--, KILLED IN ACTION, AGED EIGHTEEN. rye THE EDITOR Or
THE " SPECTATOR.") Sie,—May I venture to send you these extracts from letters written home from the front P—not because the young officer they describe was in any way braver than others, but, as your readers will agree, I feel sure, it is something to be admired and wondered at, this unflinching courage in those who are not only so young, but also totally inexperienced. This
calm, heroic bravery is a God-given attribute which perhaps nothing but the war could have brought out to the same extent. Again and again we hear of it in those who, in ordinary times, would, some of them, still be schoolboys enjoying that "last year," the proudest and happiest time of their school life. A sergeant writes :— " When I last saw him he was standing on the parapet of the German trench calling to his men to conic on."
And again he writes :— "— was by his side all that day and saw him fall, killed by a shell. He was one of our bravest and most efficient officers. Since I have been out here I have myself seen him do several acts of great bravery. He was always where his men were in greatest danger. He died as he had lived, the bravest of the brave."
To us, who can only think of him as a boy, the loving, clinging soul we have tended, guided, spoilt, and loved from his earliest years—to us comes, through our blinding tears, this vision of a "fair-haired youth, keen, alert, active, on the parapet of the trench calling to his men to ' Genie on.' And to us older ones—fathers and mothers, teachers (in whatever capacity we may have stood to them)—all that is left now, as we think
of that " noble army, men and boys," is to pray humbly :— " 0 God, to us may grace be given To follow in their train."
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