historian Leersen puts it as follows: one way of unifying history
[is] torearrange its consecutive events from a narrative order into
a spectacle, a conspectusof juxtaposed freeze-frame images.[23] The
collapsing of time into space through theannual rehearsal and
repetition of a spectacle provides a framework, not only
forunderstanding remembrance, but also for the public enactment of
forgetfulness. Drawingon Guy Debords classic book Society of the
Spectacle, geographers have begun to
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40 NUALA C. JOHNSON
theorize the extent to which spectacle has become the total lens
through which modernsociety is experienced and controlled. Ley and
Olds suggest in this vein that spectacleis the manifestation of the
power of commodity relations, and the instrument ofhegemonic
consciousness, where the masses of spectators are rendered passive
andduplicitous in their own impotence.[24] This view of spectacle
has recently been modifiedand the monolithic control of the
spectator by those creating the spectacle has beenchallenged
through analysing parody and other subversive uses of
spectacle.[25]
The genealogy of the spectacle metaphor has also been explored
and the diVerentmeanings associated with the term outlined. These
range from spectacle as ordinarydisplay to spectacle as the sense
of a mirror through which truth which cannot bestated directly may
been seen reflected and perhaps distorted.[26] This latter view
ofspectacle borrows from Roland Barthes fascinating work on the
subject. Drawingparallels with ancient theatre in his discussion of
the spectacle of excess witnessed inwrestling, Barthes claims that
[w]hat is thus displayed for the public is the greatspectacle, of
SuVering, Defeat, and Justice.[27] Analysing the cultural meaning
ofspectacle, using a semiotic approach, Barthes has stressed the
significance not only ofwords and actions but also of objects
themselves (the bodies of the wrestlers) as signifiersin the
production of meaning. In so doing he has moved beyond the
linguistic analysisof signs initially developed by Saussure.[28]
Barthes, then, has extended the analysisfrom an interpretation of
an individual image, such as a photograph, to the analysisof an
entire event or series of events.
The strength of this approach to the study of remembrance of the
Great War is thatit was popularly represented precisely through
large-scale drama or theatre. Theconstruction of a spectacle of
remembrance translated individual responses to loss andvictory into
a collective response, where the relationship between the actors in
thespectacle, the audience viewing it, and the geographical setting
which framed it, allcreated the context for interpretation. In his
discussion of wrestling, Barthes stressedthese precise types of
connections. The exaggerated antics of the wrestlers, the
moralexpectations of the audience and the arenas in which the
meaning was adjudicatedwere all interrelated. For Barthes wrestling
was not a sport, viewed to see who wouldwin or lose; it was a
spectacle where the ethics of the physical encounter were
negotiated.While modern-day wrestling may seem a far cry from the
slaughter of the First WorldWar, the question of the
intelligibility of death, and in this case the prodigious loss
oflife, is germane, as each death was simultaneously a private
moral matter (for familyand friends) and a public one (for the
state and the army). The response of a civilianaudience to that
which they themselves did not experience directly, raised
questionsabout the moral and political meaning of modern warfare.
European society, in theaftermath of the war, attempted to present
and reconcile these questions through stagingannual parades and
creating commemorative landscapes. By treating these as
ritualspectacles, albeit considerably diVerent in kind to more
orthodox spectacular events,we begin to unravel the ways in which
large scale death could be culturally and morallyharmonized in a
peacetime environment.
An account of the past relayed through public spectacle, like
narrative history, ispartly mediated through the lens of current
political preoccupations. In the case ofIreland this involved
constructing a commemorative spectacle when the pre-1914divisions
were not eliminated, the constitutional position of Ireland within
the unioncontinued to be debated and the Easter rebellion was still
fresh in the public mind.These facts add a specific dimension to
Irelands acts of remembrance that diVerentiateit in important ways
from the fashioning of memory in Britain and France.
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41THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
Recruiting an army in IrelandI joined the British Army because
she stood between Ireland and an enemy commonto our civilization
and I would not have her say that she defended us while we
didnothing at home but pass resolutions.[29]
The inadequacy of the British Expeditionary Force and the
Territorial Divisions totake up the fight in France was quickly
realized. A volunteer army would have to berecruited. Organized
into 30 new Army Divisions, three were built up of mainly
Irishpersonnel. On the eve of the war, however, there were a
variety of unoYcial armiesin Ireland formed to oppose or support
Home Rule. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF),established in January
1913 to quell physical force elements within the unionistpopulation
and to protect the union for Protestants in Ireland, quickly
enlisted about100 000 supporters. Drawn from a variety of drilling
parties congregating in Orangehalls to oppose the Home Rule bill,
the force had the appearance of an eYcientfighting unit, with a
distinguished array of retired army oYcers.[30] Prepared to fightin
defence of the Union and of empire, the UVF formed the backbone of
Kitchenersnew Army Division, the 36th Ulster. In Dublin, industrial
unrest which culminated inthe great Lock-Out planted the seeds for
the birth of the Citizen Army, formed inNovember 1913. This army,
which was also receiving military training, drew most ofits
membership from Dublin trade unionists. Although numerically small
compared tothe UVF, the Citizen Army focused its energies on the
Easter rebellion rather than onthe Great War. Against this
background, nationalists from both revolutionary andconstitutional
traditions coalesced to form the third unoYcial military unit on
theisland, the Irish Volunteers. Drawn from a range of political
opinion, the movementmushroomed in size from about 10 000 in
January 1914 to over 180 000 by the followingSeptember. Largely a
Catholic organization, which recruited about one sixth of all
Irishadult males, the geography of recruitment suggests that
[p]articipation was mostintensive in mid-Ulster, where the promise
of conflict with the Ulster Volunteers wasmost pronounced.[31]
Despite the diverse political positions within the Irish
Volunteers,John Redmond (leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party)
seized control of theorganization.
