Community and Sacrifice

The relationship between the risking of life and the movement of Spirit, which is such a central motif in the rhetoric of warfare, was nowhere more striking (and tragic) than in the enthusiasm that met the outbreak of the First World War, an enthusiasm noted not only for its intensity, but for the near universality of the sentiment. As Roland N. Stromberg demonstrated in his fascinating account of the intellectual currents of the time, the ‘ideas of 1914’ anticipated an experience that held ‘archetypal echoes of the oldest tribal solidarity’ (1982: 7). The idea of solidarity, of course, is not novel in the arena of warfare. What was significant in 1914 was its expression as a reaction to the perceived anonymity, instrumentality and alienation of modernity, which understood itself as the mode of deliverance from such irrational fervour. In our own time, the galvanizing effect of a war on the identity of a people cannot be underestimated. Admittedly we should not be so naïve as to think that the identity politics saturating the war against terror is the pure, unmediated expression of national belonging, but at the same time to dismiss the sentiments of unity and strength that underlie the rhetoric of George W. Bush’s administration as nothing but manipulative propaganda is to miss important insights into the role of both community and sacrifice in war.