KULTUR IN CARTOONS
KULTUR
IN
CARTOONS
BY
LOUIS RAEMAEKERS
WITH ACCOMPANYING NOTES BY
WELL-KNOWN ENGLISH WRITERS
_A Companion Volume to “Raemaekers’ Cartoons”
Published 1916, and now issued by
The Century Co._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published October 1917_
_Publishers’ Announcement_
Purchasers of “Kultur in Cartoons” may be interested to know that this
present work is a companion volume to “Raemaekers’ Cartoons,” issued in
1916. “Raemaekers’ Cartoons” includes many of the artist’s earlier work,
dealing particularly with the Belgian inferno. The two volumes are alike
in size and form, and together constitute a thoroughly representative
collection of Raemaekers’ drawings.
THE CENTURY CO.
_Foreword_
BY
J. MURRAY ALLISON
A year has passed since the first volume of Raemaekers’ work
(“Raemaekers’ Cartoons,” Century Co.), was published in the United
States.
At that time Raemaekers was practically unknown in this country, just as
he was unknown in England and France until January, 1916, when his work
was first exhibited in the British Capital.
The story of Raemaekers’ reception in London and Paris has been written
in the introduction to “Raemaekers’ Cartoons.”
When his cartoons began to reach America toward the end of 1916 this
country was neutral. It is with peculiar satisfaction, therefore, that I
base this brief foreword upon press extracts published prior to
America’s participation in the war.
If it were possible to discover to-day an individual who was entirely
ignorant as to the causes and conduct of the war, he would, after an
inspection of a hundred or more of these cartoons, probably utter his
conviction somewhat as follows: “I do not believe that these drawings
have the slightest relation to the truth; I do not believe that it is
possible for such things to happen in the twentieth century.” He would
be quite justified, in his ignorance of what has happened in Europe, in
expressing such an opinion, just as any of us, with the possible
exception of the disciples of Bernhardi himself, would have been
justified in expressing a similar view in July, 1914.
What is the view of all informed people to-day? “To Raemaekers the war
is not a topic, or a subject for charity. It is a vivid heartrending
reality,” says the New York “Evening Post,” “and you come away from the
rooms where his cartoons now hang so aware of what war is that mental
neutrality is for you a horror. If you have slackened in your
determination to find out, these cartoons are a slap in the face.
Raemaekers drives home a universal point that concerns not merely
Germans, but every country where royal decrees have supreme power. Shall
one man ever be given the power to seek his ends, using the people as
his pawns? We cannot look at the cartoons and remain in ignorance of
exactly what is the basis of truth on which they are built.”
The “Philadelphia American” likens Raemaekers to a sensitized plate upon
which the spirit which brought on the war has imprinted itself forever,
and adds: “What he gives out on that subject is as pitilessly true as a
photograph. They look down upon us in their naked truth, those pictures
which are to be, before the judgment-seat of history, the last
indictment of the German nation. Of all impressions, there is one which
will hold you in its inexorable grip: it is that Louis Raemaekers has
told you the truth.”
This aspect of his appeal is insisted upon by “Vanity Fair,” thus: “That
each cartoon is a grim, merciless portrayal of the truth will be
apparent to even the meanest intelligence.” The same journal refers to
the almost uncanny power of prophecy suggested by many of the pictures.
“That they are conceived in a mighty brain and drawn by a skilled hand
will be recognized by a sophisticated minority. But only those capable
of deeper probing will see that each one is in itself an elemental drama
of compelling significance and power, heightened in many cases by
prophecy and suggestion.”
The “Philadelphia Public Ledger” refers particularly to Raemaekers’
prophetic instinct. “Here, indeed, is revealed the work not only of one
who has the artistic imagination to pictorialize the savagery of the
Kaiser and his obedient servants, and to caricature in a manner that
leaves nothing unsaid in the way of sinister presentation of evil
things, but the work of one who is distinctly a seer. Moreover, the
cartoons have been verified by subsequent events, though they seemed to
some at the time to be the bitter and ironical casual comment on things
most believed could never happen to modern civilization, and have that
insight that only a special inspiration and inner illumination could
give.”
It is this obvious sincerity, this conviction on the part of the
beholder that Raemaekers is telling the simple truth and telling it
simply that gives his work its greatest value as a revelation of the
German purpose, and as an indictment of German methods of warfare and
the German practice of statecraft.
