why was it called " The Great War " ?

[Guest tommy5]

I am doing a research paper on the " Great War " and I cannot find a satisfactory reason for it being called " The Great War ". Please help me.

Thanks

[Landsturm]

It was biggest in human history so far... this is how I`d explain this to myself.

[Tony Lund]

It refers to the sheer scale of the war:

Great War / Gross Krieg / Grand Guerre

It was a massive event for everyone.

Tony.

[Moonraker]

During the war itself, it had several titles. A letter published in The Times on January 16, 1915 suggested "Great War". The paper itself initially opted for "European War". I gather that some British medals were inscribed "Great War" and that this term had been used to describe the Napoleonic War. In September 1918 Lt-Col Charles Repington (who, I think, had left the army under a cloud and became The Times' military correspondent) opted for "the First World War" and used this as a title for his memoirs published in 1920. (I've tried to check out The Times' letter via my local library website, but this seems to be down at present.)

[Tony Lund]

The British Victory medal is inscribed, “THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION 1914 - 1919”

Tony.

[Tom Morgan]

The January 1915 letter referred to by Moonraker was probably the one written by Arthur Hull Elwell. Mr. Elwell suggested "The Great War" as a name for the war, but he was not coining a phrase, just quoting a preferred alternative. He was replying to a letter of the previous day from Mr. A. C. Fox-Davis, the editor of "Burke's Peerage" who asked a question about what the war might be referred to in future. He noted that a lot of people were using the term "The European War" but pointed out that this might not be a completely satisfactory name as it excluded those non-European countries which were fighting in the war. It also excluded non-European theatres of war.

Very soon after the declaration of war, H. H. Wilson had already made up his mind. Part one of his magazine-work "The Great War - the Standard History of the all-European Conflict" hit the news-stands on Monday, 17th August, 1914.

Tom

[Moonraker]

The January 1915 letter referred to by Moonraker was probably the one written by Arthur Hull Elwell. Mr. Elwell suggested "The Great War" as a name for the war, but he was not coining a phrase, just quoting a preferred alternative. He was replying to a letter of the previous day from Mr. A. C. Fox-Davis, the editor of "Burke's Peerage" who asked a question about what the war might be referred to in future. He noted that a lot of people were using the term "The European War" but pointed out that this might not be a completely satisfactory name as it excluded those non-European countries which were fighting in the war. It also excluded non-European theatres of war. [end quote]

Tom beat me to it - I've now been able to access The Times archives via my local library website and was going to refer to the same two letters. I entered "Great War" in the arhcives search box, specifying all of 1915, and got 235 hits, plus more in advertisements. But most of these are probably lower-case references, ie "this great war that we". It's worth adding that Mr Elwell refers to another letter, from Mr Okey, in The Times of the 15th quoting extracts from some Italian documents, "I documenti della Grande Guerra".

[Tom Morgan]

Moonraker - yes - I think we were both looking up the same things at the same time and I saw that you were temporaily shut out of the local library portal so thought I would pitch in.

I agree - I also noticed that there were lots of references to great (lower case) wars going back decades. But "Great with a capital G" seems to be reserved for truly monumental things such as The Great Western Railway, The Great Lakes, The Great Barrier Reef, The Great Circle, The Great Fire of London etc. Against this background "The Great War" seems an inevitable choice of name.

I vote we all call it the GW from now on rather than the FWW or WW1!

Tom

[Steven Broomfield]

Personally, I never refer to it as anything other than The Great War, and I'm delighted to say that Mrs Broomfield and the two Misses Broomfield do likewise, which at 12 and 15 I think is an achievement of some sort! I'm not telling you Mrs Broomfield's age in case she reads this post.

[spike10764]

It was the most devastating conflict mankind had ever taken part in and for a time afterwards thought of as the war to end all wars( unfortunately this proved wrong). I think the phrase Great War probably was brought about by the realisation in 1915, that the scale of this conflict was already beyond any other and would continue to intensify for some time to come.

[paul guthrie]

For quick posting I usually use WW1 but I think Great War, certainly there had been nothing like it in scale or suffering though for suffering 30 years war may be right there.

It's likely apocryphal, but some American supposedly said he would never have known there was a WW1 except there was a WW2!

