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

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]

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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