All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.14of26.All.This.It.Is.Our.Duty.To.Bear.divx.mp3

BAGPIPES PLAY
November, 1916.

After 140 days on the Somme,
the storm of gunfire slackened.

Exhausted armies took their rest
under skies that carried
the first snows of winter.

1¼ million Europeans had been
killed or maimed or had disappeared

in the shell-drenched uplands
above the Somme.

The whole area had become
an enormous graveyard at which
three great nations mourned.

Field Marshal von Hindenburg
expressed their grief...

Over everyone hovered the fearful
spectre of this battlefield,

which, for desolation and horror,
seemed to be even worse

than that of Verdun.

The millions of shell holes
filled with water

or became mere cemeteries.

Neither of the contending parties
knew the exultation of victory.

"Neither of the contending parties
knew the exultation of victory."

This was true of the whole war,
not just of the Somme.

Nowhere on the vast perimeter
of the war, on the Eastern Front,

in Italy,

in the Balkans, had the battles
of 1916 brought a decision.

As the wounded came home and
a third winter of war closed in,

a chill gripped the hearts
of all the belligerents.

The most depressing thing of all
were the casualty lists.

Every time you opened a paper,
it seemed to be nothing
but casualty lists.

And you always found people in it
that you knew.

Everybody wore black
and that was very depressing.

After I found that it was officially
known that he had been killed,

I used to pass my time trying to
make little baby clothes for my baby

and I felt
that I didn't want to live at all.

The world had come to an end for me
because I'd lost all that I'd loved.

For over two years, victory
had beckoned the obsessed nations.

Two years of immense
effort and endurance,
and still victory lay far off.

Men began to wonder
how long could it go on?

How many more would die, how many
more weep, before the victory?

An unfamiliar word
began to be whispered...peace.

Rumours of peace offers
and peace talks

spread from capital to capital
across a Europe half-ruined by war.

Berlin. Excepting the wealthy
and those who have stored quantities
of food, everyone is undernourished.

Many people are starving.

Vienna. War weariness is growing

and the longing for peace
is greater every day.

Rome. There are already in Italy
symptoms of war weariness
and discontent.

It would be wrong to say that there
exists here a grim determination.

Petrograd. The losses which
Russia has suffered in this war

are so colossal that
the whole country is in mourning.

The impression is gaining ground
that it is useless going on.

Paris. Full realisation
of the horrors of war is kept alive

by the thousands of women
in mourning, the number of buildings
converted into hospitals,

the continual appearance of
crippled soldiers and the marching
of troops, bound for battle lands.

In October, Mr Asquith,
the British Prime Minister, asked
his Cabinet colleagues to consider

what acceptable peace terms
might be demanded from Germany.

In reply, Lord Lansdowne asked a
different and searching question...

No-one for a moment believes
we are going to lose the war, but
what is our chance of winning it?

Many of us must of late
have asked ourselves how this war
is ever to be brought to an end.

To many of us it seems
as if the prospect of a knockout
was, to say the least, remote.

Our own casualties
already amount to over 1,100,000.

BUGLE PLAYS "The Last Post"

We have had 15,000 officers killed,
not including those
that are missing.

We are slowly but surely
killing off the best of the
male population of these islands.

In the matter of manpower, we are
nearing the end of our tether.

The last report of the
Manpower Distribution Board seems
to sound a grave note of warning.

The unexhausted supply of men
is now very restricted.

Availability can only be added to
by further depletion of industry.

The army recruiting staff
used every argument in its armoury

to persuade enough men to join up,
but in vain.

By the end of 1915, the great surge
of volunteers was drying up.

In January 1916, to meet
the army's demands for fresh men,

the government
reluctantly introduced conscription
for single men between 18 and 41.

Only a noisy minority protested
against the Military Service Act,

instead of the mass resistance
throughout the country
feared by the government.

In May, conscription was extended
to married men as well.

The results were disappointing.

There were 3,400,000 Britons
of military age,

but no fewer than 2,600,000 of them
were in reserved occupations.

Kitchener's early appeals
for volunteers

had been answered
by thousands of workers
whom industry could ill spare.

In Durham, coalminers
had marched off to war en masse.

Now, in 1916, Britain and her
allies clamoured for British coal,

coal for their war industries.

