LETTERS FOR THE FRONT

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 34, 4 November 1918, Page 2

LETTERS FOR THE FRONT

(By Irma O'Connor.) A telegram, a telephone message, or a. IfustiJy-serawled,. jerkily-ivorded postcard —these wero before the war. our favourite means' of communication with our friends. In these strenuous limes it wua, such a simplo expedient that trite letterwriting was fast becoming a forgotten airt. But the insistent cry from tho trenches for "Letters! More letters!" has made a direct appeal to every niothtt and wife a,ud sister. It is something so intimate, so personal, so essentially the woman's part. It matters so little to tho recipient whether it be gracefully worded or ill-expressed, whether it eume tense with tho throb and rush of a busy town, or pregnant with lonoliness from the wilds of tho ihush, as long as it breathes of all the dear, everyday homo events so insignificant to others, so precious to the heart of the wanderer. Many a woman who before the war declared lie) hopeless inability to express herself in written words has found that love puts a spur to her imagination and dips her pen in glowing words. If Ihe war-worn soldier, intent on his overseas mail, suddenly recalls with a rush of gladness Ihe fragrance of the violets in his own homo garden, tho pungent odour of the pine needle's in the plantation, tho scent of the damp, mossy earth in tho bush; if for. a few blissful moments he firgots the dreary desolation of Flanders mud in the wild exhilaration of a gallop across the downs, or the joy of a sail in his yacht over tho bliw waters of his home hnrboui —then, indeed, the woman who wrote that letter has done patriotic work.