In this cartoon the Dutch artist pays a high compliment to the British
working man. The hideous figure of Alcoholism dressed in rags, with
large bony hands at the end of her thin bony arms, with the glaring
eyes, the distorted face and the dishevelled hair of a raging mad
woman, approaches the workman, offering bottles of whisky which he
has struck from her hand. Two of them lie smashed on the ground,
the third is falling. The workman’s choice is made voluntarily. He
will be neither the slave of drink, on the one hand, nor the slave
of prohibitory law on the other. He will judge for himself, and
his decision is expressed in this cartoon. He knows the nature of
Alcoholism which assails him, and he looks at her with anger and
contempt as he points to the answer which he has expressed in the
bottles falling or broken.
It contains also the answer which this artist of a foreign and neutral
country makes to the charges of drunkenness that were a year ago hurled
against the British workman. He was said to be endangering the country
by his self-indulgence. While there are exceptions, unfortunately, to
the picture that Raemaekers here shows us, there need be no hesitation
in believing that the workman’s attitude, as the artist sees it, is the
attitude of the overwhelming majority. It is not often that a higher
compliment has been paid to the workman than in this cartoon. It is the
ideal truth; and the more widely it is seen and appreciated, the more
it will make the ideal into the actual truth. It does not enter into
the artist’s purpose to show the serious loss caused by the alcoholism
of even a small minority, but this point of view must not be forgotten
in real life.
Copies of this cartoon should be widely spread through the country.