THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH.

TN a hundred ways the youth of Britain proves the spirit _IL that moves it. The spirit of adventure, the spirit of sacrifice, the spirit of enthusiasm, the spirit of simplicity, the spirit of patience, the spirit of reverence, and the spirit of fun—all these things combined ideally would compose the spirit of youth.

To see youth go forth to war exalted by the development of some, or indeed any one, of those inspiring flames within is to see a noble thing, however much one may deplore the imme- diate cause of the inspiration. The war, let us admit for our

consolation, has made the youth of this country discover of what it is capable :- " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' The youth replies, I can! ' "

We have read many letters from the front ; we have been

allowed, as it were, to see inside the souls of men who hid nothing that belonged to the spirit from themselves or from their friends ; men who played no tricks of deception, but who saw their end and marched serenely towards it without either insincere de- clamation or repining. Can anything possibly be more moving

than the calm and open-eyed sacrifice of a strong boy who _applies his joy of living to days of shattering trial, and departs from life almost before he haS tasted the savour of its rewards ?

We have before us a collection of letters written by a young man fresh from school who combined more of the admirable elements of the spirit of youth than any other whose letters we happen to have seen. The letters are not published, and we must say no more than that this young man was finely moulded, splendidly strong, handsome, gay, a sportsman and a naturalist, a very notable athlete, and a scholar of

quite exceptional talent, so that he wrote Latin and Greek in a manner that drew admiration from the most critical. He was not a mere juggler in Latin and Greek. He seemed to

enter into the beauty of the languages, and even his great facility was lost in his imaginative power and sympathy of comprehension. Knowledge of these various qualities perhaps prepares one to read his letters rather as though they were those of a Philip Sidney ; but what no one who was not in the secret could have expected also to find in the letters is the most attractive and convincing part of all their generous qualities—a lovableness of character which is quite unmistakable. The writer is lovable in his directness, his freshness, his unfailing gaiety, in the lightness with which learning sits on him so that he is undesignedly proclaimed in every letter a lover of humanity rather than of books. Above all, his affection for his family declares itself a hundred times over in his devices of language and suppression to save them pain and anxiety. We are tempted to say that if English family life—the confidence and easy com- munion of to-day between parents and children—had only this one result to show, it would justify itself as the exemplary training-ground of youth. The boy enlisted at the outbreak of war; received the commission he easily earned on the field ; and died as gallantly and uncomplainingly as was appropriate to his singular combination of strength and sweetness. If the death of such a youth is indeed harrowing, it has also a splendour that survives the form of death. After all, it is true—death has no sting. The reality of such strength and beauty lives on ; and death seems but an impotent assailant of all in man's spirit that moulds and teaches.

His zest in everything he saw and did from the moment he started for the front as a private must have radiated content- ment. " It's a perfect day and everything is perfect," he says in his first letter. " Having the time of my life," he says a few days later. That note never varies in writing to his family.

Everything pleases him. " I wish I could tell you about the glorious things here. There are rats in the straw anyway, and I stalked one with a bayonet in the night and only just missed him." Again : " Thanks awfully for your letters. They come so nice and regularly. One was given me to-day by a chap who got it from a Scotchman in the road. What he was doing with it nobody knows." Many of his companions are 'bus-drivers- " nearly all very nice fellows." If ever there is a suggestion that his heart is longing for home and peace, it is in a letter to a friend, not in one to his family. After his first experience of shell-fire he writes to his people : " I found it did not worry me." Nevertheless he was conscious of the sobering effect of the trench fighting that leaves its mark on every young brow. "I am having a glorious time," he says, " but you can't imagine how old I am now." Of the Regulars he writes :— " I'm always getting into talk with regulars, and getting some idea of what they're made of. I've been tremendously impressed with them. I have the very highest respect now for the British soldier as a fighting man and a gentleman.. The Englishmen out here are a type quite apart, and such a refreshing type. They always look so

nice and firm and reliable, even when they are absolutely done to the world. And you see some degrees of weariness and physical misery here which don't happen in England. I feel always that our chaps can stick it, and others simply couldn't."

