“CAMOUFLAGE” AND “EATLESS DAYS” TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO
The war in Europe has revived, and brought into common use, in all
languages, the term “camouflage,” denoting any contrivance to hide or
disguise by one side to deceive and confuse the enemy. This term, if
derived from the French _camouflet_, pronounced cam-u-flay, appears in
the _International Encyclopedia_ and is defined as: “A stinking
compound in paper cases used in siege attacks to blow into the faces
of sappers and miners to confuse them.” The word must have been
buried, for I find no mention of it in any other encyclopædia. The use
of the term in a wider sense appears in _The Letters to Authors_, of
Voltaire, dated 1730, where he savagely characterizes a rival writer
of that period thus in rhyme:
Rousseau sujet au Camouflet,
Fut autrefois chasse dit-on.
Du theatre à coups de sifflet,
Du Paris à coups de baton.
Chez les Germains chacun fait comme,
Il c’est garanti du fagot.
Il a fait enfin le devot,
Ne pouvant faire l’honnette homme.
There is no set of Voltaire in English in Monroe, hence I translate
without rhyme the French copy:
“Rousseau because of _camouflet_,
Was sometimes chased they say
From the theaters with storms of hisses,
From Paris with blows of clubs.
By Germans, each one well knows,
He is guaranteed the fagot.
He could not be an honest man,
Therefore became religious.”