(Jacobus embraces her. Reginald Talbot de Vere-Crœsus being, fortunately, shot exactly through the head with a Mauser bullet, recovers at once and embraces her also, and joins in a song-and-dance trio, "Be careful what you're doing with the gun," and the curtain falls to the tune of, "It mustn't occur again.")
Note.—This farce will be continued till further orders.
A. B. P.
THE WAR ARTIST OF TO-DAY.
To the Editors of The Friend,—Sirs,—The present campaign has most decidedly, as your correspondent in The Friend of the 11th says, commenced a new era in the history of illustrated journalism, but not to the extent that he thinks.
The camera and the pencil can, and will, live together during a campaign, but I venture to doubt if the camera will be able to do all that its champion claims for it, and the war artist who knows his business, which cannot be learnt in a single campaign, will come out on top. For reproducing and putting before the public scenes representing the strife and clamour of war, with its accompanying noise and confusion, the man with the kodak cannot compete for one single moment with the individual who is using the pencil.
How can he produce a picture that will show the public at large anything like an accurate bird's-eye view of what a modern battle is like? The brain of the camera cannot take in all that is going on. The man with the pencil does so. A few lines to indicate the background and the characteristics of it, and he is able to put before the world what has taken place, that is if he knows and has seen what troops have been doing.
In another paragraph there is a sentence which is a very unjust reflection upon "the old-fashioned war artists, who draw on their imagination." I should very much like to know who the old-fashioned war artists can be who are referred to in this manner. The few men who are still alive, and there never were many of them, are all men who have seen a large amount of fighting, have sketched and worked under fire, sent their work home often under enormous difficulties, and been in very many tight places. Why should these men be referred to in this way?
I suppose there has not been one single campaign in which the camera has been in such frequent use; but is it possible, by this means, to bring before us the various phases of a battle—a modern battle, I mean, with its absence of smoke, enormous expanse of front and general invisibility of both the attackers and defenders? Take a battery in action. Can it show us the excitement and turmoil round the guns, will it show us (unless it is a cinematograph) the trouble amongst the teams when a shell drops near them? I think not. What it can do, and does, is scenes which are more or less peaceful, such as camp views, incidents in regimental life and also bits on the line of march, but of an action—no! None of us artists are at variance with Mr. Scott in other parts of his very able letter, and we cordially welcome the camera artist, knowing very well that he has his field of work in which we cannot hope to compete with him for a moment; but to put the camera, which, after all, is only a very fine piece of mechanism, on a par with a sketch is more than most people can put up with, especially