“Now the war is over, we have something else to worry us”: New Zealand Children’s Responses to Crises, 1914–1918

While most literature tends to focus on the experiences of adults in home-front societies, this paper investigates 1910s New Zealand from a child-centered perspective. It asks how children up to twenty years of age responded to two global events that affected their antipodal nation in the latter half of the decade—the First World War and the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. Drawing on children’s thoughts, feelings, and memories as captured in oral histories and contemporaneous letters, this article argues that New Zealand youth interacted with these crises in a sophisticated manner. Youth actively engaged with the conflict and the pandemic to the extent that the events impacted children’s worlds. Yet, while children’s behavior often diverged from adult expectations, their experiences varied extensively. Emotional and geographical proximity and age all played a significant role in mediating children’s exposure and reactions to these international crises between 1914 and 1918.

Her letter suggests that at least some youth developed their own understandings and responses to the crises based on such geographic differences.
During the last three decades sociocultural historians have closely examined the First World War, and experiences on the home front, like the battlefront, have now become a legitimate topic of academic inquiry. 4 Child-centric analyses of the First World War demonstrate the impact this event had upon the lives of European youth in particular. Military mobilization resulted in the mass departure of fathers, brothers, and other male relatives from children's lives.
These absences caused significant emotional distress, and have been linked to increases in juvenile delinquency due to a lack of paternal authority. 5 Many also faced severe physiological stress due to food shortages and insufficient medical care; a 1918 study of 56,849 Viennese children, for example, showed that only 4,537 could have been classified as completely healthy. 6 Furthermore, proximity to key battlefields meant that some children, such as those living behind the front lines between the North Sea and Switzerland, were forced to cope with the possibility that they themselves may die as a result of enemy bombardments. 7 Children farther afield from the main spheres of war were also affected by the conflict. While schools in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand never found themselves on the front line, unlike some French institutions on the Somme, educational activities in these regions were still disturbed. 8 Teachers left for military service, curricula were changed to include war lessons, and children were involved in school-directed war-effort activities. 9 Youth in belligerent countries around the world additionally found themselves the targets and topics of vast quantities of war-time propaganda. The themes of "patriotism, heroism, and sacrifice" were not only expounded to youth in the classroom, but were also featured in children's literature, toys, and games even before hostilities had begun. 10 Far less is known about children's lives during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. This event resulted in more than fifty million deaths worldwide yet, as Howard Philips and David Killingray noted in 2003, the 1918 flu is "paradoxically, the best documented but least known pandemic" in world history. 11 Some British, Canadian, American, and New Zealand academics have utilized sources that cast light on children's flu-time responses within their general histories of the 1918 pandemic. 12 Oral histories of youth who survived this disaster, for example, featured heavily in Geoffrey Rice's Black November: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New Zealand. 13  A variety of sources illuminate the thoughts and feelings of New Zealand children during this period. A major source is more than 2,500 children's letters published in the aforementioned "Dot's Little Folk" page during the war years. 14 Youth up to the age of twenty were invited to assume noms de plume and write letters to editor "Dot." Many corresponded throughout the decade, and their letters often revealed a normal maturation process. Reflecting the local distribution patterns of the Otago Witness, these writers were largely Pakeha/ Europeans who lived within the predominantly rural regions of Southland and Otago. Ethel Fraser, who assumed editorship of the page prior to the outbreak of war in 1913, edited the letters for content and determined whether or not to publish letters in their entirety. 15 Approved topics such as animals and descriptions of local districts, holiday trips, and key events comprise a large percentage of the material.
Other important sources were the life history interviews of persons who were less than twenty years of age between 1914 and 1918. Recorded in the 1980s and 1990s, these childhood recollections were affected by memory loss and by revisionary processes resulting from the extraordinary amount of public memory-making surrounding the events. 16 Nonetheless, these recollections are invaluable first-hand accounts of youthful experiences. Some also provide glimpses into the lives of Maori children, although the vast majority of Englishlanguage archives from this period focus on the experiences of European, rather than indigenous, peoples.
