Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/882

 Teaching Machine-Gunners to Fire at Art

How paintings worth thousands, the work of fa- mous artists, are used to develop skill in gunnery

Bv John Walker Harrington

��EVERY war has called in artists to help the fighters. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini did their bit in their time, and now come the Academicians of our own day, whose ambition it is to paint landscapes at which soldiers will be glad to aim either cannon or machine guns. These scenic targets are works of art in every sense, for they must come from the skilled hands of masters of perspective and atmosphere and must be so ably composed that they serve just as well as long reaches of hill and dale and rolling uplands. The Art War Relief, an organization which has been enlisting noted painters for this all- important work, announced that the canvases of students and amateurs were not available.

Artificial Landscape Targets

Most young men are city or town bred. Hence few of the soldiers of our national army have a clear idea of distances in nature. As many of the cantonments have not been placed amid scenery like that which marksmen are likely to see "somewhere in France" or "on the way to Berlin," artificial landscapes are pro- vided on which they can practice. The

��paintings are too valuable for cannon fodder or even for machine-gun feed, but they serve wonderfully well in giving the illusion of panorama. The series which have been painted by H. Bolton and Francis C. Jones, both veteran members of the National Academy of Design, are typical of the kind of art which is now in league with war. Some of these pic- tures were used by machine-gun com- panies at Camp Upton near Yaphank, L. I., before their departure for over- seas.

Distance and Proportion

As the machine-gunners "lay on" their pieces in front of this pleasing mark they must keep in mind two things — range and close designation. The middle distance in the painting carries the normal vision back about 2,500 yards. The mountains far in the background are supposedly eight miles away and therefore out of range. The canvas is covered with houses and churches, bridges and culverts, and even a winding stream. The gunners aim their weapons at these various ob- jects. The commander comes up behind them and points out errors they have made in sighting due in part to their un-

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���� ��The aims of war are to aim so as to scon-. A rniliinl u piinlin.tion of a landscape gives the gunner a sense of distance and proportion not otherwise easily acqu red

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