![]() ![]() The fact is that today, on Remembrance Sunday, very little survives of the original reasons to mourn those who died in the Great War, and none of the original mourners. Everything should be new, stripped of the old-fashioned loyalties that had led to the slaughter of millions and left Europe in ruins. At Dartington, and other communities like it, traditional practices and values were deemed worthy only for the scrap-heap – classical music, realist painting, traditional architecture. It was at Dartington that the Labour politician Michael Young wrote the party’s post-war manifesto. It became a magnet for artists, architects, writers, philosophers and musicians from around the world, establishing a centre of creative activity. Some went on to found their own visionary communities, such as the one set up at Dartington Hall in Devon by Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst. ![]() The elite that shared this inspiration was moulded by contact across the world as it attempted to shape humanity atop the smoking rubble of the imperialist 19th Century. Humanity, such visionaries hoped, might be induced to forge links across what was considered to be mere national identity in favour of something higher. They wanted to reimagine human society, so that nothing as horrifying could ever happen again, by transcending borders of faith or nation. Historian Anna Neima shows how many among the world’s avant-garde sought to create new, ideal communities. The aftermath of the First World War saw a backlash by society’s elite – not just against nationalism, but also against traditional religious faith and cultural forms. Notoriously, in 1915, the Bishop of London declared it the duty of ‘everyone that puts principle above ease’ to ‘kill Germans… not for the sake of killing, but to save the world’. ![]() Indeed, most Christian denominations on both sides supported the conflict, with many at the time viewing it as a ‘holy war’. Patriotism took a hammering and, perhaps more profoundly, so did institutional Christianity. The war spawned the first Communist state, and it shattered confidence in Western civilisation. So what is the loss we’re left to remember?įor the Great War saw the beginning of the end for faith in the foundations of a European culture that had held fast for generations.īy the end of the war in 1918, George V presided over a broken, debt-ridden empire, Tsar Nicholas was killed by revolutionaries and Kaiser Wilhelm was deposed and exiled. Today, those who remember the fallen are almost all gone themselves. ![]()
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