Each writer is seeking in the dreadful welter of war some common revelation of spiritual comfort and advance. Is the agony of these years meaningless and wanton? Is the heartsickening struggle brutal and brutalizing, and nothing more? Each, in his or her own way, finds an answer.
One, a questioner by temperament, has come to see the regeneration of human life in the miracle which the war has worked in the younger generation. Another, by profession a soldier, found a new and vivid faith born of physical impotence and pain. The third, an American woman, has come to her new belief from far distant fields of the imagination. All three unite in confidence that the generation now culminating in manhood is passing through blackness into light brighter than any dawn the world has known.
The spirit of the volume is the spirit of youth, learning in the Book of Life, trusting that the best is yet to be, and reading with shining eyes to the end. It is the spirit or Léo Latil, a young soldier of France, who, shortly before his death on the edge of a German trench, wrote to his family, —
Our sacrifices will be sweet if we win a great and glorious victory,—if there shall be more light for the souls of men; if truth shall come forth more radiant, more beloved.
The War and the Spirit of Youth is an inspiring, heartening little volume. It is well printed, handsomely bound, and sells postpaid for one dollar.
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
THREE PARK STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
HEADQUARTERS NIGHTS
By Vernon Kellogg
When the World War broke out, Vernon Kellogg was Professor of Biology at Leland Stanford University. As a man of science, he was accustomed to weigh facts calmly and dispassionately. He was an admirer of Germany, a neutral, and a pacifist. With the hope of relieving human suffering, he went to Europe and became special envoy of the Committee for the Relief of Belgium at German General Headquarters and at the headquarters of General Von Bissing in Brussels.