What effect was news of the war having on Lewis? It is hard to say. Many years later, speaking to another generation of young men caught up in a great war, Lewis insisted that war produced at least one benefit: it forced us to consider our own mortality. “If active service does not prepare a man for death,” he asked, “what conceivable concentration of circumstances would?”26 There is little sign in the summer of 1916, however, that he was intellectually preparing himself for anything other than an academic career.
