Tell England, subtitled A Study In A Generation, is a novel published by Ernest Raymond in February 1922 in Great Britain about the first world war and the young men sent to fight in it.
The novel opens almost like a Just William or Molesworth story, describing the school lives of Rupert Ray and his friends at their public school, Kensingstowe. The author describes the pranks they play on the masters (teachers) from Ray's perspective. Raymond spends much of the novel setting up the characters and their relationships in this way.
Time passes quickly as the boys grow up and they deal with adolescence. They learn honesty, honour and sportsmanship through their lives at school. Raymond places dark omens about the future of the boys. For example, at the end of a triumphant cricket match the masters at Kensingstowe consider what England will do with the young men they are molding.
When the war breaks out it is treated with much excitement and the boys leave school to join the army as officers. This is the major message of the novel. Where others have condemned this attitude and blamed it for the mass slaughter of the war, Raymond explains why people thought like that, and were so willing to go forward. The attitude is embodied by their new commanding office, the Colonel;
"Eighteen by Jove! You've timed you lives wonderfully, my boys. To be eighteen in 1914 is to be the best thing in England. England's wealth used to consist in other things. Nowadays you boys are the richest thing she's got. She's solvent with you, and bankrupt without you. Eighteen confound it! It's a virtue to be your age, just as it's a crime to be mine."
The boys go forward to Gallipoli and despite Ray's pain at leaving his mother, and his clear worry that he will never see her again, they are still optimistic and raring to go into battle. They only begin to feel fear when their school friends start to die.
At the end of the novel when leaving Gallipoli Ray is charged to tell England about what has happened, "You must write a book and tell 'em, Rupert, about the dead schoolboys of your generation".
Apart from Ray's mother, the novel has no female characters and there is an obvious homosexual atmosphere surrounding the boys - described as their "classical" relationship by Raymond.
Tell England was originally published by Cassell and Company, but has been out of print since 1945. ISBN 0304928712.