The “Louisville Herald” finds it “impossible to do justice to these
remarkable drawings, this terrific gallery, impossible to estimate at
this distance the power and pressure of the indictment,” while the
“Baltimore Sun” goes so far as to claim that “no orator in any tongue
has so stirred the human soul to unspeakable pity and implacable wrath
as this Dutch artist in the universal language which his pencil knows
how to speak. Those who have forgotten the _Lusitania_ and the
innumerable tragedies in Belgium should avoid Raemaekers. They who look
at his work can never forget, can never wholly forgive.”
The “Washington Star” thinks that his cartoons should not be taken
merely as dealing with events of the conflict, “but with principles.”
The writer proceeds: “To Germany and to Austria is upheld a mirror in
which are reflected those crimes for which neither will be able to make
full redress. There is no touch of vulgarity or hatred in his work, save
that which comes from righteous indignation against foul crimes and the
vulgarity of the thing itself.”
In appraising the value of Raemaekers’ cartoons purely as political
documents, as historic records of crimes and barbarities which the
civilized world must not be permitted to forget lest the horrors of the
past three years descend upon us again, their purely artistic appeal is
frequently ignored or forgotten, but not always. “Raemaekers is an
artist,” says the “Boston Globe.” “He tells his story simply, eliminates
all unnecessary detail, knows the dramatic value of light and shade, and
draws a single figure cartoon with as much impressive suggestiveness as
he does a crowd.” The “Providence Journal” acclaims him as a great
artist to whose hand has been given the touch of immortality. “Like many
geniuses,” continues the “Journal,” “this Dutch artist awaited the
occasion in human affairs to awaken the power which he may not even have
been aware of possessing. It took a titanic force to stir his
conscience and that conscience, once stirred, leaped into aspiring
activity to the service of mankind.” Particular stress is laid by the
“Boston Transcript” on the artistic merit of the drawings. Comparing him
to Honoré Daumier, the great French cartoonist of the Franco-Prussian
War, the “Post” is of opinion that Raemaekers is the one artistic
personality whose genius has been developed by the stimulus of the war.
“If the measure of the influence wielded by a cartoonist is the extent
and intensity of emotion aroused by his work, then possibly there has
never been a cartoonist in the history of the world who can have
compared with Raemaekers. The inspiration of his pictorial polemics is a
hearty and profound and righteous indignation, a motive which is of
first-rate artistic worth, and which is shared by all the civilized
world. What strikes the mind in looking upon these cartoons is the
Dantesque quality of the artist’s passion and imagination.” The
“Transcript” concludes a remarkable appreciation of the cartoons with
the following words: “He guides the spirit and the conscience of the
world to-day through an inferno of wrong.”
_List of Cartoons_
PAGE
THE ZEPPELIN RAIDER 2
THE EXHUMATION OF THE MARTYRS OF AERSCHOT 4
THE OLD SERB 6
THE “LUSITANIA” NIGHTMARE 8
“FANCY, HOW NICE!” 10
THE LAODICEANS 12
“A PITIFUL EXODUS” 14
“DEATH THE FRIEND” 16
A HIGHER PILE 18
PEACE REIGNS AT DINANT 20
HUMANITY _vs._ KULTUR 22
THE BILL 24
“YOU NEED NOT STORM THIS PLACE” 26
HOHENZOLLERN MADNESS 28
