Another reflection I made
at the First World War symposium was that my grandchildren presumably
don't know anything about it.
Of course, I didn't know
much about it when I was a child, once again, because it was totally
eclipsed by the 1917 revolution and the subsequent Communist coup
that eventually harvested more lives than the Great War on both sides – but our
history books didn't tell us about it. Our history books told us that
the war was instigated by world imperialism, and it was a blessing
for Russia that it finished off the Russian empire and established
paradise on earth.
I don't know what my
Swedish grandchildren's history books tell them about the Great War.
Probably a short paragraph with a blurry black-and-white picture
explaining that somewhere, far away, there was a war that Sweden did
not participate in. Sweden had its own problems then. It was an
impoverished country, and a third of its population had emigrated.
That story takes many pages in the history books. I guess it's
inevitable, because history is always written from a particular
perspective, and what is major for one history writer is a footnote
for another. Yet being a displaced hedgehog, I cannot help asking
myself: can I do something to make my grandchildren aware of the
Great War that did not affect their forefathers? And do I want to?
Why would they care? And then I think about red poppies, and the war
monuments by the Cambridge railway station and in our little village,
and lists of perished soldiers in King's Chapel, and yes, I want my
grandchildren to know about it, just as I want British children to
know about it. And history books won't help. You need the power of
fiction to get the message across. Or rather, get the feeling across.
And this is why I have
sent copies of War Horse to my grandchildren and encouraged
their parents to take them to see the film. And I will read the books
that I learned about at the symposium and see whether I want my
grandchildren to read them.
Most of all, I wish
somebody would write a book about a Swedish child who by serendipity
gets caught in the Great War.
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