From a British standpoint, if there was to be a crisis in Europe
in the summer of1914, it was going to centre on the divisions
within Ireland about the issue of HomeRule. The outbreak of war in
Europe, however, interrupted this process and thehistorian F. S. L.
Lyons asserts that [t]he Irish problem had been refrigerated,
notliquidated. Nothing had been solved and all was still to play
for.[32] In some respectsthe war in Europe and the necessity to
recruit volunteers in Ireland shifted the settingof the internal
debate to a wider geographical arena. The home front and the
battlefront became interconnected in complex ways that diVered, in
kind, from thoseconnections in the rest of Great Britain. With
volunteer movements already in place,partly trained and certainly
motivated, the war provided an opportunity for each todisplay
strategic and political allegiances. Ironically the existence of
private armies,with a membership of over a quarter of a million
people, posed a threat and anunexpected opportunity for the Crown
on the eve of the war.
With Carsons UVF eager to serve the Crown overseas, Redmond, in
a speech atWoodenbridge in Co. Wicklow on September 20th, urged his
volunteers to go whereverthe firing line extends.[33] This explicit
call to arms proved a decisive moment for theIrish Volunteers. A
split developed between the 170 000 who supported Redmondsappeal in
principle (and were renamed the National Volunteers) and the 11 000
opposedto participating in the war who formed the Irish
Volunteers.[34] This latter group formed
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42 NUALA C. JOHNSON
the backbone of the rebellion staged in 1916. Fitzpatrick
observes that [d]uring 1913and 1914, through an extraordinary
outburst of mimetic militarism, a large proportionof adult males
began to train, dress and strut about in the manner of
soldiers.[35] TheFirst World War provided an outlet for testing
those soldiering skills.
Irish soldiers in the Regular Army who formed part of the
British ExpeditionaryForce were dispatched to Belgium in August
1914. Men of nine Irish infantry regimentswere part of that force.
Each regiment had its own natural recruiting hinterland. Inthe case
of the Leinsters, Munsters, Connaughts and Dublins their
geographicalsource area is self-evident. The Royal Irish recruited
principally in the south-east; theInniskillings drew support from
Donegal, Derry and mid-Ulster; the Irish Rifles werelargely based
in Belfast, Antrim and Down; and Royal Irish Fusiliers were
recruitedin Armagh, Monaghan and Cavan. As the war proceeded,
however, non-Irish troopswere regularly co-opted into these
regiments to fill gaps in personnel.
As it became clear that the British Expeditionary Force did not
have the capacity toconduct the war on its own, Lord Kitchener
called for 100 000 men to volunteer forthree years service. The
first new Army, K1, included the 10th Irish Division. Thebroadly
nationalist 16th Irish Division, many of whose rank-and-file
members weredrawn directly from the National Volunteers, formed
part of the Second Army. Bothwere pronouncedly Catholic in
composition. The 36th Ulster Division, drawn heavilyfrom members of
the UVF, formed part of the Fifth Army. The latter Division
suVeredatrociously in the Somme oVensive of 1916. It was the only
Division to reach theGerman second line but 6000 men were lost or
wounded in the process. This attack,in particular, spurred Major
Wilfred Spender to claim in July 1916 that:
The Ulster division has lost more than half the men who attacked
and, in doing so,has sacrificed itself for the empire . . . Their
devotion, which no doubt has helped theadvance elsewhere, deserves
the gratitude of the British Empire. It is due to the memoryof
these brave heroes that their beloved province shall be fairly
treated.[36]
The view that the 36th Ulster was an exclusively Protestant
Division drawn from theranks of the UVF has undergone some
revision. Recent research suggests that over 15per cent of soldiers
in some battalions were Catholic.[37] The oYcer class in all
Divisionswas frequently drawn from among Irish Protestants, some of
whom had served inprevious conflicts.
Although recruitment first began for the 10th Division, all
three had been formedby November 1914. Recruitment figures in Irish
urbanized areas up to December 1914are comparable to those found
elsewhere in Britain. Taken by province it is certainlyclear that
Ulster contributed more troops to the war eVort than any other in
Irelandand that Protestants enlistment was disproportionate to
their overall numbers.[38]
Roy Foster suggests, however, that this pattern may have had as
much to do withproletarianism as Protestantism.[39] Although
political motivations cannot have beentoo distant from the public
mind in any quarter in Ireland, patterns of recruitment inBritain
suggest that the areas of heaviest enlistment were in the most
industrializedparts of the country and weakest in the predominantly
agricultural regions.[40] In Irelandthe industrial hub lay in the
north-east and in the greater Dublin area. Overall,recruitment
figures decreased significantly in 1916; the combined eVects of the
absenceof conscription, war weariness, and the Easter rebellion
made it hard to attractvolunteers.
Although it is notoriously diYcult to estimate the precise
number of Irish men whovolunteered for service, recent research
suggests that 50 000 volunteers from the pre-war private armies
directly transferred to the new Divisions; a further 80 000
joined
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43THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
the new Divisions independent of the unoYcial military
groupings. In addition theexisting Irish soldiers (serving as
Regulars, reservists, Special Reserve, naval ratingsand oYcers)
brought the total number of Irish men in the wartime forces to
about210 000.[41] These figures would swell significantly if one
could calculate the numbers ofIrish living in Britain, the
Commonwealth and the United States who volunteered forservice in
non-Irish regiments or the number of women serving in the auxiliary
forces.In the absence of research in this area, all we can be
certain about is that currentfigures are an underestimate of the
total contribution of Irish people to the war eVort.
