Armistice, war and remembrance, seen through the pages of The Spectator

The verse before Laurence Binyon’s ‘They shall not grow old…We will remember them’, is this:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

It’s reflected in an article that appeared in a 1917 Spectator under the headline ‘The Splendour of Youth’.

We may not say that the development of the noblest qualities in the flower of the nation is a justification of war, but none can deny that it is a sustaining consolation. The war has shown of what British youth is capable. The young men did not know it themselves before; nor did their friends, nor even their fathers and mothers. It is as though their hearts had been touched by a common ideal that unites them in valour and raises them to an almost incredible standard of performance.