Calls to Arms: New Zealand Society and Commitment to the Great War
Steven Loveridge
Victoria University Press, $40.00.
ISBN 9780864739674.
Impressed by the Blackadder account of WWI when he was a child, Steven Loveridge grew up to write a PhD thesis followed by this book, whose aim is to explore not WWI as it was fought, but the relationship between the local war effort and New Zealand society. Loveridge argues that there was a broad cultural mobilisation in New Zealand in support of the war effort. This mobilisation was not imposed by elites but swelled from the ground up, buoyed by a suite of generally accepted cultural values, beliefs and sentiments. To make his case, Calls to Arms is organised into six chapters, supported by illustrations that survey selected areas where New Zealand society and culture intersected with mobilisation for the Great War.