A snippet on swearing

Or rather, a cutting on cursing: from the Ilford Saturday Post, 14 June 1919

A bit unfair to blame it all on army life; after all, Rupert Brooke had written in his 1914 poem Peace of the desire to

Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, 
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

The ‘dirty songs’ were clearly there in civilian life, and no doubt much of the cursing was taken into the army by civilians.