And from the Art Editor

The Tocsin of War, which sounded on that fateful morning of August 1914, reverberated throughout the civilized world and fired martial souls with enthusiasm and love for country beyond all telling. Britons, old and young, flocked to the flag. 'Tis an old story now, but its reiteration will go on to the Crack of Doom; thousands, after besieging recruiting offices, were accepted and tens of thousands were sent empty away. It is greatly to the credit of several of the members of The Chelsea Arts Club and their friends, that they were among the first in the rush to enlist. Turned down repeatedly on account of age or medical unfitness, at the invitation of Lt. Col. H. E. Bruce Porter, the willing Rejected enrolled as orderlies in the R.A.M.C. (T.) at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth, S.W. Men of international reputation in the arts, zealously worked in menial capacities. Famous sculptors, noted landscape and portrait painters and brilliant black and white men eschewed not the most unsavoury jobs connected with the routine of a Military Hospital. They were out to 'do their bit' and right royally they did it. But though they sloughed their civilian skin, the palette and paintbox were irrefutably fixed in their dispositions and, during their all too infrequent moments of leisure, they struggled to find expression in the old way, like shrubs bursting into leaf on a spring morning.

Pte. Ward Muir, one of the happy fellowship and himself an artist in another medium - a talented journalist and novelist of repute in two hemispheres - seized the occasion with the C.O.'s benediction to start a Gazette. Although the journal fructified so late in the annals of the war as October, 1915, yet it was one of the earliest to start and it became the brilliant pioneer of many similar periodicals. Among the many contributors who performed pictorially and who figure in the following pages were one or two of outstanding merit. Pte. Stephen Baghot de la Bere had founded himself on Brangwyn, with a touch of the freakishness of Heath Robinson and a dash of the whimsicality of Arthur Rackham, but in the pages of our journal his own individuality asserted itself and his mordant humour, biting sarcasm and vitriolic fun allied to the brilliant execution of his draughtsmanship made to a large degree the reputation of The Gazette at the outset.

Pte. C. R. W. Nevinson - our only Futurist - carried on the tradition of Cezanne, Matisse and Van Gogh much to the joint amusement and perplexity of the reader. He served the useful purpose of not only out-Picassoing Wyndham Lewis but also of out-Heroding the Kaiser in pictorially bringing home the frightfulness of War. The celebrated portrait painter, Geo. Coates - a member of the International Society of Painters and the Beaux Arts - deftly limned for us many studies of our crippled heroes, and W. R. S. Stott and G. E. Lee rendered their impressions of hospital work in their own inimitable and respective styles. A. H. Fullwood, A. Streeton, J. A. Grant, E. Martin, J. Hodgson Lobley and R. B. Ogle - all frequent exhibitors at the Royal Academy - found a metier in black and white and frequently adorned our pages, while P. Kirk, with an eye like a camera, noted the hospital buildings from various points of view and his records are valued highly as souvenirs by the patients.

The men of the unit of the Royal Army Medical Corps were not to have it all their own way. Among the wounded - men from every calling and every clime, professional artists, talented amateurs and aspiring scribblers, who 'never published anything before,' came along with their interesting wares. The three outstanding patients in this volume are the Australian, Vernon Lorimer (who was wounded at Gallipoli and whose art reputation, made on The Sydney Bulletin, became an undoubted asset to us), and the Englishmen G. F. G. Fisher and H. E. Harman. The latter are well known to the weekly imbiber of light literature as frequent contributors to London Opinion. The ladies of the Voluntary Aid Detachment - Misses Marjorie C. Collins, V. Down, De la Touch and Ryle, - let in, most usefully, interesting sidelights from the feminine angle of our institution.

In the heyday of its joyful career, The Gazette received a blow from which it staggered. Pte. (now Lieutenant) de la Bere withdrew the light of his countenance from us and transferred it to the Artists Rifles, but the gods ordained that The Gazette was not to languish for want of talent, and the mantle of Elijah fell with some purpose upon Elisha in the shape of J. H. Dowd of Punch and The Bystander fame. Endowed with the eye of a needle for sharpness, a hand like lightning for unerring statement, Dowd, with the gift for caricature, possesses Daumier's sense of fun with Gavarni's masterly draughtsmanship and, furthermore, delineates character as faithfully as Charles Keen. The slickness of his drawing appeals equally to the man in the street and the exotic dilettante. We flatter ourselves that, in the publishing of The Gazette, we not only benefit the wounded and relieve their hours of tedium, we lay up a store of good things for the use of the historian. Our chronicles testify, more truly than libraries of learned tomes, to the indomitable pluck and abounding good humour of our heroic Tommies, and we mean to go on shouting out this fact and crying our wares from the housetop until the Outbreak of Peace bursts upon a startled world.

Noel Irving, Sergt., R.A.M.C. (T.)