Altogether a rather odd book. Page 6 talks of German legions overrunning Belgium and France, carrying destruction wherever they marched. The body of the book is mainly made up of short articles on left hand pages, illustrated by right hand pages, with the illustrations being an entertaining mixtures of cartoons, portraits and other photographs from newspapers and magazines of the day. Something over half it covers the war which started in the August of that year.
I read of the return of Dr. Mawson from the Antarctica. Of the occupation of Vera Cruz by the US army. Of the granting of Home Rule to Ireland, with actual enactment being postponed sine die. I can admire a photograph of the Archduke Ferdinand and his family, with his wife being a more handsome specimen by today's standards than the husband, decorated as he is with the large moustache of yesterday. I can read the King's message to his troops on their departure. Sir John French's first dispatch. Quite a few pages given over to German atrocities, complete with an elevating cartoon from Punch. An even more elevating water colour (by George Soper) of a wounded Highlander's self sacrifice.
So an odd book, but also a record of its time. A record which has survived all the culls and remains in its place on the bottom shelf of the front room bookcase.
So I was pleased earlier this year, in the course of the visit to Exeter noticed at reference 1, to buy the companion volume from 1911. Once the property of one E. G. Chandler and originally sold by a discount bookseller at the Victoria Library of Kettering (the place where a better class of playground equipment comes from). I learn that these books were directed at the market for Christmas presents for expatriates, eager for news from home, so it is just possible that the E. G. Chandler turned up by google (see reference 2) is a descendant.
Same format as the 1914 volume, a little more staid and a little grander, more a relic of the age before the deluge. We have, for example, most of the illustrations stuck in, onto black backing pages, rather than being printed directly onto the white paper of the book proper. We get such an illustration, in colour, to illustrate the article about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. (I once use to own a comic novel by Wolf Mankowitz about this very theft, a novel which has not, unlike the 1914 book, survived all the culls. Indeed, it may have been an early victim). We have an obituary article for Sir Robert Hart, whose career was among the most remarkable ever known, and who went on to know fame in the form of a wikipedia article in his honour. Quite a lot of space is given over to the coronation of King George and Queen Mary. This being followed by a rather odd photograph of H.R.H the Prince of Wales in his investiture robes. The investiture took place, it seems, immediately after the state visit of King George & Queen Mary to Ireland (see page 104), in the course of which I read that Irish hospitality and warmth of heart were expressed with their wonted freedom.
So another record of its time, and a fitting companion to the first. What price a complete set from ebay?
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/isca-dvmnoniorvm.html.
Reference 2: http://egchandler.com/.
PS 1: my understanding is that the current line is that there were indeed German atrocities in Belgium at the start of the war, lurid contemporary coverage notwithstanding.
PS 2: further to reference 1, I now find that I have been to a production of Timon of Athens at the Globe, which I had completely forgotten about. See reference 3. Slightly depressing to be reminded of how things which warranted elaborate notice at the time, a paltry seven years ago, had vanished from accessible memory.
Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=timon+of+athens.
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