A small collection of Great War pamphlets

I just came back from the big Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, where I got to catch up a bit with some old friends, and to meet or re-meet some newer ones—including some I hardly recognized, to my chagrin. As always, it was great fun to show off some of the manuscripts and other items I’ve found lately, even if I was pretty sure some of the things wouldn’t (and didn't) sell. And I went to the dance, but I did not dance.

But even while I was off in Kalamazoo, I still bought a thing or two, and while I was away, a big box of WWI pamphlets and booklets was delivered. Listed as containing 110 items, I guessed I’d find something of interest in such a big batch of booklets, and the price was right, I thought.

Around 100 WWI pamphlets

How surprising, however, to find the work of medievalists—and familiar names at that—cropping up over and over in the collection. 

Much of what is in the collection might come under the broadest heading of “propaganda”: arguments in support of entering or continuing the war, pro- and anti-German pamphlets, accusations of enslavement and other atrocities. Most of the items, it turns out, are not especially rare as individual pieces, but there are a couple scarcer items present, too. But the whole collection together gains something by its sheer mass.

Pamphlets by Lloyd George,
Parker, Noyes, and Hope.

It is interesting, for example, to see the literary names who published in this genre: besides familiar political figures like David Lloyd George, there are pamphlets by the English poet Alfred Noyes and the novelist Anthony Hope, best remembered today for The Prisoner of Zenda. The Canadian novelist Gilbert Parker is, perhaps, somewhat less well remembered today, but he was prolific as a propagandist. 

More surprising to me were the contributions of two medieval scholars. Two items in the collection were written by Joseph Bedier, best known for his scholarly critical editions of Old French romances. Seeing these works about German atrocities in WWI were very much a surprise to me. Equally surprising was the little pamphlet “Why America Fights Germany” by the well-known Stanford Chaucerian, J. S. P. Tatlock, published as part of the American “War Information Series” issued by the Committee on Public Information, a governmental committee created by an Executive Order from Woodrow Wilson.  

2 by Joseph Bedier and one by J S P Tatlock.

Today, of course, I can describe Bedier and Tatlock as medievalists: at the time, however, it may well have been more accurate to describe them as prominent literary men in the scholarly mode: like Noyes, Parker, and Hope, their reputations were of use in the propaganda business. The academy was, perhaps, less isolated from public affairs at that time, and medieval studies was the most prominent and important area in the literary academy. I am not sure I really regret the loss of that prominence, though it may be useful to remember that it was only a hundred years ago when most of the world's key literary academics studied the middle ages.

Most surprising of all to me in this batch of booklets was the name of Charles Homer Haskins. Haskins was a prominent Harvard historian, and his name lives on now in the Haskins Society, which puts on an annual conference, where I once presented a scholarly paper of my own. A handful of the pamphlets in this collection bear a stamp reading “Harvard College Library Gift of Charles Homer Haskins.” 

4 pamphlets donated to Harvard by Haskins.

Indeed, it seems likely that the whole collection was once deaccessioned by Harvard; many are noted in pencil as duplicates, and most have a notation like “dHC” which seems to mean “duplicate; Harvard College.” Throughout, there are often indicators of who donated these items to Harvard, including at least one apparently donated by Abbot Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president, the brother of poet Amy Lowell. 

Anyway, Charles Homer Haskins was, besides being a historian who wrote about the middle ages, a more prominent figure in the aftermath of the war. According to the Wikipedia entry on Haskins, he had met Woodrow Wilson at Johns Hopkins, and then served as one of three advisors to the president at the Paris Peace Conference where the Treaty of Versailles was drafted. Although they first caught my eye because I knew Haskins’s name as a medievalist, to have these books of “War Information” that were once owned by one of the few advisors Wilson brought with him to Paris makes this collection seems especially interesting: linked directly to Haskins and thence to Wilson and Versailles.

I sometimes dream of becoming a “public medievalist,” but I would be daunted to advise a president on something so momentous as the peace to follow a world war. I think my ambition is more modest: most often, I hope to find items like this collection that teach me something, and I hope to share what I learn and find such items a home.