Stand Up, Ye Dead

In wartime Britain, Norman Maclean treats crowded housing, drinking and falling birthrates as urgent matters of national responsibility. His preface, dated October 1916, argues that renewed faith must lead to changes in public life. He criticises the government's response to alcohol and connects conditions at home with the country's ability to sustain its forces abroad. The opening chapter uses population figures from London, Edinburgh and elsewhere to press his warning about national decline.

A later passage turns from a workman struggling beside a passing tram to the circumstances Maclean believes have shaped him. Overcrowded rooms, poor sanitation and the concentration of public houses in struggling districts become evidence in an argument about collective duty. The book offers readers interested in British social history a forceful example of religious reform writing. Its treatment of housing and temperance shows how Maclean brings material hardship into his appeal for moral renewal.