death - the great war and the flu pandemic of 1918 as context for doctrine and covenants 138

8/8/2019 Death - The Great War and the Flu Pandemic of 1918 as Context for Doctrine and Covenants 138

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BYU Studies 6, no. 1 (2 7)

At the dedication o BYU’s new Joseph F. Smith Building on September2 , 2 5, President Gordon B. Hinckley said o President Joseph F.

Smith, “It is my opinion that no man, save the Prophet Joseph only, has hada greater and better understanding o the origin and history o the Churchand o its doctrines—not only concerning this li e but also concerning theeternities.” O the “Vision o the Redemption o the Dead,” which com-prises Doctrine and Covenants 138, he said, “It is a document without par-allel. . . . Tere is nothing quite like it in all o our sacred literature.” Andin the dedicatory prayer he said o President Smith, “His mind . . . reachedinto the depths o the things o eternity, the great spiritual architecture o Ty divine and eternal plan.”

Tis article is an e ort to understand more ully the context o D&C138—our only passage o canonized scripture rom the twentieth century.

Te discussion is necessarily somewhat provisional. We do not know, aswe do or the Word o Wisdom, or example, the immediate circumstancesthat led to this revelation. But it is illuminating to consider it in termso biographical detail and contemporary events ( g. 1). It is worth ask-ing—even i a complete answer remains elusive—why this revelation wasgiven just when it was.

First, a word about “context.” As used here, the term is meant to sug-gest the attendant environment—events, conditions, widespread concernsand sentiments that bear upon the passage at hand. Te term does not

1. Gordon B. Hinckley, “Remarks at the Dedication o the Joseph F. SmithBuilding at Brigham Young University,” September 2 , 2 5, 3, 4, 5, pd availableat http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1497.

“Te Great Worldo the Sp r ts o the Dead”Death, the Great War, and the 1918 InfuenzaPandem c as Context or Doctr ne and Covenants 138

George S. ate



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How did I, a medievalist, come to be so

haunted by the Great War? As a young manI was drawn to the work o soldier-poet Wil-

red Owen, his musical ear and tonal inno- vations, and the underlying compassiono his poetry. In my civilization courses, Iwould touch upon the war as a backdrop toEliot’s Te Waste Land and other modernisttexts. But about a decade ago, two works

especially started me on a journey I had notanticipated: Paul Fussell’s Te Great War and Modern Memory and Vera Brittain’s

estament o Youth. I began seriously to study the Great War, to visitbattle elds and memorials while in Europe, to hunt up homes andgraves o poets and other gures I had come to admire. In the late199 s, I developed a course on the subject or London Study Abroad.Tat seminar has brought me greater satis action than any othercourse I’ve taught. Te materials have an unmatched immediacy and poignancy, and visits to battle elds and memorials in Francehave overwhelmed my students and me with loss and reverence.

While in the midst o my preparation, I happened to read againD&C 138, and I was struck by its date: October 3, 1918. I reread it inthe context o the war, the u pandemic, and then Joseph F. Smith’sown abundant experience with grie . I had long admired Joseph F.Smith: My priesthood line o authority comes through him; heordained my great-grand ather, George F. Richards, an Apostle in19 6. From my ather I have a rst edition o Gospel Doctrine (1919).While a graduate student I came across a volume o Orson F. Whit-ney’s poetry, handsomely bound in green leather and hand inscribedas a gi rom President Smith to Cornell University Library. Itpleases me to see his name commemorated in BYU’s new Joseph F.Smith Building, with its architectural evocation o light and learn-ing. I remember my excitement when the Vision o the Redemptiono the Dead was added to the canon in the 197 s, and as I continue

to see how it resonates within its various interrelated contexts, my gratitude or its timeliness and timelessness has grown.

George S. Tate



VWorld o the Spirits o the Dead

necessarily imply causality. Indeed, as historian o ideas Quentin Skin-ner reminds us, it is problematic when “‘context’ mistakenly gets treatedas the determinant o what it said” rather than as a ramework. Tisarticle considers several events and conditions, large and small—somethat precede the vision, some that are concurrent with it, and some that

ollow it. Some conditions, such as Joseph F. Smith’s own grie , may havein uenced him to meditate on the realm o the dead; others, such as the

u pandemic, which reached its height shortly a er the vision, are unlikely to have directly caused his meditation. Te prophet was aware o most o these contexts—some acutely so; o others (especially o subsidiary mat-ters which I discuss, like Prince Max’s telegram or C. S. Lewis’s musingon 1 Peter) he was not. We should, however,consider not only to whom but by whom therevelation was given. And while it would bepresumptuous to make assertions about theworkings o God’s mind or will—except toacknowledge that he sees all that was, is, andwill be, and that he loves his children—wecan at least recognize and be grate ul orthe timeliness o the vision in addressing

pro ound, worldwide needs. For when this vision is read against the backdrop o thecontexts discussed here—and perhaps oth-ers not dealt with—it resonates in ways itmay not otherwise.

Te vision that became D&C 138 wasreceived on October 3, 1918, the day be orethe Church’s general con erence. President

Smith ( g. 2) had been in poor health or

2. Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History o Ideas,”in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics , ed. James ully (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 64; see also 58: “I it is true that therelations between the context o any given statement . . . and the statement itsel do take the orm . . . o a relation between antecedent causal conditions and theirresults, then it is clear that the independent li e o ideas in history must be cor-respondingly in danger.”

3. Even while responding to the whisperings o the Spirit, a prophet’s under-standing, as Mormon recognizes, is necessarily limited in relation to the Lord’s:“And I do this or a wise purpose; or thus it whispereth me, according to theworkings o the Spirit o the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know allthings; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; where ore, he workethin me to do according to his will” (W o M 1:7).

Fig. 2. Joseph F. Smith. Cour-tesy LDS Church Archives,Salt Lake City. © Intellectual

Reserve, Inc.



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some time, and it came as “a complete surprise to the large congregation”when he entered the Salt Lake abernacle or the rst session. In his weak-ened condition he spoke only brie y. Te ront page o the Deseret Evening News or October 4 summarizes his comments. He re erred to his illnessand said: “I have not lived alone these ve months. I have dwelt in the spirito prayer, o supplication, o aith and o determination; and I have had my communications with the Spirit o the Lord continuously.”

Te prophet shared the vision o October 3 with his son Joseph Field-ing, who took it in dictation immediately ollowing the close o con er-ence. As the headnote to section 138 indicates, the text was presented onOctober 31 to President Smith’s counselors, to the Quorum o the welve,and to the Patriarch o the Church and unanimously accepted by them.President Smith died on November 19, and the text was rst published inthe Deseret Evening Newson November 3 under the title “Vision o theRedemption o the Dead” ( g. 3). It appeared therea er in the December1918 issue o Te Improvement Era. Tough it was accepted as authoritative

4. “I Have Dwelt in the Spirit o Prayer,” Improvement Era 22 (November1918): 8 . Both James E. almage and Emmeline B. Wells noted this surprise intheir journals. Richard Neitzel Holzap el and R. Q. Shupe, Joseph F. Smith: Por-

trait o a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2 ), 225.5. Joseph F. Smith, 89th Semi-Annual Con erence o Te Church o Jesus Christ

o Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Te Church o Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints, 1918), 2; Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Li e o Joseph F. Smith(Salt LakeCity: Deseret News Press, 1938), 466. Despite his ill health, President Smith did,in act, continue to attend the con erence, coming brie y to the pulpit our times:on the rst day to endorse a talk by President Penrose (Charles W. Penrose, 89thSemi-Annual Con erence,21); on the second to renounce as spurious the report o a revelation he was supposed to have received in French some years earlier (add-ing, interestingly or what was to ollow, “When the Lord reveals something to me,I will consider the matter with my brethren, and when it becomes proper, I will letit be known to the people, and not otherwise,” Joseph F. Smith, 89th Semi-Annual Con erence,57); on the third to ask or a vote on the purchase o liberty bonds withChurch unds (Joseph F. Smith, 89th Semi-Annual Con erence,79); and nally toexpress regret that the con erence needed to be adjourned (Joseph F. Smith, 89thSemi-Annual Con erence,139).

6. Smith, Li e o Joseph F. Smith, 466.7. “Vision o the Redemption o the Dead,”Deseret Evening News, November

3 , 1918, section 4, 6; Joseph F. Smith, “Vision o the Redemption o the Dead,”Improvement Era 22 (December 1918): 166–7 . Te vision was also printed in theJanuary 1919 editions o theRelie Society Magazine, Utah Genealogical and His-torical Magazine, Young Women’s Journal, and Millennial Star . In the interveningyears be ore it was canonized in 1976, the vision was perhaps most accessible inJoseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine: Selections rom the Sermons and Writings o Joseph F. Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1919), 472–76. On the publication



Fig. 3. Te Vision o the Redemption o the Dead was rst published in the Deseret Evening Newson November 3 , 1918. Courtesy Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham YoungUniversity.



