This picture is a perfectly accurate symbolic study of the German
Empire. Therefore, naturally, it is one of the most dreadful that
were ever drawn. In all the gruesome “Dances of Death” in which the
fifteenth century took so grim a pleasure, no artist ever conceived the
horrible idea of a fat skeleton. But we have not only conceived the
thought, we have seen the thing--“a terror in the sunshine.” We know
that chest, puffed up with a wind of pride, and that stomach heavy with
slaughter and rich living; and above them the Death’s Head. We have
seen it. We have felt its foul breath. Its name is Prussia.
Look at a portrait of Frederick the Great, the “onlie true begetter” of
this abortion. It oddly suggests what Raemaekers has set down here; the
face a skull, the staring eyes those of a lost soul. But the skeleton
has grown fat since Frederick’s day--fat on the blood and plunder
of nations. Only there is no living flesh on its bones, nothing of
humanity about it.
“Can these dry bones live?” was the question asked of the prophet. It
might have been asked of Frederick: “Can this nation live, created
of your foul witchcraft, without honour, without charity, without
human brotherhood or fellowship, without all that which is the flesh
and blood of mankind?” The answer must have been that it could live,
though with a life coming from below and essentially infernal. It could
live--for a time. It could even have great power because its time was
short.
But now it has waxed fat--and kicked. And its end is near.