A generation ago a little clique of wise men at Oxford patted
themselves on the back for having discovered “The Historical Method.”
But the common people of all countries have always known it. The names
of the great dead are not forgotten, nor yet the great things for which
they stood. There may be no strict liturgy for the ancestor worship of
the West, but that worship is a simple fact, and it is a thing that
timorous politicians would do well to remember. Here Raemaekers appeals
to his countrymen to regard their past, to be worthy of the great
seamen who took the Dutch Fleet up the Medway, and lashed brooms to the
mast-head of the ships that swept the sea clear of British enemies.
The Dutch were fighting for their liberty then. Great Britain is
fighting for liberty in Europe to-day--and for Dutch liberty to
boot. The enemy of all liberty uses Holland as a short cut whereby
her pirates of the air can get more quickly to their murder work in
England. Would the hero ancestors, of whom the Dutch so boast, have
tolerated this indignity? The artist seer supplies the answer.
Note the mixture of the ghostly and the real in this vivid and
vivacious drawing. But if it is easy to see through the faint outlines
of the sailor spirits, it is easier for these gallant ghosts to see
through the unrealities of their descendants’ fears and hesitations.
The anger of the heroes is plainly too great for words. How compressed
the lips! How tense the attitude! The hands gripped in the angriest
sort of impatience! Mark the subtle mingling of seaman and burgher
in the poise and figures. Mark particularly van Tromp’s stiffened
forefinger on his staff.
Is the fate of L19 the fruit of our artist’s stinging reminder that
Holland once had nobler spirits and braver days?