The principal consequence of war is death and, in the First World War, it occurred on an unprecedented scale. The fatal casualties sustained by the armies of the British Empire were approximately a million. These had to be buried – or remembered – as more than half the casualties were ‘missing’, their bodies never found or identified. This problem was new. But, in this World War, the whole population was involved and public opinion demanded that the dead had to be buried decently or their names recorded on permanent memorials.
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Solid stone and bronze memorials were, inevitably, and aftermath of war, so Country Life had to wait a few years before any could be illustrated. This 1926 Frontispiece shows the newly unveiled Guards’ Memorial opposite Horse Guards, Whitehall, London, designed by H. Chalton Bradshaw.
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This studio photograph with the poem Requiem seems as much a comment on the passing of the year as on the trauma caused by the war.
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Those touched by the war were as busy creating private memorials as public ones, although the former are largely forgotten. This 1921 advertisement offered imposing frames for these personal but official mementoes of the war.