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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 28, 1915)
rM" , . 1 " . MAGAZINE SECTION AY I WIN PORTLAND, - OREGON, SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 28, 1915. r7 cm O iJ-: ID W c PICTORIAL SUPPLEMENT 1 If , Vv A '7 ; Futurists or Real ists in Art Find in the Hush and Smash of Armed Action the Most Thrilling Emotion in the World. You May Feel in These War Paintings the Desperate Aban don That Sends . Men to Their Death Without a Qualm OW can they die without dread? They have no hope, yet they have no fear. Why? There is no an swer that may be written down. Lit erature, helpless. falls to the ground when it confronts the task of describing the supreme emotion of a soldier. You may spend" a lifetime in a library yet never learn. For your question will never be answered by written or spoken word. But you may do this : Tou may stare Into the courage-steeled faces that rush across (he canvases of war artists and know. Geniuses of the brush have caught that indescribable death hunger of the fighting man and have put that passion of 1? W" i ''AW j W1" 4j f 1 it V ,1 rx. x 11V fe. In v- '""TL V 4 4 r . X -r It . V.. . V . . . - I !..; .T i. Vi..'' 4- r V V , ft . if r J" vV w . 5- "i - '1 3K r4 1 The futurist artist, G. R. W- Ncvinson, has put into his "Returning to the Trenches" the absorbed determined spirit that animates the soldier. vatch Nevlnson's Frenchmen sweeping back to their trenches at dawn. Their heads stretch forward, their knees lift with one short, hard jerk, their feet come down in a single decisive "clump." The ditch into which they will soon be tumbling Is a pit of death ; Into it shells come smashing, gases that rend lungs come drifting ; through it blood and water run as high as a man's knees, but there is nothing to sug-. gest those horrors in the .eager swoop of this compact, hard-driven file of men. Some unseen force, something that is bred in uniform determination and desire, puts that vigor and dash into their march ing step. Some mighty spirit envelops them, the spirit of thousands of men, all absorbed ln the same thoughts, all striving for the same ends, all doing and acting for the accom plishment of the same things. When a man feels that surging up and down his spine life becomes less dear and death less dreadful. It is the spirit that rises out of war pic tures and out of nothing else in the realm of art or representation. Here are the horsemen of Napoleon at Waterloo! Into the ditch they go. stern, inflexible, unflinching. To die In the open is one thing, to be smothered and trampled to death in a hole in the ground is another. Then suddenly nndor the feet of the front rank appeared a deep ditch, the sunken road. A detour was Impossible. The moment urn of the mass thrust the front 4incs unhesitatingly onward. There was no escape, so the soldiers of the emperor rode bolt upright over the brink and filled the trench with their bodies. ' When.it was level full the remaining horsit men kept on over the maRs of battered, mangled flesh. The artist paints that moment when the second rnnk swept oer the edge of the ravine. On his canvas appears no French man afraid. Faced by a terrible death, thej ride Into Jt, still intent upon that sonie thing that wipes dread and remorse from the soldier's mind. Copyright 1915. by J. KttUr "Scotland Forever. by Lady Butler, has in it the abandon which drives fear from the minds of warriors. vi.jfc-, "The Ravine at Waterloo," painted by V. Checa, catches the mental concentration of the fighting man who is too intent upon the magnitude of his endeavors to fear death, even ; m the smothered depths of a ditch. passions where you may see. They have seized and held for the view of posterity that master moment when man, sword and heart are at the tenith, they have put into the fierce countenances of the soldiers that tremendous sense of heroic abandon which lifts them high and clear above thoughts of gain and memories of ambition. Look" at the Greys, thundering down, sabers ; swinging, ' voices screaming, manes whipping, scabbards rattling ; look into that row of emotion-torn faces peering-over the wild0 heads .of their straining horses feel; with 'the 'breathless riders, that bursting flood of abandon-' and know' why-.mekdie-tuw afraid'! ' '. ' ' 1 1 '..Ml,! m mm w ( W ,tV i--MS '? '-''1 v ' '!J tV fr &