This Armistice Day, Let’s Salute Britain’s Attempt to Build a Country “Fit for Heroes”
The phrase “a country fit for heroes” expressed the spirit of social reform that was seen as WWI veterans’ just reward for service. It was a promise of health and well-being for everyone — a tonic against the forces of austerity that we should revive.
Wounded WWI soldiers in wheelchairs waving the Union Jack flag down the streets of London, 1916. (Daily Herald Archive / National Science & Media Museum / SSPL via Getty Images)
In a speech on November 24, 1918, Prime Minister David Lloyd George posed the following to his fellow Britons:
What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in. I am not using the word “heroes” in any spirit of boastfulness, but in the spirit of humble recognition of fact. I cannot think what these men have gone through. I have been there at the door of the furnace and witnessed it, but that is not being in it, and I saw them march into the furnace. There are millions of men who will come back. Let us make this a land fit for such men to live in. There is no time to lose. I want us to take advantage of this new spirit. Don’t let us waste this victory merely in ringing joybells.
The speech was delivered after a war that did not go according to plan. Intended to last just a few months (it was believed by many that it would be “over by Christmas”), World War I dragged on from July 28, 1914, to November 11, 1918. It was the first war in which the United Kingdom used mass conscription. Its troops suffered the harrowing conditions of the trenches, widespread disease, infestations, and low morale. Their lives were consumed by the industrialized war machine of mustard gas, heavy artillery, and tanks, ultimately costing Britain close to a million lives.
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