Hymns and the First World War

08 November 2018

To mark the centenary of the 1918 Armistice, we explore the stories behind some of the hymns written during, or influenced by, the First World War:

 

What service shall we render thee    Ernest James Dodgshun (1876-1944)

Written shortly before the outbreak of World War I for inclusion on a ‘Peace Hymn Sheet’. The hymn is a strong statement of high principles and noble intentions, written at a time when tension was running high between various European countries, and war was beginning to seem likely...

 

For those we love within the veil   William Charter Piggott (1872-1943)

Written in 1915, during the First World War, for a Commemoration Service at Whitefield’s Tabernacle, London. It was almost certainly influenced by the need to commemorate the fallen of the Great War, even as early as 1915...

 

O valiant hearts, who to your glory came    John Stanhope Arkwright (1872-1954)

Published in leaflet form in 1917, and sung at a service in Westminster Abbey on 5 August 1917 to mark the third anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. It is a plangent and moving hymn, suited to the mood and time in which it was written, and to the very powerful emotions of sadness and remembrance during and after the First World War...

 

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above    Cecil Spring Rice (1859-1918)

The original version (now the second stanza) was written in 1912, while the author was on diplomatic service in Sweden. On 12 January 1918, after three and a half years of war, he sent what is now the first stanza to William Jennings Bryan, formerly US Secretary of State and a firm believer in peaceful arbitration of international disputes...

 

Father eternal, ruler of creation    Laurence Housman (1865-1959)

This hymn was written in 1919 at the request of the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, H.R.L. (‘Dick’) Sheppard. It addresses the problem of reconstructing the international order, and calls for a radical change of heart by peoples and nations...

 

Peace in our time, O Lord       John Oxenham (1852-1941)

The memory of ‘The Great War’, as it was often called, was still fresh in people’s minds. Oxenham had written about it in a number of books and poems. His hymn was timely, and his hymn expresses a general desire for peace. However, his implied foreboding was realised when in 1938 the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, returned from a conference with Hitler at Munich with a piece of paper that he thought would signify ‘peace in our time’...

 

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide    Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847)

The current practice of singing this hymn at the English Football Association Cup Final began in 1927... the institution of this tradition may partly be explained by the hymn’s encapsulating a shared national sense of loss and remembrance resulting from vivid memories of the recent First World War (interestingly, the hymn was parodied by soldiers in the trenches of Flanders, who sang ‘We’ve had no beer, we’ve had no beer today’)...