Boy soldiers

From ‘What will they do with it?’, The Spectator, 14 August 1915: It is true that in a good many cases boys of 17 ought not to be sent to the trenches. Such boys would, however, be quite serviceable for home defence purposes, and it is obvious that we must in any case keep a quarter of a million, and perhaps half a million, soldiers in these islands to resist a raid. Not only do boys of 17 learn very quickly, but six months of good food and military drill and of life in the open would enormously improve their physique and make them the better able to bear the trials with which the nation will be confronted at the close of the war.