20 
LAND & WATER 
May 10, 1917 
War's Desolation 
WE reproduce on the opposite page two of the 
water-colour drawings of the British firing-hne 
winch are being exiiibited by 2nd Lieutenant 
E. Hundley- Read ^Machine Gun Corps) at the 
LeicrsTcr Gall<-nes in Leicester Squy^re. Tuey convey in a 
mos jKiignant manner the desolation of war. 
Tins exiubit ion. winch is crowded duly, and which is shortly 
to be enlaigid by further drawings from the same brush, is an 
education in itself. After a visit to it the battles now being 
fought on the Western Front assume a new reality. The 
artist concerns himself with nature and inanimate subjects 
rather than with man, and he brings home most vividly the 
sadness, misery and wicked wantonness o( the whole business. 
He Mm-^if writes of the scenes as follows : " Wandering 
from Albert to PoziSre*, through Devil's Wood and the 
many ruined villages that go to make up this place of tragedy, 
over roads inches deep in all kinds of mud. and shell holes 
full of slime to the brim, a trap even to the most wary, passing 
Kttle forests of wooden crosses and solitary graves in unlikely 
spots, threading a difficult path along the edge of a 
shppery or crumbling trench, impeded by tangled wire, step- 
ping gingerly over unexploded bombs, dud shells and unbuned 
human wreckage, every horror soon ceases to astonish." 
As it was between Albert and Pozieres when these words 
were written, so is it to-day from Lens to St. Quentin and along 
the valley of the Scarpe — a collection of brick and masonry 
ruins, of broken fields, of the maimed skeletons of trees 
and woods, with tatters not only of military equipment but of 
men themselves. There is also another side of battle which 
this exhibition illumines. It is the almost solemn magni- 
ficence of a heavy bombardment by night. Of course we gaze 
without the terrible roar and din of the guns in our ears 
and so obtain a false impression. But the pictorial effect 
is most impressive, and is a further proof of that truth, wlucl. 
has been more than once stated in these columns, that despiti 
khaki unilorms, modern appliances, etc., etc., war. for all 
its horror, must ever keep a splendour and glory of its own. 
In these rooms in Leicester Square you can behold both war's, 
splendour and war's pitifulness and should have no difficulty 
in striking a balance between the two. 
This is the second exhibition which Mr. Handley-Keaa 
has held during the last two years, and his work shows grea: 
strengthening. He seems more definite in his ideas, surer ol 
touch and able to impart conviction more readily. He was 
an artist before the war ; enlisted in the Isle of Wight and 
subsequently went into the Artists Rifles with whom be 
remained for some time. Afterwards he joined the Machini.- 
Gun Corps as a private and worked his way up to Quartet 
Master Sergeant Instructor. He has now received a Com- 
mission, but remains with the Machine Gpn Corps. Thai 
Mr. Handley-Read is a devoted lover of Nature is made very 
plain in this fine passage that concludes the brief introduc- 
tion to -his catalogue : 
" Detail and incident, at first a shock to the understanding, 
soon take their places as natural results of human conflict on 
such an immense scale. An impression, however, is left out- 
standing—at first passed over in the great chaos. It is bom 
of the tortured trees, twisted into unnatural shapes, splintered 
at their bases, uprooted and bent or stretclung gaunt arms to 
the sky. Here is a veteran of the forest battered and torn, 
there a slender and graceful trunk with a few twigs as yet 
only bullet-clipped. Sturdy willows are seen hurled, root 
upwards, into a shell hole. Such sights fix themselves in- 
etifaceably in the mind. Everywhere the murdered trees 
haunt the vision. It is the most weird, the most uncanny 
remembrance of the Somme " 
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