In its cause

Question

1. Does "for every individual who had died in its cause" mean "for every individual who had died in First World War"?2. Does "individual grief" in the last line mean mean "people's grief for the died soldiers"?Context:The Canadian First World War memorial at Vimy Ridge in France is an interesting example of this debate. In 1921, the competition for the memorial was won on the basis of a design that reduced the reasons for the conflict and the consequent soldiers’ deaths to allegorical symbols such as justice, sacrifice, and honour. By the time the monument was unveiled in 1936, while the allegorical symbols remained, in response to public pressure the walls were now engraved with the names of every Canadian soldier who had lost his life in France and had no known grave. The memorial had become both a national monument to the war and a symbolic grave for every individual who had died in its cause and whose remains had never been identified. Here, national interest was able to accommodate individual grief.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

1. I found "in its cause" so odd that I tried to determine who the author was, to no avail. I would expect "for the cause" or "in its name", but not "in its cause". A war is fought over a cause. It is not the cause. This is not the same "cause" as in "cause and effect", you no doubt realize: AHD def. 3. "A goal or principle served with dedication and zeal: “the cause of freedom versus tyranny” (Hannah Arendt)." The writer meant simply "every individual who had died in it [the war]."

2. The writer is contrasting the public meaning of the monument with the personal commemoration of each dead soldier, contrasting the grand eternal principles embodied in the allegorical symbols with the stark reality of individual death.

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In its cause

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