Perhaps the most striking quality in the Exhibition is rather
an unexpected one, for it is an effect of poignant realism. Nothing could be further removed from photographic ideals than moat of these pictures, and yet, whether we like it or not, and whether the painters intended it or not, the net effect of the Exhibition upon a civilian is a conviction that at last he understands something of the life that our men led in France and Flanders. It is an impression that no exhibition of photographs or of war trophies and relies ever gives. The disciple Thomas, childlike, preferred the evidence of "the print of the nails" to that of the inspired word as a proof of identity. But to those who want something other than "a piece of the actual shell" the Canadian War Exhibition will prove singularly illuminating.
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