# The music of the land
where we were born

# We'll remember the laughter

# And the sunshine after rain

# And we'll grin, grin, grin
Till we win, win, win

# And they come back again. #

The President
of the Board of Trade paints
the picture in gloomy colours

and anticipates
a complete breakdown in shipping.

The submarine difficulty
is becoming acute.

In September 1916,
just over 100,000 tons
of British shipping were sunk.

By December, the monthly figure had
risen to more than 180,000 tons.

In a year, nearly 1½ million tons
of shipping had been lost

and only a third of this figure
had been built to replace it.

Our shipbuilding is not keeping pace
with losses and, although
the number of our vessels is down,

the demands upon our tonnage
are not diminished.

The increasing size
of enemy submarines,
the strength of their construction

point to the inescapable conclusion
that in spite of all our efforts,

it seems impossible to provide
an effective rejoinder to it.

As British shipping declined, the
number of German U-boats doubled.

In 1916, 95 had been built
and only 25 had been sunk.

The size of our home fleets
is still insufficient.

We have nearly reached the limit
of immediate production
in the matter of capital ships.

We have not got enough destroyers
for escort and anti-submarine work.

With the submarine
apparently invincible,

the importance of producing
food from British farms increased,

yet, Lord Lansdowne pointed out...

The President
of the Board of Agriculture reports

that there is
a world deficit in breadstuffs,

that the price of bread is likely
to go higher, that there has been a
general failure of the potato crop,

there is a shortage in the supply
of feeding stuffs,

the difficulties of cultivation
steadily increase,

land is likely to go derelict,
the yield to decline and the number
of livestock to diminish greatly,

the supply of fish is expected
to be 64% below the normal.

The financial burden
which we have already accumulated
is almost incalculable.

We are adding to it at the rate
of over £5m per day.

Generations will have to come and go
before the country recovers
from the financial ruin

and the destruction of the means of
production which are taking place.

All this it is no doubt our duty
to bear,

but only if it can be shown that
the sacrifice will have its reward.

The responsibility of those
who needlessly prolong such a war

is not less than that of those
who needlessly provoke it.

Lansdowne's memorandum
was a secret document.

But reports in every newspaper
in 1916 hinted unmistakably

at failure, disappointment,

at sacrifice without reward.

On Easter Sunday,
revolution exploded
in the graceful streets of Dublin,

centre of English rule in Ireland
since the Middle Ages.

1,500 men of the Sinn Fein party
seized the General Post Office
building,

turned it into a stronghold and
proclaimed a republic of Ireland.

In two days, British troops crushed
the rebellion with ruthless force.

An uneasy tranquillity
was restored.

The citizens of Dublin came out of
shelter and walked about the city,

surveying the wreckage
with a bewildered unbelief.

The rising had been the work
of extremists,

like those who had killed
the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo.

Moderate Irishmen stood aside.

Thousands of Irish volunteers
were fighting in the British army.

The British took this for granted.

They saw the Easter rebellion as
treachery at a moment when the UK
was battling for its very life.

In the next ten days,
tension grew afresh in Ireland

as the British executed
15 of the captured rebel leaders.

Every shot resounded across
Ireland, across the Atlantic Ocean,
to the Irishmen in America.

Every shot created another martyr
in Ireland's long struggle
for nationhood.

After the executions, the British
army in Ireland were seen, even by
moderates, as an occupation force.

The homely men in khaki became
a symbol of foreign oppression.

British bitterness against the
Irish rebels was reflected by the
great crowds outside the Old Bailey

during the treason trial
of Sir Roger Casement.

Casement was an Irish patriot,

captured on the eve of the Rising
after landing from a German U-boat.

He was eventually executed
more than three months
after the Easter rebellion.

Blazing indignation
at Britain's actions swept
the Irish community in America.

Their millions of votes were a
factor in the American presidential
election in the autumn.

There were those who feared,
like Lloyd George,

that the British victory in Ireland
might be bought at a high price.

The Irish American vote
will go over to the German side.

Unless something is done, even
provisionally, to satisfy America,

the Germans will break our blockade

and force on us
an ignominious peace.

Lloyd George
proposed immediate home rule,

but the blood of the martyrs
prevented any peaceful solution
in Ireland.

The extremists did not want
compromise. They wanted
total and unconditional victory.

