Christian Camouflage.
I am much interested in accounts of a novel art practiced in war. It is called camouflage, and consists of painting objects so that they can hardly be distinguished from the landscape. For example, a soldier taking observations in a tree will wear garments painted skillfully to imitate the foliage of the tree. Army automobiles, ambulances, guns, and gun-carriages are painted with the colors of the forests, farm-lands, rocks, whatever is their background. What seems from a little distance to be a ruined brick building may be in reality a gigantic howitzer. What looks like a pine woods may be an extended airplane-shed. A dead horse lies in "no man's land" between the warring trenches, an object familiar to both sides. In the night a hollow painted model of the horse is substituted with a soldier inside who takes close observations of the enemy all day. Stumps are removed from the same location and painted stumps take their place as shelters for sharpshooters. Once, to fool the German air-men, several miles of roadway were painted on canvas and stretched across the country over the real road, so that beneath it troops and batteries could be moved to the battle-field unsuspected. This camouflage is an interesting and valuable art, by means of which some of the best artists of France have been "doing their bit."
As I read of all this, I wonder if there is not a Christian camouflage to be practiced by those of us who are in civil life, during the war and all through the days and years of coming peace.
It is wise for every worker to identify himself with the circumstances in which his lot is cast, the providential surroundings of his life. The teacher, preacher, lawyer, physician, editor, should throw their lives heartily into the life of their village or city, and incorporate themselves with the interest around them. So should every farmer, every clerk, every housemaid, endeavor to "fit in" as well as possible, not alien to the community or shop or household in which they are at work, not toiling for dollars alone, not mere industrial hermits, but vital factors in their little corners of society.
This is Christian camouflage. By means of it one is protected against many a sharpshooter of the Devil's army,-against Pride, against Selfishness, against Loneliness, against False Ambition, against Ennui, against Hatred and Prejudice and Greed. Merged in the common good, the soul widens out to the whole commonwealth. It is a noble art of peace as well as a useful art of war.