// In May 1919 The Times reported General Sir Nevil Macready, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, as attributing recent robberies to men ‘grown callous after four years’ experience of killing’. He also feared that a battle-hardened husband might now murder his wife rather than, as before the war, administering ‘just a clip under the ear’. In the summer of 1919 Philip Gibbs, a highly respected war correspondent, sought ‘to get deeper into the truth of this war’ and its immediate after- math, no matter how painful it might be. In the concluding chapter of his book he lamented how ‘the daily newspapers for many months have been filled with the record of dreadful crimes, of violence and passion. Most of them have been done by soldiers or ex-soldiers.’ Gibbs believed that a significant minority of front-line soldiers had returned seriously altered by their experiences. //
http://oro.open.ac.uk/10655/1/