[Illustration: THE REFUGEES FROM GHEEL
Gheel has a model asylum for the insane. On the fall of Antwerp the
inmates were conveyed across the frontier. The cartoon illustrates an
incident where a woman, while wheeling a lunatic, herself developed
insanity from the scenes she witnessed.]
“The Junker”
There were few things that Junkerdom feared so much in modern Germany
as the growth and effects of Socialism; and it is certain that the
possible attitude of the German Socialists--who were thought by some
writers to number somewhere in the neighbourhood of two million--in
regard to the War at its outset greatly exercised the minds of
Junkerdom and the Chancellor. A few days after the declaration of War a
well-known English Socialist said to us, “I believe that the Socialists
will be strong enough greatly to handicap Germany in the carrying on of
the War, and possibly, if she meets with reverses in the early stages,
to bring about Peace before Christmas.”
That was in August, 1914, and we are now well on in the Spring of 1916.
We reminded the speaker that on a previous occasion, when Peace still
hung in the balance, he had declared with equal conviction that there
would be no War because “the Socialists are now too strong in Germany
not to exercise a preponderating restraining influence.” He has proved
wrong in both opinions. And one can well imagine that the Junker class
admires Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg for the astute manner in which
he has succeeded in shepherding the German Socialist sheep for the
slaughter, and in muzzling their representatives in the Reichstag.