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and occasionally cited, the visiondid not make its way into thescriptural canon until 1976, whenit was added (along with the pres-ent D&C section 137) as a supple-ment to the Pearl o Great Price.Tree years later, on June 6, 1979,the First Presidency announcedthat it would become section 138o the Doctrine and Covenants; it

rst appeared as we have it in the1981 edition.

Biographical Context

Let us rst consider a bio-graphical context or section 138.Early in 1918, Joseph F. Smith su -

ered a staggering blow. His eldestson Hyrum Mack ( g. 4), an Apos-tle then orty- ve years old, diedon January 23 o complications

rom a ruptured appendix. Presi-dent Smith wrote in his journal:“My soul is rent asunder. My heartis broken, and utters or li e! O

my sweet son, my joy, my hope! . . . O God, help me!” A er his sons JosephFielding and David Asael took him to view Hyrum’s body, President Smithcon ded again in his journal:

At the noon hour David and Joseph took me to Hyrum’s where I oncemore kissed the lips o my boy—whose lips I have never ailed to kisssince his birth whenever we have met, or parted until now—they did not,

or the rst time in all his li e, kiss me back again! O how bitter is this

history, see Robert L. Millet, “Te Vision o the Redemption o the Dead,” inHearken, O Ye People: Discourses on the Doctrine and Covenants, wel h Sperry Symposium (Sandy, Utah: Randall Books, 1984), 259, 263–64. It was Elder Bruce R.McConkie who divided the text into verses and wrote the headnote.

8. Smith, Li e o Joseph F. Smith,474 (only a portion o the lament is quotedhere); this passage is also quoted in the Priesthood and Relie Society manual

eachings o Presidents o the Church: Joseph F. Smith(Salt Lake City: Te Churcho Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints, 1998), 4 7.

Fig. 4. Le to right: Hyrum Mack Smith,his son Joseph, and Joseph F. Smith.

Hyrum died the same year his atherreceived the Vision o the Redemptiono the Dead. Courtesy LDS ChurchArchives. © Intellectual Reserve, Inc.



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beaming little black eyes sparkling with love or papa; . . . but a vacantlittle chair . . . and only the one desolate thought orcing its crushingleaden weight upon my heart— she is not here, she is gone!

Joseph F. Smith composed commemorative poems or his deceasedchildren and grieved deeply over their loss. His memory o each remained vivid and a ectionate. He continued to mark important anniversaries longa er their deaths, noting in 1916, or example, that orty-nine years hadpassed since Mercy’s birth. Finally, just days be ore the vision o October 3,Hyrum Mack’s widow, Ida Bowman Smith, died o heart ailure on Sep-tember 24, six days a er giving birth to a son, whom she had named a erhis deceased ather.

In the abundant literature o mourning, there are ew expressionsmore poignant than those o Joseph F. Smith. Death had surrounded himthroughout his li e, and the longings these deaths awakened could not be

ully soothed in mortality.Te death o his daughter-in-law just be ore con erence could not but

renew his grie or his son. Te prophet, asking himsel what purpose thedeath o the young Apostle might serve, must have ound consolation inthe words o the vision that now comprise verse 57: “I beheld that the aith-

ul elders o this dispensation, when they depart rom mortal li e, continue

their labors in the preaching o the gospel o repentance . . . in the greatworld o the spirits o the dead.” It must also have brought him com ort tosee among the noble and great ones his ather Hyrum (D&C 138:53), a erwhom he had named his son and a er whom in turn his new orphanedgrandson was also named. (Some our months earlier, on June 27, 1918, theanniversary o the Martyrdom, President Smith, surrounded by his amily,had dedicated a monument to the Patriarch Hyrum Smith in the Salt LakeCemetery.) On a personal level, the spirit o Elijah, re erred to in verse 47,by which the hearts o athers are bound to children and those o childrento athers, is thus immediate and direct in President Smith’s li e.

Te Great War

Te second, multi aceted context dominates most o the ront page o the Deseret Evening News rom October 4, 1918 ( g. 5). It is the Great War

12. Smith,Li e o Joseph F. Smith, 455–56, emphasis in original.13. Smith,Li e o Joseph F. Smith, 455.14. “Beloved Woman Hears Call o Death,” Deseret Evening News, Septem-

ber 25, 1918, 5. Re erring to the “great blow” the death o her husband had beento her, the article continues: “With the advent o her little son, named or his

ather Hyrum Mack, her riends hoped that the keenness o her grie might beassuaged.”



Fig. 5. Deseret Evening News,October 4, 1918, the day a er Joseph F. Smith received his vision. World War I and the in uenza pandemic occupy the paper’s headlines; the twoscourges together made 1918 one o the most atal years in history. Courtesy Harold B.Lee Library, BYU.



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(or World War I). From the page’s various headlines one might orm theimpression that the Germans and Austrians were retreating as ast as they could. Te Macedonian ront had indeed collapsed, but resistance else-where was erce and desperate, and some costly battles lay just ahead. Tegreat American battle, the Meuse-Argonne o ensive, was just beginning,and what came to be known as the Lost Battalion was right in the midsto its devastating week-long ordeal. Still, we are just thirty-eight days romthe end o the war.

From its inception in late summer 1914, President Smith had watchedthe war rom a ar with concern and sadness. At the outset he had per-sonal cause to be anxious as well: his son Hyrum Mack—the same whodied in 1918—was serving as the European Mission president at the timeand, while traveling in Germany when the war broke out, was arrestedbrie y on suspicion o spying or the British. In a Christmas message thatDecember, the First Presidency wrote:

15. Te relationship o D&C 138 to the Great War has been discussed inRichard E. Bennett, “‘And I Saw the Hosts o the Dead, Both Small and Great’:Joseph F. Smith, World War I, and His Visions o the Dead,” Religious Educator 2, no. 1 (2 1): 1 4–25. I learned o Bennett’s study only a er having twice taught

D&C 138 in seminars on the Great War and modernism. While our topics sharemuch in common, our approaches di er. Bennett reviews Joseph F. Smith’s state-ments on the war and provides a help ul survey o re ections on the meaning o the war at its end rom religious leaders o many aiths: Anglican, Catholic, Amer-ican Protestant, and Jewish; he also considers President Smith’s earlier discourseson death and the spirit world during the war years (April 1916, February and April1918). A related study is his “‘How Long, Oh Lord, How Long?’ James E. almageand the Great War,” Religious Educator 3, no. 1 (2 2): 86–1 1.

16. A good general history o the war is John Keegan, Te First World War (New York: Knop , 1999). On the American involvement, see David M. Kennedy,Over Here: Te First World War and American Society (New York: Ox ord Univer-sity Press, 2 4); and John S. D. Eisenhower, Yanks: Te Epic Story o the American Army in World War I (New York: Free Press, 2 1).

17. Hyrum Mack Smith served as president o the European Mission, head-quartered in Liverpool, rom 1913 to 1916. At the time the war broke out in lateJuly 1914, he was traveling in Germany with Hyrum W. Valentine, president o the Swiss-German Mission (Basel). Suspected o spying or the British, they werearrested brie y and were only able to return to Switzerland on August 9, andElder Smith not to Liverpool until August 21. Hyrum Mack Smith to the FirstPresidency, in Deseret Evening News, September 8, 1914, 1 and 3, describing theoutbreak o war, his di culty getting out o Germany and back to England, andwhat was being done or the missionaries’ sa ety; compare Je rey L. Anderson,“Mormons and Germany, 1914–1933: A History o the Church o Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints in Germany and Its Relationship with the German Govern-ments rom World War I to the Rise o Hitler” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young



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churned up by artillery, was trans ormed into what Mary Borden called“Te vast liquid grave o our armies.” Tousands simply sank to oblivion.

olkien’s horrible Dead Marshes in Te wo owers , in which Sam, alling,sees “dead things, dead aces in the water,” come directly rom his experi-ence at the Front.

In many places the devastation can still be seen on the landscape:craters rom mines (the one at La Boisselle is three hundred eet wide andninety eet deep), a land pocked by artillery, abandoned trenches. Not eventhe grass Carl Sandberg writes o can hide the destruction ( g 6).

Like the valley o bones Ezekiel saw (to which D&C 138:43 re ers), theland is a boneyard still. O en armers turn up bones o the dead as they plow. In 2 1 a shallow grave containing twenty British soldiers, their armslinked together, was uncovered near Arras. Munitions rom the war con-tinue to kill: in 1991, or example, thirty-six people died and another y-one were injured rom happening upon hitherto unexploded shells.

