There are few moments in history when the division between the sexesseems as "natural" as during wartime: men go off to the "war front,"while women stay behind on the "home front." But the very notion of thehome front was an invention of the First World War, when, for the firsttime, "home" and "domestic" became adjectives that modified the militaryterm "front." Such an innovation acknowledged the significant andpresumably new contributions of civilians, especially women, to the wareffort.Yet, as Susan Grayzel argues, throughout the war,traditional notions of masculinity and femininity survived, primarilythrough the maintenance of--and indeed reemphasis on--soldiering andmothering as the core of gender and national identities. Drawing onsources that range from popular fiction and war memorials to newspapersand legislative debates, Grayzel analyzes the effects of World War I onideas about civic participation, national service, morality, sexuality,and identity in wartime Britain and France. Despite the appearance ofenormous challenges to gender roles due to the upheavals of war, theforces of stability prevailed, she says, demonstrating the WesternEuropean gender system's remarkable resilience.