It is hard to imagine any grimmer irony than the
announcement that the admission fee to Lord Beaverbrook's exhibition of war pictures in Regent Street includes entertainment-tax. Emphasis on the horrors of war can, no doubt, be overdone, but I feel no sort of doubt that such an exhibition as this is all to the good. It is admirably arranged. The pictures are simply stark truth, depending for their effect on nothing artificial or adventitious. The most moving perhaps is the photograph of a shattered body hanging high above earth on the remaining branch of a blasted tree. Men's courage is immense, and even the prospect of passing through such a hell as this would not keep recruits away if they were called for. But every man and woman who sees the pictures will at least take a vow to make it impossible that anyone they care for shall ever be exposed to such a fate. That can only be done by banishing war from the earth, not as Lord Beaverbook will have it, by letting war come and trying to keep this country out of it. In spite of him it is the broad, not the narrow, truth that his pictures inculcate.
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