When Raemaekers pictures Von Tirpitz to us, he does so with savage
scorn. He is not the hard-bitten pirate of story--but a senile,
crapulous, lachrymose imbecile; an object of derision. He fits more
with one of Jacobs’s tales of longshore soakers, than with the
tragedies that have made him infamous. But when he draws Von Tirpitz’s
victims, the touch is one of almost harrowing tenderness. The Hun is
a master of many modes of killing, but however torn, or twisted, or
tortured he leaves the murdered, Raemaekers can make the dreadful
spectacle bearable by the piercing dignity with which he portrays the
dead. In none of these cartoons is his _sæva indignatio_ rendered with
more sheer beauty of design, or with a craftsmanship more exquisite,
than in this monument to the sea-mined prey. The symbolism is perfect,
and of the essence of the design. The dead sink slowly to their
resting-place, but the merciful twilight of the sea veils from us the
glazed horror of the eyes that no piety can now close. Even the dumb
senseless fish shoots from the scene in mute and terrified protest,
while from these poor corpses there rise surfaceward the silver bubbles
of their expiring breath. One seems to see crying human souls prisoned
in these spheres. And it is, indeed, such sins as these that cry to
Heaven for vengeance. Blood-guiltiness must rest upon the heads of
those that do them, upon the heads of their children--aye, and of their
children’s children too. This exquisite and tender drawing is something
more than the record of inexpiable crime. It is a prophecy. And the
prophecy is a curse.