“To Your Health, Civilisation!”
This terrible cartoon points its own lesson so forcibly that its effect
is more likely to be weakened than strengthened by any verbal comment.
Death quaffs a goblet of human blood to the health of Civilisation.
Death has never enjoyed such a carnival of slaughter before, and it is
Civilisation that has made the holocaust possible. The comparatively
simple methods of killing employed by barbarians could not have
destroyed so many lives; nor could barbarian states have raised such
huge armies. The artist makes us feel that such a war as this is an act
of moral madness, a disgrace to our common humanity. It is true that
some of the nations engaged are guiltless, and others almost guiltless;
but there is a solidarity of European civilisation which obliges us all
to share the shame and sorrow of this monstrous crime. Universal war is
the _reductio ad absurdum_ of false political theories and false moral
ideals; and the _reductio ad absurdum_ is the chief argument which
Providence uses with mankind. Perhaps it is the only argument which
mankind in the mass can understand.