Save for the spiked helmets, the gruesome figures in the foreground
of this cartoon might have belonged in life to any one of the warring
nationalities. It is a noteworthy fact, however, that not one of the
nations at war has shown so little care for its dead as Germany, whose
corpses lie and rot on every front on which they are engaged.
The world cannot blame Germany for the introduction of barbed wire as
an accessory of war, though it is well known that German wire surpasses
any other in sheer devilish ingenuity; not that it is more effective
as an entanglement, but its barbs are longer, and are set more closely
together, than in the wire used by other nationalities; it is, in
short, more frightful, and thus is in keeping with the rest of the
accessories of the German war machine.
But this in the cartoon is normal barbed wire, with its normal burden.
One may question whether the All-Highest War Lord, who in the course
of his many inspections of the various fronts must have seen sights
like this, is ever troubled by the thought that these, his men, lie and
hang thus for his pleasure, that their ghastly fate is a part of his
glorious plan. He set out to remake the world, and here is one of the
many results--broken corpses in the waste.
Part of the plan, broken corpses in the waste. By the waste and the
corpses that he made shall men remember the author and framer of this
greatest war.