21. Mary Borden, “Te Song o the Mud,” line 34, in Lines o Fire: WomenWriters o World War I , ed. Margaret R. Higonnet (New York: Plume, 1999), 5 7.

22. Barton Friedman cites analogs to Sam’s seeing “dead things, dead acesin the water” (J. R. R. olkien, Te wo owers , [New York: Houghton Mifin,1988], 235) rom Sieg ried Sassoon, Max Plowman, and John Mase eld in “ olkienand David Jones: Te Great War and the War o the Ring,” CLIO 11, no. 2 (1982):115–16. More generally, see John Garth, olkien and the Great War: Te Treshold o Middle-earth(Boston: Houghton Mifin, 2 3). In a rare indication o in u-ence, olkien did acknowledge that “the Dead Marshes and the approaches to theMorannon owe something to Northern France a er the Battle o the Somme.”Te Letters o J. R. R. olkien,ed. Humphrey Carpenter with Christopher olkien(Boston: Houghton Mifin, 2 ), 3 3.

23. Carl Sandberg, “Grass,” in Te Penguin Book o First World War Poetry , 2drev. ed., ed. Jon Silkin (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1996), 235.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.Shovel them under and let me work—

I am the grass; I cover all.And pile them high at GettysburgAnd pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.Shovel them under and let me work.

wo years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:What place is this?Where are we now?I am the grass.Let me work.

24. Andrew Loudon, “Rest in Peace, Chums,” Daily Mirror, March 22, 2 2, 21.25. Donovan Webster, A ermath: Te Remnants o War (New York: Vintage

Books, 1996), 19. Since France’s Départment du Déminage (munitions disposal




Te pervasiveness and ubiquity o death were overwhelming. IsaacRosenberg describes the Front as “Dead Man’s Dump,” with “wheelslurch[ing] over the sprawled dead.” Wil red Owen writes to his mothero “the distortion o the dead” and o their “unburiable bodies.” NoMan’s Land, the space between the opposing trenches, was dotted with

unit) was established in 1946, more than 63 bomb disposal experts have beenkilled while trying to clear the land o explosives rom World Wars I and II. Telargest single item is unexploded artillery shells rom World War I, which com-prise eighty percent o the ordnance encountered. Webster, A ermath, 19, 35.

26. Isaac Rosenberg, “Dead Man’s Dump,” line 7, in Silkin, Penguin Book o First World War Poetry , 221.

27. “I suppose I can endure cold, and atigue, and the ace-to- ace death, aswell as another; but extra or me there is the universal pervasion o Ugliness.Hideous landscapes . . . everything unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion o the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug-outs all day, all night, themost execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious. But tosit with them all day, all night . . . [Owen’s ellipsis] and a week later to come back and nd them still sitting there, in motionless groups, HA is what saps the‘soldierly spirit.’” Wil red Owen to Susan Owen, February 4, 1917, letter 482 in

Fig. 6. Preserved battle eld and trenches rom the Battle o the Somme in theNew oundland Memorial Park, Beaumont-Hamel, Northern France. Courtesy George S. ate.



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unrecoverable corpses, some perpetually suspended in the barbed wire.As the war went on, one could hardly dig anywhere without uncoveringdecay. As a de ense mechanism, some became numb to death, or assumeda kind o bravado, joking about body parts projecting rom trench wallsor a corpse’s macabre grin, but most could not, however much they may have wished to. It is no wonder that Charles Sorley begins a sonnet:“When you see millions o the mouthless dead / Across your dreams inpale battalions go.” Such dreams o en haunted the soldiers, even in day-light. In London on leave, or example, Sieg ried Sassoon thought he sawcorpses on Piccadilly. 0

Seeing what lay about them, and imagining their own ate, poets(imitating A. E. Housman and Tomas Hardy) sometimes adopted theperspective o the dead, speaking rom graves. Perhaps the most amousexample is John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields,” the second stanza o whichreads:

We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, elt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders elds.

It is the perspective . S. Eliot later adopts at the beginning o Te WasteLand (1922), or it is only rom under ground that the speaker can say para-doxically “Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in orget ul snow.”

Wil red Owen: Collected Letters, ed. Harold Owen and John Bell (London: Ox ordUniversity Press, 1967), 431–32.

28. On the psychological impact o trench war are, see Eric J. Leed,No Man’sLand: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge, N.Y.: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1979); see also Denis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers o the Great War (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1979), chapters 8, 11, and 12 especially.

29. Charles Hamilton Sorley, “When You See Millions o the MouthlessDead,” in Silkin, Penguin Book o First World War Poetry, 89.

3 . Robert Graves,Good-bye to All Tat , 2d rev. ed. (New York: Anchor, 1957),256.

31. John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” in Silkin, Penguin Book o First World War Poetry , 85. Housman uses the perspective o the grave in “Is My eam Plow-ing” ( A Shropshire Lad , poem 27), Hardy in “Channel Firing” and “Ah, Are YouDigging on My Grave?”

32. . S. Eliot,Te Waste Land, lines 5–6, in . S. Eliot, Te Complete Poemsand Plays 19 9–195 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1952), 37; seeMichael H. Levenson, A Genealogy o Modernism(Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1984), 172: “Te eye here sees rom the point o view o someone(or some thing) that is buried. . . . Te opening o Te Waste Land looks at spring

rom the point o view o a corpse.”




In the end, seventy million men took up arms. Tere were over thirty million military casualties, including over nine million dead. Nine mil-lion! Such numbers roll easily o the tongue, and we can become inured tothem in the way Kubrick parodies in the 1964 lm Dr. Strangelove: “ en,twenty million tops, depending on the breaks.” On only the rst day o thebattle o the Somme, on a ourteen-mile segment o the overall ve hun-dred-mile Western Front, the British su ered nearly sixty thousand casu-alties on a single day: July 1, 1916. Tat is more than one casualty or every second o daylight. It remains the deadliest day in British military history.

Te Tiepval Memorial to the Missing o the Somme ( g. 7) bears,inscribed on its sixteen great piers, the names o 73,412 British soldierswho died in the battle o the Somme and have no known graves. Itscounterpart in Flanders is the Menin Gate at Ypres. On its inner walls,recesses, and outer porticos are inscribed the names o 54,896 Britishsoldiers o the Ypres salient whose graves are unknown. Every evening ateight, buglers still play the Last Post in honor o the dead. But the memo-rial turned out to be too small, and another 34,984 names o the missing

rom the same salient are inscribed on the semicircular wall and alcoveso yne Cot Cemetery near Passchendaele. On the night the Menin Gatewas dedicated, Australian war artist Will Longsta had a reverie in which

he imagined the allen soldiers o the Ypres salient rising rom the groundand passing into eternity—a reverie he then painted.

Such memorials are related to a theme o the period—that o absence.Tucydides describes the Greek practice o carrying “one empty bierdecked or the missing, that is, or those whose bodies could not be recov-ered” (2.34). With respect to the Great War, this idea mani ests itsel in various ways: or example in sculpted representations o soldiers carryingan empty bier, at times accompanied by a quotation rom chapter 44 o

33. In order to give my students a sense o the British losses on the rst day o the Battle o the Somme, I once took them over to the Lavell Edwards Stadiumat BYU and read them an eyewitness account o the attack. As we looked at rowupon row o the stadium, the sixty thousand-plus empty seats stared back at us. Ittakes some time just to walk by and count o one thousand; the prospect o going

urther was daunting.34. Tat same day, an LDS soldier was killed on the German side o the line at

Mametz at the southern end o the Somme sector. Wilhelm Kessler, who had beenserving in the Swiss-German Mission as editor o Der Stern when war broke out,had enlisted in the German army and, previously twice wounded, had receivedthe Iron Cross. His mission president, Hyrum W. Valentine, spoke o his deathat April general con erence 1917, re erring to him as “a aith ul Latter-day Saint, asoldier o the Cross though enlisted or the time being with his country’s army.”Anderson, “Brothers across Enemy Lines,” 128, 13 –31.