Answer the call: recruitment posters
Although recruitment was initially channelled through the
activities of the UVF andthe National Volunteers, war propaganda
was also a necessary weapon to nudge thoseindiVerent to politics to
enlist. Over 80 000 men enlisted in Ireland who shared nomembership
of the existing private armies. What, therefore, prompted these men
toenlist? All participating countries used posters to mobilize
volunteers and to influencepublic opinion in a time where
newspapers were principally the preserve of a literateminority.[42]
Posters are invaluable historical documents as [o]ur idea of the
First WorldWar is darkly coloured by our knowledge of the tragedy
of the battlefields. Posters cangive some idea of the flavour of
the period as it was experienced by civilians.[43] Whilethey reveal
oYcial strategies towards recruitment they also expose information
relatingto munitions work, the food economy and the health care
needs of combatants.[44]
British recruitment was directed by an all-party Parliamentary
Recruiting Council,established to utilize the parties
organizational structures to facilitate the great demandfor troops.
Posters were commissioned by the committee and their work only
ceasedafter the introduction of conscription.[45] While the PRC was
prolific in output duringthe war, the artistic merit of their
posters was often criticized. For historical geographersof war,
however, it is the messages they relayed to a lay public through
the pictorialimage and the written text which is of concern. To
attract potential troops posters ranthe gamut of all emotions which
make men risk their lives.[46]
Posters displayed in Ireland before 1915 had no specific Irish
content. They containedthe same messages and visual imagery
employed in posters for the rest of Britain. Theyfrequently denoted
loyalty to empire or to the sovereign. In early 1915 the
CentralCouncil for the Organisation of Recruiting in Ireland was
established. One of itsobjectives was to give a distinctly Irish
flavour to the campaign. This council wassucceeded by two other
organizations: the Department for Recruiting for Ireland(October
1915) and the Irish Recruiting Council (May 1918).[47] Together
these or-ganizations produced a series of large-format recruitment
posters to sell the war in,Ireland.[48] The most comprehensive set
of these posters is held at Trinity College,Dublin. While it is
unknown whether this represents a complete set, of the 203
preservedat Trinity, two-thirds were large enough to be used for
public display while the smallerones were most likely used inside
recruiting stations, shops, oYces and railway stations.The print
runs for the posters ranged from 250 to 40 000 and most were
printed inDublin or Belfast. From this evidence it has been
estimated that approximately twomillion posters were printed in
Ireland and most were printed in colour. About three-quarters of
these posters contained some Irish content, especially in 1915, at
the heightof the recruitment drive.[49]
Although each combatant state adopted diVerent design formats
for their posters,recurrent themes often overrode national
diVerence. Thus although Irish posters gave
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44 NUALA C. JOHNSON
a local dimension to the war eVort, they also frequently
appealed to what were seenas universal principles of moral duty and
masculinity. While the motivations ofindividuals to volunteer can
never be fully identified, the recruitment posters revealsome of
the dominant leitmotifs used to encourage enlistment. In the
following analysisI seek to oVer a flavour, although by no means a
comprehensive overview, of theimagery employed to evoke support for
the war in Ireland.
Four themes in particular are evident in Irish posters. Firstly,
there was an appealto Irishmen to protect their homeland from
foreign invasion (Figure 1). The homelandin this instance is
encapsulated as an idyllic rural landscape pregnant with the fruits
ofthe soil. The agricultural nature of the Irish economy at this
time reinforced the necessityfor its protection. While ethnic
stereotyping of the enemy was employed regularly as acommon motif
in recruitment posters, stereotyping of the native also proved
usefulas a means of exerting pressure to enlist. The display of the
brave Irishman exploitedprecisely such imagery of national
character (Figure 2). In case the public doubtedthe availability of
additional volunteers to enlist, a map reminded the population
ofthe numbers still eligible for recruitment (Figure 3).
Although in some respects the extraordinary conditions generated
by the warchallenged orthodox gender conventions, especially with
respect to female participationand responsibility in the workplace,
recruitment posters often continued to emphasizethe fragility of
women in a war context and the masculine qualities required to
protectsuch vulnerabilities (Figure 4). The image of the helpless
female was seized upon as arecruitment weapon whereby the potential
recruit is shamed into exercizing his masculineduty to protect the
domestic sphere, one inhabited by women, children and the
elderly(Figure 5). Yet not all recruitment posters adopted such
conventional female tropes.The moral principle of protecting the
small, and independent nation-state Belgiumfrom German atrocity
could be combined with a gendering of the responsibility toserve.
Figure 6 depicts an assertive woman, aware of her superior moral
conviction,challenging her menfolk to serve, to do the right thing,
for the sake of little Belgium.In an Irish context, the
juxtaposition of a small nation in flames from the
bullyingbehaviour of its larger neighbour resonated with some
home-front interpretations ofIrelands relationship with Britain,
and was exploited in Redmonds appeal to Irishmento play a role in
the war in defence of the rights of small nations. The dominant
femaleimage seeks to remind the reader of the willingness of women
to rise to the moralchallenge to serve, even when the army did not
recruit combatant female soldiers.Together with the political
context of pre-war Ireland, these recruitment posters provideus
with some insights into how the moral imperative of the war was
emblazoned onthe public consciousness during the course of the
conflict.
