that it would. Nevertheless, it had one ghastly effect on contemporary
painting. When I returned to Paris in the autumn of 1919 I found the
painters whom I had known before the war developing, more or less
normally, and producing work which fell nowise short of what one had
come to expect. I saw all that there was to be seen; I admired; and then
I asked one who had already, before the war, established a style and a
reputation--I asked Friesz, I think--"Et les jeunes?" "Nous sommes les
jeunes" was the reply. Those young French painters who should have been
emerging from the ruck of students between 1914 and 1919 had either been
killed, or deflected from their career, or gravely retarded. Only now
is _la jeunesse_ beginning to give signs of vitality; only now is a new
crop coming to the surface; so now I will take the foolhardy risk of
pronouncing the names of a few who seem to me to have given proof of
undeniable talent--Gabriel-Fournier, Favory, Lotiron, Soutine, Corneau,
Durey, Monzain, Richard, Guindet, Togores, Gromaire, Alix, Halicka. I
must not be taken to assert that all of these are under thirty, or that
none was known to discerning amateurs before the war, or in its first
years at any rate. Certainly, the work of Gabriel-Fournier, Favory,
Soutine, and I think of Corneau, was known to me even, through
photographs, before the Armistice was signed. As certainly I think it
is true that all are of a later crop than Segonzac, Marie Laurencin,
Luc-Albert Moreau, etc., while Monzain, Richard, Togores, Gromaire,
Alix, Guindet, and Halicka are very young indeed. So here are a dozen
painters--most of them little known at present outside a smallish circle
of artists, critics, and inquisitive amateurs--who appear to give
promise of excellence: amongst them I should be inclined to look for the
masters of a coming age. [G]

[Footnote G: Twelve years ago I made a list of young or youngish
painters--the men of thirty or thereabouts--from whom it seemed to me