There is a case to be made that, despite the unfortunate interlude involving the death of her brother in 1915, Katherine Mansfield did her best to ignore the 1914–18 war, the ‘Great War’. Jeffrey Meyers makes the case forcefully:

At first glance, a brief summary of the facts would seem to support Meyers's contention. Not only did Mansfield have the temerity to dissemble and bluff her way into the war zone in France for a tryst with her lover-in-waiting, Francis Carco, in early February 1915, but also she returned to Paris twice within three months – in March, when she seemed entranced by the sight of a Zeppelin, and again in May. Then, in mid-November and little more than a month after the death of her brother, Leslie, she hurried off to the South of France (Marseilles, Cassis, then Bandol), where she settled until the end of March 1916. Her final, and longest, visit to France during the war began on 8 January 1918 and lasted well over three months until 11 April 1918.

In his autobiography, Between Two Worlds (1935), John Middleton Murry seems to confirm at least their indifference to the war. After describing a solemn farewell visit from Elliott Crooke, an Oxford friend in the Special Reserve, who arrived with his kit and sword, he writes:

Though Murry feels empowered to speak both for himself and for Mansfield, the evidence of her letters, notebooks and stories belies both his confident claim about their attitude to the war and the indictment by Meyers. As she once wrote to S. S. Koteliansky, ‘Dont believe the conjugal “we”.’