"To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.' -From President Wilson's address to Congress, April 2d.

VOL. LXII

JULY, 1917

NO. 1

SPECIAL SERVICE FOR ARTISTS IN
WAR TIME

By Ernest Peixotto

ACCOMPANIED BY REPRODUCTIONS OF ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY FRENCH WAR ARTISTS

W

HAT can the artist do for his country in war time? What has he done in the countries now at war? In what direction can he exert his maximum of efficiency? For what work is he especially equipped?

Through my connection, as American secretary, with the Appui aux Artistes an organization that has been helping the needy artists of Paris by providing cheap meals for them in studios loaned for that purpose I have been kept in close and constant touch with what the art-workers have been doing in France. Even before I left that country, in the fourth month of the Great War, the artists were actively organized.

At the very outbreak of hostilities the younger artists and the students at the Beaux-Arts took their assigned places in the ranks of the youth of France, and shared the horrors of the first few months of war with such fine self-sacrifice and with such spirit and ardor that I have among my papers a single list of three hundred and fifty of them killed in action. Many distinguished themselves on the field of battle; many were "gassed" or wounded; many have come back physical and mental wrecks after long periods in the hospitals.

Two artists of the Appui were among those who acted as éclaireurs for what was probably the most deadly volley of artillery ever fired. "At Verdun, when the

Fort de Vaux was cut off from the main French body by German cross-fire," writes a friend in Paris, "the situation of the garrison became hopeless and Reynal capitulated. The Germans seemed to think that, with Vaux fallen, Verdun was in their power. They prepared a triumphal advance in force. Platoon after platoon, regiment after regiment, rolled out of the trenches, formed in close order under their standards and began to sweep onward, cheering and singing, with their music at their head. Two men of the 'Appui' helped to signal the right moment for the French guns to open. Those who saw it say that a great cloud of dust rose to an enormous height, hiding everything from view, and when it settled no living thing could be seen. The space between the lines became a lifeless chaos and remains so until to-day."

And so one might go on indefinitely with tales of military achievement connected with the artists of France. But they have done better than this. The French Government awakened to the fact that the artists of its country should not be thus wantonly sacrificed; that there were very useful things that they could do. So it directed its efforts toward employing them in work for which they were specially equipped.

It sent the more vigorous ones to the front, with special permits from the War Department, to make sketches from life of scenes in the trenches, in the avantpostes; of life in the hospitals, in the Copyright, 1917, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. Printed in New York.