Calls to arms : New Zealand society and commitment to the Great War / Steven Loveridge.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: cultural mobilisation and sentimental equipment -- 1. Being British: the mobilisation of greater British nationalism -- 2. Being truly British: the mobilisation of anti-alienism -- 3. 'Half a soldier before enrolled': the mobilisation of the proto-ANZAC ethos -- 4. 'Shirkers': the mobilisation of a masculine antitype -- 5. 'The women's part': the mobilisation of womanpower -- 6. Culture of sacrifice: the mobilisation of public responses to the costs of war-- Conclusion: New Zealand society and the Great War.

"During the First World War, New Zealand society committed itself to a war effort the intensity of which can be glimpsed in the wealth spent, the extraordinary legislation passed, the emotions evoked and the enlistment of near 10 per cent of the country's population in the armed forces. It is sometimes presumed that this commitment reflects general wartime hysteria or the effects of imposed propaganda - with all the manipulative trickery that that term implies. Calls to Arms takes a different view, and considers this commitment as emblematic of deeper cultural sentiments and wider social forces which were marshalled in a cultural mobilisation: a phenomenon whereby cultural resources were mobilised alongside material resources. Many pre-existing social dynamics, debates, orientations, mythologies, values, stereotypes, and motifs were retained, but redeployed, in response to the war"--Publisher information.