WILL YOU PLEASE ENDEAVOUR TO OBTAIN
AT LEAST TWO NEW MEMBERS BY MEANS
1 OF THE APPLICATION FORMS ENCLOSED?
214
The Ypres Times.
It is just a body of people who are proud of the moral quality of our race and nation
which arose above all baseness in that time of war, and who do not intend to let its memory
slide away into oblivion as soon as the price of the loaf falls to 4d.
The League might conceivably keep these memories green by merely singing a
Te Deum at eleven o'clock dailyit might do worse, but it so happens that it does a
number of other things and is just beginning to do them more vigorously and to add to
their number.
By way of commemorating the war the League does sundry things to-day and will
do more in the future and do them or some of them permanently. It issues to members
scrolls and badges. It arranges the visits of relatives to the graves, provides them with
guidance; a resting place and centre at Ypres reduced fares and so forth. It publishes
maps of the Salient and of the cemeteries there. It sells all the war books and issues a
quarterly journal of war literature. It is erecting the boundary stones marking the
extreme advance of the invader, and in due course it will mark the important military
points in the Salient and when its fund suffices it will develop its present Pilgrimage
Centre into a more permanent and imposing edifice, including a museum. But its
efforts are not confined to bricks and mortar and paper. Every day the Office gives
assistance and advice to members needing them about pensions and other questions.
I should say that letters and visitors often number a score a day. Finally, and this is a
point about which special efforts are now being made, the League Branches form local
centres for the meeting of old comrades and the organisation of local commemorations.
Some of these same things are being done by other institutions which have grown out
of the war. We not only welcome that fact but we are actually working in with them
and sharing their labours. I have in my mind three other bodies with which we are in
close touch. Our practical efforts, pilgrimages, reunions, and so forth which overlap,
are made with different objects in view. The League's ultimate object is to commemorate
the war.
And why Ypres Because the Salient more than any other battle ground represents
in a peculiar degree the things to be commemorated. It was there that the Old Con-
temptibles exhibited their quality at least as much as they did at Mons or the Marne or
Aisne it was there that the Territorials and the New Army showed what they were good
for, and if the Canadians stood out conspicuous, troops from every part of the Empire
overseas won laurels there. The formations which escaped duty in the Salient at one time
or another, must be few in number. Other sectors have their claims to special memory,
but Verdun and Ypres stand unrivalled for dogged tenacity. The defence of Ypres kept
the war within boundsthe collapse of Ypres would have proved a menace to our mastery
of the sea and all that that meant to the Allies.
But why trouble to join the League There is the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the
Stone Cross in every town and village, and the cemeteries at the Frontare not they
enough of commemoration Yes, certainlyunless you feel that there ought to be a
body of living men keeping memories alive and handing them onand you may care to
take a personal share in that business.
Philip Gibbs.
E. B. Waggett.
