Arms and the Boy Arms and the Boy "Arms and the Boy" is a poem by Wilfred Owen. Like Owen's other famous poems, it deals with the atrocities of World War I; in it, he portrays the loss of innocence of a child in the midst of war. Thousands like the boy are drawn into the battlefield, to the tormenting visitations of war. <poem>"Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood"</poem> It seems a wonder that a boy familiar with sticks and stones holds bayonets in the same hands and learns the coldness of death.
The English Boy at the Cape: An Anglo-African Story ordered an investigation, as a result of which no more children were sent to South Africa, while Canada and Australia continued to receive them right up to the middle of the twentieth century. In "The English Boy at the Cape: An Anglo-African Story", Kendall makes a graphic plea for religious and racial tolerance. A little English boy, Charles, becomes a street child in Cape Town. He is taken in by a Muslim family, who teach him cleanliness, godliness, schooling and industry. A shocking episode occurs when a gang of drunken British midshipmen break up a Muslim festival, accusing the participants