[Steven Broomfield]

For quick posting I usually use WW1 but I think Great War, certainly there had been nothing like it in scale or suffering though for suffering 30 years war may be right there.

It's likely apocryphal, but some American supposedly said he would never have known there was a WW1 except there was a WW2!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Going off-topic, didn't the film of the Play "The Madness of George III" have to be renamed "The Madness of King George" because the American market would want to know what happened to "The Madness of George" and "The Madness of George II"?

[zooloo]

Going off-topic, didn't the film of the Play "The Madness of George III" have to be renamed "The Madness of King George" because the American market would want to know what happened to "The Madness of George" and "The Madness of George II"?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes.

zoo

(Gosh that was a lot of effort

[Vincent Petty]

Actually NO!

Just another urban legend...

Check out snopes.com on the subject... The real story about the title of the film "The Madness of King George."

From the site --

Claim: The title of the 1995 British film The Madness of George III was changed to The Madness of King George by its distributors to avoid the possibility that American audiences would think it was the third installment of a "Madness of George" movie series.

Status: False.

Examples: "The Madness of King George" is the film adaptation of the Alan Bennett play "The Madness of George III," its title changed because the distributor was afraid Americans might think it a sequel.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[T]here is a delicious story circulating here -- an example of a "those-dumb-Yanks" story that some British people love to tell. It seems the film's title was changed from "The Madness of George III" because American audiences would think it was a sequel and not go to see it, assuming they had missed "I" and "II."

Origins: 1995 saw the release of the film The Madness of King George, a movie whose plot focused on the bizarre behavior of George III, the English monarch who was commonly said to have "gone mad" after losing England's North American colonies to the American Revolution. Modern medical experts now believe King George suffered from a metabolic disorder known as porphyria, and The Madness of King George deals with the political machinations that took place as the king's illness incapacitated him -- both physically and mentally -- for extended periods of time.

Coincident with the film's release came the rumor that its distributors had altered its title for the American market, changing The Madness of George III to The Madness of King George lest puzzled Americans think they had missed the first two entries of the series.

Let's clear up a couple of matters right off the bat: First of all, the film's distributors had nothing whatsoever to do with its title. Secondly, the title of the film was not changed, nor was it titled differently in America than it was in other parts of the world. The film was always called The Madness of King George, and it bore that title everywhere it was exhibited. The confusion came about because the film was based upon a play entitled The Madness of George III, but the film's producers opted to call their movie The Madness of King George instead.

Okay, but why the title switch between stage and screen versions? Did it have anything to do with a fear that Americans might think they'd missed two previous horror flicks about the madness of a character named George? Americans might be a bit gullible and naive at times, but Hollywood has had no compunctions about releasing non-sequel films bearing titles such as Leonard Part 6, creating sequels with names like Naked Gun 2 ½, or re-releasing the original Star Wars film with an addition to the opening screen crawl that identified it as "Episode IV." (No, Star Wars didn't bear this designation in its original release, so don't write to us to tell us it did.)

Although Nicholas Hytner, the film's director, admitted that the claim is "not totally untrue," he also divulged that the most important factor was that "it was felt necessary to get the word King into the title." The change was not primarily motivated by a perceived need to cater to Americans' alleged gullibility or ignorance, but by a prudent recognition of cultural differences between America and England. America has always been a nation without royalty, and thus using "King George" in the title established much more clearly to American audiences that this was a film about a monarch than "George III" would have. (Similarly, the 1997 UK film Mrs. Brown, about the relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown, was advertised under the name Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown in America, where the name "Mrs. Brown" would not readily have been recognized as a reference to Queen Victoria.)

Of course, you have to wonder what Americans who didn't recognize "George III" as the designation of a monarch would make of the film's title. The third part of something? Maybe. So in that sense, perhaps there is a little bit of truth to this one.

Last updated: 9 October 1999

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[Steven Broomfield]

Well, the last paragraph makes it clear it's not exactly a ringing denial, is it?

Anyway, why spoil a perfectly good urban myth with the truth?

[Paul Hederer]

Why would we recognize George III? We fought a war so we wouldn't have to recognize him

I think to Americans there is only one George, and we dumped his tea in the harbor--get beyond that and you'll lose us. All those nasty Roman numerals are sooo complicated.

Paul