“MY MASTER ASKS YOU TO LOOK AFTER THESE DOVES” 30
FAMINE IN BELGIUM 32
POOR OLD THING 34
GERMANY AND THE NEUTRALS 36
THOSE HORRIBLE BRITONS 38
DR. KUYPER TO GERMANY 40
THE KAISER’S DIPLOMACY 42
CAIN 44
THE COUNTER-ATTACK AT DOUAUMONT 46
THE MORNING PAPER 48
“AND SUCH A BRAVE ZEPP HE WAS” 50
FLYING OVER HOLLAND 52
“IF THEY DON’T INCREASE THEIR ARMY” 54
RELIGION AND PATRIOTISM 56
THE PRISONERS 58
“WELL, MY FRIEND” 60
“HOW QUIET IT MUST BE IN THE ENGLISH HARBORS BLOCKADED BY OUR FLEET” 62
THE BRIGANDS 64
IT LOOKS SO IN SERBIA 66
VICTORY BY IMPOSTURE 68
SHELL-MAKING 70
ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN SUCCESS 72
THE SEA THE PATH OF VICTORY 74
BALAAM AND HIS ASS 76
A GENUINE DUTCHMAN 78
ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE GERMANS 80
SUBMARINE “BAGS” 82
WITHIN THE PINCERS 84
GERMAN POISON 86
THE ORGANIZATION OF VICTORY BY IMPOSTURE 88
WITTENBERG 90
THE BROKEN ALLIANCE 92
THE SHOWER-BATH 94
THE ANNIVERSARY BOUQUET 96
THE STRANDED SUBMARINE 98
HEROD’S NIGHTMARE 100
“MY BELOVED PEOPLE” 102
ON THEIR WAY TO VERDUN 104
BETHMANN-HOLLWEG’S PEACE SONG 106
A GERMAN “VICTORY” 108
“WAITING” 110
THE KAISER AS A DIPLOMATIST 112
HUN HYPOCRISY 114
THE PRUSSIAN GUARD 116
GREEK TREACHERY 118
THE WORLD’S JUDGMENT SEAT 120
THE KAISER’S CRY FOR PEACE 122
TIT FOR TAT 124
FORCED LABOR IN GERMANY 126
THE FALL OF THE CHILD-SLAYER 128
THE CLIMBER 130
CULTURE AT WITTENBERG 132
THE “CIVILIANS” 134
TWO PEALS OF THUNDER 136
A UNIVERSAL CONSCIENCE 138
JOAN OF ARC AND ST. GEORGE 140
THE BRINGERS OF HAPPINESS 142
THE OLD POILU 144
HUMANITY TORPEDOED 146
THE SUPER-HOOLIGANS 148
BEFORE THE FALL 150
THE SHIRKERS 152
FOR MERIT 154
DUTY _vs._ MILITARISM 156
THE TROUBADOUR 158
SEE THE CONQUERING HERO COMES 160
BELGIUM 162
THE GIANT’S TASK 164
“I MUST HAVE SOMETHING FOR MY TROUBLE” 166
“CINEMA CHOCOLATE” 168
THE DOCTRINE OF EXPEDIENCY 170
MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS 172
POUNDING AUSTRIA 174
DURCHHALTEN--“HOLD OUT” 176
THE SATYR OF THE SEA 178
WAR COUNCIL WITH FERDINAND AND ENVER PASHA 180
THE BURIAL OF PRIVATE WALKER 182
THE SUPREME EFFORT 184
“WER REITET SO SPÄT DURCH NACHT UND WIND?
DAS IST DER VATER MIT SEINEM KIND” 186
THE VOICES OF THE GUNS 188
THE DEATH’S-HEAD HUSSAR 190
THE “FRANC-TIREUR” EXCUSE 192
THE ENTRY INTO CONSTANTINOPLE 194
“COME AWAY, MY DEAR!” 196
THE “HARMLESS” GERMAN 198
THE PROPAGANDIST IN HOLLAND 200
TETANUS 202
SHAKSPERE’S TERCENTENARY 204
NOBODY SEES ME 206
THE ORIENT EXPRESS 208
THE BLOOMERSDYK 210
THE “U” BOATS OFF THE AMERICAN COAST 212
TO THE PEACE WOMAN 214
THE WOLF BLEATS 216
STRICT NEUTRALITY 218
_Kultur in Cartoons_
_The Zeppelin Raider_
This cartoon is not in the least allegorical, and it is far less
terrible than the reality. For the simple reason is that children torn
to pieces by high explosives are far more horrible to look at than
children with their throats cut.
Had these blood cartoons of Raemaekers been published in the spring of
1914, the artist would have been considered a maniac.
But in the spring of 1916 we know him to be a man portraying the truth,
giving us the doings of the German Emperor and his satellites in colored
pictures, and a very mild interpretation of them at that. For it is a
fact that no man could bear to look at or consider the real truth of
what William of Germany has done through the hands of others, of the
horrors that he has committed against women who cannot here accuse him,
against children of whose very names he knows nothing.
