The Great War Brings It Home: The Natural Reconstruction of an Unnatural Existence

The Great War Brings It Home: The Natural Reconstruction of an Unnatural Existence

Author: Hargrave, John, 1894-1982

Year: 1919

The Great War Brings It Home contained a vast, unsynthesized outpouring of ideas and proposals for the reform of society and the creation of a new and better world. The book was a concerted attempt to place woodcraft scouting in a social and philosophical context. It arose directly from the experience of wartime and was one of the first attempts published in England to delineate a response to that experience and imbue it with new meaning. The book offered the chance of rescuing some sense from the chaos and some positive future principles drawn from the destruction of the past. It provided both a wider purpose for a particular form of scouting and suggested a vital role for the individuals committed to it, welding together the objective circumstances of the time with the experiences of individuals. It negotiated a version of reality which made sense to the reader and went beyond that to identify the essential problems which that version of reality suggested. It then returned to an established Hargrave theme - the woodcraft way of life - as a solution to these problems. - Social Movements and Their Supporters The Greenshirts in England By M. Drakeford, 1997