What did they look like ?
The first two volumes of the officla.1 history of the last war have been conspicuously well done, but I think it a pity that more imagination is not used in the choice of illustrations. These are sparse and poor. Neither a photograph of a canal bank, nor even a photograph of the upper half of an admiral, helps the reader to visualise the things he wants to visualise: Of these easily the most important is the soldier and the weapons he used. Surely there were some Tar artists attached to the B.E.F. whose productions would bring to life the pre-jeep era, the age of the respirator, and of that supremely useless weapon, the Boyes anti-tank rifle ? How can a youthful reader imagine what Blenheims and Hampdens and Battles looked like when he, regards a Liberator as the last word in obsolescence ? I know that in these volumes very little space can be given to illustrations; but I really think it would be worth, in those that follow, trying to make better use of it.
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