we paint fake cows and nail them on wooden frames

Above The founder of Futurism, Italian poet and editor Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (1876-1944), a fascist if ever there was one. As in: “We will glorify war—the world's only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.” Below that is a notebook sketch he made of a dazzle-camouflaged ship.

•••

Margaret E. Sangster, “Camouflage” in Christian Herald, 1918—

“I’m in the Camouflage Division,” the rather new soldier told me proudly.

“Camouflage?” I repeated it after him in a questioning way. “Camouflage?” (That, of course, was before the word became nationally-known and popular.)

“Yes, camouflage,” the rather new soldier told me. “Most of the fellows in it are artists, and we have an awfully interesting time.”

“What.” I asked,"do you do?”

“Why,” the rather new soldier told me, “we disguise things to—to fool the enemy. For instance, we paint canvas cows and nail them on wood frames, and when they are placed in the field in front of a trench, anybody looking across the field would think that it was nothing but a peaceful bit of pasture. We paint the sides of ships. too, with long, quivering lines so that they will look like waves, and sometimes with great spots of vivid color so that, at a distance, they will be too indefinite for a submarine to shoot at. That’s camouflage!”

“Then,” I said, “it isn't a new idea, is it? How about the siege of Troy when they brought spies into a city concealed in a wooden horse? That was camouflage! How about the time, in Macbeth, when an army of men marched on a castle holding boughs before them so that they looked like a moving grove of trees? That was camouflage, too.”  

"Of course it was,” agreed the rather new soldier, “you're right—camouflage isn’t a new idea. It’s only the old idea of deception made into a fine art!”

• Okay, I admit to being puzzled at first. American writer Margaret Elizabeth Sangster (1938-1912) died in 1912. Camouflage was not formally introduced (by that name) until 1914, and this news article is dated 1918. What's wrong with this picture? Nothing, as it turns out. There was another Margaret E. Sangster, who was also a writer and the granddaughter of the earlier person—it was the granddaughter who wrote this article.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus