The extended commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great War have commenced in earnest. Over the next four years people around the world will struggle to avoid the politicised public narratives of these remembrances. Nationalistic sentiment is no less palpable today than imperial sentiment was a century ago. Its opponents are still there too. Among the countless commemorative activities that will occur, there are innumerable counter narratives. Although they are compelling in their telling of oppositional stories, they have yet to capture the imagination of the dominant storytellers of our generation. Mainstream media, governments, and politicians of all persuasions, remain a captive of “soft jingoism”, and the myth making of Geoffrey Serle’s “fire-eating generals”. In such a view, war remains a lamentable, but necessary evil. The true costs of war are absorbed only partially.

Given the destabilisation of much of the globe, and the increasing militarisation of domestic politics by Western governments, it is unsurprising that a widespread movement for peace is momentarily lost. But history provides hope. By looking back we can see the ebb and flow of peace movements, and the lessons here are instructive. The present commemorative phase provides historians with a license to tell the stories that underscore the feeble fabric of nationalistic hubris – ones that seek to analyse and understand the human condition rather than simply commemorate it. Tales of national re-birth are but one facet of war, complicated by a much richer, dirtier, and more nuanced reality. This reality challenges the necessity of war, and allows us to empathise with war’s victims, elucidate oppositional tactics, and provide explanations for the difficulties in sustaining a pacifist approach in the midst of war.

The chapters here deal with aspects of peace and anti-war, of memory, of forgetting, and of legacy. The majority – unsurprisingly, given the present historical moment – concentrate on the experience of the First World War. The shadows of that war are long, and the historiography they build on extensive.

Contributors include Phillip Deery, Julie Kimber, Karen Agutter, Anne Beggs Sunter, Robert Bollard, Verity Burgmann, Liam Byrne, Lachlan Clohesy, Rhys Cooper, Carolyn Holbrook, Nick Irving, Chris McConville, Douglas Newton, Bobbie Oliver, Carolyn Rasmussen, Phil Roberts, and Kim Thoday.

Douglas J. Newton