But their accusations are heard and their names remembered by those
whose eternal business it is to hear and record, and the silence of
those civilized nations who have said nothing before the doings of the
infamous One has spoken where silence is heard as well as speech.
Just as St. Paul stood by in silence at the martyrdom of St. Stephen, so
have they stood at the martyrdom of these Innocents, and just as he
uttered that lamentable cry in the Temple of Jerusalem, so will they cry
in his very words, but without his justification of holiness:
“I stood by and consented.”
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
[Illustration]
_The Exhumation of the Martyrs of Aerschot_
Read here a few sentences from the sworn and sifted testimony of
witnesses who saw what happened at Aerschot in August, 1914.
“When the war broke out a German whom I knew well by sight had been
living at Aerschot some three years. He had no apparent occupation, but
lived on his means in a small house. Occasionally he was away for some
time. On the outbreak of war he was expelled from Belgium. He came back
with the German troops and pointed out to them all houses and other
property belonging to the burgomaster, and the Germans destroyed it all.
Many civilians in Aerschot were killed by the Germans. I myself saw some
forty dead bodies, including three women. They had been shot.... In one
house the wife of a man whom I know well was burned alive. Her husband
broke both legs while attempting to rescue her.... The Germans with
their rifles prevented anyone going to help this man, and he had to drag
himself along the street, with his legs broken, as best he could....”
“I saw some German infantry soldiers kill with bayonets two women who
were standing on their doorsteps....”
“There we saw a whole street burning.... We heard children and beasts
crying in the flames.”
“The Germans deliberately fired beyond us at four women, a child of 11
or 12 years of age, an infant of six months (about) and four other
children who were clinging to their mothers’ skirts. The infant was in
its mother’s arms, and was riddled with shot, which passed through it
into the mother’s body. While she was trying to crawl into safety on her
knees the Germans still fired at her until she died.”
“I saw the body of a little boy about 6½ or 7 years of age, with four
bayonet wounds in it. It was stiff and propped against a wall.”
“The first thing we saw was the body of a young girl of about 18 to 20,
absolutely naked, with her abdomen cut open. Her body was also covered
with bruises.... About a kilometer farther on I saw the body of a little
boy, aged 8 or 9, with his head completely cut off. The head was some
distance from the trunk.”
These simple phrases, and hundreds more like them, plain to read in the
book of evidence, make a better commentary than any I could write on
this drawing. There are, indeed, many passages more terrible, such as
the tale of the unspeakable treatment of the priest, dragged into
Aerschot from the neighboring village of Gelrode. And I turn from
reading such things to an English newspaper, wherein is the report of
the speech of a person at a great gathering of people interested in
coöperative trading--a person who hopes, after the war, to “take by the
hand” the creatures guilty of these infamies. It has been my experience
to know many sad blackguards in the worst parts of London, but I cannot
remember one who could fall as low as that. To find such we must search
the smuggeries and the priggeries and the Fellowships of Reconciliation.
ARTHUR MORRISON.
[Illustration]
_The Old Serb_
The calculated brutality of German and Austrian “frightfulness,” its
cowardice and cold-blooded evil, are already familiar to all impartial
students of Teutonic warfare. But a Nation that has consented to its own
slavery cannot value freedom, or be supposed to respect the life or
liberty of the innocent and weak. With her neck under Prussia’s heel,
tamed Germany strives in word and deed to reflect the spirit of her
masters, and so far succeeds that she can contemplate the atrocities of
this war with satisfaction, and from pulpit, school, and press applaud
each new manifestation in turn. Blind obedience to command has brought
the Germans to a state where even their thinking is done for them; they
grovel before the brute power that drives them and kiss and sanctify the
bloody hands that hold the whip.
Luther said the justification of liberty was that man could only truly
serve God and his fellow-man if freedom of choice of means were
permitted to him. The German of to-day relinquishes that freedom and is
content to be herded under a political system that denies him his
independent manhood. He sacrifices responsibility and liberty alike to a
race which he still suffers to inherit the privilege of directing his
State; he prostitutes his own reasoning faculties and ignores the
evolution of morals by applauding Prussia’s reactionary ideals at the
expense of every modern movement for the progress of humanity. He knows
the right and does the wrong--a willing slave to an archaic autocracy.
