| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Richard Schweitzer. The Cross and the Trenches: Religious Faith and Doubt among British and American Great War Soldiers. (Contributions in Military Studies, number 225.) Westport, Conn.: Praeger. 2003. Pp. xxxiii, 311. $74.95.
In this exciting and thoughtful book, Richard Schweitzer takes up two large problems in the historiography of World War I. The first is the trope of modernism. Prominent figures in British culture at the turn of the last century perceived a break with the past and disagreed only about when it began. Was it after the war, or before? Was it the publication of Ulysses (1922) or Mrs. Dalloway (1925), or was it Le sacre du printemps (1913) after all? Cultural historians have often taken the same approach. As Schweitzer shows, however, their focus on disjunctions (gaps, chasms, and discontinuities) has caused them to underestimate the force of tradition both during and after the war.	1
Schweitzer focuses on religious belief among men who fought in the war. He argues that the role of religion has been ignored, in part because of the "modernist" thesis and its claim that the war undermined organized religion and the moral certitude that sometimes came with it. Much evidence in this book shows that the contrary was often the case, and the evidence of religious belief is not unique. Other cultural institutions, including chivalry, shared religion's role in maintaining continuity between pre- and postwar life.	. . .

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