In "When the Vision Dies...," Vera Brittain the memoirist states that she "did not then know that if the living are to be of any use in this world, they must always break faith with the dead" (247).  In other words, the living must turn their loss into something productive.  I think this recognition of her naivety is interesting in this particular part of the text, as this is after Roland has passed, but before Geoffrey, Victor, and finally Edward would die in the War.  In this moment, she has only partially learned the extent to which this would have to be true.  Brittain the V.A.D. nurse does not yet know that the War would rob her of not just her lover or as she herself describes as "all [her] future" (190).  It would also rob her of her greatest friends and brother, "all [her] past" (190).  I was reminded of this towards the end of our reading as we see Vera begin to shift back to academic pursuit as a way of living up to these men's lost potential.  In a way, I see this operating as a sort of religion for Vera or a way of understanding the world that can encompass the totality of the War while at the same time make room for hope through remembrance of those she lost, and I think would inevitably lead her towards adopting a pacifist stance.  In "Survivors Not Wanted," she concludes that she "discovered that human nature does change, does learn to hate oppression, to deprecate the spirit of revenge, to be revolted by acts of cruelty..." (Brittain 473).  It is prophetic in a way that she would be so heartened by history and then immediately condemnatory fo the Treaty of Versailles which so obviously failed to recognize the humanity of those forced to agree to its terms.  Her critique of treaties is just as biting as any other she has served up throughout the memoir, and I wonder at her not being more cynical as Testament of Youth is published during the interwar years.