Thus servile obedience to physical power is the noblest principle that
United Germany has yet attained, and the consequences permeate the
people in a spiritual indifference to elementary honor displayed alike
on her battlefields and in her council chambers.
The lie is accepted as her first diplomatic weapon; “frightfulness” is
developed as an invaluable ally of conquest; cruelty and treachery are
praised by the scholar and pastor, practised as a matter of course by
the soldier and politician. None sees what dishonor is thus heaped upon
his country and how her history has been defiled by this generation on
the precepts of the last.
Ignoring, as she always does, every contact with other cultures,
Germany, out of a congenital megalomania, has evolved her own; and in
her eyes it is no doubt as beautiful and precious as the ugly treasure
of the child in the perambulator, who discards the most delightful
modern toys for its own battered and hideous doll.
In this regard she is indeed still a child; but a study of comparative
cultures, following upon the destruction of her present rulers and their
doctrine of force, should create a larger-minded nation wherein the
civilized concepts of older States shall find recognition.
“Until that final consummation,” as Francis Stopford has well said,
“Europe dare not rest secure, and the horrors of Belgium and Serbia will
be repeated for the next generation if Germany be left the freedom to
reëstablish her might and to reorganize the life of her peoples with the
sole object of crushing her neighbors at the first favorable
opportunity.”
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
_The “Lusitania” Nightmare_
Though a year and more has passed since the great tragedy of the
_Lusitania_, and many evil things have been done since that day by the
enemy who strikes at rooted principles of civilization, yet by reason of
its magnitude and its utter disregard of the elementary principles of
humanity the memory of this deed is still alive in the minds of men.
This “nightmare” that Raemaekers pictures was no dream fancy, but a
reality; men and women walked along the rows of corpses laid out in the
sheds, searching for that which they dreaded to find....
“There is no right but might,” said Germany in that act, “and there is
no law in the exercise of might.” Men, women, and children alike of this
perverted nation were bidden to rejoice over the sinking of the
vessel--the fact cannot be too often stated or too fully kept in mind,
more especially now that the fabric whence that doctrine of unguided
force has emanated is crumbling under the blows of the Allied armies.
For in the day of peace will be found many who will merit Achan’s fate
through following Achan’s way, careless of the rows of little corpses
that lay out for indentification after the sinking of the
_Lusitania_--careless of all but the material aspect of the settlement
that must be made when the military power of this present Germany is
crushed.
If it be not crushed beyond the possibility of rising again--if there be
any way left by which those who own no law but necessity and expedience
may repeat the experiment of these years of war, then these lives that
ended off the Old Head of Kinsale ended in vain, and their memory is
dishonored. With that which caused this nightmare there must be no
compromise.
E. CHARLES VIVIAN.
[Illustration]
_“Fancy, How Nice....”_
The ethics of war are difficult to reduce to consistent principles. At
first sight it does not seem more cruel to asphyxiate your enemy than to
blow him to pieces with a land-mine or to turn a machine-gun upon him.
Nevertheless, two facts are certain. One is that this very invention was
offered to our War Office years ago, and was rejected as unworthy of a
civilized nation. The other is that it is forbidden by The Hague
Convention in a clause accepted by Germany herself.
The adoption, without warning, of poisonous gas is perhaps the most
shameless of all the treacherous violations of international law which
Germany has committed. It is now known that Germany had determined,
before hostilities began, to violate all the laws of war. In the
Official German War Book these conventions are referred to only with
contempt. To disregard them is what the Germans call “absolute war”; and
they claim that absolute war is the only logical kind of war.
In adopting this theory Germany has fallen far behind barbarism; for,
cruel as the barbarian often is, there are always some things which he
will not do to his enemy, some conventions which he will observe, either
from the chivalry which belongs to the character of the genuine fighting
man or from fear of Divine anger, or from a vague sense of what is due
to human beings even when they are enemies. The notion that all moral
principles are in abeyance during war is the most revolting doctrine
that can be proclaimed. It is disgusting to find that it is openly
defended by many of the religious guides of the German people, who
profess to speak in the name of Christianity.
Such moral obliquity, one thinks, can only exist in a nation which does
not play games. But perhaps the reason why games are discouraged in
Germany is that they encourage a “foolish” sense of honor and chivalry
in the serious business of life.
W. R. INGE,
_Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral_.