The spectacle of remembrance: Peace Day, 19 July 1919
In the aftermath of the Great War, rituals to mark its end and
to commemorate itsdead were quickly underway. While 19 July 1919
was designated Peace Day in Britainand marked in London by the
parading of 18 000 troops past the Cenotaph in Whitehall,plans were
also made in Ireland to mark this day.[50] In Dublin, by early
1919, therewere proposals afoot to establish an Irish National War
memorial. A committee forthat purpose, headed by Lord French, the
Lord Lieutenant for Ireland, was established.The initial intention
of the committee was to erect a War Memorial Home for ex-serviceman
visiting or passing through Dublin and to establish a record room
whichwould contain the parchment rolls of all fallen Irish
soldiers.[51] Although Lord French
-
45THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
Figure 1. A recruitment poster urging Irishmen to defend their
agricultural landscape.Source: Board of Trinity College Dublin.
Figure 2. A poster appealing to stereotypes of Irish bravery in
the Great War. Source: Board ofTrinity College Dublin.
-
46 NUALA C. JOHNSON
Figure 3. Irelands war map. Source: Board of Trinity College
Dublin.
hoped to have the plan underway by the end of 1918 he realized
that [n]othing,however, could be done until the whole of loyal
Ireland was brought into council.[52]
While the committee, by and large, supported the proposal to
locate the memorialhome in Dublin, there was a strong view that it
ought to be a symbol of unity on theisland, uniting north and
south, Catholic and Protestant.[53] Although supporting theproposed
national memorial, representatives from the north of Ireland made
knownthat they also had their own plans. The Mayor of Belfast
observed that the Church ofIreland and the Presbyterian Church had
already begun erecting commemorativeplaques in their churches. The
Mayor of Derry confirmed that his city would be fundinga memorial
to honour their dead. Although Ulster may have been perceived to
bepursuing a more independent route, Captain Dixon MP reassured the
public thatUlsters loyalty to the Crown did not undermine their
view that the soldier from Clare(west of Ireland) was equal to the
soldier from Shankill (west Belfast) and should beremembered as
such.[54]
The celebration of peace day in Dublin took on the
characteristics of a spectacle.By Royal Proclamation the day was
declared a bank holiday and this was observed bymuch of the
mercantile community in the city. The victory parade was a
well-organizedpublic event with the route of the march published in
the national press. The paradebegan at Dublin Castle, the centre of
government administration in Ireland. Theparticipants assembled in
the lower Castle yard between 09.30 and 10.30 a.m. and they
-
47THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
Figure 4. An appeal to potential recruits to defend their
women-folk. Source: Board of TrinityCollege Dublin.
were ordered for the procession which began at 11.30 a.m. The
sequence of the paradeconsisted of a leading troop of mounted
police, followed by the Irish Guards PipersBand, transported from
Windsor for the event. Demobilized Irish soldiers and
sailorsfollowed, marshalled according to regiment and led by their
own oYcers. As many aspossible were clothed in khaki. Following the
troops came the Commanding OYcerand his staV. DiVerent units of
artillery and cavalry were next in line and were followedby
representatives of the RAF, WRAF, WAAC, Red Cross and VADs.
Bringing upthe rear of the parade was a huge display of tanks and
armoured cars. The processioncomprised about 20 000 people, of
which 5000 were demobilized soldiers and sailors.[55]
Yet not all veterans organizations participated. The Discharged
Soldiers and SailorsFederation was not represented and 2000 to 3000
Irish Nationalist Veterans adheredto their decision to boycott the
event.[56]
The parade followed a designated route along the thoroughfares
of the south innercity terminating at St Stephens Green (Figure
7).[57] Notably the parade was not routedalong Sackville Street
(the main street of the city and the nexus of the Easter
rebellion),partly because many of the buildings along the street
were under renovation. The focalpoint of the procession was at the
Bank of Ireland, College Green, where a stand forthe viceregal
party had been erected the previous day. The irony of this space
did notgo unnoticed. As the editorial of the Freemans Journal
observed:
-
48 NUALA C. JOHNSON
Figure 5. The war is about defending the domestic sphere as
illustrated in this poster.Source: Board of Trinity College
Dublin.
By a refinement of irony in keeping with the best traditions of
Dublin Castle, theViceroy and Chief Secretary elected to take the
salute in front of the old ParliamentHouse, emphasising the fact
that what counts in Ireland is not the will of its people . . .but
the power of its rulers to mass bayonets, tanks and
field-guns.[58]
The arrival of the Lord Lieutenant at College Green was greeted
by the playing of thenational anthem and the hoisting of the Union
Jack. The soldiers took the salute hereand this space acted as the
symbolic keystone of the parade. Opposite the Bank, in theforecourt
of Trinity College, two stands were occupied by wounded veterans,
oVeringthem a vantage point from which to view the parade and to be
viewed by the spectators.This junction along the route provided
prized space for spectators to assemble wherethey could
simultaneously glimpse the procession of military personnel and the
Britishstates representative in Ireland. On a rather hyperbolic
note the Irish Times recordedevents as follows:
Politics, dissension, everything are forgotten as Irelands
Viceroy and the Empires firstdefender takes his stand under his
well-served flag; and for some minutes, at any rate,one felt that
every voice in Ireland was paying throaty tribute in honest
thanksgivingto a man in whose person the spirit of victory and
peace was symbolised.[59]
-
49THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
Figure 6. A reversal of gender roles in this poster displaying
an assertive woman appealing to areticent man to fight the cause.
Source: Board of Trinity College Dublin.
