Of this whole earlier stage, the _junior subaltern_ was the leading
figure. It was he--let me insist upon it anew--whose spirit made the new
armies. If the tender figure of the "_Lady of the Lamp_" has become for
many of us the chief symbol of the Crimean struggle, when Britain comes
to embody in sculpture or in painting that which has touched her most
deeply in this war, she will choose--surely--the figure of a boy of
nineteen, laughing, eager, undaunted, as quick to die as to live,
carrying in his young hands the "Luck" of England.
* * * * *
But with the end of 1915, the first stage, the elementary stage, of the
new Armies came to an end. When I stood, in March 1916, on the
Scherpenberg hill, looking out over the Salient, new conditions reigned.
The Officer Cadet Corps had been formed; a lively and continuous
intercourse between the realities of the front and the training at home
had been set up; special schools in all subjects of military interest
had been founded, often, as we have seen, by the zeal of individual
officers, to be then gradually incorporated in the Army system.
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