[Illustration]
_The Laodiceans_
“Thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot....
Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need
of nothing.... I counsel thee ... anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that
thou mayest see.”
Raemaekers has patience with most things, but with neutrality he would
scorn to be patient. He refuses to parley with it, even when it waves
the colors of his own country in its hand--if it ever does anything so
sturdy as to wave colors. These old women are dreadful, they are almost
as terrifying as his Prussian monsters. The persuasive old fanatic in
the foreground arguing the divinity of lukewarmness is dreadful in
herself, and more dreadful still because we all know that she exists, in
belligerent as in neutral countries. And worse, far worse, is the
granite female with her stone brooch in her marble collar behind her.
The others are surprised, doubtful, not yet entirely won over to the
specious argument; but the woman behind is a very Gibraltar of
neutrality.
Seldom, very seldom, does Raemaekers draw dreadful women. His Germania
is a symbol, not a woman. I can only remember one other cartoon, a
merciless drawing of the Kaiser and the Kaiserin, in which a woman
stands for evil. He likes to picture pity and mercy and nobility in the
form of women, and when he wishes to paint sorrow and endurance he gives
us such cartoons as those of the mothers and widows of Belgium. And this
makes it the more likely that in these gossiping, selfish, silly, wicked
creatures he is drawing a type of mind rather than a type of female. In
every country there are “old women”; but they are not always females.
H. PEARL ADAM.
[Illustration]
_“A Pitiful Exodus”_
This is one of Raemaekers’ crowds. He is fond of depicting crowds, and
he is right. He has the art of making them singularly effective. He
catches wonderfully both the general impression and the value of a face
or figure here and there not violently obtruded but individually
appealing.
And these crowds are so effective because they are so true. This is a
war of crowds. The nations have fought in crowds, they have suffered in
crowds. “Multitudes--multitudes in the valley of decision” might be said
to be its text.
And Antwerp was ever a place of crowds; though not, of course, like
this. Who does not know Antwerp as she was before the war? A great,
buzzing, thriving hive on the water’s edge, filled with a jolly,
comfortable, busy _bourgeoisie_; mediæval and modern at once, with her
churches and her quays, her florid “Rubenses” her Van Dycks, her
Teniers, her _Maison Plantin_, and all the rest of her past; her world
commerce, her fortifications of to-day, deemed impregnable!
She had been besieged and fallen before. To-day she fell with scarcely a
siege.
Who was responsible for this fiasco--for the defense which was no
defense, the relief which was no relief? Why was the Naval Brigade sent
there? Perhaps we shall know some day, when Raemaekers’ country is free
to set them also free again.
What we can know is graphically and terribly told by Mr. John Buchan and
the witnesses he cites.
The highways were black with the panting crowds: ladies of fashion,
white-haired men and women, wounded soldiers, priests old and young,
nuns, mothers, daughters, children. So it was described by one who saw
it.
More than a quarter of a million of inhabitants left Antwerp in one day.
The world has never before seen such an emptying of a great city. “Some
day,” Mr. Buchan ends, “when its imagination has grown quicker, it will
find the essence of war not in gallant charges and heroic stands, but in
the pale women dragging their pitiful belongings through the Belgian
fields in the raw October night.”
If anything could further quicken the world’s imagination it would be
this picture. Rubens devised the famous “pomps” for the entry of
Ferdinand of Austria. The German entry had no Rubens. But this miserable
pomp, this “pitiful exodus,” has found its realistic Rubens in
Raemaekers.
HERBERT WARREN.
[Illustration]
_“Death the Friend”_
When the white horse rode out to war with the clever, handsome
mountebank in the shining armor astride it (ignore for the moment the
duller fact of an anxious, field-gray man in a Benz limousine) the
demigod made, let us admit it, a brave show.
’Tis credibly reported that in his company rode his august familiar,
“our old God” in a new mood and a brand new uniform, “wearing,” in fact,
in the words of a dithyrambic Teuton, “the Death’s Head cap of the
German Hussars and carrying a white banner.”
What that Other may be assumed to have made of Dixmude, Termonde, and
the ineffable rest of it is for the curious to conjecture: as also at
what exact stage of the swift journeyings back and forth of the tired
white horse there came into a mind fed on rich, fat phrases and meaty
metaphors, and the flattery of astute, strong men and the dazzling
reflections of the imperial cheval glass, the first doubt as to whether
the high approval of that Other were indeed an objective reality, or
merely a figment of the imagination of an overwrought overman. In any
case, there must soon have dawned an aching wonder as to how the devil
the banner could be _white_.
