WAR PAINT AT THE FRONT

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3143, 28 July 1917, Page 7

WAR PAINT AT THE FRONT

HOW MANY LIVES AND MUCH MATERIAL ARE SAVED SNIPERS LIKE INDIANS OF OLD (By J. Keeley, in tho "San Francisco ' Chronicle.") American artists who longed for some war work more active than painting posters have begun to"find it. They ore forming "ii United States wing of the "Camouflage." This mysterious word is descriptive of a huge French department of artful trickery, a department to which only the most skilled painters and col-our-authorities can bolong. It has saved' no one knows how many lives, how many cannon, how many car-loads ■of man and gun food. Its membership lias been depleted time and neain by .. . death, but' always tho loyal aitists of Franco have filled up tho ranks again ■ and kept the very' necessary, work going. "The Camouflage" is a corps of painters who. go abont with paint and brush, .. concealing all the military equipmentand activities 1 possible. They perform these miracles by clever picces of colour .execution, painting whole railroad trains so thai from an' aviator's bitnation far . above, they .look like grassy fields or dirt roads,. aud' are indistinguishable. Another part of their work is lo co.iceal cannon by hanging painted .-,-invns above them. Horses and men have been literally painted out of real landscape. Snipers creeping into the thickets to pick off receive an. elaborate coat of facial and clothing paint which Makes them' blend almost completely with the scenery. When a sniper is. crouching in a shaded nook he is painted in lrottled colours 60 that- the sunlight and shadows, conceal him by similarity. Houses have been- painted on screens.. and slrttched •/ over -useless-sites, .with the result that . German artillery lias switched its fire upon this suspicious building, and left the important places for tho time being safe. . Roads Hidden from _German Aviators. Long stretches- of road have been imitated on wide strips of screen- and placed in position- during the yight, s> that when the German aviatoi® looked down in the morning they were able to report to their artillery that nothing was passing down this milch-travelled path. At that very time," however, underneath this strip of canvas which lied so amiably Bbout its state of inactivity hundreds of French cannon were rumbling to the front, comfortable in the nsstir.mee that tho airmen above them were starching ' for ' them . elsewhere. Perpendicular screens are ; used, also, in tricking tho German binoculars. Roads which lead "directly toward the enemy lines liavo been reproduced in proper perspective * on huge .-canrases and erected iirioss tho street. so that from the German ptsition i 1; appeared that nothing at all was going on therein. At times wholo towns_ have been painted on these gigantic screens, and so cleverly painted on that tho Germans have not deigned to shell t.hem on acpount of their innocence. Master brushes have given houses, streets, trees and background skies so lealistic an appearance that no human eye could detect them from nature. The scene painters of Paris who have been employed upon- this phase of 'Camou- , fiage" have been especially proficient, for the same principles that guided their stage decoration work dominate their • field art. The scale has been enlarged, the perspective elongated; no other'technical "difference exists. Outposts for pickets, spies, and snipers have been constructed nut of the isost innocent objects. Huge boulders iying in "No Man's Land" have been ■ removed under cover of darkness and artificial rocks, constructed of -painted wooden frames, under which a man and his rifle may be hidden, have been-put. in their places in the night, so- that when dawn "cajrfe/again the'sniper might in" perfect safety'shoot'-down-suoh enemies, as came to tile loopholes. It is told that once ■a .dead horse was 'removed :from a', hilltop ■which commended a view of the German position arid a' painted artificial horse with a; lookout inside put- in its place under cover of tho dark. By this means miicli fm'nortant information was relayed to the French commanders, who were connected with the psendo horse- corpse by telephone. - . Uniforms Painted for Night. ' Experiments have been made by the French masters of colour along tho line of concealing men by day and by night in their creeping,''crouching advances .across exposed positions. The uniforms of the men who make night attacks are dashed arid splotched with dull silver streaks so that under the spotlights of the German's they will give the impression of inert bodies tangled in barbed wire or' covered as they fell by rifles "and ..bayonets.' The faces of the men are often darkened to a muddv brown so. that no glimpse of white will betray their true nature. -

- France owns its' indebtedness in this protective colour science to the American Indian, who- painted his face and nude body to blend with nature'so'that in,his ambuscades he might creep upon his enemies unseen. ' It is customary to think of tlie painted Indian as he was wlieu going on his raids, decorated wildly with bright colours "lvhich added to the fierceness of his facial'expression and which struck terror into the hearts of those who opposed liini for the first time. Picturesque as was this phase of tbe Indian colouring, it was not in frequency nearly as considerable as his more artful concealment by tricks of colours. He could with plant and earth dyes make himself become to all intents and purposes part of the ground to which he hugged or part of the tree trunk to which he clung.

He, in. his turn, owned-his indebtedness to the birds and beasts of the forest. The quail in the weeds is as brown as the herbage about it.; its back and breast are flecked with,white in such a manner that.it must move before it is detected. The squirrel oil' the bough is of the same brown hue as the bark; the: rabbit crouching in the stubble blends perfectly .with the plaiij life.' Tlie polar bear is white because of the advantage it gives him in stealing upon seals across tho snow. The bears of more southern districts are brown and black to harmonise yith the forests and weather-beaten rocks in whicli they live. Tropical animals are in the main spotted or mottled, because the sun of the equator is raainlv unobseured, shining brightly down upon matter! .inngles and thus making spotted and flecked shade. Tigers, snakes leonards gazelles, giraffe all are marked so. The lion is of a duller dun hue. but one which is beautifully adapted to the rocks and veldts where lie stalks.

That man should have in the heydav nf his civilisation, when the painted Indian had been relegated almost to inytliland, had recourse to these 'savage methods of protection is marvellous and yet it is "too common for remark in the ranks of the European soldiers.

While not strictly a part of "Camouflage, ' the Allies' schenfp of covering their batteries with branches of trees is closely akin to the science of painting out objects. In it "Camouflage" had its European birth, for in the early days of the war, before the artists began to busy themselves with screens, the soldiers in the field hit upon tho leaf covering as tho best way of thwarting the German airplane observers. This in itself was nothing new. It. had been used in other wars as a disguise not from tho air but from tho foe. Tt will bo remembered that .when Macduff's army moved upon the castle of Macbeth in Shakespeare's play it. came marching behind a cloud of tall tree limbs borne by t.he front ranks to conccalj the niimbers and character of the attacking party. Thus was the old propheev "Till iH'rn.mi wood remove to Dnnsinane" fulfilled. ;

"Cunioll flase" if moans "th rowinj; in one's eyes/' nnd is word in (lie French Franco hns led the other nations in this now science lnrpolv hpemise the French arc the"world's--jrrcniosi. handlers of colour. Impressionism. flic latest jjrent movement in art, which introduced to t.lio world the science of pntHnsiPivnnj: nnd-vigorous colours in pointing*. berrnn in- I'nince. Monof and Stnnet. the (\v« originators of (hp school, rna<Tp tJie: varying shades of sunlight the principal'thing in their* pictiiros.nnd set thousands of painters following their now principle".