The talent in the following description of shell-fire is clear

through all its undress :-

" You probably don't know what a village looks like when it has caught it in the neck. It is a wonderful sight. Each house has chosen its own way of sitting down, and the whole place is all huge pits where the big high-explosive contact shells—Black Maria and her relatives—have burst. Its an extraordinary experience march- ing through a place like this for the first time, at night. Perhaps you don't know tho two sorts of shells, which are absolutely different. there's the big brute, full of lyddite or melinite or some high explosive, which bursts when it hits the ground, and makes a big hole, blowing out in every direction, but chiefly upwards ; so that if you are lying down you -re all right, unless the thing bursts on you. This chap does not have any bullets in him, but he does his business in big jaggy bits, which you hear flying round—bzzzz, and may kill you some hundreds of yards off, if you are exceptionally unlucky, by dropping on your top-crust. He is generally a heavy shell, fired from a howitzer, and goes dead slow. A Black Maria comes trundling along, whistling in a meditative sort of way, and you can hear her at least four seconds before she gets to you. The other sort is really much more dangerous, as it is full of bullets, and is timed to burst in the air, when the bullets carry on forwards and downwards in a fan shape. He is almost always an express, and comes up not unlike an express train, only faster. The crescendo effect is rather terrifying, but if you are in a trench, and can keep your head down, he can't get at you seriously. The Germans have a little motor battery of 3-inch guns (they gave me my first taste of shrapnel) which is very unpleasant. The shells come in with a mad and ferocious squeal, and burst with a vehemence that is extraordinary for their small size. They have very small bullets in them, and lots of them. Anyway, we're getting guns up here hard, all sorts. We've one big chap communing with a cross-road ten miles off 1"

He received his commission in an Irish regiment, and in describing the character of his men says :-

"That reminds me of two lads in this regiment who got fed up with each other in the trenches. So in broad daylight they got up on the parapet and fought. After hour one was knocked out, but all the time the Germans were cheering and firing their rifles in the air to encourage the combatants ! Who says the Germans are not sportsmen ? You can gather from these stories what sort of chaps I've got. They will only obey their own officers—they obey me all right so far—but they make magnificent fighters. They are much cheerier than English 'Pommies, and able to stand anything. The only way is to jump heavily on serious offenders, and condone little things. . . . I caught another spy the other day. I said, Vous Cites espion !! ' He said, Non, non ; je suis trop francais pour cela,' and spat copiously on the floor to prove it. That and a pass he had convinced me, and I let him go. He took his hat off to me and bowed when I said, C'est bien ; bouge t" (which is rather a good expression I've picked up) and said Bonjour, M. le colonel, merei bien.' So I kicked him behind and we parted, firm friends. There was about half the company looking on and applauding, which made it all extremely funny."

Here is an account of a dangerous piece of scouting :—

" They wanted an officers' patrol to go out sometimes, so — and I went on after that and crawled down a hedge among mangold- wurzels, over lightly frozen ground that scrunched like grinding coffee. We got about 100 yards from their trenches, perhaps a bit less, and listened to them talking and working. I could not under- stand much, but I got a word every now and then. There were two sportsmen having a walk close in front of us talking sixty to the dozen—I think they were officers, but we heard nothing of any use. Most of the men were doing wire about 60 yards off us, and we could hear everything they did. After a bit some blighter in our trenches fired, and the bullet ricochetted up close to us into the middle of this little party, but apparently did not hit them. They hated that, and when our fellows started shouting insults—the favourite one is "Allyman Bully Beef' suggesting that they don't get enough to eat, and always riles them absolutely mad—they began to go back to their trenches. We could hear our fellows shouting Allyman no good' and — the Kaiser,' and they were getting bored with us. After a while it came—`Allyman Bully Beef ! Bang—bang—bang, off went the German rifles, and the machine gun joined in.

rolled into the ditch pretty quick, into two feet of very cold water. I stopped where I was, and made a noise like a turnip. The machine gun fired slick up our hedge, searching vertically, and I was glad when it was over, as a great stream of bullets went past just over the ditch, and they raised their elevation as they fired, so they passed our place pretty soon, and went over us. We about-turned as soon as they stopped and did good time on all fours and finally on two legs; but they heard us and started again. However, we got behind an old house and then went-home—poor old— soaked and chatter- ing with cold ; me shrieking with laughter at him, as he had on a goatskin and it was rubbed up the wrong way and he looked like a hedgehog that has had a blind."