The selection of these sources reflects contemporaneous understandings of childhood. Legal and cultural definitions of youth in 1910s New Zealand by and large included all persons less than twenty years of age. Men had to be at least twenty years old to be eligible for military service and, from 1917, nineteenyear-old boys needed to obtain parental permission if they wished to enlist. 17 Similarly, "Dot's Little Folk" correspondents were deemed to be "Old Writers," and thus adults, once they had reached the end of their adolescence. As a result, this article refers to children up to the age of twelve as "younger children" in order to clearly differentiate them from their adolescent counterparts.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Though geographically distant from the main scenes of conflict, the Great War became a regular feature in many New Zealand children's lives. As a Dominion of the British Empire, New Zealand was constitutionally involved in hostilities from the outset, and government authorities devoted extensive resources to aiding the imperial war effort. Volunteer and conscription efforts resulted in 104,000 men serving overseas and, although indigenous support was far from universal, more than 2,200 of these soldiers were Maori. 18 Fifty-eight percent of New Zealand's servicemen became casualties, and their families endured considerable emotional stress as they faced the reality that their loved ones might not return. 19 Winning the war became a key priority for countless New Zealanders, and influential social groups sought to impress upon the wider public the importance of supporting the conflict. Like its European allies, New Zealand developed a war culture through which citizens "made sense of the war, and persuaded themselves to continue fighting it." 20 This culture, with its associated war talk and expectations, permeated New Zealand communities.
Schools were seen as important sites for youth interaction with the war.
Teachers and principals across New Zealand actively strove to connect students with the conflict, and activities related to the war-effort were inserted into school curricula. Creating handicraft items for serving combatants became particularly common in primary schools. Maori boys and girls alike knitted socks for the soldiers at Paroa Native School near Whakatane. 21 Nine-year-old "Chiddy" similarly noted in her letter to "Dot's Little Folk" page that "every Tuesday afternoon we have sewing and knitting at school. At school I am knitting an eye bandage and a pair of braces." 22 Younger children were also involved in school-driven war activities outside the classroom. An elevenyear-old "Poor Little Rich Girl," for instance, raised ₤3.3.4 with the rest of her class in a fundraising contest between the South Island towns of Hokitika and Greymouth. 23 Churches also encouraged youth engagement with the war. The conflict constituted a key topic of discussion within Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic churches across the country. Despite some sectarian tensions, most denominations drew on similar frameworks when presenting the war to their congregations. These included sanctifying the Allies' cause, notions of duty, and the sacrifice made by soldiers on the battlefield. 24 Youth constantly heard their religious leaders endorse the conflict in church services, and Protestant children were also exposed to war rhetoric at Bible class and Sunday school. The Break of Day, for example, was a key educational resource for Presbyterian children during this period, and James Aitken regularly stressed the importance of supporting the conflict throughout his editorials. In early September 1914, Aitken requested his audience pray and "ask God to grant victory to our side; for we believe that we are in the right, and that Germany and Austria have done very wrong." 25 Community events furthermore shaped children's experiences. Numerous farewells were held for New Zealand's departing servicemen. Iris Clarke was eight years old at the outbreak of war, later recalling "when the boys went away they always had special send offs. There were always special send offs, always.
Sometimes there would be three or four going off at the same time." 26 Born in 1910, Ivan Kelly similarly remembered the multiple dances held for returning soldiers. 27 War-effort fundraisers were also widely attended by children. Nineyear-old "Highlander," for instance, recounted that "we had a patriotic concert up here [in Mornington, Dunedin] on the 3rd of this month. Rouse and my brother took part in it . . . and they danced and sang nursery rhymes. They were not the same rhymes the children used to learn, but about the war." 28 Young children often enjoyed their involvement in war-related activities that enlivened the daily routine. Eleven-year-old "Hope" told Dot in 1917 that "we knit and sew at our school for the soldiers, and I like knitting very much." 29 Of course, such enthusiasm did not necessarily stem from a desire to help the war effort. Vivian Robertson enjoyed singing to departing soldiers with her school choir at least partly because she liked getting dressed up. "I loved it because I got a new, very beautiful . . . pinafore to wear and . . . [I had] seven bows in my hair." 30 Such activities were largely initiated and orchestrated by adults.
Fundraisers, handicraft production, farewell dances, and patriotic concerts were all integrated into key spheres of children's lives. Compulsory attendance legislation meant children had little choice over their involvement in war-effort activities at school, and youth had likewise long been involved in local events organized by community groups. Like many other aspects of prewar culture, the adult-controlled dimension of childhood was mobilized for war.
