Conclusion

This short chapter reviews the overall arguments of the book. It concludes with the conjunction of contrasting and often competing concepts of nationalism and socialism in the Great War of 1914-18. Partly through a survey of soldier socialists, like Colonel John Ward, MP and union leader, and Mick Mannock, socialist air ace, it concludes that the majority of the British labour movement supported the war effort. It argues that in the long term the emergence of Labour as a party of government and the foundation of the welfare state, owed much to the experiences of citizen soldiers of nineteenth and twentieth centuries.