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Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach): “And some there be, which have no memorial;who are perished, as though they had never been” (verse 9); or again in themost important British memorial o all: the Cenotaph, or empty tomb, inWhitehall, which has been the ocal point o mourning and remembrancesince it was rst erected. Here the dead are honored by silence, itsel anabsence. When the Unknown Warrior was brought with great ceremony to be buried in Westminster Abbey in November 192 , over one million

mourners ooded past the Cenotaph and the warrior’s tomb ( g. 8).Virginia Wool also evokes the war and its devastation through

absence: the empty room at the end o Jacob’s Room, where we learnthrough his absence that Jacob Flanders has died in the war; the bracketed

35. It is rom later in the same chapter (verse 14) that Rudyard Kipling, atthe invitation o architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, chose the phrase inscribed on thealtar-like Great War Stone at each o the larger British military cemeteries and atmemorials like Tiepval: “Teir Name Liveth or Evermore.” Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: Te First World War and English Culture (New York: Atheneum, 1991),271. Kipling, whose only son, John, was among the missing at Loos in September1915 and who searched in vain or his son’s grave, became a strong advocate o memorials to the missing. 75 Years o the Menin Gate & 25, th Last Post: EnglishGuide to the emporary Exhibition (Ypres: In Flanders Fields Museum, 2 1), 4.

Fig. 7. Piers with inscribed names and the altar-like Great War Stone, TiepvalMemorial to the Missing o the Somme, Northern France. Courtesy George S. ate.




re erence to Andrew Ramsey’s death rom shell re, narrated in an empty house in the middle “ ime Passes” section o o the Lighthouse.

Death itsel was an absence. (Remember the “vacant little chair” inJoseph F. Smith’s lament or his daughter.) For the bereaved whose kins-men were among the missing or had distant graves in oreign elds, eventhe rituals o closure that revolve around a body were not available. And the sheer, overwhelming quantity o death awakened individualand communal grie on an unprecedented scale. With loss came ques-tions: What is the ate o the dead? Do they continue to exist? Is there li ea er death? Will I see my loved ones again? Te world was dense withloss and, as soldier journalist Stephen Graham wrote upon revisitingthe battle elds in 192 , “Tere is a pull rom the other world, a drag on theheart and spirit.”

One orm the quest or consolation and answers took was spiritual-ism, the people involved o en believing themselves to be responding toe orts o their dead to contact and to com ort them. As Sir Arthur ConanDoyle wrote:

In the presence o an agonized world, hearing every day o the deathso the ower o our race in the rst promise o their un ul lled youth,seeing around one the wives and mothers who had no clear conception

whither their loved ones had gone to, I seemed suddenly to see . . . that itwas really something tremendous, a breaking down o the walls betweentwo worlds, a direct undeniable message rom beyond, a call o hope ando guidance to the human race at the time o its deepest afiction. 0

36. See Allyson Booth, Postcards rom the renches: Negotiating the Spacebetween Modernism and the First World War (New York: Ox ord University Press,1996), 3, 44–49; and Allyson Booth, “Te Architecture o Loss: eaching Jacob’sRoom as a War Novel,” in Re:Reading, Re:Writing, Re: eaching Virginia Wool :Selected Papers rom the Fourth Annual Con erence on Virginia Wool ,ed. EileenBarrett and Patricia Cramer (New York: Pace University Press, 1995), 65–72.

37. Te British ban, beginning in 1915, on repatriation o the war deadincreased the sense o death as absence. On the relationship o absence to com-memoration, especially in gurative sculpture, in which the sculpted body issurrogate or the absent corpse, see Catherine Moriarty, “Te Absent Dead andFigurative First World War Memorials,” ransactions o the Ancient MonumentsSociety39 (1995): 7–4 .

38. On the pervasiveness o grie and communities o mourning, see Jay Winter, Sites o Memory, Sites o Mourning: Te Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

39. Stephen Graham, Te Challenge o the Dead (London: Cassell, 1921), 36.4 . Arthur Conan Doyle, Te New Revelation (New York: Doran, 1918), 39.

Tough he had been interested in psychic phenomena or several decades, ConanDoyle did not declare his own belie in spiritualism until late 1916, in the Novem-



Fig. 8. Te Cenotaph, or empty tomb, in London. Over one millionmourners ooded past the Cenotaph when the Unknown Warrior wasburied at Westminster Abbey. Courtesy Harold B. Lee Library, BYU.




Late in the war, Conan Doyle, who had lost several loved ones duringits course, including his son Kingsley, became one o the leaders o

ber 4 issue o Light (the journal o the London Spiritualist Alliance); he beganlecturing on spiritualism in October 1917. Martin Booth, Te Doctor, the Detective,and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography o Arthur Conan Doyle (London: Hodderand Stoughton, 1997), 313. His most important writings on spiritualism are TeNew Revelation (1918),Te Vital Message (1919), and Te History o Spiritualism (1926). Conan Doyle elt that the cataclysm o the war must serve some purpose orthe su ering to have any meaning. Near the end o his six-volume history o thewar, the work he judged to be his most signi cant, he writes: “He [the historian]lays down his pen at last with the deep conviction that the nal results o this greatconvulsion are meant to be spiritual rather than material. . . . Not to change rival

rontiers, but to mould the hearts and spirits o men—there lie the explanationand the justi cation o all that we have endured.” Arthur Conan Doyle, Te Brit-ish Campaign in France and Flanders , 6 vols. (New York: Doran, 1916–2 ), 6:3 7.In Te Vital Message he is even more direct:

It has been our ate, among all the innumerable generations o mankind,to ace the most right ul calamity that has ever be allen the world. . . . I our souls, wearied and tortured during these dread ul ve years o sel -sacri ce and suspense, can show no radical changes, then what soulswill ever respond to a resh in ux o heavenly inspiration? . . .

Why was this tremendous experience orced upon mankind? . . .[Te causes] are essentially religious, not political. Tey lie ar deeperthan the national squabbles o the day. A thousand years hence thosenational results may matter little, but the religious result will rule theworld. Tat religious result is the re orm o the decadent Christianity o to-day, its simpli cation, its puri cation, and its rein orcement by the

acts o spirit communion and the clear knowledge o what lies beyondthe exit-door o death. Te shock o the war was meant to rouse us tomental and moral earnestness, to give us the courage to tear away vener-able shams, and to orce the human race to realise and use the vast newrevelation which has been so clearly stated and so abundantly proved,

or all who will examine the statements and proo s with an open mind.”(Arthur Conan Doyle, Te Vital Message [New York: Doran, 1919], 11–13)

41. Kingsley was badly wounded on the Somme in 1916 and invalided back toEngland. Tough weakened, he resumed his medical studies at St Mary’s Hospi-tal and died October 28, 1918, not o his wounds, but in the in uenza epidemic,which also claimed Conan Doyle’s brother Innes in Belgium our months later.Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, Malcolm Leckie was killed in the rst weeks o the war, his nephew Oscar Horning and another brother-in-law Leslie Oldhamwere killed in 1915. Booth,Te Doctor, Te Detective, and Arthur Conan Doyle ,311. Conan Doyle always insisted that his conversion to spiritualism was not basedupon his own loss o kinsmen (see Arthur Conan Doyle, Te History o Spiritual-ism, 2 vols. [New York: Doran, 1926], 2:225), but it was di erent or his wi e, Jean:



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spiritualism. Although the movement was widely denounced as mis-guided and even heretical by many clergymen, hundreds o thousandswere drawn to the possibility o communicating with their dead. As Jay Winter observes: “Spiritualism gave people a chance to have a ritual inter-ment o members o their amily whose graves were not known or who hadliterally been blown to pieces. Maybe hal o the men who were killed inthe First World War had no known graves. Te amilies had no place to gothrough the rituals o separation. A séance was one o them.”

Sir Oliver Lodge’s Raymond, which went through a dozen printingsbetween 1916 and 1919, is a urther in uential example showing the rela-tionship o spiritualism to grie . Lodge was a prominent man o science,whose work as a physicist had brought him a knighthood. His early inter-est in psychic research proceeded rom a scienti c perspective (wirelesstelegraphy, etc.). When their twenty-six-year-old son, Raymond, was killednear Ypres in September 1915, the Lodges eventually sought solace througha spiritualist medium. Over time, convinced that he could base his conclu-sions on his own experience, Lodge set about to share his ndings, trustingthat his experience might bring com ort to others:

I have thought it my duty to speak out, though it may well bebelieved that it is not without hesitation that I have ventured thus to

obtrude amily a airs. I should not have done so were it not that theamount o premature and unnatural bereavement at the present time isso appalling that the pain caused by exposing one’s own sorrow and itsalleviation, to possible sco ers, becomes almost negligible in view o theservice which it is legitimate to hope may thus be rendered to mourners,i they can derive com ort by learning that communication across thegul is possible.

Te book is divided into three parts: Te rst part consists o letters romthe Front that Raymond sent while he was alive. Te second, “supernormal”

“It was the death o my brother at Mons that brought me to believe in Spiritual-ism. . . . I rankly con ess that, be ore that, I was sceptical. . . . But in this very room[Conan Doyle’s study at Crowborough] . . . the spirit came to us o my brother, andI knew that I had got into touch with him.” Arthur Conan Doyle and Jean ConanDoyle, “Te Challenge o Spiritualism, Does It Con rm the Christian Doctrine o Immortality? An Interview with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” interview by CharlesDawbarn, Daily Chronicle, August 13, 1919, 4, reprinted in Harold Orel, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Interviews and Recollections(New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 241.