War-time activities and demands were not always appreciated. New Zealand's overwhelming focus on the conflict resulted in numerous social and economic constraints that negatively affected children. Irene Ball, eight years old when the Great War began, later remembered her childhood as "very Spartan . . . You didn't spend a penny on sweets. The poor old lady in the shop at the corner couldn't have done very well because we had a Belgian box that we all put our pennies in . . . there was no thought to anything else except for helping the war effort." 31 It is unclear from her recollection whether Ball actually wanted to donate her money to the war effort or if she did so due to wider social pressure. Buying sweets for her own personal consumption, after all, may have had greater appeal than gifting her money to strangers overseas. Some children, on the other hand, were not quite so ambivalent when the conflict infiltrated their worlds. New Zealand schools donated money usually spent on academic awards towards various war funds during this period. Thelma Haywood, ten years of age in 1914, was one of several interviewees who remembered not receiving a prize at primary school. She recalled that "when my turn came, [it was during] World War One . . . so I missed my dux medal, I had to go without one." 32 Resentment was a common response to adult expectations of universal self-sacrifice.
Older children were given greater cause to resent the conflict. Soldier enlistment and recruitment practices drained workforces across the country, and secondary school authorities were asked to help with labor shortages that emerged as early as 1915. 33 Rector F. Milner's 1915 report for the Waitaki Boy's High School in Oamaru noted that "as many as 80 or 90 boys have been requisitioned for shearing work, and these are distributed over a wide area in Otago and Canterbury. We recognise that the School will be called upon next year in greatly increased measure to furnish hands for shearing and harvest- Te Kuiti we had to put a message out to stock up at Frankton so we could lunch them." 36 Fewer than thirty percent of New Zealand children went on to secondary education, and high levels of adolescent employment meant that older youth were often exposed to the conflict's impact on the lives of strangers. 37 Charles Harling was a fifteen-year-old errand boy in 1917 and, decades later, he still remembered delivering one particular telegram: I didn't know what was in it . . . and I heard a hell of a scream and I looked around and the woman fell down to the ground . . . Her husband had been killed in action, and from then on the postmaster had to take all the serious or Killed in Action-KIA they used to call them-as I hated going. 38 The conflict's impact on New Zealand children's educational and working lives, however, was relatively limited, especially when compared to the suffering of youth in other belligerent countries. Severe shortages in Central and Eastern Europe, for example, resulted in widespread truancy at German elementary schools as children were forced to skip class in order to search for food. 39 The burden of obtaining food and fuel also fell on young children in Vienna. 40 Numerous European adolescents faced the pressure of being the primary bread winners for their families; the Berlin police estimated in 1917 that one-third of working youth between fourteen and eighteen had fathers in the army. 41 By contrast, New Zealand children's labor-related absenteeism was largely confined to the summer months and, although war-related demands and encounters in the workplace could be distressing, they tended to constitute brief moments of stress rather than long-term pressures. Unfortunately, not all spheres of New Zealand children's lives were so unaffected.
When hostilities were declared, children with combatant relatives faced profound shifts in their roles at home. Eleven-year-old "Queenis" recorded in 1916 that one of her brothers had returned from Gallipoli but two others were currently training at Featherston Military Camp, and, early the following year, she noted that they had left New Zealand for the war. 42 War-related absences were lengthy-unlike their British counterparts, it was unfeasible for New Zealand soldiers to return home on leave. All too often these separations became perma- Eileen Cragg, ten years old in 1914, distinctly remembered in her oral interview the distress she felt when receiving letters from her father who served as an officer. Cragg's father told her about some of the hardships he faced living in the trenches, including lice and poor-quality food; his letters were chewed around the edges by rats. 44 Contact with men experiencing the war firsthand did not guarantee continual youth engagement with the First World War. The conflict lasted more than four years, and some youth became accustomed to their soldier-relations' absence. Ten-year-old "Lady Pikiarero" noted in 1917 that "I have an uncle at the front, and when he first went away I missed him very much." 45 Such emotional ambivalence was particularly common in younger children, possibly stemming from the fact that many might have only had a limited relationship with their combatant-relatives in the first place. In comparison to Germany, France, and Britain, New Zealand's soldiers were overwhelmingly unmarried. 