"SCOTS GUARD"
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—With reference to Mr. Alec Waugh's review of this book, and Mr. Arthur E. E. Reade's letter on the personality of its author, may I hope that your readers will be interested in an extract from a newly-discovered letter of Wilfrid Ewart's which would seem to illumine the matter further?
Corresponding with one of his intimate circle on August 1st, 1918, from the Guards Division Base Depot, Havre, Ewart writes :
" Will you look out for my Vision of Paris in June 1918 ' in this month's National Review. It may make some of them sit up a bit. The censor has cut out two pages which annoys me intensely as it's probably spoilt the whole rhythm, but even with what's left, Maxse says he's delighted.' Well, it's a bit out of my usual line. I have got off, too, another long descriptive thing of the Third Battle of Ypres called Three Days.' I am happy to find that something quite new—a new touch and scope—have come to me in this last year or so—something I never had before. It is very curious and really gives me great hopes. I feel I have incomparably greater power of expression than I had at the time I wrote ' After Ypres' in Corn'all.
All this is very personal and egotistical but it does one good to speak or write to one who thinks mach as we do. We all shut our- selves up too much."
From this it would surely appear that some three years before the publication of Way of Revelation Ewart was to a degree " certain of himself," and what Mr. Waugh, on meeting him, mistook for hesitancy was, in reality, modesty.
The three essays mentioned by Ewart in his letter are to be
found reprinted in When Armageddon Came.-1 am, Sir, &c.,
• JOHN GAWSWORTIL
33 Great James Street, Gray's Inn, W.C.
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