[Illustration: THE GERMAN LOAN
“Don’t breathe on the bubble or the whole will collapse.”]
There are some English critics who have not yet considered so simple
a thing as that the case against horrors must be horrible. In this
respect alone this publication of the work of the distinguished foreign
cartoonist is a thing for our attention and enlightenment. It is the
whole point of the awful experience which has to-day swallowed up all
our smaller experiences, that we are in any case confronted with the
abominable; and the most beautiful thing we can hope to show is only
an abomination of it. Nevertheless, there is horror and horror. The
distinction between brute exaggeration and artistic emphasis could
hardly be better studied than in Mr. Raemaekers’ cartoon, and the use
he makes of the very ancient symbol of the wheel. Europe is represented
as dragged and broken upon the wheel as in the old torture; but the
wheel is that of a modern cannon, so that the dim background can be
filled in with the suggestion of a wholly modern machinery. This is a
very true satire; for there are many scientific persons who seem to
be quite reconciled to the crushing of humanity by a vague mechanical
environment in which there are wheels within wheels. But the inner
restraint of the artist is suggested in the treatment of the torment
itself; which is suggested by a certain rending drag in the garments,
while the limbs are limp and the head almost somnolent. She does not
strive nor cry; neither is her voice heard in the streets. The artist
had not to draw pain but to draw despair; and while the pain is old
enough the particular despair is modern. The victim racked for a
creed could at least cry “I am converted.” But here even the terms of
surrender are unknowable; and she can only ask “Am I civilised?”