"A life nobly lived and nobly died—the ideal"—such was the comment of an old colleague of mine, who has himself since lost a promising soldier son. "I venture to say," he added, "that his noble letter, written almost on the eve of his death, will carry healing to thousands and thousands of sorely-stricken hearts in these sad times. It should be printed in letters of gold."
"Be sure," wrote an old Cardiff friend, "in all your sorrow that He who fashioned your boy so well and equipped him so fully, still has him in His own kind care and keeping; and that when you 'carry on,' bearing your load bravely, your dear boy will be nearer to you than you often think, in some splendid service, too."
"It is such noble sacrifices as your son's," wrote a well-known M.P., "that almost alone redeem the horror of this world-wide catastrophe."
From M. Marsillac, London correspondent of Le Journal (Paris):
What a truly magnificent spirit was shown in that letter of your son! Indeed, we who remain behind are more to be pitied than those who go forth into Eternal Peace by such a noble and luminous road.
Mr. Alexander Mackintosh, its Parliamentary correspondent, writing in the British Weekly, said:
Lieutenant Paul Jones, as an occasional visitor, was familiar to the Press Gallery. Oxford has lost another young man of unusual gifts, a scholar and an athlete, as modest as he was brave, and the Gallery has a sense of personal loss. Yet it bids his father say, in the beautiful apostrophe which Rustum puts into the mouth of the snow-headed Zal:
"O son! I weep thee not too sore,
For willingly, I know, thou met'st thine end!"
Mr. Arnold White ("Vanoc") in the Referee for August 12, 1917:
Just before his death Lieutenant Paul Jones wrote a letter which deserves record on imperishable bronze. This young officer has given a new lustre to the name of Paul Jones.