46 As a result, children's closest combatant kin were most likely their brothers, who may have left home to pursue employment opportunities or to get married long before they went overseas. These age gaps were particularly likely in large families; although married women during this period gave birth to an average of three to four children, numerous New Zealand youth were born into households with six or more children. 47 Emotional disengagement was less possible for older youth. Due to their age, adolescents interacted heavily with men later sought by enlistment and conscription movements. While young children may have never really known their combatant-relations, older youth had usually grown up with their soldierbrothers. They also had a far greater number of potential connections to the front; boyfriends, husbands, friends, and peers joined adolescents' relatives in fighting overseas. Sixteen-year-old "Strawberry Leaf" noted as early as November 1914 that "I know three or four who have gone away to it [the war], and we all hope it will come to an end soon." 48 These relationships further exposed older children to the realities of war, emotionally tying adolescents more strongly to developments on the battlefield. As "Pineapple" wrote in mid-1915, "it makes it [the conflict] seem so much nearer our homes when we have friends who have been either killed or wounded at the front." 49 The war also targeted male adolescents themselves. Older boys were increasingly viewed as future combatants between 1914 and 1918, and their letters reveal that many responded strongly to this assumption. Legal constraints did not stop a number of adolescent males from attempting to sign up for military service. 50 "H. M. S. New Zealand" informed Dot that "I have three brothers at the front, and am going to try to get away myself. I have already been fined for enlisting under age; but better luck next time." 51 Administrative attempts to prevent underage boys from serving overseas, however, varied in intensity, and there was significant diversity in how recruitment centers across the country determined eligibility for enlistment. 52 Although exact numbers are difficult to determine, it is clear that a number of male adolescents successfully lied about their age, or obtained parental permission, in order to fight on the battlefront. Eruera Kawhia and Potene Tuhoro, for example, were brothers from Rangitukia on the East Coast of the North Island who served in the First and Second Maori Contingents, respectively. Upon enlistment, fifteen-year-old Eruera claimed he was twenty-one, and sixteen-year-old Potene said he was nineteen. By January 1917, both paid the ultimate price for their determination by dying overseas. 53 Most male adolescents asserted that they wanted to become soldiers so they could help fight their country's enemies, and these explanations tended to draw on prevalent stereotypes. In his introductory letter to Dot, "Marconi" wrote that he "will be 19 soon, and then I will be able to enlist, with the intention, if I pass, to knock out a few of those square-headed Germans." 54  Children's writings about the end of the conflict nonetheless reveal that some youth had a greater personal investment in the cessation of hostilities.
Adolescents and those with close soldier-relatives reflected on declarations of peace extensively, responding with a mixture of elation, relief, and even shock.
Sixteen-year-old "Gipsy Belle" commented, "thank goodness the war has come to an end. Very, very few people-in fact, I don't think any of us-can realise what it means yet." 61 For these children, the war had become so entwined with the absence of friends and family that they felt that they could only believe that hostilities had ended when the troops returned. Despite describing at length the peace celebrations held in Nightcaps, "Toddie" contemplated, "it is hard to realise the war is over, and it will only be when the boys come home that the fact will be brought home to us in New Zealand that peace once more reigns on the earth." 62 Unfortunately, the First World War was not the only crisis with the capacity to disrupt children's lives in the 1910s. Throughout 1918 and 1919, countries across the globe were affected by a highly contagious disease later identified as an H1N1 influenza strain. 63

THE 1918 INFLUENZA PANDEMIC
New Zealand experienced two waves of the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the first of which occurred during September. 64 As was the case overseas, the second wave of this flu strain proved to be far more dangerous than the first, and it was this later outbreak that contemporaries saw as constituting Youth observed how the flu affected their wider communities. Ten-yearold "Henry VIII" noted in December that "on nearly all the farms around here the work is behind on account of the influenza; but this district is very lucky, as none have died from it yet." 69 Ivan Kelly, four years old during the pandemic, also noted how the flu affected the region where he had grown up. He recalled that "the undertakers [in Birkenhead] were that busy that the carriers were using their carts and wagons to take the corpses to the cemeteries. The Northcote Primary School, that was a temporary morgue." 