Sometimes his letters break into a passage of real lyrical joy. For instance :-

" It is lovely sitting in the sun and listening to the cock-chaffinches and yellow-hammers tuning up, and expanding in the aura which has come straight from — [his home]. There's nothing like Spring air to take you away and back. Even in this hole in a turnip-field we are conscious of the largior aellier, which is as broad -as from here to England at least, and as deep as all past-years, made warm with old happiness, and all alive with fancies that come in and laugh like the

ghosts of little kiddies that keep on playing though no one takes any notice. Then we go back to the trenches.'

Lyrical, Lyrical, too, is his description of the Irish priest's smile, which " would make the hedges grow." But nobility shines through his thoughts, and not less through the clipped language of his manly grief when he writes of tho death of one of his dearesb friends :— " Fve just heard A. is dead. A. was a good boy, and I'm sure h. died just as he lived, and no one could better that. I've written to his people. This is the first time the war has hit me hard. Cheer up, my very dears. A.'s all right. He'll carry on. It would take more than that to stop him. Of course I've got a bit gone, but I'm healed, and can carry on, and do better work. It is only the selfish part of us that goes on mourning. The soul in us says sursuin corda.' I've looked at death pretty closely and I know what it is. A man is called away in a moment and goes before God. A. went as we know him, the boy wo are proud of. Think of him as he is, and the grief slips off you."

Again on the same subject :- " I've got a long account to settle out here, and A. is at the top of it. I think they'll find that will cost them a lot. His death hits me harder than the death of all the valiant men I've grown to like and love out here. The love that grows quickly and perhaps arti- ficially when men are together up against life and death has a peculiar quality. Death that cuts it off does not touch the emotions at all, but works right in the soul of you ; this is so incomprehensible that you are only vaguely conscious of the change which you find there later, and shake hands with it. Regret is what you feel ; but there is something rather better than that really, which I think is what makes men. My love for A. was not a war-baby, and so his loss is more painful to me than any other. But I know he's all right."

After numerous " close calls " the time came for the writer of these letters also to cross to the other side where the trumpets sound for such as he. An officer has described his end :-

" On the 15th we had a particularly unpleasant afternoon, so bad that the general decided to take us out and give us a rest., and we were to be relieved about 10 p.m. At 9 p.m. working parties came up to bury the dead, improve the existing trenches, and dig new ones, and we had to start them working ourselves. Your brother had to start one at a place where our trench touches the German trench with only 20 yards of unoccupied trench in between. He was warned to be careful, as the Germans had a machine gun and several rifles trained on the spot, but with his usual courage he got up on the parapet, and from there directed the working party. A flare showed him up, and he was fired at immediately, and one bullet hit him in the body. He was carried in and bound up at once, and in half an hour was back at the dressing station, where they made him as comfortable as possible, and gave him sufficient morphia to deaden the pain. When I had got my company and my dead and wounded out, I went to the dressing station to see how he was, and found him lying on a stretcher looking very white, but as calm and peaceful as a statue. I bent over him, and he recognized me at once, and said that I could do nothing for him. He knew he was going, for he said,

It's all up with me, old chap.' Of course I told him that was absurd and that we'd kill many Germans between us before that happened ; at which he smiled, for wo both knew that his time was near. I stayed with him for half an hour, and then had to go away with my company. He made no complaints and wanted nothing, and he died very shortly afterwards, when they had taken him to the Field Ambulance, a beautiful manly death."