If the meaning of the war was to be mediated through spectacle,
the Viceroy, UnionJack and National Anthem provided the necessary
symbols of legitimation. The LordMayor of Dublin and the citys
Corporation (of a nationalist political persuasion),however, did
not endorse the parade and attendance was left to the discretion
ofindividual council members.[60]
The parade proceeded along the streets skirting Trinity College
and south to StStephens Green. A particularly enthusiastic welcome
was noted outside the KildareStreet Club.[61] The marching of
soldiers in clean, well-pressed uniforms, althoughcontrasting with
the filth of the trenches, conveyed a sense of orderliness and
rationalityto the war. The parading of the dismembered bodies of
some soldiers, however, remindedthe public of the suVering
necessary to achieve moral and political goals. Barthes notesof
wrestling that [s]uVering which appeared without intelligible cause
would not beunderstood.[62] Intelligibility was thus conveyed
through the flying of the Union Jackaround the city (including at
the General Post OYce) and this symbol could beinterpreted as a
representation of civility in the face of the enemys barbarity.
Althoughflags and bunting were most heavily concentrated along the
streets of the parade,Grafton Street and Sackville Street were also
heavily adorned (Figure 7). At the GPOthe Union Jack, the American
stars and stripes and the Italian flag were all hoisted toremind
the public of the international eVort involved in the achievement
of victory.
-
50 NUALA C. JOHNSON
Figure 7. The route of the peace parade in Dublin on 19 July
1919.
The bells of Christ Church Cathedral rang a continuous peel
finishing with a volleyfiring. According to the Irish Times the
days events had shown that Dublin was proudto share with the rest
of the empire in celebrating the dawn of peace after an
anxiousvigil.[63] Not only were the men of various Irish regiments
represented, especially theDublin Fusiliers, but the role of women
in the war eVort was also acknowledged withdetachments from the
VADs, Red Cross and Womens Legion taking part in the event,thereby
indicating that the war was not just the preserve of men but
necessitated thesupportive role of woman to ameliorate the
suVering.[64] After the parade there was aformidable display of
armoured cars and tanks, the first time Dubliners had seen
themachinery of war on such a massive scale. The conjunction of
soldier, nurse, flag andweapon provided the rationale for
remembrance.
Unlike Barthes wrestlers, where suVering is staged before the
eyes of the audiencethrough stylized gestures of pain and passion,
in First World War processions thesuVering had already been
experienced by the soldiers, the wounded and the bereaved.[65]
The spectacle thus sought to ameliorate and render
comprehensible suVering already
-
51THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
endured, rather than to re-enact the pain once again. Thus the
evidence of battle, theuniformed ranks, the military bands and the
weaponry, reminded the audience of thepotential pain embedded in
the amassed armoury, but at that moment, they wererepresentations
of peace or the absence of suVering. The orchestrated assemblage
ofthe machinery of war acted then as the neutral mechanism used to
maintain the moralorder. Ironically they become a synecdoche of
civility and order rather than destructionand barbarism. But they
did not stand for such values in isolation. Their moral
fortituderesided in the iconography surrounding them: the flags of
empire; the viceregal entourage;the government buildings; the
houses of learning; the peacetime conditions of thestreets. The
route of the march was not, then, just a material backdrop, the
coverwithin which the real tale was told or read, it was an
intrinsic part of the tale itself.Indeed it configured the
spectacle in a particular way in the hope that it would
beinterpreted uniformly.
The audience, however, proved to be discriminating in its
celebration of peace. Whilecrowds assembled along the route of the
parade, enthusiasm was muted in places. Forinstance, on Brunswick
Street and Westland Row [s]ome cheers were raised as thedemobolised
soldiers passed but the regular troops were received for the most
part insilence.[66] The soldier in this spectacle then was an
ambivalent figure, his meaningcould not be totally fixed. While
those who had served in the field of battle could behonoured as a
representation of a just cause, in Barthes terms an externalized
imageof torture which the spectator experiences as the perfection
of the iconography forthe regular soldier in the parade his role in
Ireland in the summer of 1919 could notbe easily separated from the
prevailing debate about Irelands place in the union.[67]
The concept of justice embodied in the figure of the war veteran
could not necessarilybe transferred with ease to the regular
soldier. While young girls could carry bannersbearing the
inscription Welcome Home to demobilized soldiers, the moral
position ofthe professional troop parading the streets of Dublin
remained far more equivocal.[68]
Despite evidence of general support for the parade during
daylight, the eveningwitnessed a number of incidents which
challenged the eVectiveness of the spectacle.Around 09.00 p.m. two
soldiers were attacked on their way back to their barracks.Amidst
the scuZe which broke out along the quays a police sergeant
attempting torestore calm was shot. The soldiers themselves made it
safely back to their barracks.During the evening crowds of Sinn
Fein supporters gathered in various parts of thecity, particularly
around the GPO, brandishing flags and singing republican
songs.While successful peace entertainments were held in private
space at military barracksin the city, soldiers found themselves
more vulnerable when they entered public spaceafter dark. Dublin
thus could launch a large-scale spectacle but there was no
guaranteethat it would be given an unanimous reading by all the
citys citizens.
Peace celebrations, held in other centres around the country,
also received mixedreceptions. In Belfast due to what the Belfast
Newsletter referred to as local con-siderations (the celebrations
associated with 12 July), the civic celebrations werepostponed
until 9 August. This date would also allow the Viceroy to take the
salute inBelfast and honour Ulsters contribution to the war eVort.
