WWI - fine group of five autograph letters written by an officer from the front, making a number of important observations on the origins of the war, the progress, with comments on an allied victory in 1916, and finally with some very marked comments on the changing mood of the British people towards the end of the war. In the first letter, undated, but clearly written shortly after war broke out, he comments: 'I am very sorry for the Kaiser. He was the one man in Germany for peace. While he was away in Norway the war party headed by the Crown Prince started all this off, though of course he cannot go back…' In a second letter, dated in another hand August 2nd 1914 - ie two days before war was declared, he comments on the preparations taking place in the British army, and gives his opinion as to what the Germans intended to do and comments that they did not realise the resistance of the Belgians. The final letter in the group was written in July 1917 and he makes some very important comments on the mood of the British public which he encountered on a rare visit to England from the front: 'I went once or twice to the theatre & mine was the only clean shirt in the place…I suppose the idea is that the idle rich are not to provoke the down trodden workers by displays of fancy…everyone seemed mad & their own preoccupation to get rich quickly by robbing somebody else. When you hear people whom you originally considered sane, talking about republics , committees of soldiers, workers' delegates etc it makes one mad. Happily, the present Russian debacle will dispel some of these illusions about democracy…'. Together with a WWI era autograph album featuring prose, verse, illustrations and some photographs of serving soldiers, a further letter written shortly after the outbreak of war, describing efforts to recruit men for the army and a small group of ephemera