From the archives | 28 August 2014

From ‘Left behind’, The Spectator, 29 August 1914: In the poorer streets a kind of holiday atmosphere prevails, and a sort of excitement which is in a measure pleasurable fills the air… All the children are intensely excited. Many fathers have ‘gone to the war’, but not quite so many as are said to have gone by little boys and girls who cannot bear to be behind their friends and neighbours in importance. It is a tremendous step up in the world to have relations ‘at the front’, and ‘the front’ has a very wide meaning to children. Indeed, it seems to include the whole of England, except London.