1943 Exhibition of British war pictures exhibition

FOREWORD. On these walls you will read the story of the defence of Britain against the Nazis, o the long campaign in which civilians in blitzed cities and suburbs did as big a job and endured as much as the airmen, the seamen and the soldiers. If the people of Britain had failed in this fight the war would have been lost, but they did not fail. In these anxious months of late 1940 and early 1941 with which many of these pictures deal they manned our first line of defence just as surely as our own fighting men who were playing their big part in holding the fort in the Middle East. The history of these times is not fully written unless the artist as well as the writer and the photographer helps to tell it. I think that you will agree, after looking at these paintings and drawings, that you have a more vivid and enduring picture of Britain in the blitz than you gained by only reading about it, and a greater pride in your citizenship of the British Commonwealth. This collection of official war pictures has been made available by the British Ministry Soon after the war began Britain set her artists to work recording what war was like— of Information through the High Commissioner in Australia for the United Kingdom. its tragedy and its courage, the ugliness and the humour. It is necessary both for the nation It is being exhibited throughout the Commonwealth under the direction of the Board of and for the artists themselves that the artists should see and depict these things, and Management, Australian War Memorial, in co-operation with the Trustees of the National therefore Britain sent the artists among the scarred cities, to the air force stations and out Art Galleries of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, on the North Sea in naval ships to paint war as it is. There is no propaganda here, and no and Tasmania. glorifying of war, because the people of Britain believe, as we believe in Australia, that honesty and truth are among the things for which we are fighting.