During the lull after a literary deluge of experiences of the last war and rising warnings against the coming chemical extinction of mankind, books [of the sort of Testament of Youth] assume a greater significance. They are written by that "lost generation," invisibly marked with the shadow of death and destruction. The whole tragedy of a hoary youth without the exciting self-assurance of a "barbarian heroism," the bitterness of its sorrow and frustration, carry far more striking agitation against a new massacre than do the glowing tales of trench moles.

Vera (Mary) Brittain 1893?–1970 Wide World Photos

Vera Brittain's story is the average story of a million individuals during the war: the conventional middle-class home in rural England, a meager adolescence, a short period at Oxford, and then the beginning of the war. Her fiance is drafted and killed, her brother and their friends follow soon after, and Miss...