Every belligerent
sought that elusive prize.

On June 3rd, the most discouraging
news of the war glared from the
headlines of British newspapers.

The British Grand Fleet had at last
encountered the German High Seas
Fleet off Jutland

and apparently
had had the worst of the battle.

Was this possible?

BUGLE PLAYS

They fired the first shot

and it went
just over the Princess Royal...

Oh, about 50 yards.

The battle cruiser Indefatigable
was the first to blow up

because of a flash down into
the magazine from a German shell.

It was a terrific explosion.

The guns went up in the air like
matchsticks, 12-inch guns they were.

She began to settle down and in
about half a minute, she was gone.

Twenty minutes later,
the Queen Mary followed.

Another ship's company paid with
their lives for the inferiority
of British design and material.

Yet a third British battle cruiser
was similarly destroyed when
the main fleets came into action.

When I saw the Invincible
after the explosion,

she was just, to me,
one flaming letter V.

She went down broken clean asunder
in the midships, exactly like that.

Of course, after that,
other ships had already gone,

many crippled,

and when we steamed
through the main patch,

there was the men on rafts,
bits of wood...

bravely cheering, waving...

And there was a smell of cordite,
a smell of gas from shells

and also burnt bodies.

The Germans issued a communique
which was quoted in newspapers
throughout the world.

Our High Seas Fleet encountered
on May 31st the main part
of the English fighting fleet,

which was superior to our forces.

During the afternoon, a series
of engagements developed between
the Skagerrak and the Horn Reef,

which was successful for us.

GERMAN NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS

The British Admiralty did not say
whether they considered the Battle
of Jutland a victory or a defeat.

The newspapers
drew the inevitable conclusion.

The Times said...

It is clear that we have suffered
the heaviest damage at sea
we have met during the war.

The British were stunned.

The navy was their deepest pride.

Four centuries of decisive victory
lay behind the Royal Navy.

In 1916, the British people
expected no less.

Instead, Germany's navy had had
the best of an indecisive battle.

German ships had proved stronger,
more deadly fighting machines.

Nevertheless, the German fleet
had run back to port.

An American newspaper noted...

The German fleet has assaulted
its jailer and is still in jail.

Hard on the heels of Jutland came
more news of tragic loss at sea.

Lord Kitchener was dead,
drowned in the cruiser Hampshire,

on his way to Russia.

For the last six months,
his power had dwindled.

Control of the army had passed
to General Robertson, Chief
of the Imperial General Staff.

Kitchener took leave of the country
he had served so valiantly alone.

Lloyd George was to have been
Kitchener's fellow passenger
to Russia in the Hampshire,

but the aftermath
of the Irish rebellion
had taken him to Dublin instead.

Kitchener's memorial service
was attended by vast crowds,
stunned at the news of his death.

MUSIC: "Abide With Me"

To them, he had still been a man
with the power of magic,

a titanic figure who had led
and protected them amid the furies
of this struggle...

Kitchener of Khartoum.
Now he was gone.

The Irish rebellion, Jutland,
Kitchener and the Somme,

a year that had begun so bright
with hope

was growing old
in loss and sadness.

MUSIC: "The First Noel"

It is the third Christmas of the war
and the gloomiest.

To wish each other Merry Christmas
is almost a mockery,
of such is the prevailing gloom.

Our troubles appear
to obtrude themselves upon us

more acutely today
than at any other time.

We recall our fondest hope
and belief last year

that this Christmas
we should eat our dinner in peace.

For Germany, too,
1916 was closing in gloom.

For the first time since 1914,
there had been few victories
for the Fatherland to celebrate.

Germany had suffered nearly
1½ million casualties in one year,

fighting against growing odds
in the west, in the Balkans
and in the east.

Once again, that summer, her
brittle ally, Austria, had broken
before a Russian onslaught.

The worst crisis that the Eastern
Front had ever known now began,

for this time
there was no victorious German army
standing by ready to save.

On August 27th,
Romania declared war

and opened yet another hostile
front against the central powers.

Germany's enemies had at last
thrown their full weight against
her with simultaneous violence.

The autumn of 1916 witnessed
the most gigantic struggle
in the history of the world.

Nearly 14 million allied soldiers
against the nine millions
of Germany and her allies.