42. Te Great War and the Shaping o the 2 th Century (KCE /BBC Video,1996), episode 8 “War without End” (see http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/).

43. Sir Oliver J. Lodge, Raymond, or Li e and Death, with Examples o theEvidence or Survival o Memory and Afection a er Death(New York: Doran,1916), vii–viii.




part is made up o psychic communications rom Raymond. Te third partis a philosophical section that concludes with an e ort to reconcile spiri-tualism with belie in Christ. oward the end Lodge writes, or example:“Whatever the Churches may do, I believe that the call o Christ himsel will be heard and attended to by a large part o humanity in the near

uture . . . as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth.” How-ever much we may reject spiritualism—its trappings o mediums, séances,automatic writing, and the like—, we can only eel sympathy or the grie that propelled it during this period o such great loss.

Te realm o the dead is also obliquely evoked by C. S. Lewis, a con- valescing young soldier, wounded in Flanders in April 1918 during theGerman spring o ensive and invalided back to England. Around the sametime that Joseph F. Smith began to meditate on the First Epistle o Peter(see D&C 138:5), Lewis chose the title or a book o poetry rom 1 Peter 3:19.In the summer and early all o 1918, he gathered together poems he hadwritten be ore being posted to France and some while at the Front andarranged them into a collection he proposed to title Spirits in Prison. Te volume was accepted in the all and published under the pseudonym CliveHamilton early in 1919, by which time the title was changed to Spirits inBondage. Although the original title comes rom the New estament,

Lewis wrote the poems during his agnostic period. Tere is little hereo the later Christian apologist or, directly, o Christ’s visit to the spiritsin prison. Indeed the realms seem reversed; this li e has become the

44. Lodge, Raymond, 376; on Lodge and spiritualism more generally, seeWinter, Sites o Memory, Sites o Mourning,chapter 3, especially 61–62.

45. A not in requent aspect o grie was a longing or a suitable portrait o thedead. In 1916 artist Florence Upton began painting rom photographs portraits

or the amilies o dead soldiers. Te amilies would bring her various mementos o the dead—a canteen, a pocket Bible, letters, etc.—and try to convey a sense o theloved one’s character and personality. Upton then tried “to make the person liveagain—at least on canvas. . . . A simple likeness would not do.” As she continuedin this work, she was hersel drawn to spiritualism, until “the kind o portraitwork Florence was doing at the time was so closely allied to Spiritualism that itbecomes di cult to separate the two activities.” Norma S. Davis, A Lark Ascends:Florence Kate Upton, Artist and Illustrator (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press,1992), 134, 157.

46. A. N. Wilson, C. S. Lewis: A Biography(London: Williams Collins Sons,199 ), 56, 59–6 . See Clive Hamilton [C. S. Lewis],Spirits in Bondage (London:Heinemann, 1919); and (more recently) C. S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage: A Cycleo Lyrics, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, 1984). Hamilton is Lewis’smother’s maiden name.

47. Te closest Lewis comes to Christ’s visit to the spirits in prison is in “DePro undis,” in which, i it be not a dream or vain hope, the distant voice o “a just



v BYU Studies

hopeless realm o the dead. Te last poem, “Death in Battle,” pleads orescape to a di erent world, “Beyond the tide o the ocean, hidden and sunk away, / Out o the sound o battles, near to the end o day.”

Finally, while we are still considering the war, it may be worth not-ing a urther article on the ront page o theDeseret News or October 4,column 5: “Prince Maximilian o Baden Appointed German Chancellor”(see g. 5). Prince Max, a political moderate who opposed unrestrictedsubmarine war are and who had worked to ensure humane treatmento prisoners o war, was appointed chancellor on October 1, 1918, andinstalled on October 3. What the article does not say, since it was notthen generally known, is that late on the night o October 3—the date o Joseph F. Smith’s vision—the new chancellor, urged by the German HighCommand, cabled President Woodrow Wilson asking him to intervenewith the Allies to arrange an armistice and to begin negotiations orpeace. Tis was the beginning o the ormal process leading to the war’send some ve weeks later.

God that cares or earthly pain” may still be heard again:

Yet ar away beyond our labouring night,He wanders in the depths o endless light,Singing alone his musics o delight;Only the ar, spent echo o his songOur dungeons and deep cells can smite along.

(Lewis, Spirits in Bondage, 2 )

48. Lewis,Spirits in Bondage, 75.49. Prince Max struggled with this decision, wanting more time to deliberate

and hesitant to have a desperate suit or peace be his rst act as chancellor, but, as

he writes in his memoirs, “ owards evening [o October 3] the nal orm o thenote was decided upon. I signed it and was appointed Chancellor the same day.”Te Memoirs o Prince Max o Baden, trans. W. M. Calder and C. W. H. Sutton, 2 vols. (London: Constable and Co., 1928), 2:22. Te text o the message to Wilson is:

Te German Government requests the President o the United States o America to take in hand the restoration o peace, to bring this requestto the notice o all belligerent states and to invite them to send plenipo-tentiaries or the initiation o negotiations. Tey accept as a basis or thepeace negotiations the programme [the Fourteen Points] laid down by the President o the United States o America, in his message to Congresso 8th January, 1918 and in his subsequent announcements, particularly in his speech o 27th September, 1918. [¶] o avoid urther bloodshed, theGerman Government requests the President to arrange the immediateconclusion o an armistice on land, by sea and in the air. (Signed) Max,Prince o Baden,Imperial Chancellor. ( Memoirs o Prince Max, 2:23)




Te Flu Pandemic

Many more deaths were soon to ollow—so many, in act, that the hor-ri c losses o the last our years o war would more than double within a

short period o time. Tis brings us to our last major context, one which ispartly intertwined with the last weeks o the war—the in uenza pandemico 1918. Te new killer was the genetically reassorted u virus, more viru-lent than any ever known, and even today little understood. 0 In the UnitedStates alone, in the month o October 1918—that is, the period between the vision o October 3 and its ormal acceptance on October 31—there wouldbe more deaths than in any other month in the nation’s history. Treeshort excerpts rom the American Experience documentary, In uenza

1918, will give some sense o the disease’s scope:In thirty-one shocking days, the u would kill over 195, Ameri-

cans. It was the deadliest month in this nation’s history. Co ns werein such demand that they were o en stolen. Undertakers had to placearmed guards around their prized boxes. Te orderly li e o Americabegan to break down. All over the country, arms and actories shutdown—schools and churches closed. Homeless children wanderedthe streets, their parents vanished. Te vibrant and optimistic nationseemed to be alling apart. . . .

In Washington, Victor Vaughn [the government’s chie epidemi-ologist] came to a rightening conclusion: “I the epidemic continuesits mathematical rate o acceleration, civilization could easily disappear

rom the ace o the earth. . . .”

For the German texts, see Prinz Max von Baden, Erinnerungen und Dokumente ,ed. Golo Mann and Andreas Burckhardt (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1968),336–37.

5 . Recent e orts to understand it more ully are not without controversy.Researchers have recovered tissue rom 1918 u victims and have reconstructedthe virus using reverse genetics, publishing its sequence in 2 5, and have nowtested its e ect on primates, using macaque monkeys, with dramatic results. Inaddition to producing acute respiratory distress, the virus caused the monkeys’immune systems to erupt in a “cytokine storm”; all died within days, the last oneseuthanized early because o the severity o their symptoms. See Darwyn Kobasaand others, “Aberrant Innate Immune Response in Lethal In ection o Macaqueswith the 1918 In uenza Virus,” Nature 445 (January 18, 2 7): 319–23 and the ear-lier studies by J. K. aubenberger and . M. umpey therein cited. World healthauthorities take seriously the possibility that the pandemic could recur. See, orexample, the U.S. Homeland Security Council’s National Strategy or PandemicIn uenza (November 2 5), with cover letter by President Bush, available onlineat www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/pandemic-in uenza.html, and the variousmaterials and links at www.pandemic u.gov.



v BYU Studies

On November 11, the Armistice ended the Great War. In San Fran-cisco the scene was surreal. Tirty thousand people paraded through thestreets—all dancing, all singing, all wearing masks.

o return to the Deseret Evening Newso October 4 (see g. 5), con-sider column 3: “Spanish In uenza Still Spreads over Land”—the surgeongeneral said that the only way to stop it was to close churches, schools,theatres, and the like. In retrospect, the subheadings adumbrate more thancould be known at the time. For example, “In uenza spreads in Philadel-phia” re ers to 738 new cases in the last twenty- our hours. In the month o October alone, however, eleven thousand people in Philadelphia would dieo the u, 759 on a single day (October 1 ). Bulldozers and steam shovelsdug mass graves. Te next subheading, “In uenza Making Headway inNew York,” oreshadows a grim harvest: about 1 percent o the city’s popu-lation (33,387 people) died o the epidemic between September 1918 andMarch 1919, over hal o them in October and early November.

