With the impending 100 year anniversary upon us Hew Strachan
has said: "the big challenge is not the principle of commemoration but the
practice of education. The Imperial War Museum and the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission have anticipated this. The former is developing new First World War
galleries, not least thanks to the additional money announced by the Prime
Minister in October, and is creating an online presence that embraces other
institutions. The commission, by enhancing its provision of onsite information,
is addressing the fact that visitors now come to be informed rather than to
mourn. It is the institutions’ task to provide the framework within which these
debates enhance knowledge and understanding – both of the First World War and
of war more generally. The only other significant tranche of new government
money contained in the Prime Minister’s announcement was £5 million to enable
selected school pupils in England to visit the Western Front. Many already do
so, and it is hard to see how this funding is going to change much, not least
when it is not extended to the rest of the United Kingdom and given that it
will be exhausted by 2019. The major challenge is to produce an educational
legacy that lasts and is more pervasive, originating in the classroom and
stimulated by big and new ideas. The plans for the centenary are still
conceptually empty.
Hew Strachan is the Chichele Professor of the
History of War and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is a member of the
World War I Centenary Advisory Board.