The German army held on,
but it was badly shaken.

In September, the Germans had begun
to build a new line of defences

far behind their front on
the Somme, deeper and more powerful
than before - the Hindenburg Line.

Hindenburg told his officers...

We must save the men
from a second Somme battle.

In Germany herself, people
faced the winter's bitter cold

without fuel to warm the home
and with little expectation
to warm their hearts.

The British blockade was working.

Factory workers and schoolchildren
lived on turnips, black bread
and substitute foods.

Hindenburg wrote...

People at home had been bitterly
disappointed by the military events
of the last few months.

I regarded the country's morale
as serious,

though it had not collapsed.

Victory seemed a long way away
from Germany now.

In Austria,
the dream had well nigh vanished.

On 21st November,
the Emperor Franz Josef died.

BELL TOLLS

Hapsburg pomp and pride
seemed to be buried with him.

His whole empire lay slowly dying,
victim of the monstrous violence
it had done so much to provoke.

Its polyglot population -
Austrian, Hungarian or Slav -

yearned for food, for warmth,
for war to cease.

With the venerable,
white-haired emperor,

a large part of the national
consciousness of the conglomerate
empire sank into the grave.

Austrian political leaders made
no secret that she could not stand
any further burdens

in the way of military
and political failures.

The new emperor Karl
saw no salvation for his empire

or for the House of Hapsburg
in a continuation
of the long-drawn agony of the war.

Like his peoples, he yearned
for an end to empty victories
and bloody defeats.

In Ludendorff's words,
he wanted peace.

CHEERING

The Russian Empire, too, was dying.

A dynasty
that had ruled for 300 years

was collapsing
under the blows of modern war.

The last hopes, the last energies
of the loyal soldiers
and brave officers of Holy Russia

had been poured into Brusilov's
summer offensive.

Great advances, great booty,
huge casualties.

And at the end,
another hollow victory.

Since 1914, Russia had lost
over 4½ million men,
killed or wounded,

and another 2 million as prisoners.

Misery and discontent
stalked the endless vistas
of the Russian homeland.

In December, an observer
wrote to Lloyd George...

In the next three months,
either the government will yield,
or there will be a revolution,

or Russia will have to stop fighting
and make peace.

In France, the dying year
brought the same bleak tally.

One in every six
of the French adult population
had passed into the armed forces.

One in every 25
of the entire French race
was now dead or wounded or missing.

Verdun,
the only French victory of 1916,
had taken ten months to produce

at a cost which everyone understood
to be immense.

A French soldier wrote...

What kind of nation
will they make of us?

These exhausted creatures, emptied
of blood, emptied of thought,

crushed by superhuman fatigue.

After two years of war,

France was calling up boys of 17,

and still the invader
squatted immovably on her soil.

How long could she fight on?

The war can last a year longer

if our forces melt away at the same
rate as in the preceding months.

France may emerge victorious
from the struggle,

but she will be exhausted and will
become a nation of the second rank.

Neither of the contending parties
knew the exultation of victory.

To all of Europe,
the price of elusive victory
was proving higher and higher.

SHOUTING

Small wonder that men's minds
turned to fresh concepts.

In Germany, the Imperial
Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg

saw peace negotiations as the
only way out of the catastrophe.

After two years of war, without
any real prospect of an end,

I felt that the step
was politically necessary.

The Germans captured Bucharest,
capital of Romania, on 6th December

and this solitary victory
gave Bethmann-Hollweg
the springboard he needed.

As the German troops marched in, he
sent a note to the US government...

Prompted by the desire to avoid
further bloodshed and to make an end
of the atrocities of war,

Germany, Austria, Bulgaria
and Turkey have proposed to enter
forthwith into peace negotiations.

If, in spite of this offer
of peace and reconciliation,
the struggle should go on,

Germany and her allies will
continue it until a victorious end,

but they solemnly decline
every responsibility for this
before humanity and history.

The American president, Woodrow
Wilson, and the Pope intervened

to ask the warring nations
to state their peace terms.

Reactions were mixed.

In Britain,
a few newspapers argued...

A summary rejection without reasons
of the German offer by the Allies
is out of the question.

But other papers demanded war
until Germany was utterly smashed.

The question is the mastery between
two wholly incompatible views
of right or wrong,

of humanity, of civilisation
and of law.

