The Telegraph Book of Readers’ Letters from the Great War edited by Gavin Fuller (Aurum Press, £14.99)

‘ALL over by Christmas.”

Just a fortnight beyond that hopelessly overoptimistic date, a reader of The Daily Telegraph gave a prescient assessment. Writing from the Primrose Club, London, F Annesley warned: “As one not unacquainted with Germany, her soldiers and her fortresses, I may perhaps be permitted to suggest that by the time the war has been on five years Britain will probably have awakened to the fact that in January 1915, she should have been strenuously preparing the fittest five million of her sons for the front.”

Whether there should be conscription was a hot topic. Annesley’s letter was in response to one signed ‘Patriot’, which urged: “Surely it is high time to stop the wretched farce of inviting young men to join the Army… It is up to our Government to shove them in…”

How British citizens viewed the First World War at the time is a little- explored byway of the conflict.

This collection of Daily Telegraph letters opens an illuminating window to it. In July 1915, the Mayor of Margate, William Booth, was keen for the world – or at least Daily Telegraph readers – to know that, in his town, it was business as usual.

Presenting Margate as “a high class Continental pleasure resort,” he stressed: “Our magnificent sands – the happy hunting ground for the children – are all open and absolutely free as ever, and the sea bathing, so popular on account of its safety, is also largely patronised.”

Under the pen-name North Country, but probably from the North- East, because he names “racing centres such as Stockton, Redcar, Doncaster, York and Newcastle” a reader complains about racing being stopped “while theatres, cinemas and concert halls are allowed to remain open”.

But the horrors of war were being recognised – including for horses.

A letter from the “Blue Cross Fund, aimed at the care of horses in wartime,”

appealed for cash to help its “four large hospitals in France.” By November 1915, these had treated 2,000 wounded horses, and £3,000 a month was needed to carry on the work.

Concern for wounded soldiers, largely left to God and Providence after previous conflicts, sowed the seeds of state support. Describing how “for some months I have been visiting our wounded heroes,” a Frederick Milner wrote: “Some of these poor fellows, alas, will be crippled for life. I endeavoured to assure them that a grateful country would see to it that they did not want, but they said they had been told that so often, only to be deceived… “It is inconceivable to me that these men will not be amply provided for… Would it not be possible for the War Office to tell these poor fellows definitely what will be done for them, and so save them from the mental torture, which adds so much to their sufferings? I commend this suggestion to our great War Minister.”

Other letters record appeals for socks, gloves and “mufflers” for the troops. Even for pipes, to replace those lost or broken in battle. More worryingly, for “field glasses”, donations of which were “being distributed as rapidly as possible”.

Under-equipment of our troops is nothing new.

Probably through censorship, particular battles – the Somme, Passchendaele – are scarcely mentioned, though a short letter from “One of the Mothers” reveals that her 18-year-old son “laid down his life at Ypres.” She calls for “a distinctive badge for the fallen, a coveted decoration in memory of our dead” – another prompting for the future.

It’s a shame many of the letters appear under nom-de-plumes. Arguably too many also come from official bodies – the British Empire Union, the Royal Colonial Institute.

Still, the collection mirrors home perceptions and preoccupations of the war, culminating in an awareness of its unprecedented horror.

Published six days before the Armistice, a letter signed Templar pictures the ravaged war zone as it is still etched in our national consciousness: “Towns and hamlets blasted to pieces, plough and pasture churned with shell, untillable for generations, woods and coverts stripped and shattered. Desolation of desolation, such as Daniel the prophet never dreamed of.”

Templar wanted “women from every class to see these things. They will then know what war is in all its fearful brutality. They will understand why their menfolk fought and died. This war may then end war.”

But that hope proved as futile as “all over by Christmas”.