But France, being by temperament, by environment, and by tradition a far more artistic nation, with a much higher standard of general taste, responded more readily to the lighter and more fascinating touch of those artists who chose the street and the theatre entrance as their gallery. It is more than fifty years since Chéret started on his flamboyant comet-like career, setting Paris aflame (so to speak) with joyously wild, irresponsible visions of colour and line, delicate and fantastic. Steinlen, Mucha, Grasset, Toulouse-Lautrec, Willette, Bonnard, Guillaume, and others worked with him in more recent days, and among these are artists who have done masterly posters for France during the War. It is still with the greatest reluctance that a drawing, even when it conveys a definite suggestion clearly, is accepted in England unless it is "finished": the value of a work of art is reckoned in accordance with the amount of patient craftsmanship which it displays. The French poster artist, on the contrary--and he obviously has the public as his supporter, or his vogue would cease--is often content to throw upon the space at his command what, on this side of the Channel, any advertising agent would scoff at and reject as a "mere sketch." If the French artist can convey his suggestion, his idea, in a few hasty lines or brilliant touches of colour, he knows that his work is done, and is well content. Looking at the French war posters as a whole, one feels that in no other country has there been the same poignant appeal, the same presence of a deeply-felt emotion. And these have been transferred to the posters with a spontaneity, a lightness, and an expressive sufficiency that make the French poster stand alone. Take the posters of Steinlen, Faivre, Willette, Poulbot, and that versatile master, Roll, whose death occurred while these notes were being prepared. They each have the brilliant quality of a sketch by a man who is master of his material. They are drawn with the fine, free gesture of the born narrator. All the balance and compactness of the French _conte_ are there, with every line inducing to intensity of expression. In the figures there is nothing of English photographic precision, nothing of Germany's force and brutality, but always a note of intense sympathy, of something subtly human. Rapid, slight, they may be; but there is a greatness and endurance in their design and their appeal. The _poilu_, in the trenches or _en permission_, the _gamin_ of the streets, the worker in the field or hospital, the invalid who has been smitten by the heavy blows of war, are alive in these swift chalk-drawn studies.