The city did observe theday with an oYcial pageant of military
personnel which was comprized exclusively ofEnglish and Scots
regiments. In other Ulster towns, such as Antrim, Bangor
andLisburn, the holiday passed oV without incident. In Enniskillen,
despite the refusal ofthe nationalist Urban District Council to
take part in the celebrations, the holiday wasobserved by both
Catholics and Protestants.[69]
Although many Irish towns hosted some mark of remembrance for
the ending ofthe war the local political context had a substantial
eVect on the nature of support. In
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52 NUALA C. JOHNSON
Cork city Sinn Fein boycotted the celebrations; no flags flew
from City Hall nor didCork Corporation take part in the event. At
the citys Workhouse Sinn Fein hoistedblack flags over the entrance
to the building. Similarly at their own headquarters blindswere
drawn and black flags flown. The iconography of death could be used
for diversepolitical ends. Nevertheless large crowds took part in
the parade, but there was seriousrioting in the city in the
evening.[70] A policeman was shot; soldiers were attacked andSinn
Fein women physically removed blue, white and red badges from the
femalefriends of soldiers.[71] If during the war women placed white
feathers on unenlisted men,in Ireland brandishing symbols of
support for the war were at times interpreted asicons of betrayal.
From an overview of press reports it appears that Peace paradeswest
of the Shannon were more muted, with most businesses remaining open
throughoutthe day.
In smaller towns in Leinster and Munster the spectacle of
remembrance was alsogreeted with ambivalence. In Dundalk, most
commercial enterprises did not observethe bank holiday. At the
courthouse graYti read Peace now. This world is safe
forhypocrisy.[72] The moral highground could not always be secured.
But not all protestsin Ireland emanated from nationalist quarters.
In Clonmel the local branch of theSoldiers and Sailors Federation
did not take part in the parade as a protest against thegovernments
treatment of ex-servicemen.[73] In the town of Tipperary a Union
Jackfloated from the General Post OYce but a few yards away a
republican flag wassuspended on telegraph wires spanning the main
street. At 11.00 a.m. a party of militarypolice armed with rifles
removed the republican flag to some ironic cheering from thecrowd.
At a meeting of the Local Government Board of Guardians a Mr.
Quinlannoted that the Sinn Fein flag ought to have first place in
the town.[74] At the peacedinner that evening mixed feelings were
evident but Monsignor Ryan, a chaplain inFlanders, struck a
conciliatory note in his speech. He claimed that Ireland had
foughtas Gods soldiers against the Germans.[75] If the political
battle could not be resolved,an appeal to religious truths might
hold sway.
Wexford town similarly represents an interesting case of how the
account of pastevents was writ large on the landscape of
commemoration. Although one of the principalsites of the 1798
rebellion and its centenary celebrations one hundred years
later,Wexford represented a place where constitutional and
republican loyalties competedfor support. The birthplace of John
Redmond (leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party)and his brother
Major Willie Redmond, killed in the war, the holiday was only
observedby government oYces, banks and foundries. There was a
marked absence of publicdecorations and the only flag hoisted in
the parade was the Irish flag. No public bodyin the town oYcially
took part in the parade. OYcial forgetfulness can be as potent
agesture as remembrance. Around 500 ex-servicemen, nevertheless,
took part in theprocession which congregated for speeches in
Wexford Park. In his address, towncouncillor James McMahon argued
that although Irish people had gone to war of theirown accord,
unconscripted the free gift of a free people to fight for freedom .
. . Nowthe fight was over, they [the people] should seek freedom
for themselves and byconstitutional agitation secure
self-government for Ireland.[76] He distanced Wexfordfrom the
republicanism of Sinn Fein and he condemned their flag as one
sullied bycrime and shame. Instead he urged the audience to follow
constitutional avenuestowards Home Rule and to converge under the
older green flag of Ireland. The peaceday commemorations in
Wexford, therefore, provided a forum for the national questionto be
discussed and it illustrates how the outcome of the Great War found
expressionlocally among diVerent shades of nationalist opinion.
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53THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
Conclusion
Irish men and women engaged in large numbers in the Great War
and endured hardshipcomparable to that of other national groups
immersed in the conflict. The consummationof Allied victory
expressed through national peace day celebrations and annual
re-membrance day spectacles amplified Irelands equivocal response
to that eVort. TomKettle, a Member of Parliament, an academic and a
supporter of Home Rule, realizedthe ambiguity of his position as a
soldier on the Western Front. Kettle was acutelyaware of how the
public memory might subsequently be fashioned: These men [ofEaster
1916] will go down in history as heroes and martyrs, and I will go
downif Igo down at allas a bloody British oYcer.[77] Although a
commemorative traditionhad been in existence since at least the
mid-nineteenth century, a tradition which tookthe form of mass
funerals and centenary celebrations of the United Irishmen
rebellionin 1898, in the years immediately after the Armistice, the
question of how Irish peoplewould make sense of their role in the
First World War was problematic. The evidencesuggests that it was
not simply a desire to expunge the memory of war completely
frompublic consciousness which governed the form that remembrance
took in Ireland. Insome respects the diYculty lay in the fact that
for many Irish people the war was notover in Ireland.
In Barthes discussion of spectacle its potency resides precisely
in the popular andage-old image of the perfect intelligibility of
reality . . . in which signs at last correspondto causes.[78] The
use of spectacle in Europe to construct a post-war memory,
evenamong the victorious, could not rely on such certainties. The
meaning of the war couldnot be staged so easily, perhaps because
the actions of the war itself were beyond theconventional
parameters of intelligibility. Paul Fussells disarming contention
that [i]nthe Great War eight million people were destroyed because
two persons, the ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand and his Consort, had been
shot exposes the paradox of cause andeVect.[79] Nevertheless
combatant states expended enormous physical and financialenergy in
trying to make sense of just that, through freeze-framing the war
in thepublic consciousness through peace day celebrations and
subsequently through annualremembrance days.
