The life that was lived in childhood and adolescence by that generation of boys and girls who grew into young manhood and womanhood just before the outbreak of the War is deader than the age of Queen Anne, yet it is all less than a quarter of a century ago, and the people who belonged to it are still young or, anyway, young-middle-aged. But it was a doomed generation, and few of those who survived the War and the revolutions consequent on the War were ever really at home in the world afterwards. (p. 340)

["Testament of Youth"] is a great help toward understanding that generation and toward understanding, not only why the young were so thoroughly sacrificed in a democratic age, but why they permitted themselves to be so sacrificed. "Testament of Youth" is the account of the life of a typical girl of that doomed generation, belonging...