70 Schools garnered particular attention, which is unsurprising considering their status as major public infrastructure and the large amount of time many spent within these environments. Children not only commented on the appropriation of school buildings for flu-relief efforts, but also the disruption the pandemic had upon their educational activities; eleven-year-old "Grandmother's Girl" informed Dot in mid-December that "we haven't had our break-up [for the school term], because we are having our holidays on account of the influenza." 71 Children reacted keenly to the mass fatalities caused by the flu pandemic, even when they had not been personally bereaved. "Billy Oakland," nine years old at the end of 1918, noted that "we are having a lot of holidays just nowfirst with the ending of the war and now for the influenza. One of the boys in my class lost his mother with it last week. It is so sad." 72 Intriguingly, some younger children appear to have had a stronger emotional response to the large number of flu victims than to the mass casualties resulting from the First World War. Vivian Robertson lived through both the conflict and pandemic, and she recalled in her oral history interview that you'd hear the strains of the band of the death march that played at any particular funeral . . . [and] the same thing happened . . . when the people were dying with the influenza . . . I think they called it the death march, and that's what used to fill us so full of fear was the very word death, we had a great fear of that . . . We knew it was something that was tragic, and possibly more so then the war because I didn't really understand what the war was about, [although] I knew there was a war on. 73 New Zealand's war-related deaths had overwhelmingly taken place on battlefields far away. Some younger children were significantly affected by these fatalities, especially when they involved relatives, but many had little understanding of the realities behind long casualty lists in newspapers. Death on such a large scale was an abstract concept rather than a lived experience. By contrast, the pandemic resulted in numerous victims who died in New Zealand itself. Younger children may well have been more emotionally affected by the flu due to their immediate proximity to its consequences. Whether or not they truly fully understood the specter and reality of death itself, however, was another matter.
Age may have been a protective variable that maintained some younger children's psychological wellbeing during the pandemic. A large number of youth recognized that the 1918 flu was something to be avoided, but some children did not entirely comprehend the danger this event posed to both their family members and themselves. When she was only seven years old, Marion Williams had to care for both her parents when they were struck ill by the virus.
Nonetheless, she later noted "I don't ever remember being frightened about it. I wasn't frightened 'cause I sort of suppose I didn't . . . have any fear of knowing you know what it could be, what could happen to them." 74 Even when presented with damning evidence to the contrary, some children still believed that the pandemic was not a serious threat. Francis Fitzgerald, ten years old in late 1918, recalled that during the pandemic: They used to wrap their corpses up in canvas and just put them on lorries . . . Joe and I used to run behind the lorries and hanging onto the back of them, they weren't going very fast . . . and they'd [go] down the town hall and there was the fumigation there and we used to run through this fumigation and out again and we thought it was great fun. 75 Younger children were physically, as well as emotionally, sheltered from the effects of the pandemic. Parents and caregivers went to great lengths to prevent their children from being infected, often using crude quarantine measures.
Eight-year-old Margaret Young and her brother were evacuated from their home in Lyall Bay, Wellington, after their father contracted the flu. She later recalled that "they sent me to some friends that lived up in Duncan Terrace . . .
We all had to try to go out the house, I think my brother went to Grandmother's or something because it was so infectious." 76 Isolation at home rather than evacuation, however, appears to have been the more common experience for younger children as it quickly became evident that sending children away would not necessarily protect them from the virus. The flu's intrusion into younger children's homes forced many to assume significant responsibilities. As young adults were struck unusually hard by this virus and children were not, numerous youngsters up to the age of twelve had to look after flu-stricken caregivers. As mentioned earlier, Marion Williams was one of these children. At first Marion's mother was able to care for her father but, as Marion later recalled "she [her mother] finally got the flu, and she was terribly ill and . . . I had to look after them, I must have been about 7 at that stage. Dad was out in the tent and mother was in bed inside and she was very, very, very ill." 82 This role reversal of children looking after adults was entirely unintended, and parents often tried to prevent it from occurring. Dorothy Savage was placed in another home at Te Ore Ore, a Maori settlement near Masterton, during the pandemic after both her caregivers caught the flu.
Unfortunately, the only other occupant in her new living quarters-an "old man"-also fell ill. She remembered, "I stayed with him and then he got sick and I nursed him, I used to look after him there was only the two of us there.