In the case of Ireland, I have attempted to exemplify how this
approach to re-membrance presented deep-seated contradictions for
participants and public alike. Inthe capital city and in many
Ulster towns a spectacle could be staged with relativesuccess (at
least in daylight hours); in other places, more remote from the
administrativecentre of the island, support was more muted. The
representation of four consecutiveyears of war around a single
street event underlines the fact that the war was popularlymediated
through spatial rather than temporal categories. Military units
configuredinto a public spectacle, marching along streets lined by
spectators, disguised the factthat the war was a sequence of
conflicts fought on diVerent sites, at diVerent times,across
Europe. Veteran soldiers became the undiVerentiated representatives
of a moralorder (the just cause), and their willingness to serve
(notwithstanding conscription)deserved the symbolic thanks of the
state and the public at large. Public memory wascultivated then,
through the spaces in which the parades took place and the
formaliconography (flags, uniforms, anthems) surrounding them. In
the Irish case I havesuggested that the population did discriminate
between the demobilized volunteer andthe regular soldier; and that
the icons of legitimation were diVerentially interpreted bythe
populace. Attempts to have the parades read uniformly by the public
was diYcultin post-war Ireland because the very symbolism employed
had wider meanings in thecontext of 1919. Like Barthes world of
wrestling the parades may have sought to oVer
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54 NUALA C. JOHNSON
an intelligible basis to suVering but the commemoration of one
war in the shadow ofanother set in stark relief the ambiguity
between the past and our reading of it.
School of GeographyQueens University of BelfastBelfast BT7
1NNNorthern Ireland
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Mike HeVernan, David Livingstone, Mairn Nic Eoin
and threeanonymous referees for their helpful comments on an
earlier draft of this paper. Thisresearch was supported by a grant
from the British Academy.
Notes[1] P. Mac Aonghusa and L O Reagain, The Best of Pearse
(Cork 1967) 134.[2] For an overview of the centenary celebrations
of 1798 and the associated iconography, see
T.J. OKeefe, The 1898 eVorts to celebrate the United Irishmen:
the 98 centennial, Eire-Ireland 23 (1988) 5173; Idem., Who fears to
speak of 98: the rhetoric and rituals of theUnited Irishmen
centennial, 1898, Eire-Ireland 28 (1992) 6791; N.C. Johnson,
Sculptingheroic histories: celebrating the centenary of the 1798
rebellion in Ireland, Transactions ofthe Institute of British
Geographers N.S. 19 (1994) 7893.
[3] K. Whelan The Tree of Liberty (Cork 1996) 174.[4] P.
Travers, Our Fenian dead: Glasnevin cemetery and the genesis of the
Republican funeral,
in J. Kelly and U. MacGearailt (Eds), Dublin and Dubliners
(Dublin 1990) 52.[5] R. Barthes, The world of wrestling, in Idem.,
Mythologies (New York 1972) 22.[6] J. Fairhall, James Joyce and the
Question of History (Cambridge 1993) 164.[7] J. Joyce, Ulysses
(Oxford 1993), originally published in 1922.[8] F. Jameson, The
Political Unconscious (Ithaca 1981) 35.[9] For a further discussion
of this point, see R. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford
1946).[10] See S.M. Gilbert and S. Gubar, No Mans Land: The
Place of the Woman Writer in the
Twentieth Century: Vol 2Sexchanges (New Haven 1989).[11] M.R.
Higonnet and P.L.R. Higonnet, The double helix, in M.R. Higonnet,
J. Jenson, S.
Michel and M.C. Weitz (Eds), Behind the Lines: Gender and the
Two World Wars (NewHaven 1987) 39.
[12] This view is most cogently argued by Paul Fussell, The
Great War and Modern Memory(Oxford 1975). It is also supported by
Eric Leed in his study of the psychological impactof the war on men
in his No Mans Land: Combat and Identity in World War One
(Cambridge1979). See also Samuel Hynes examination of the impact of
the war on English culture inA War Imagined: The First World War
and English Culture (London 1992).
[13] See G. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Shaping the Memory of Two
World Wars (Oxford 1990).[14] J. R. Gillis, Memory and identity:
the history of a relationship, in R. Gillis (Ed.), Com-
memorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ
1994) 8.[15] Recent work includes A. Gregory, The Silence of Memory
(Oxford 1994); R.W. Whalen,
Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War (Ithaca 1984); A.
Becker, Les monumentsaux morts: memoire de la Grande Guerre (Paris
1988).
[16] M. J. HeVernan, For ever England: the Western Front and the
politics of remembrance inBritain, Ecumene 2 (1995) 293324. In
terms of the American civil war, see J. Winberry,Lest we forget:
the Confederate monument and the southern townscape,
SoutheasternGeographer 23 (1983) 107121.
[17] P. Nora, Between memory and history: les lieux de memoire,
Representations 26 (1989) 13.[18] J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites
of Mourning. (Cambridge 1995) 5.[19] The following are conventional
military histories of specific regiments: T. Denman, Irelands
Unknown Soldiers: the 16th (Irish) Division in Great War (Dublin
1992); B. Cooper, The
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55THE SPECTACLE OF MEMORY
Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli (Dublin 1993); T. Johnstone,
Orange, Green and Khaki:The Story of Irish Regiments in the Great
War, 19141918 (Dublin 1992).
[20] For accounts based on the memoirs and oral histories of
Irish participants in the GreatWar, see P. Orr, The Road to the
Somme (Belfast 1987); M. Dungan, Distant Drums: Irishsoldiers in
Foreign Armies (Belfast 1993); M. Dungan, Irish Voices from the
Great War(Dublin 1995).
