Looking at this cartoon one can understand why Raemaekers is not
_persona grata_ in the Happy Fatherland. With half a dozen touches he
has changed Satan from the magnificent Prince of Evil whom Gustave
Doré portrayed into a--Hun. Henceforth we shall envisage Satan as a
Hun, talking the obscene tongue--now almost the universal language in
Hades--and hailed by right-thinking Huns as the All Highest War Lord.
Willy senior must be jealous.
With the learned Professor, the cartoonist not only produces a
composite portrait of all the _Herren Professoren_, but also drives
home the point of his amazing pencil into what is perhaps the most
instructive lesson of this monstrous war--the perversion to evil uses
of powers originally designed, nourished, and expanded to benefit
mankind. When the _Furor Teutonicus_ has finally expended itself, we do
not envy the feelings of the illustrious chemists who perfected poison
gas and liquid fire! Will they, when their hour comes, find it easy
to obey the poet’s injunction, and, wrapping the mantle of their past
about them, “lie down to pleasant dreams”?
We are assured that these professors have not exhausted their powers of
frightfulness. It may be so. This is certain: Such frightfulness will
ultimately exhaust them. With this reflection, we may leave them, grist
to be ground by the mills of God.