Do You Remember? Ypres Day in Paris 132 upon the grave of the Unknown Warrior. This unofficial deputation of the Ypres League Committee and members was headed by Major E. Montague Jones, O.B.E., and received at the Abbey by the Venerable Archdeacon Storr, M.A., who conducted a short service and addressed a few appropriate words. In Paris, on October 31st, the twentieth anniversary of the First Battle of Ypres, a wreath was placed by Colonel Beckles Willson on behalf of the Ypres League, on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe bearing the following inscription In Memory of our Gallant French Comrades who sacrificed their Lives in the Immortal Defence of Ypres (1914-1918) The Ypres League." By Ian Hay. I WRITE this on Armistice Day 1934the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War. Memories will be busythey will not all be unhappy memories, by any means. Those four long years, although they were grim and sometimes horrible, were profoundly interestingif only because they plucked millions of men and women out of a groove of monotonous routine and gave them a chance to show the stuff they were made of. Ability came to its own with a bound. Anybody with a capacity for organisation or leadership went right up to the topa railway manager became First Lord of the Admiralty, and a London taxi-driver finished up the war as a Brigadier-General. Those years brought recognition to scores of unknown scientists and inventors; and they did more to emancipate women than half a century of ladylike agitation. They were coarse, barbaric years, but they were dominated by an inspiring atmosphere of courage and fellowship. The men in the trenches had all things in common, while women of all walks of life worked devotedly side by side in factory and canteen. Charity, public and private, abounded. More than five million pounds were raised for the Prince of Wales's Fund, and nearly every great house in England was a hospital or convalescent home. And they were days of astonishing material prosperity. There was employment for all, and at fancy wages. There was very little to buy, especially towards the end. and at least everybody had money. I hope no one will imagine that in recalling some of the alleviating circumstances of those days I am arguing in favour of war or suggesting that we should start another. There are a million sufficient and permanent reasons against that kind of madness lying in British Military Cemeteries over three continents to-day. I am merely setting down in haphazard fashion a few odd memories which may be of interest to the generation which has grown up since then-there is not a British boy or girl at school to-day who was an inhabitant of this globe when the Great War broke outand perhaps, too, to my own contemporaries. It is always interesting to look backand the odd part of it is that the experiences which we often recall with most satisfaction are the unpleasant onesperhaps because we like to realise that they are safely over.

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1935 | | pagina 6