Notice, too, the re erences to army camps lower in the column. It wasin these that the u rst emerged in a milder orm, and it was to these thatthe deadly reassorted strain o the virus rst returned in September. AtCamp Devens, near Boston, a doctor described how soldiers arriving at thein rmary with what appeared as ordinary in uenza

rapidly develop the most viscous type o Pneumonia that has ever beenseen. . . . It is only a matter o a ew hours then until death comes and it issimply a struggle or air until they su ocate. It is horrible. One can standto see one, two, or twenty men die, but to see these poor devils droppinglike ies gets on your nerves. We have been averaging about 1 deaths aday, and still keeping it up.

An alarming and still puzzling aspect o the u was that the most vulnerableage group was twenty- ve to thirty- our—people in the prime o their lives.

51. In uenza 1918(WGBH/PBS Video, 1998); a transcript can be ound atwww.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/in uenza/ lmmore/index.html.

52. Gina Kolata,Flu: Te Story o the Great In uenza Pandemic o 1918 and theSearch or the Virus Tat Caused It (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999),2 ; Al red W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: Te In uenza o 1918(Cam-bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 6 –61.

53. Letter rom “Roy,” an otherwise unidenti ed doctor, September 29, 1918,quoted in Kolata, Flu, 13–14. Epidemiologist Victor C. Vaughn later looked back with horror on what he witnessed while visiting the camp: “In the morningthe dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like cord wood. Tis picture waspainted on my memory cells at the division hospital, Camp Devens, in the allo 1918, when the deadly in uenza virus demonstrated the in eriority o humaninventions in the destruction o human li e.” Quoted in Kolata, Flu, 16.




In the military camps and on the troop ships, people were perishing at anastonishing rate, their bodies stacked like cordwood in the morgues.

In France, o the 116, American soldiers who died in the war,more than hal died o the u or attendant pneumonia. A physician at anAmerican Expeditionary Force (AEF) eld hospital describes what it waslike to try to deal simultaneously with wounds and u:

Everything is over owing with patients. Our divisions are being shot up;the wards are ull o machine-gun wounds. Tere is rain, mud, “ u” andpneumonia. Some hospitals are overcrowded, some are not even work-ing. Evacuation 114 had no medical o cer but hundreds o pneumoniasand no one to look a er them. . . . Every sort o in ectious case was there,packed in as close as sardines with no protection. . . . Hundreds o caseso desperate pneumonia that are dying by the score. . . . Rain, rain; mud,blood; blood, death!

One such u casualty was Stan ord Hinckley, Gordon B. Hinckley’solder brother, who died on October 19 at a training camp near Bordeaux,attended by B. H. Roberts, chaplain o the 145th Field Artillery. He le

54. Te proportion in the LDS “Died in Service” list published in the Improve-ment Era 22 (December 1918): 148–52 is representative. O the sixty servicemen

listed, thirty-nine (and possibly nine others, who died at camps o unspeci edcauses) died o the u or attendant pneumonia, either abroad or in military campsin the U.S.

55. Dr. George Washington Crile, Diary, October 17, 1918, quoted in Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, 165–66. Learning o the u’s devastation amongthe Allied troops, the Kaiser hoped on October 1 that in uenza would cripple theopposing armies while leaving his own relatively untouched, but the u soonspread to German troops and civilians alike. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pan-demic, 158–6 . Prince Max, the new chancellor, noted the desperate circum-stances in his memoirs: “Te misery in the towns about the middle o October wasindescribable. No coal, no adequate clothing, a ceaseless hunger. Te in uenzaepidemic was striding over Europe. In Berlin alone on the 15th October its vic-tims numbered 1722. Te disease made terrible ravages among our people, whohad no powers o resistance le .” Memoirs o Prince Max,2:92;Erinnerungen und Dokumente, 391. Prince Max himsel was stricken and bedridden or two weeks.Having been given a sleeping dra , he slept or thirty-six hours during the time

nal negotiations or the Kaiser’s abdication were underway. Crosby, America’sForgotten Pandemic, 16 ; Giles MacDonogh,Te Last Kaiser: Te Li e o Wilhelm II (New York: St. Martin’s, 2 ), 4 7.

56. Roberts, past sixty when the 145th was called up, was initially rejected oractive service. In desperation he appealed to Senator Reed Smoot, with whom hehad engaged in political quarrels over the years, and, a er agreeing to be “bro-ken” rom major to lieutenant and to undergo rigorous training at Camp Zachary

aylor in Kentucky, was nally able to rejoin the unit and accompany it to France.Earlier he had been engaged in recruiting, promising parents, “You send your



v BYU Studies

behind a widow and a six-month-old son and now lies buried at Suresnesoverlooking Paris. An account o his death, in the orm o a letter romthe unit commander Richard W. Young to his riend Bryant S. Hinckley,Stan ord’s ather, appears in the same issue o theDeseret Evening News as the Armistice—a melancholy counterpoint to the jubilation. In herbiography o President Hinckley, Sheri L. Dew writes that when news o Stan ord’s death arrived, it was the rst time that Gordon, who was eightand was himsel just recovering rom the u, had seen his ather cry.

Utah was less devastated by the u than were large urban areas, butit is worth considering the development o the epidemic in the state. Inthe same October 4 issue o the Deseret Evening News, there is a reporto Utah’s “ rst authenticated case” o Spanish in uenza (as it was thencalled), contracted rom ailing soldiers taken o a troop train in Ogden. By October 9, the number o u cases had grown so alarmingly that an orderwas given to close all public gatherings. On October 1 , the heading reads:“Many owns are Closed by Order o Health Board.” On the same page we

sons and I will be a ather to them”; it was a promise he kept. Arriving at CampDeSouge near Bordeaux in late September 1918, the unit, like others, was soon hitby in uenza, and Roberts was tireless and earless in attending his stricken men,

ourteen o whom died o the u. While individuals rom the 145th were sent asreplacements to the Front (Roberts’s own grandnephew, George Day, was killed),the unit itsel was not ordered to action until November 9, but a delay meantthat the Armistice intervened and the unit did not get to the Front. ruman G.Madsen, De ender o the Faith: Te B. H. Roberts Story(Salt Lake City: Bookcra ,198 ), 3 1–14.

57. “Brig. Gen. Young ells o Stan ord Hinckley’s Death,”Deseret Evening News, November 11, 1918, section 1, 3.

58. Sheri L. Dew, Go Forward in Faith: Te Biography o Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 39. Stan ord Hinckley’s grave is, in a way,associated with Gordon B.’s mother’s death as well. Having had a mastectomy in1928, Ada Hinckley learned in March 193 that her cancer had returned, and sheunderwent radium treatments. Despite her ill health, she insisted on accompany-ing Stan ord’s widow, Beulah, on a Gold Star Pilgrimage (at government expense)to visit Stan ord’s grave at Suresnes. By the time she returned, her condition haddeteriorated urther, and she died on November 9, 193 , in Los Angeles, where herhusband had taken her or urther treatments. She was buried on November 13,193 , two days a er Armistice/Remembrance Day. President Hinckley recalled:“My brokenhearted ather . . . stepped o the train and greeted his grie -strickenchildren. We walked solemnly down the station plat orm to the baggage car, wherethe casket was unloaded and taken by the mortician. We came to know even moreabout the tenderness o our ather’s heart. . . . I also came to know something o death—the absolute devastation o children losing their mother—but also o . . .the certainty that death cannot be the end o the soul.” Dew, Go Forward in Faith, 48–51.




read: “All collegiate study at the University o Utah suspended by order o President John A. Widstoe.”

At BYU, a Student Army raining Corps unit had been establishedwith great an are at the Maeser Building on October 1 ( g. 9). wo weekslater, the university suspended classes. Te White and Blue speculated thatthe closure might last only a week; in act, the university did not resumeuntil January 1919. 0 When it did so, students and aculty still wore maskswell into winter semester ( g. 1 ). As the threat seemed to diminish, wagswriting or the White and Blue began to see amusing sides to this practicewith articles on a “masked ball” and “love with a mask on” as well as anci-

ul mask designs.Perhaps the most poignant Utah u story concerns the Goates amily.

