WORLD WAR I: ASSIGNMENT FOR REFLECTION Part 1: The Impact of the War Answer the questions below. Each question requires a detailed paragraph response.

1. Explain how Canada was affected by World War I in terms of national sovereignty, the status of women in Canada, and relations between English Canada and Quebec.

2. Discuss THREE ways that the Treaty of Versailles, far from ending the war in

Europe, actually laid the foundations for future conflict. Part 2: Language and Propaganda Read the following passage from the book The Great War and Modern Memory by literary scholar Paul Fussell: One of the cruxes of the war, of course, is the collision between events and the language available—or thought appropriate—to describe them. To put it more accurately, the collision between events and the public language used for over a century to celebrate the idea of progress. Logically there is no reason why the English language could not perfectly well render the actuality of trench warfare: it is rich in terms like blood, terror, agony, madness, shit, cruelty, murder, sell-out, pain and hoax, as well as phrases like legs blown off, intestines gushing out over his hands, screaming all night, bleeding to death from the rectum, and the like. Logically, one supposes, there’s no reason why a language devised by man should be inadequate to describe any of man’s works. The difficulty was in admitting that the war had been made by men and was being continued ad infinitum by them. The problem was less one of “language” than of gentility and optimism; it was less a problem of “linguistics” than of rhetoric. Nor would the hearty idiom of boys’ adventure stories in which the young hero never failed to stand up and play the game serve to transmit the facts about modern mass man in the attack. This idiom was still being tried late as 1918 by Edward G. D. Liveing in his book Attack. Liveing’s account of the attack on Gommecourt on July 1, 1916, proceeds through such clichés as “fleecy clouds” and “the calm before the storm” to observations like “battalions of infantry, with songs and jests, marched up . . . ready to give battle.” “Men not too badly wounded,” we are told, “were chatting gaily.” We hear of “a very plucky young fellow” and are assured that “our boys rushed forward with splendid impetuosity.” In a well-written, detailed paragraph, explain what Fussell is arguing here, and link his arguments to the two propaganda posters and the two photographs on the following pages. You may also wish to refer to the clip from the film Gallipoli.