Committee of American Students of the School of Beaux-Arts, Paris
This was one of many efforts by Francophile Americans in France and the United States in support of the French and Allied cause; both before and after their own country entered the war.
Notable American architect and École des Beaux-Arts alumnus Whitney Warren was one of the organization's founders.
Another key organizer was (Frank) Ronald Simmons (1885-1918), the son of a wealthy Rhode Island industrialist, who became a very close friend of Edith Wharton.
The American journalist Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916) included the following piece about the group in his wartime book With The French In France And Salonika (1916), as part of chapter XI.
If that is your wish, you can buy an original water-color for fifty cents, and so help an art student who is fighting at the front, and assist in keeping alive his family in Paris.
They do not speak of the distinguished artists, architects, engravers, and sculptors who instruct them as "Doc," or "Prof." Instead they call him "master," and no matter how often they say it, they say it each time as though they meant it.
And, no matter if his school of art has passed, and the torch he carried is in the hands of younger Frenchmen, his former pupils still salute him as master, and with much the same awe as the village curé shows for the cardinal.
He has organized a committee of French and American students which works twelve hours a day in the palace of the Beaux-Arts itself, on the left bank of the Seine.
The windows look into formal gardens and courts filled with marble statues and busts, bronze medallions and copies of frescoes brought from Athens and Rome.
In this atmosphere the students bang typewriters, fold blankets, nail boxes, sort out woollen (sic) gloves, cigarettes, loaves of bread, and masks against asphyxiating gas.
Additionally, student organizations frequently published periodicals, and the term "gazette" was not uncommon in the titles of these publications.
That said, the Comité des Étudiants Américains de l'École des Beaux-Arts Paris which was active during World War I was a specific organization run by a specific group of people, that engaged in particular activities in charity and the arts during the war; and it has left behind an artistic "body of work(s)" relevant to the period.
Some of them are highly finished, others are more like rough "sketches"; although the tendency is for the post cards to be "ready and presentable for sale", as suits their intended purpose.
Most of the cards have a specific and fairly elaborate printed design on the reverse side, which includes graphical elements as well as the inscription.
The design is signed at the bottom-centre, to the left of the canon, but the name tends to be illegible; possibly it is Rene Jaudon, who entered the Beaux-Arts at Paris in 1910.
The Gazette served as a means to inform students who had been mobilised, of school activities and relevant news; as well as providing another source of fund-raising for the group.
The Gazette was published in French, book-style, in a 2-column format; with professional newspaper-quality printing in black ink, on what looks like unfinished (i.e.: no coating, glossy or satin) paper of a fairly heavy grade of slightly rough newsprint.
There is no inclusion of pacifist material, and only limited representation of leftist views; nothing "revolutionary", pro-communist, or otherwise hard-core "Red".
As the single example of the gazette presently available, when preparing this article, and as an edition produced after the French & Allied victory in the War, it is difficult to judge how representative of the rest of the series this particular volume is.
