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WHAT'S THE USE OF THE LEAGUE?
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THE JOURNAL OF THE YPRES LEAGUE.
Vol. I. No. 8. Published Quarterly. July, 1928.
There are still people who ask, in a curious hostile tone, What is the Ypres League
What's the use of it, anyhow When they are told it is to commemorate the War
and the part we took in it they answer shortly, We want to forget the War. Why rake
up that old horror and reopen old wounds Why commemorate the most frightful
sacrifice of young manhood and the most horrible crime of civilisation in modern history
It is people like that who should join the League, because their bitterness would be
relieved by the spiritual ideal of men and women in its ranks who belong to it, not
forgetting the tragedy of war, not for morbid motives or militaristic aims, but to keep in
living remembrance the splendour of the spirit of our people at that time, their defence
of national life and liberties, their exalted resistance to all the powers of evil and darkness
in league against the nation and the individual soul.
Beyond the disillusion of the present time and its inevitable weariness future genera
tions of our race will, beyond all doubt, turn back to the pages of history narrating the
Great War, with a marvelling pride in that heroic period when their race reached a sublime
height of courage, endurance, and carelessness of self. They will wish that they might
have but one glimpse of that British manhood which went marching up the roads to
Ypres. They will, if they have any humility of heart, pray that they may have inherited
some spark of that spiritual fire which enabled those men, and their women at home,
to endure the stress of those years and to face the worst that was in them, so unflinchingly.
It is to keep that fire burning in the heart of the race that the Ypres League has been
formed.
I may not speak for others, but for myself the League is the corporate and permanent
memorial of all that was noble in the war, and especially of that common manhood which
in all ranks rose to great nobility, in unselfish sacrifice and duty. On November n of
1919, 1920, 1921,1922, the whole Empire stood still in solemn and thankful commemoration
of that devoted service. The Ypres League tries to keep that spirit alive for all time, and
for every day of the year.
No man wants to spend his life in commemorating the war or anything elsehe
must be busy about a thousand other objects and interests, he cannot be daily thinking
of the past. It is for him that the Ypres League is formed so that when occasion arises,
an anniversary, the meeting of a comrade in trouble, an opportunity of going over the old
ground, there is the League and its Office, a permanent storehouse and provider of what
he wants, a place moreover into which he can toss his personal memories for circulation
among the members.
