During World War I, New Zealand society committed itself to a war effort, the intensity of which can be glimpsed in the wealth spent, the extraordinary legislation passed, the emotions evoked, and the enlistment of near 10 percent of the country's population in the armed forces. It is sometimes presumed that this commitment reflects general wartime hysteria or the effects of imposed propaganda—with all the manipulative trickery that that term implies.

Calls to Arms takes a different view, and considers this commitment as emblematic of deeper cultural sentiments and wider social forces which were marshaled in a cultural mobilization: a phenomenon whereby cultural resources were mobilized alongside material resources. Many pre-existing social dynamics, debates, orientations, mythologies, values, stereotypes, and motifs were retained but redeployed in response to the war. By exploring this process, Calls to Arms sets New Zealand's military involvement in a broader context and enriches our historical understanding of the society which entered and fought the Great War.