International studio (56.1915)

Impressions of Brittany in War Time

v
4


ON THE QUAY, DOUARNENEZ
IMPRESSIONS OF BRITTANY
IN WAR TIME. BY FRAN-
CINE ALMOND. SKETCHES
BY W. DOUGLAS ALMOND, R.L

PEACEFUL Brittany .' That part of France
so beloved by artists for its primitive
simplicity, its days of dazzling sunshine
when shadows are as purple as those of
the Midi, its days of mists and rain when sun-baked
colour glows with a luscious softness through its
bath of delicious moisture. Brittany, with its note
of black that always comes “just right”—the
note that gives such surprising value to the tawny
yellows, brilliant blues, and gorgeous reds and
purples. Brittany, the happy resting-place of
Americans who know their Europe, and of Great
Britons who love their little Brittany.
And you who love it, are you still thinking of it
as Peaceful Brittany? Come, then, and see it in
war time, see it warm with pulsating life and move-
ment ; see it more gorgeous still with its added
LVI. No. 224. —October 1915

colour of thousands and tens of thousands of
soldiers. Scarlet and blue soldiers drilling for
war, in open spaces where peace used to reign.
Sappers in fatigue uniforms of cotton that once
was blue and now, by repeated washings and sun
hissings, runs a riotous gamut of hydrangea tones,
from deepest purple to mauvish pink. Sappers
quite unconscious of their colour value as, with
spades over their shoulders that catch the glinting
sunshine, they swing along in hundreds, bent upon
experimental trench-digging. Soldiers marching
and manoeuvring and dancing around in bayonet
practice. The air filled with the rattle of musketry,
the tramp, tramp, tramp of moving battalions, and
ever and anon the bugle call 1 “ Poilus ” every¬
where, energetic, alert, indulging in blague as they
peel potatoes for the evening meal outside the
22 1