Forgotten Precedent: If you look hard, it is possible to locate memorials to the victims of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic. For the most part, however, the horrors of those dreadful months were simply rolled-up with all the other bloody horrors of the war. In popular memory, these two, equally traumatic, global experiences merged into a single tragic narrative which was now – praise be to God! – over. Best not to dwell. Best not to ask too many questions. Best not to learn too many lessons.
WHY WERE SO FEW lessons learned from the deadly Influenza
Pandemic of 1918-19? The current best estimate of the death toll from “Spanish
Flu” (which actually originated in the United States) is 50-60 million – many
times the number of people killed in the First World War. With the global
population estimated at 1.8 billion in 1918, the Spanish Flu killed 3.0 percent
of all the human-beings on earth. In the face of such stunning mortality,
national governments might have been expected to pledge themselves to doing all
within their power to prevent a recurrence. Why is it that in every city, town
and village of New Zealand memorials abound to the 18,000 men who fell during
the four years of the First World War, while only a handful recall the 9,000
victims who perished in just six terrifying weeks at the peak of the 1918-19
pandemic?
The answer lies in the extraordinary degree of censorship
imposed upon their citizens by all the governments engaged in the First World
War. In order to “maintain morale” on “the home front” it was considered vital
to shield the families and friends of the men in the trenches from the
realities of industrialised warfare. Great Britain’s wartime Prime Minister,
David Lloyd-George, famously told a journalist friend: “If the people really
knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t
know and can’t know.”
That they were required to post casualty lists numbering in
the tens-of-thousands was bad enough. Belligerent governments (including our
own) were absolutely determined to keep the soldiers’ loved ones in blissful
ignorance of the way their sons, brothers and husbands had died – and of how
little was gained by their sacrifice.
As the death-toll mounted and the horrors of the war
multiplied, political and military leaders found themselves holding a tiger by
the tail. They had kept so much hidden, from so many, for so few tangible
gains, that they had no option but to keep hiding the truth from their
respective peoples. To make their job easier they cultivated an atmosphere of
extreme intolerance for any behaviour or expression capable of being construed
as dissent or disloyalty. Those found guilty of opposing the war (future New
Zealand prime ministers among them) were imprisoned. Kiwi conscientious
objectors – most famously Archibald Baxter – suffered the infamous tortures of
“Field Punishment No. 1”.
It was into this fraught environment that an avian variety
of influenza crossed the species barrier into pigs, and then into humans, on a
Kansas farm early in 1918. “Patient Zero” was an infected farm boy who carried
the virus with him to military training camp, from whence it travelled with
infected troops to the battlefields of France and Belgium. In a terrifyingly
short period of time it had been carried back into the home countries of the
infected soldiers. The death toll rose relentlessly and exponentially: the
virus killed hundreds, then thousands, then millions.
And the authorities deliberately muted their official response.
In Britain and its empire especially, which was staring down the barrel of a
German victory in the early months of 1918, the political and military leaders
were desperate to keep any suggestion that, back home, their loved ones were
falling like ninepins from their fighting men. With revolution raging in
Russia, Allied politicians were in no mood to allow the Bolshevik “virus” to
spread.
In frightening anticipation of the policy of the current
British government, the pandemic was simply allowed to “let rip” among
Britain’s helpless and unprotected population. Perhaps the most tragic moment
came on Armistice Day, the 11 November 1918, when hundreds of thousands of
citizens were permitted to gather in the streets, hugging and kissing, to
celebrate the war’s end. It is difficult to imagine a more effective way of
hastening the virus’s spread!
Obviously, local measures were taken to keep people safe,
but with censorship still in place, the pandemic had burned itself out before
its worldwide impact was generally comprehended. Everyone the virus could get
had been gotten, there was no one left to infect.
Tragically, the appalling decisions of New Zealand
politicians and military administrators, both at home and in our newly acquired
colony of “German Samoa”, allowed the virus to come ashore and do its deadly
work. The ship returning William Massey, New Zealand’s prime minister, from
Europe had reported the infection on board but was, astonishingly, allowed to
dock. No one, seemingly, had the courage to order the PM placed under
quarantine. The New Zealand military officer “in charge” of Samoa, was similarly
informed that there was sickness aboard an arriving vessel. He, too, permitted
its passengers to disembark. The virus swept across western Samoa, killing
upwards of a quarter of the territory’s native population.
If you look hard, it is possible to locate the burial sites
of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic’s victims. Row upon row of tiny gravestones,
or, verdant swards of cemetery lawn marking mass graves. Very occasionally,
there is a larger memorial. The reality, however, is that the horrors of the pandemic
were simply rolled-up with all the other bloody horrors of the war. People were
encouraged to merge these two, equally dreadful, global experiences into a
single tragic narrative which was now – praise be to God! – over. Best not to
dwell. Best not to ask too many questions. Best not to learn too many lessons.
And yet, some lessons were learned. In 1920 the Health
Organisation of the League of Nations was formed, building upon the rather
haphazard pre-war efforts to co-ordinate the international fight against deadly
diseases. In 1948, following a second, even more appalling global conflict, the
now defunct League’s Health Organisation morphed into the World Health
Organisation (WHO) of the newly former United Nations. It is no accident that
one of the core principles of the WHO is the early, accurate and comprehensive
communication of “outbreak” data across the planet.
Political and military reluctance to rapidly and truthfully acknowledge,
and then take steps to combat, outbreaks of highly infectious and deadly
disease, as happened at the end of the First World War, is every bit as
dangerous to public health as the deadliest virus. Such is the grim tutorial from
the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19. It is to be hoped that the governments of
the United Kingdom, the United States – and New Zealand – are paying close
attention.
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 17 March 2020.
