“He was then twenty-two. He arrived in England in the early part of 1915 to join the British Army, and no military eye could doubt that the British Army had got a rare recruit. Harry Butters got his first commission in the 11th Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Afterward his technical faculty found more congenial scope when he transferred to the Royal Field Artillery. While training, he stayed a good deal at the rectory, Stow-on-the-Wold, Glos. The rector writes: ‘He was a warm-hearted, fearless young officer, as fine an American gentleman as ever crossed the Atlantic.’ It is much to say, but it is true.” “His captain writes that, ‘He was with his guns, and no one could have died in a nobler way. He was one of the brightest, cheeriest boys I have ever known, and always the life and soul of the mess.... We all realized his nobility in coming to the help of another country entirely of his own free will, and understood what a big heart he had. He was loved by all.’ “He is in it to the finish, indeed, with comrades of his adoption, who have passed with him. He takes his last sleep out there with so many of the brave and true where none was braver and truer than he, and among the recollections of the great war, his name will not be forgotten. Beaumont will take care of that. In his old college we doubt not he will have his permanent memorial. In our thoughts the flags of Britain and America cover his heart with double honor. We shall never see them entwined again without thinking of him. No American can read these lines without being proud of him. No Briton can read them without feelings deeper, more moved than can be said in any words. We are grateful, as he would have liked, to his America that bred him.” Mrs. Denis O’Sullivan, the widow of the famous Irish singer who was so eulogized by Mark Twain in his “Memoirs,” wrote to friends about the boy she affectionately called “stepson,” though there was no such tie between them: “Do you remember in poor Synge’s ‘Riders to the Sea’—the old mother says that now her last son is drowned, she will be able to sleep o’ nights? “The harrowing anxiety of every day in this time of war is over for me, too. On July 22, as you know, Gerard, my first stepson, was killed. And on August 31, at night, too, my last—Harry Butters—they were both as dear to me as my own—but Gerard had his own people here—he was not dependent on me, while in a way, Harry had only me—his sister was six thousand miles away. I haven’t been able to say much of him these last months as he had been getting the carbon copies of my letters to you. Yet it was so often on the tip of my fingers to enlarge upon the boy—his charm, his capabilities.