The Lilac Connection.

In the thirteen years since I came to live in this house I’ve never seen the lilac trees so brimming with blossom as they are this year. I’m particularly fond of lilac, and yet, curious as it might seem, they always make me think of how attitudes to war changed between 1918 and 1939. It isn’t so curious actually, because attitudes to war – as with attitudes to so many things – are reflected in popular song.

In Britain during WWI, the popular songs were full of bonhomie and jingoistic pride. They were essentially jolly ditties put to music written in militaristic march time and carried the message: War is a great adventure and we’re all going to have a wonderful time being part of it. Hence the start of maybe the best known of them:

Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye

Cheerio

Here I go

On my way

But then, a mere 21 years after the cessation of what became known as ‘the last lot’, the next lot started while the country was still full of middle aged and elderly people who remembered what the last lot had really been like. They remembered the millions of young men from all sides who had died, or been blinded, or sent home crippled, or had their minds turned into a quagmire of nightmares, enervating anxieties, and a horror of loud noises. And I’ve little doubt that most of them knew full well that it was all to serve the politicians’ power games, and that the brave refrains of the popular songs were little more than propaganda to place a smoke screen over a highly dubious and inhumane cause.

So when the next lot came around the songs carried an entirely different tone. They were softer, gentler, still upbeat to encourage hope for a new spring and a more peaceful future, but with a hint of melancholy mixed in. And there was still an element of propaganda about them, but this time it was an attempt to promote public morale rather than persuade gullible young men that sinking waist deep in freezing mud while waiting to be visited by violent death and dismemberment was somehow a great adventure.

Dame Vera Lynn became famous for her rendition of probably the best known of them:

There’ll be bluebirds over

The white cliffs of Dover

Tomorrow, just you wait and see

But my own favourite is the one which begins:

We’ll gather lilacs in the spring again

We’ll walk together down an English lane

Until our hearts have learned to sing again…

That’s the connection.