[21] The work of academic historians includes G. Boyce, The Sure
Confusing Drum: Ireland andthe First World War (Swansea 1993);
Idem., Ireland and the First World War, History Ireland2 (1994)
4853; D. Fitzpatrick (Ed.), Ireland and the First World War (Dublin
1986); T.Bartlett and K. JeVrey (Eds), A military history of
Ireland (Cambridge: CUP, 1996); K.JeVrey (Ed.), Men, Women and War
(Dublin 1993); Idem., Irish artists and the First WorldWar, History
Ireland 1 (1993) 4245; Idem., Irish culture and the Great War,
Bullan 1 (1994)8796; J. Leonard, The twinge of memory: Armistice
Day and Remembrance Sunday inDublin since 1919, in R. English and
G. Walker (Eds), Unionism in Modern Ireland (Dublin1996) 99114.
[22] This includes the work of K. Whelan, The Tree of Liberty
(Cork 1996); D. Kiberd, InventingIreland (London 1995); L. Gibbons,
Transformations in Irish Culture (Cork 1996); D. Lloyd,Anomalous
States: Irish writing and the postcolonial moment (Dublin
1993).
[23] J. Leersen, Remembrance and imagination: patterns in the
historical and literary representationof Ireland in the nineteenth
century (Cork 1996) 7.
[24] D. Ley and K. Olds, Landscape as spectacle: worlds fairs
and the culture of heroicconsumption, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 6 (1988) 194.
[25] For a fuller discussion of this critique see A. Bonnett,
Situationism, geography andpoststructuralism, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 7 (1989) 131146.
[26] S. Daniels and D. Cosgrove, Spectacle and text: landscape
metaphors in cultural geography,in J. Duncan and D. Ley (Eds),
Place/Culture/Representation (London 1993) 58.
[27] Barthes, op cit., 23.[28] R. Barthes, The Elements of
Semiology (London 1967).[29] Declaration by Francis Ledwidge who
volunteered to serve in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
and was killed by an exploding shell in 1917. Quoted by Seamus
Heaney in D. Bolger (Ed.),Francis Ledwidge Selected Poems (Dublin
1992) 17.
[30] D. Fitzpatrick, Militarism in Ireland, 19001922, in
Bartlett and JeVrey, op.cit., 3834.[31] Ibid., 386.[32] F.S.L.
Lyons, The developing crisis, in W.E. Vaughan, A New History of
Ireland. Vol. VI:
Ireland under the Union. Part II: 18701921 (Oxford 1996)
144.[33] D. Gwynn, Life of John Redmond (London 1932) 392.[34]
F.S.L. Lyons, The revolution in train, in Vaughan, op. cit.,
189204.[35] Fitzpatrick, op. cit., 383.[36] Cited in T. Bowman,
Composing divisions, Causeway 2 (1995) 25.[37] Ibid.[38]
Fitzpatrick, op. cit.[39] R. Foster, Modern Ireland 16001972
(London 1988).[40] Bowman, op. cit.[41] Fitzpatrick, op. cit.[42]
M. Rickards, Posters of the First World War (London 1968).[43] J.
Darracott, The First World War in Posters (London 1974) ix.[44] M.
Hardie and A.K. Sabin (Eds), War Posters (London 1920).[45] J.
Darracott and B. Loftus, First World War Posters (London 1972).[46]
C. Haste, Keep The Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First
World War (London 1977)
52.[47] P. Callan, Recruiting for the British Army in Ireland
during the First World War, Irish
Sword (1987) 4256.[48] A large selection of recruitment posters
are stored in Department of Early Printed Books,
Trinity College, Dublin. Most are undated but they would have
been published after theestablishment of the Central Council for
Recruitment. Most were printed in Dublin andBelfast.
[49] M. Tierney, P. Bowen and D. Fitzpatrick, Recruiting
Posters, in Fitzpatrick, op. cit., 4758.[50] Hynes, op. cit.[51]
Irish Times, 4 July 1919.
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56 NUALA C. JOHNSON
[52] Quoted in Irish Times, 18 July 1919, 4[53] This view was
expressed most forcefully by the Provost, Trinity College Dublin.
See Irish
Times 18 July 1919.[54] Ibid.[55] Irish Independent, 21 July
1919.[56] Freemans Journal, 21 July 1919.[57] Based on reports
published in Irish Times, 21 July 1919.[58] Freemans Journal, 21
July 1919, 2.[59] Irish Times, 21 July 1919, 5.[60] Freemans
Journal, 19 July 1919, 5.[61] Freemans Journal, 21 July 1919,
3.[62] Barthes, The world of wrestling, 23.[63] Irish Times, 21
July 1919, 5.[64] Ibid.[65] Barthes, The world of wrestling.[66]
Irish Independent, 21 July 1919, 3.[67] Barthes, The world of
wrestling, 25.[68] Evening Herald, 19 July 1919, 1.[69] Belfast
Newsletter, 21 July 1919.[70] Freemans Journal, 21 July 1919.[71]
Cork Examiner, 22 July 1919.[72] Irish Times, 21 July 1919, 5.[73]
Ibid.[74] Ibid.[75] Ibid.[76] Freemans Journal, 21 July 1919,
3.[77] Cited in G. Boyce, Ireland and the First World War, History
Ireland 2 (1994) 51.[78] Barthes, The world of wrestling, 29.[79]
Fussell, The Great War, 8.
IntroductionWar and public memoryThe spectacle of
memoryRecruiting an army in IrelandAnswer the call: recruitment
postersThe spectacle of remembrance: Peace Day, 19 July 1919Figure
1.Figure 2.Figure 3.Figure 4.Figure 5.Figure 6.Figure 7.
ConclusionAcknowledgementsNotes