The Inconvenient Truth

During 1914, the world was thrown into chaos with the beginning of World War One. Throughout this war, many soldiers were given the opportunity to write letters home in an effort to raise overall morale. These letters are crucial to historians because during those times no one really knew what the war was truly like because the government often manufactured the whole concept of war so that the public only knew of positive details. Though these letters are vital, they are often limited and questionable in their accuracy to depict the true image of war because of the censorship put into place by the government for both civilian and military postal services. These services were installed in an effort to protect military secrets as claimed by the government, but in reality all they do is keep the public in the dark about the true image of war. Therefore, whenever there was sensitive material in the letters, they were quickly disposed of. However, although there was a strict enforcement upon letters, they still proved invaluable. Though they may not give us any details about the war, they do offer us the details on how the soldiers, the actual participants, felt about it. This is demonstrated in letters such as one written by Canadian, John Ellis, to his wife after the Great Canadian Advance where he writes, “I do hope and pray it will soon be all over as I don’t want to see anything like it again.”[i] Such phrases are what assist historians in the interpretation of letters that are then used to enhance our simple canned history.