Of all forms of “Kultur” or “frightfulness” that which materialises
in “the terror which flieth by night” is to the intelligent mind at
one and the same time the most insensate and damnable. It fails to
accomplish, either in Paris or in London, the subjugation by terror
of the people for which Germans seem to hope. It is only in German
imagination that it accomplishes “material and satisfactory damage to
forts, camps, arsenals, and fortified towns.” In reality it inflicts
misery and death upon a mere handful of people (horrible as that may
be) and destroys chiefly the homes of the poor. It serves no military
end, and the damage done is out of all proportion to the expenditure of
energy and material used to accomplish it.
The fine cartoon which Raemaekers has drawn to bring home to the
imagination what this form of “Kultur” stands for makes it easy for
us in London to sympathise with our brothers and sisters in Paris. We
have as yet been spared daylight raids in the Metropolitan area, and so
we needed this cartoon to enable us to realise fully what “Kultur” by
indiscriminate Zeppelin bombs means.
Who cannot see the cruel drama played out in that Paris street? The
artist has assembled for us in a few living figures all the actors.
The dead woman; the orphaned child, as yet scarcely realising her
loss; the bereaved workman, calling down the vengeance of Heaven
upon the murderers from the air; the stern faces of the _sergents de
ville_, evidently feeling keenly their impotence to protect; and in
the background other _sergents_, the lines of whose bent backs convey
in a marvellous manner and with a touch of real genius the impression
of tender solicitude for the injured they are tending. And faintly
indicated, further still in the background, the crowd that differs
little, whether it be French or English, in its deeper emotions.