THE YPRES TIMES
55
The Pilgrims' Room, to which the Ypres League Hostel Fund contributed so
generously, will be opened next month; it is a beautiful building. All information
for pilgrims and visitors will be kept there, such as register of cemeteries, maps
of the Salient, and maps which show the roads to the cemeteries and memorials.
Everyone who goes to Ypres should visit the Settlement in the Rue
Elverdinghe, immediately west of the Cathedral and two minutes' walk from the
Grand Place.
W. P. Pulteney,
Lieut.-General.
By Lieut.-Col. R. C. Feilding, D.S.O.
(The Medici Press. 15s. net.)
IS this a book worth reading? The question has been already answered. In
War Letters to a Wife," it has been said, we have a material British contri
bution to war literature. We read again that such a book as this, written
with sincerity and single-minded desire for truth," will furnish enlightenment to the
historian of the future. Another critic, who claims to have read uncounted war
books, has stated that none recalls so vividly as Colonel Feilding's the reality of
the trenches and the spirit of the men that held them." This book, we are told
again, is by far the best book on the war we have yet seen." Even in these days
of extravagant claims, most of us who have read War Letters will endorse
such words.
These letters deal with the author's experiences from April, 1915, to March,
1919. Those who know naught of Givenchy, Festubert, Loos, the Hohenzollern
Redoubt; of the Somme, Ypres, Messines, Cambrai; the March retreat of 1918,
the Third Battle of the Somme and the final advance through Lille and Tournai,
such people cannot conceive what such a record means. Among the writer's page-
headings there is barely a name missing from the roll of battle-honours of those
years. Few men could have seen so much history in the making, still fewer have
lived to tell the tale. And Feilding tells it well.
Unlike much current war literature, clearly these letters were never written
for the multitude. They flaunt no conscious artistry. Their author, cramped by
no mission, no philosophy, could dispense with hysteria in any form. Effects were
not his aim. And since time was precious when he wrote, he confined himself,
not to frightfulness, but war. But, let us not fail to note it, this is more than a
British contribution to war literature; it will furnish enlightenment to many more
than historians; if indeed one of the best books on the war," Colonel Feilding's
Letters deserves to live for further reasons.
One suspects that when deciding on publication Colonel Feilding hardly
realized how much he was giving us; his book, besides displaying his skill with
the pen, reveals much of the man that wielded it. Moreover, there looms behind
his words more than his own personalitythese are war letters to a wife.
Because of that, there is nothing depressing or sordid in what he writes. Because
of that, his pages are richly human. Because of that, his book at once ranks apart
from other war books. He shows us The Front indeed in all its moods, comic