War Letters of a Public-School Boy

by Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

A well-known Professor, himself a Balliol history scholar, wrote:

I only met your son once, but I liked him much, and from the time he got the Brakenbury the promise of his future career at Balliol had a very special interest for me. I felt sure he was destined to do great things. It is tragic to know that that destiny will now never be realised; but he has done greater things; he has done the greatest thing of all. That he should have joined the Army so early and pressed for transfer to the machine-gun corps—a unit which occupies posts of the greatest danger, and is required to hold them at all costs and against all odds—makes his achievement all the more memorable. Your sorrow must indeed be great, and almost intolerable, but the thought of such a high and fearless devotion will, I trust, do something to assuage it.

From Mr. William Hill, an old journalistic friend of mine:

Yesterday morning I read with regret profound, on account of the nation's loss as well as your own, the report of the death of your gallant son. Yesterday evening in a volume by Watterson—which incidentally contains a sketch of the Captain Paul Jones of history, depicted as a brilliant young man, with charms of person and graces of manner—I read in an appreciation of Abraham Lincoln a letter written by the great President to a sorely-bereaved mother, which I feel it to be a duty and an honour to recite in part to you in this hour. Lincoln wrote:

"I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom."

In your own case, Lieut. Paul Jones, in the form of his last letter and by the testimony of his Major, has left a legacy of protest and aspiration and example which I ardently trust and believe will reinforce powerfully the spirit of regeneration, so long belated, that is already beginning to influence materially the Britain of our immediate future. Sealed by the sacrifice of his life, the note of a saner and purer national life set in his letter by your son will, ere half the century is past, give us, I am confident, a stronger and mightier Britain.

From Mrs. Denbigh Jones, Llanelly:

"Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" That has been the ideal of these brave young souls. From one great joy to another your glorious boy led you on. He lived and moved with an intensity and a fullness beyond our slow dreams, as if rushing to consume everything in life worth reaching and learning in the given time. The intoxication of life which possessed him will shine for ever in your memory, as it was not of earth. He scaled the topmost crags of duty, and now his young voice still calls to us "far up the heights."

My son's nurse, for whom he had a warm and abiding affection, married Mr. W. W. Jones, of Llanelly, who wrote:

On behalf of my wife, his devoted and loving nurse Nan, and myself, we extend to you our most heartfelt and sincere sympathy in this great catastrophe of your lives through the death in action of your dear son Paul, whilst fighting for the rights of justice, humanity and freedom. He died like the hero he was. My wife was greatly distressed and painfully grieved when she learnt of the cruel loss you have sustained. Paul's name was a household word in our home. She always spoke of him as such a noble, unselfish and virtuous boy, good in spirit, great of heart. It is hard that he should be taken, his life already so rich in achievements and with its promise of a brilliant and golden future. By his death it is not only you, his parents, who will suffer; but Paul, being in himself a great democrat—which in these days we can ill afford to lose—the democracies of the world will suffer by the loss of such a gallant and noble gentleman.