Yes, I made a note of that passage too, desertblues. Part of what is so heartbreaking about Vera Brittain's book, and the situation that people find themselves in in any war, is that in order to bear the dreadful injuries and deaths, people have to try to tell themselves that it is for a good cause, that the deaths are not senseless, even when it is clear she understands how pointless it all is. And each generation seems to be caught up in it anew.
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The causes of war are always falsely represented; its honour is dishonest and its glory meretricious, but the challenge to spiritual endurance, the intense sharpening of all the senses, the vitalising consciousness of common peril for a common end, remain to allure those boys and girls who have just reached the age when love and friendship and adventure call more persistently than at any later time. (page 250)
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And another quote, this time writing about the disaster that was Gallipoli, where she is contrasting a report about the Dardanelles and John Masefield's
Gallipoli:
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The latter (Masefield's book) makes you feel, in spite of the condemnatory language of the report, and the sense one has all through that the campaign was an utter failure with nothing in its result large enough to justify it, that it must have been a very fine and wonderful thing to have been one of that small army that fought so gallantly for such a forlorn hope. (page 288)
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And finally, a comment about the changes to the landscape she knew in France, after the hasty burials were made beautiful and peaceful in the great war cemeteries:
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Even the weather-beaten crosses, with their bright gardens of pansies and stocks and marigolds, in the big cemetery below the pinewoods at the top of the hill have been replaced by the stone architecture of our post-war frenzy for memorials - as though we could somehow compensate the dead by remembering them regardless of expense. (page 321)
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