Sheep magazine archive 1: issues 3-9

FEATURE
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A
whispered
WHY?
Joe Jenkins
Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: ‘It had to be!’
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, ‘Why’?
Thomas Hardy,
written on Armistice Day,
1918
2014 – 2018 marks four years when we
remember a war that caused a degree of
suffering all too clear in the statistical record; 16
million people dead and 20 million wounded.
On our iPad 4s, our iPhones and our TV screens
we will see young faces from 100 years ago,
brimming with expansive optimism – before the
horror, the brutality and the cynicism. In Hardy’s
poem, written on Armistice Day 1918, the
poet’s question: ‘Why?” is a whispered ‘Why?’ –
a Why?” that remains painfully unanswered, still
today. Yet it is a Why?” people, young and old, will
nevertheless be asking over the next four years. It
is a “Why?” we have a duty to answer, as best we
can.
The First World War was the first modern
industrialised war. It consumed millions of citizenconscript
soldiers in four years of apocalyptic
destruction. Its legacy of mass death, mechanized
slaughter, propaganda, and disillusionment swept
away long-standing romanticized images of
warfare. War was no longer something painted
on the tops of biscuit tins, but a visceral reality, in
millions of homes, torn apart by grief.
But this is narrative, and narrative is not
explanation. While commentators have no
problem explaining the Second World War as a
victory over fascism, the First World War appears
to be different. Already, battles have raged: Boris
Johnson demanding the head of Tristram Hunt;
Sir Tony Robinson, Private Baldrick in Blackadder,
calling Michael Gove the Education Secretary,
“irresponsible”, for his comments on the war.
15
OCTOBER 2015