In the note to another picture I have remarked on the farcical
hypocrisy of the German Emperor in presenting himself, as he so often
does, as the High Priest of several different religions at the same
time. They are nearly all of them religions with which he would have
no sort of concern, even if his religious pose were as real as it is
artificial.
Being in fact the ruler and representative of a country which alone
among European countries builds with complete security upon the
conviction that all Christianity is dead, he can only be, even in
theory, the prince of an extreme Protestant State. Long before the
War it was common for the best caricaturists of Europe, and even
of Germany, to make particular fun of these preposterous temporary
Papacies in which the Kaiser parades himself as if for a fancy-dress
ball; and in the accompanying picture Mr. Raemaekers has returned more
or less to this old pantomimic line of satire.
The cartoon recalls some of those more good-humoured, but perhaps
equally contemptuous, sketches in which the draughtsmen of the
French comic papers used to take a particular delight; which made a
whole comic Bible out of the Kaiser’s adventures during his visit to
Palestine. Here he appears as Moses, and the Red Sea has been dried up
to permit the passage of himself and his people.
It would certainly be very satisfactory for German world-politics if
the sea could be dried up everywhere; but it is unlikely that the
incident will occur, especially in that neighbourhood. It will be long
before a German army is as safe in the Suez Canal as a German Navy
in the Kiel Canal; and the higher critics of Germany will have no
difficulty in proving, in the Kiel Canal at all events, that the safety
is due to human and not to divine wisdom.