Brittain, Vera, Diary, 7 August 1914

00000285-2.jpg
Description: 
Diary of Vera Brittain

Tabs

Case Study: 
From Youth to Experience: Vera Brittain’s Work for Peace in Two World Wars
Creator: 
Brittain, Vera
Source: 
diary
Date: 
7 August 1914
Collection/Fonds: 
Contributer: 
McMaster University Libraries
Rights: 
Vera Brittain estate; McMaster University has a non-exclusive licence to publish this document.

Identifier: 
00000285-2
Language: 
eng
Type: 
image
Format: 
jpg
Transcript: 

at Chesterfield – that there was no room for more recruits in the 6th Derby & Notts. Regt. but that the adjutant was delighted with their letter & had selected it from many hundred other applications & sent it to the War Office. Edward’s & Maurice’s qualifications are considered excellent & vastly superior to the majority of those who volunteer. Goodness knows what will happen now that they are in the clutches of the War office, that ravenous gleaner of men. We are expecting to hear every [fact?]. Edward is very interested to know where he is to be sent, but otherwise not the least excited or stirred – I have never known him so completely calm, & he seems to have grown older quite suddenly, specially at moments. Daddy was quite angry about the letter being sent to the War Office, but E. who went out with me after dinner, said that Daddy, not being a public schoolman or having had any training, could not possibly understand that impossibility of his remaining in inglorious safety while others, scarcely older than he, were offering their all. E. is of course rather young to volunteer really being only eighteen. Maurice was nineteen to-day. E faces the prospect of whatever he may have to do with perfect tranquility, & says that even death can only come once. We spoke of the entire absence of future prospects which war seems to produce; E. said that now but for this he would have been eagerly speculating about Oxford, but now he scarcely thought of it at all. Intellect, except in very high places, seems scarcely to count at all in time of war – the ordinary average solder fights just as well for his ignorance as any cultured man for his knowledge. And then the value of human life becomes so cheap, so that while the loss of ten men under tragic circumstances amid ordinary conditions would fill the whole country with horror, the news of the loss of thousands is now regarded with a philosophical calm and an