A quarter of a century ago there appeared Testament of Youth, one of those rare books which are a landmark for a whole generation. To young people, and more especially young women, who were in their twenties in 1933, the year of its publication, Miss Brittain's autobiography interpreted the puzzle of childhood recollections, things incomprehended at the time but of later years never to be forgotten. The First World War made a curiously deep and indelible mark on the generation who were just too young to be personally involved in its tragedy. They saw and to an extent far greater, probably, than their elders supposed, they understood with the mind, but they were not sufficiently adult to understand from the heart. The great abstracts, such as love and loss, mean little or nothing in childhood….

Herein lies the explanation of the sudden popularity of war books and plays some...