The Spectator at war: War of words

From The Spectator, 16 January 1915:

A VOICE FROM THE FRONT

[To the editor of the “Spectator”]

SIR,— You may be interested to hear that the other day—in a place which the Censorship regulations forbid me to mention —I saw a number of soldiers surrounding an officer who was reading the Spectator to them; and in another place I saw a private give a packet of treasured cigarettes to a comrade for a three-weeks-old copy of the Spectator. He felt he bad got a good bargain. Pray do all you can to get the men in England to undertake their proper share of the work we are doing out here for them. Don’t butter them up, and tell them they are “heroes,” when they are not The impression we have out here is that there is far too much joining “fancy ” organizations in England, and that this sort of thing is merely an excuse for loafing and stopping comfortably at home in a warm house, instead of dodging bullets in a cold trench.