English: In an April 1919 letter to his friend and fellow Canadian artist Arthur Lismer, Fred Varley wrote: "I was in Ypres the other day - in Maple Copse and Sanctuary Wood - you pass places such as Piccadilly or Hell Fire Corner and you follow up a plank road and then cut off over a festering ground, walking on the tips of shell holes which are filled with dark and unholy water, You pass over swamps on rotting duckboards, past bleached bones of horses with their harness still on, past violated rude crosses sticking up from the filth and the stink of decay is flung over all. There was a lovely wood there once with a stream running thro' it but now the trees are powdered up and mingle with the soil. One or two silly maimed stumps are left, ghostly mockeries of what they were. "I tell you Arthur, your wildest nightmares pale before reality. How the devil one can paint anything to express such is beyond me. The story of War is told in the thousand and one things that mingle with the earth - equipment, bits of clothing almost unrecognizable, an old boot stuck up from a mound of filth, a remnant of sock inside, and inside that - well, I slightly released the boot, it came away in my hand and the bones sifted out of the sodden rag like fine sand. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I find myself marvelling over the metamorphosis from chrysalis to butterfly but I never get beyond marvelling.