Within three days, in the third week o October, our members o thisyoung amily died in Ogden: rst Kenneth (age ten), then Elaine (six), thentheir ather Charles Hyrum (thirty- ve), and nally Vesta (eight). Witheach death, Charles’s ather, two o whose sons were serving in France atthe time, drove to Ogden to bring the body to Lehi. He made caskets or thechildren and buried them in the amily plot while, without his knowing it,his elders quorum harvested his sugar beets rom his reezing elds on theSaratoga road:

Ten ather sat down on a pile o beet tops—this man who broughtour o his loved ones home or burial in the course o only six days

[sic]; made caskets, dug graves, and even helped with the burial cloth-ing—this amazing man who never altered, nor inched, nor waveredthroughout this agonizing ordeal—sat down on a pile o beet tops and

59. “First Authenticated Case o Spanish In uenza,” Deseret Evening News,October 4, 1918, section 2, 1; “Order Closes All Public Gatherings in Utah,”Deseret Evening News,October 9, 1918; “Many owns are Closed by Order o the HealthBoard,” Deseret Evening News, October 1 , 1918, ront page.

6 . Ernest L. Wilkinson, initially rejected by the SA C was ormally inductedon October 25, 1918, and billeted in the Maeser Building. Soon stricken with the

u, he sought a priesthood blessing and “promised God that i He would sparehis li e, [he] would serve BYU . . . in any way he could i ever the opportunity presented itsel .” When he later became president o BYU his o ce in the MaeserBuilding encompassed the room where he had been nursed back to health duringthe epidemic. Woodru J. Deem and Glenn V. Bird, Ernest L. Wilkinson: Indian Advocate and University President (Provo, Utah: Mrs. Ernest L. Wilkinson [pri- vately published], 1982): 35–36.

61. “Patriotic Program at Maeser Memorial,” Te White and Blue 22 (Octo-ber 1, 1918): 8; “Spanish In uenza Epidemic—School Closed,”Te White and Blue 22 (October 16, 1918): 21; “Love With a Mask On,” “Advanced Styles in Masks(Paris),” “Dying Doings o the S. A. . C.,”Te White and Blue 22 (January 15,1919): 43, 45, 5 .



Fig. 9. Student Army raining Corps standing in ront o the BYU Karl G. MaeserBuilding, October 1, 1918. Courtesy University Archives, BYU.

Fig. 10. Te 1918–1919 in uenza pandemic caused BYU to close in October 1918;when classes resumed in January 1919, students still wore masks. Courtesy Uni- versity Archives, BYU.




sobbed like a little child. Ten he arose, wiped his eyes with his big redbandanna handkerchie , looked up at the sky, and said: “Tanks, Father,

or the elders o our ward.”

Te Armistice was declared on November 11. A ew days later, onNovember 19, just a er his eightieth birthday, President Smith died. Asthe small inset under his photograph in the Deseret Evening Newsaccountindicates, the General Authorities o the Church and amily representa-tives agreed that “in view o existing health conditions in the community,it would be improper to hold public uneral services.” A month later,Church leaders designated December 22 as a day o asting “ or the arrestand speedy suppression by Divine Power o the desolating scourge that ispassing over the earth.” Shortly therea er the epidemic seemed to havepassed its crest, and the decision was made to resume Church services onJanuary 5 and to reopen the temples on Monday, January 6. But a urtherwave o the epidemic in the spring caused the April general con erence tobe postponed until June, the only time April con erence has not been held.

In the end, 675, Americans died o the u, more than all the deaths(62 , ) su ered in the Civil War. From 1917 to 1918, the nation’s aver-age li e expectancy dropped by twelve years. Worldwide, the death tollwas staggering. Te most conservative estimate is twenty million (more

than twice the number o combat deaths in the entire First World War);British virologist John Ox ord thinks one hundred million is a more likely number, arguing that twenty million died in India alone. Te most recentstudy locates the toll somewhere between these two, at y million.

62. Account by Les Goates, Charles Hyrum’s brother (who was serving inFrance at the time o the deaths), as quoted by Bishop Vaughn J. Featherstone,Ensign 3 (July 1973), 37; the our deaths in three days are reported in “Four Mem-bers o One Family Succumb to Attack o the Dreaded Spanish In uenza,” OgdenStandard Examiner , October 22, 1918, 6.

63. Anthon H. Lund and Charles W. Penrose, “No Public Funeral,” Deseret Evening News, November 19, 1918, ront page.

64. “Special Announcement,” in Clark, Messages o the First Presidency,5:115–16 (December 28, 1918); and “General Con erence Notice,” in 9 th Annual Con erence o Te Church o Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints(Salt Lake City: TeChurch o Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints, 1919), 1.

65. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, 2 6.66. Kolata, Flu, 8.67. Kolata, Flu, 7, 285–86.68. Niall P. A. S. Johnson and Juergen Mueller, “Updating the Accounts:

Global Mortality o the 1918–192 ‘Spanish’ In uenza Pandemic,”Bulletin o theHistory o Medicine76, no. 1 (2 2): 1 5–15.



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According to historian Al red Crosby, “Nothing else—no in ection, nowar, no amine—has ever killed so many in as short a period.”

imely and imeless: “A Document without Parallel”

Katherine Anne Porter also nearly died o in uenza. Her conditionwas so hopeless that she was le on a gurney or dead; the Denver news-paper or which she wrote set her obituary. She did not know, during herlong periods o delirium and unconsciousness, that her ancé, the lieuten-ant who had cared or her be ore she was hospitalized, had himsel diedo the u. 0 In her short autobiographical novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider, her

ctionalized sel , struggling through hallucination, her ace covered with

a white cloth, hears a voice in her mind ask: “Where are the dead? We haveorgotten the dead, oh, the dead, where are they?” Te vision given toJoseph F. Smith on October 3, 1918, answers this question and speaks to thegreat, worldwide need that underlies it.

D&C 138 rst shows us the vast concourses o dead—“the hosts o thedead, both great and small” (verse 11); “innumerable company” (verse 12);“vast multitude” (verse 18); “vast congregation” (verse 38); “great world o the spirits o the dead” (verse 57)—vast, even when (as in verses 12, 18, and38) the re erence is only to the just.

Te vision proceeds rom and a rms the “great and wonder ul love”o God (verse 3) as it is expressed through the Atonement o Christ—anatonement it shows to be universal, pro ered to all who have ever lived ordied. Te vision comes, in a sense, in medias res: addressing the un athom-able losses o the war years just past, and anticipating the even greaterquantity o dying that lay ahead, not only in the next months o the pan-demic, but through the Second World War (which would grow directly out o the First and would, with its millions o civilian casualties, be ve

times more costly in loss o li e than World War I) and beyond—com ort-ing, “bind[ing] up the brokenhearted” (verse 42), and providing hope andreassurance.

Te vision shows how the work o redemption was and is organizedamong the dead. (With respect to the war, the quasi-military languageo verse 3 —“organized his orces,” “commissioned them”—is intrigu-ing.) In the last weeks o his li e, Joseph Smith had alluded to missionary

69. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, 311.7 . Joan Givner, Katherine Anne Porter: A Li e(New York: Simon and Schus-

ter, 1982), 125–28.71. Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Tree Short Novels (New

York: Harcourt Brace, 1939), 255. (Tis novella, too, ends with an empty room.)



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Yet rom a purely scriptural perspective, the teaching remained a mattero in erence. In Jesus the Christ , or example, a work completed in 1915during the rst year o the war, James E. almage considers the same pas-sage rom 1 Peter that Joseph F. Smith later pondered. almage’s languageis provisional, i assertive: “Te act that the gospel was preached to thedead necessarily implies the possibility o the dead accepting the same.”;or “Missionary labor among the dead was inaugurated by the Christ; whoo us can doubt that it has been continued by His authorized servants, thedisembodied.”; or urther, “A continuation o such labor among the disem-bodied, is so abundantly implied in scripture as to be made a certainty.” Joseph F. Smith’s vision not only a rms that this is so, but it also articu-lates how such work was established and how it is continued. Althoughthe vision was not o cially adopted as canonized scripture until 1976,its ormal rati cation on October 31, 1918, gave it particular authority. In itsgrandeur and scope, the vision is the capstone o all teachings on the work o salvation among the dead.

Te vision renews the connection o temple work to the redemption o the dead, inviting us, the living, to remembrance and active participation,through seeking a er the dead and per orming “vicarious baptism” (verse 33)and other ordinances, and in so doing drawing the two worlds together.