It does not admit of accommodation.

It can be settled only by the defeat
of one principle or of the other.

Disillusion and disappointment
at the end of 1916
did not draw men towards peace,

but these feelings
undermined the leaders
associated with costly deadlock.

In Great Britain,
Lloyd George had replaced Asquith.

All Lloyd George's instinct
drew him towards new methods
of waging war.

I thought, rightly or wrongly,
that there was hesitation,

vacillation and delay,

and that we were not waging this war
with the determination, promptitude
and relentlessness

with which it MUST be waged.

It is a national war.

Everyone must contribute

and it is on that basis alone

we shall be able to achieve
a great triumph.

So Lloyd George
became Britain's leader.

In Germany, with his peace moves
a failure, it was
Bethmann-Hollweg's turn to go.

The army leaders, Hindenburg and
Ludendorff, now led Germany from
behind a figurehead chancellor.

In each country, ruthless men
replaced the more moderate.

Ludendorff wrote...

The war had to continue and
had to be decided by force of arms.
It had to be victory or defeat.

There were further preparations
on a large scale, the maintenance
of our determination to fight

and the employment of every weapon
in Germany's arsenal.

The Germans believed that they had
found a new means to early victory,

a submarine used to sink all ships
at sight, even neutrals, even
Americans approaching Allied ports.

The Chief of Naval Staff was
confident that the campaign would
have decisive results in six months.

The loss of freight
and imports would produce
economic difficulties in England

that would render a continuance
of the war impossible.

Lloyd George recognised
the force of this threat.

The submarine must be beaten,
or Britain would starve...

The jugular vein of Allied vitality
was the sea.

If that vein were once cut off...

..the Allied strength would soon be
drained of its lifeblood.

Lloyd George pressed the convoy
system on a reluctant Admiralty,

which believed it couldn't work.

The larger target offered by
a convoy was no more vulnerable than
each single ship would have been.

A submarine was unable to count
on firing more than a single shot,

as it was at once attacked

by the escorts and the guns
of the convoy vessels.

Victory at sea depended on whether
British shipyards could launch more
new ships than those that sank.

Shipyard workers were exhorted
to speed construction.

Lloyd George's
new shipping controller began
revolutionary new programmes,

building standardised tramp
steamers, even prefabricated ships
which never saw a shipyard.

Another weapon against this attempt
to starve Britain was the land.

Lloyd George told his countrymen...

Every available square yard
must be made to produce food.

The labour available for tillage
must not be turned
to ornamental purposes

until the food necessities
of the country have been
adequately safeguarded.

# Keep the home fires burning

# While your hearts are yearning

# Though your lads are far away

# ..Till the boys come home. #

Even the lakes in the royal parks
became freshwater fisheries
in the drive for food.

Milk and sugar and meat
remained very scarce
and were only rationed by price.

The burden of sacrifice
fell on the poor.

There were demonstrations
and protest meetings
against the high cost of living.

This mass meeting emphatically
protests against the inaction of the
government on the food question.

The inflated prices are largely due
to the profiteers who are taking
advantage of the national crisis

to exploit our people.

Lloyd George appointed
a Food Controller to cut down
wasteful methods of distribution.

He appealed to the nation
to ration itself.

The saving of food
means the saving of tonnage.

And the saving of tonnage
is at the present moment
the very life of the nation.

New leaders, new methods,
in Britain and Germany.

France, too, saw change.

General Joffre, victor of the
Marne, commander in chief of the
French armies throughout the war,

seemed unable to produce new ideas.

His weary countrymen
now associated his name
with attrition and failure.

The French government was in danger

so Joffre was sacrificed with
the title of Marshal of France.

General Robert Nivelle,
his successor,

promised what France in her
weariness and grief so desperately
wanted - swift, immediate victory.

We have the formula. With it,
we shall beat the enemy.

French politicians clung to Nivelle
with desperation.

# Keep the home fires burning... #

The bitterest winter
in living memory gripped Europe.

For the ordinary people,
it was a time of hunger and cold,
anxiety and sadness.

But they knew their duty. They
believed their cause was right.

In France and Britain and Germany,
there was a grim resolve
to fight on.

# ..silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining

# Turn the dark cloud inside out

# Till the boys come home. #