Early Problems, 1914

Abstract

‘The men have gone, the villages are deserted.’ The image of a vast and sudden depopulation of country areas during the month of August was presented in the local press with an air of dramatic finality. ‘So many men have left’, wrote La Croix de l’Isère on 28 August, ‘that an atmosphere of sadness and doom pervades the small towns and villages of the Dauphiné.’¹ The Rector of the Academy of Grenoble reported that ‘all along the valley of the Isère the once familiar shouts and cries of farmers going to market, of animated “farm talk” in cafés and market squares has given way to an anxious silence maintained by women, children and old men’.² It was as if all the prevarications of the press during the last days of peace had given way to a full recognition of the inherent sadness of the situation. France would be deprived of all her able-bodied young men for the duration.