On This Day, 25 July 1918

Birmingham Daily Post

Thursday 25 July 1918

WONDERFUL WAR PICTURES IN BIRMINGHAM.

To the majority of civilians the war is still something of an abstraction, even if they have had distressing realisation of some of its consequences. It is difficult unless one has visited the scenes where battle has been waged to visualise the concrete horrors of destruction and devastation which characterise modern warfare. The Canadian official war photographs which are on exhibition at the galleries of the Royal Society of Artists, New Street, Birmingham, graphically realise these for us, especially the large picture showing the taking of Vimy Ridge. In this photograph a most interesting phase of the battle is pictured in a comprehensive way. We see the troops and Tanks advancing amid an inferno of shells, and in the foreground lie the fallen. But the camera-artist – and he is an artist – has not forgotten the lighter side of life at the front, so that it may be said that the exhibition is truly representative, and leaves an indelible impression on the memory.