There is a significance in this cartoon which I believe will appeal
much more strongly to the firing line than to Home. The Front distrusts
politics, and especially the higher politics. That means the juggling
and wire-pulling of the Chancelleries, and the Front has an uneasy
conviction that at the subtleties and craftiness and cunning of the
diplomatic game we cannot compete with “The Bosche.” Hard knocks and
straight fighting the Front does understand, and at that game are
cheerfully confident of winning in the long run.
It would be bitter news to the fighting men that any peace had been
patched up on any terms but those the Allies soon or late will be in a
position to dictate, to lay down and say flatly, “Take them and have
Peace; or leave them and go on getting licked.” The Front doesn’t like
War. No man who has endured the horrors and savagery and “blood, mud,
and misery” of civilised warfare could pretend to like it. No man who
has endured the long-drawn misery of manning the waterlogged trenches
for days and weeks and months can look forward with anything but
apprehension to another winter of war. No man who has attacked across
the inferno of the shell-and-bullet-swept “neutral ground,” or has
hung on with tight-clenched teeth to the battered ruins of the forward
fire trench under a murderous rain of machine-gun and rifle bullets, a
howling tempest of shells, an earth-shaking tornado of high explosives,
can but long for the day when Peace will be declared and these horrors
will be no more than a past nightmare.
But the Front will “stick it” for another winter or several winters,
will go through many bitter attacks and counter-attacks to win the
complete victory that will ensure, and alone will ensure, lasting
peace. We know our limitations and our weaknesses. We admit that, as
the American journalist bluntly put it, we are “poor starters,” but we
know just as surely he was right in completing the phrase, “but darn
good finishers.” Let the “higher politicians” on our side stand down
and leave the fighting men to finish the argument. Let them keep the
ring clear, and let the Front fight it out. The Front doesn’t mind
“taking the responsibility,” and it will give “Kaiser Bill” and “Little
Willie” all the responsibilities they can handle before the Great Game
is over.