You know I cooked for him and I changed him and everything." 83 Adolescents still at home in late 1918 also found themselves responsible for their relations' wellbeing. Parents, siblings, and other close kin could fall victim to the flu in quick succession, leaving older youth little choice but to become caregivers. Some adolescents understandably felt overwhelmed, including fourteen-year-old Eileen Cragg, who herself came down with influenza. Cragg remembered that "the whole family had it, but I was able to get out of bed and make a cup of tea and do something like that . . . And there was no organization to cope, you couldn't get help, mum was very ill and I just did the best I could because I was not as sick as the others." 84  Zealand youth. While the conflict and the pandemic were both tragic events, youth up to twelve years of age tended to react more keenly to flu-related fatalities at home than to war-time casualties that occurred overseas. These broad trends, however, were not impervious to other proximity-related variables.
Close relationships with persons directly affected by the conflict or the flu tended to further engage children with that event. Youth with combatant-relatives were more likely to be emotionally connected to the war throughout their relatives' military service than peers who lacked such ties to the battlefront.
These findings illuminate and confirm suspected differences between home front societies. As asserted by Bart Ziino, Australia and New Zealand's experiences of the Great War diverged from those of other belligerent countries due to Australasia's global positioning. The fighting fronts of war were located more than twelve thousand miles away, and distance thus defined Australasian responses to combatant casualties. 97 This article demonstrates that, in addition to shaping adults' reactions to the First World War, New Zealand's geographical remoteness also affected those of its youngest citizens. While war-related deaths occurred away from New Zealand homes, many families in Central Europe faced starvation due to conflict-induced food shortages. Furthermore, unlike their counterparts at the Somme or in Belgium, New Zealand youth were not subject to the deprivation, dislocation, and devastation associated with living upon or near the front line. This differential impact meant that younger New Zealand children could more easily be disengaged from the conflict as they were rarely forced to confront the realities of warfare.
The physical distance between New Zealand and First World War battlefronts also had emotional ramifications. Many men from New Zealand and Britain, for example, left their loved ones for military service, but this separation was far starker for families based in the southern hemisphere. As Rosalind Kennedy recognized, the absence of British fathers and brothers was periodically interrupted, as these soldiers were able to visit their immediate families while on leave. 98 New Zealand children, by contrast, could go years before reuniting with combatant-relatives who survived the war. Returning home while on leave was not practical for New Zealand and Australian soldiers, and these lengthy absences had an impact on both children's relationships with loved ones overseas and their understandings of the conflict itself.
Age was another key variable in children's experiences between 1914 and 1918. Like their younger counterparts, adolescents actively engaged with the First World War and the 1918 influenza pandemic. These events, however, had a heavier impact on older children's concerns and priorities than those of children less than twelve years of age. Adolescents' schooling and working lives were often disrupted due to increased demands from their home front society.
Older boys faced particular pressure during the conflict, finding themselves the targets of strong expectations regarding their "inevitable" enlistment into New Zealand's armed forces. Furthermore, adolescents' proximity to those eligible for military service resulted in older children enduring multiple absences, including those of relations, friends, peers, boyfriends, and even husbands.
Older children reacted strongly to the war-related disturbance of key spheres within their lives, engaging with the conflict emotionally, behaviorally, and discursively. For many adolescents, the First World War was an intensely personal event that necessitated extensive reflection.
Children's voices from this period indicate that although youth engaged with the conflict, they did not necessarily endow it with the degree of significance commonly assumed amongst historians. New Zealand academics John Crawford and Ian McGibbon recently asserted that "the Great War was undoubtedly the most traumatic event in New Zealand's history," yet it is clear that many adolescents like "Christabel" saw the 1918 influenza pandemic as constituting an even more traumatic moment in their lives. 99 Older children were particularly exposed to this deadly H1N1 virus because of the ways in which their lives were structured. Unlike their younger counterparts, many older children did not have the option of staying at home during the pandemic.
Employment obligations not only forced adolescents to witness the tragic consequences of this event but also placed them at greater risk of contracting the virus itself. While geographical and relational proximity were key in shaping youth reactions to international crises throughout this period, age undoubtedly aggravated the impact these events had on some children's lives. Ultimately, New Zealand children responded to the First World War and the 1918 influenza pandemic in multiple, complex, and sophisticated ways.
As Martha Saxton argues, "the history of childhood and children destabilizes traditional assumptions about what counts as history and who gets counted in making that history. When historians take children and childhood into consideration, new questions and perspectives demand attention." 100 Youth-centered analyses and investigations effectively grant greater depth to historiographical narratives, even to those areas as thoroughly investigated as the social history of the mid-to-late 1910s.