Te re erences to temples (verses 48 and 54), should remind us that two o them, Hawaii and Alberta—the rst outside Utah since the Saints settledin the West—, were begun while Joseph F. Smith was President o theChurch. Te timing o the Alberta temple, dedicated in 1923, well be orethe Canadian memorials at Vimy Ridge (1936) and elsewhere, is especially pleasing given the extraordinary valor and losses o the Canadian orces,including LDS soldiers, during the war. It seems a poignant juxtaposition to

and empowered to preach the gospel and minister to the women whilethe elders and prophets are preaching it to the men. ( Young Woman’s Journal 23 (1911): 128–32; as cited in Smith,Gospel Doctrine, 46 –61)

74. James E. almage, Jesus the Christ (1915; repr. Salt Lake City: Te Churcho Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints, 1981), 675–76; italics added.

75. President Smith dedicated the site o the Alberta emple on July 27,1913, and that o the Hawaii emple on June 1, 1915, but did not live to see theircompletion. Both temples were dedicated by President Heber J. Grant: Hawaii onNovember 27, 1919; Alberta on August 26–29, 1923. (Apostle Hyrum Mack Smithalso visited Cardston in August 1917, ve months be ore his death, to dedicate theAlberta Stake abernacle.)

76. Like those o other nations in the British Empire (now Commonwealth),Canadian troops ought in the war nearly rom its outset. Tey were engaged inalmost every major action, su ering the rst gas attack o the war near Ypres in 1915




see on the corner across rom the temple grounds Cardston’s war memo-rial bearing the names o the small town’s allen. At the unveiling o thememorial in 1925, stake president Hugh B. Brown, who had served in the waras a cavalry o cer and who would later become a counselor in the FirstPresidency, was a speaker.

In an age so pain ully preoccupied with absence, especially wherethe bodies o loved ones had irretrievably vanished—“corpselessness” is theterm most o en used by cultural historians—, the vision, with its inher-ent promise that the Atonement opens the way or all to be resurrected,a rms the central and eternal importance o the body in very vivid terms.For a er enumerating ancient patriarchs and prophets up to Elijah, whosemission “ oreshadow[ed] the great work to be done in the temples o theLord . . . or the redemption o the dead” (verse 48), it says o this righteoushost: “All these and many more, even the prophets who dwelt among theNephites and testi ed o the coming o the Son o God, mingled in the vastassembly and waited or their deliverance, For the dead had looked uponthe long absence o their spirits rom their bodies as a bondage” (verses 49–5 ,emphasis added). Hence their eager gladness at the prospect o being lib-erated “ rom the bands o death”: “Teir sleeping dust was to be restoredunto its per ect rame, bone to his bone, and the sinews and the esh upon

them, the spirit and the body to be united never again to be divided, thatthey might receive a ulness o joy” (verses 16–17).

As an inspired commentary on a scriptural passage (1 Pet. 3–4), whichdraws upon other passages in its explication (Isa. 61:1 [verse 42], Ezek. 37:1–14[verse 43], Mal. 4:5–6 [verses 46–47]), the vision—with its representationo “great and mighty ones” (verse 38) rom Adam and Eve through the

and in April 1917 distinguishing themselves spectacularly at Vimy Ridge, now siteo the country’s most important memorial abroad; they also captured Passchen-daele later that year at great cost, bringing to an end the Tird Battle o Ypres.Despite its small population, the nation mobilized some 62 , troops, o whom241, (about 39 percent) became casualties, with sixty-seven thousand slain. Onthe country’s participation in the war, see Desmond Morton and J. L. Granatstein, Marching to Armageddon: Canadians and the Great War 191 –1918 ( oronto: Les-ter and Orpen Dennys, 1989); on its remembrance o the war, Jonathan F. Vance,Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War (Vancouver: Univer-sity o British Columbia Press, 1997).

77. On Brown’s military service, its high points and vexations, see Eugene E.Campbell and Richard D. Poll, Hugh B. Brown: His Li e and Tought (Salt LakeCity: Bookcra , 1975), 52–74. Brown was later LDS servicemen’s coordinator dur-ing the Second World War.

78. See, or example, Booth,Postcards rom the renches, chapter 1 “Corpse-lessness”; and Moriarty, “Absent Dead,” 8–15.



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patriarchs and prophets to Joseph, Hyrum, and their associates—harmo-nizes Old and New estaments, the Book o Mormon (verse 49), the Res-toration, and the inspiration o the living prophet, at once expanding ourunderstanding and showing us that the gospel is, indeed, everlasting. AsRichard Bennett has observed, the section a rms biblical authority in themidst o the “higher criticism” prevalent in the early twentieth century.

As revealed truth, the vision counters and corrects many widespread,well-intentioned but erroneous teachings, such as some ound in ConanDoyle’s treatises Te New Revelation (which also appeared in 1918) andTe Vital Message (1919). It is ascinating to read Conan Doyle’s treatisesin relation to D&C 138. Tere are many common themes—the reality o aspirit world and o the soul’s existence a er death; whether, given the sheerabundance o dying, Christ can appear to all who die; and the evidence o scripture. But these are mostly addressed in opposite ways. For example,Conan Doyle would “tear the Bible in twain,” setting aside the Old es-tament, and would emphasize Christ’s li e rather than his death andresurrection, believing the idea o redemption to be a mystical accretionwhich is “hardly ever spoken o ” in spirit communications. D&C 138 doesthe opposite; 0 it harmonizes the Old and New estaments and reasserts

79. Bennett, “And I Saw the Hosts o the Dead,” 119.8 . Some short passages rom Conan Doyle will suggest the contrast:

Christianity must be modi ed by this new revelation. . . . People arealienated because they rankly do not believe the acts as presented tothem to be true. . . . Above all, many cannot understand such expressionsas the “redemption rom sin,” “cleansed by the blood o the Lamb,” andso orth. So long as there was any question o the all o man there wasat least some sort o explanation o such phrases. . . . But i there were no

all, then what became o the atonement, o the redemption, o originalsin, o a large part o Christian mystical philosophy? (Conan Doyle, NewRevelation, 54–55)

Te whole Christian system has come to revolve round [Christ’s]death, to the partial exclusion o the beauti ul lesson o His li e. Far toomuch weight has been placed upon the one, and ar too little upon theother. . . .

Reading many authentic spirit communications one nds that theidea o redemption is hardly ever spoken o , while that o example andin uence is or ever insisted upon. In them Christ is the highest spiritknown, the son o God, as we all are, but nearer to God, and there orein a more particular sense His son. He does not, save in most rare andspecial cases, meet us when we die. Since souls pass over, night and day,at the rate o about 1 a minute, this would seem sel -evident. A er atime we may be admitted to His presence, to nd a most tender, sympa-



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anointed that the Father and the Son live and are still earnestly engaged inthe ongoing work o salvation or all God’s children.

Tis remarkable “Vision o the Redemption o the Dead” is more thana doctrinal clari cation that when Christ visited the spirits in prison(1 Pet. 3–4) he did not go himsel among the wicked but “organized his

orces” and “commissioned them” (verse 3 ) to go orth on his behal . Noris its audience limited only to members o the Church who may be inter-ested in such questions. It is, as President Hinckley declared, “a documentwithout parallel.” In its grandeur and scope, it is, indeed, the capstoneo all teachings on the work o salvation among the dead. But it is morethan this. Addressed to all the world through the living prophet in the lastweeks o his li e, the vision came at a time o great, worldwide need. Such apanoply o dying; such universal and unresolved grie , particularly whereloved ones had vanished without a trace; such pervasive hunger to knowthe ate o the dead—all these things give a special resonance to D&C 138,with its great concourses o the dead, its assurance o divine love and o theunspeakable com ort o the Atonement, the blessings o which extend toall mankind, both the living and the dead. imely and timeless, the visionspoke directly and compassionately to an agonized world in 1918, as it stillspeaks to us today and will continue to speak in uture ages.

pasts as one might look across a great chasm to a remote, peaceable placeon the other side. . . .

Te sense o a gap in history that the war engendered became acommonplace in imaginative literature o the post-war years. Poets andnovelists rendered it in images o radical emptiness—as a chasm, or anabyss, or an edge—or in images o ragmentation and ruin, all express-ing a racture in time and space that separated the present rom the past.(Hynes, A War Imagined, xi, xiii)

George S. ate ([email protected]) is Pro essor o Humanities and Com-parative Literature and ormer Dean o Undergraduate Education at BrighamYoung University. Most o Dr. ate’s scholarship has concerned itsel with patris-tic and medieval literature, though he has also previously written on LDS topics.His passion or the Great War is explained in the author’s sidebar. Tis article isexpanded rom an illustrated devotional given in the BYU College o Humanitiesin 2 3 and subsequently taped or BYU Broadcasting. Pro essor ate is grate ulto Pro essor Richard E. Bennett or his encouragement in the revisions.

death - the great war and the flu pandemic of 1918 as context for doctrine and covenants 138

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