Defiant city [antikvár]

Introduction by J. B. Priestley UjCJbLREADY there have been some ex- cellent photographic records of bombed Britain. For one of them, Britain Under Fire, I wrote an introduction. But no matter how skilfully the camera is used, it cannot be given the feeling and insight and power of selection of the artist. It is, in the end, the artist who will tell us most. What he gives us is not merely a pictorial record but also his vision of life. He works under the stress of certain emotions, and as we look at what he has created those emotions are released. No photographs could suggest the horror, the disgust, the compassion, the enduring grace, the rich warm humanity, that we discover in these drawings. Here a man and not a machine shows us bombed London, Thus there is here a deeper truth than the truth of the photographs. We not only stare at these scenes but we also live in them, as the artist lived in them. Mr. Bato is a fine draughts- man—his technical accomplishment will be obvious to anybody—but it is also clear from these drawings that he is, too, a man with a notable breadth and depth of feeling, the kind of man who should be on hand to tell the world about bombed London. We were fortunate in having him with us. It is privilege to