And when was it that in place of that Other Rider in the hussar’s cap
there seemed to be something queer and sinister astride behind him on
his battle-weary steed? Was it then that he began to whistle so
vigorously (_vide_ German Press _passim_) to keep up his spirits? And
will there come a time (has it already come?) when that caressing touch
on the shoulder will seem indeed the caress of a friend, and that gaunt
index point to the only peace he will ever know?
JOSEPH THORP.
[Illustration]
_A Higher Pile_
Full half a million men, yet not enough
To break this township on a winding stream;
More yet must fall, and more, ere the red stuff
That built a nation’s manhood may redeem
The Highest’s hopes and fructify his dream.
They pave the way to Verdun; on their dust
The Hohenzollern mount and, hand in hand,
Gaze haggard south; for yet another thrust,
And higher hills must heap, ere they shall stand
To feed their eyes upon the promised land.
One barrow, borne of women, lifts them high,
Piled up of many a thousand human dead.
Nursed in their mothers’ bosoms, now they lie--
A Golgotha, all shattered, torn and sped,
A mountain for these royal feet to tread.
A Golgotha, upon whose carrion clay
Justice of myriad men, still in the womb,
Shall heave two crosses; crucify and flay
Two memories accurs’d; then in the tomb
Of world-wide execration give them room.
Verdun! Thy name is holy evermore;
In thine heroic ruin the nations see
A monument, upon whose living shore
In vain the evil breaks; we bend the knee,
Thou symbol of all human liberty.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
_Peace Reigns at Dinant_
The mere human criminal will cover his crime with disguises; but it may
truly be said that the Prussian has buried even his crime in the
evidences of it. He has made massacre itself monotonous; and made us
weary of condemning what he was never weary of carrying out.
It is said that General Von der Goltz, on receiving complaints of the
scarcely human parade of cruelty which accompanied the first entrance
into Belgium, declared that such first bad impressions of the Prussian
would wear off after his victory in the real campaign; and that, as he
expressed it, “Glory will efface all.” That sort of glory, however, was
itself effaced from the German prospects as early as the battle of the
Marne; and we shall never know whether humanity is capable of so vile a
forgiveness; or whether glory will efface all.
But there is a real sense in which we may say that infamy has effaced
all. In the first stage of the war Prussia conducted assassination upon
the same scale as grand strategy; and it is as difficult to recall every
woman or child whose death was in itself a breach of all international
understandings as it is to recall every poor fellow in uniform who has
fallen in the open fighting which everyone understands.
The pen becomes impotent when it attempts to give life to statistics;
and I do not know that anything can come closer to it than the pencil,
when it draws what the artist has drawn here--merely one quiet soldier,
in the corner of one quiet town; and beyond only the corner of a heap of
figures, which are yet more quiet.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
[Illustration]
_Humanity v. Kultur_
One of the most marked features of Raemaekers’ art is his intense
feeling of patriotism. He is proud of his country and of her past
history, and he is resolute to be true to the fame of the Netherlands in
the past and to preserve the freedom which is the heritage of her
people. Another characteristic is his abhorrence of the prospect of
German tyranny over his country. He hates that danger, which must ever
be present to the mind of a patriotic Dutchman. It has been the pressing
danger of the country for many years, and the danger increases and
becomes more imminent year by year. He hates that thought, both because
it would put an end to the freedom of his country and because he detests
the character of Germany, and many of his cartoons express this
abhorrence in the extremest form. He loathes the nature and the effects
of German “Kultur.”
Both these characteristics are expressed in this cartoon. The
Netherlands is represented as a young Dutch girl in the national
costume, a working woman wearing apron and cap and big wooden shoes. She
has taken off one of the shoes, holding it ready to strike, while in a
threatening attitude and with flashing eye she faces a hideous hag in
dirty, slovenly attire, who represents the great enemy. The artist’s
cartoons vie with one another in the ugliness which is imparted,
sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, to the enemy, but there is
none which represents Prussia in a more detestable form than this.
Prussia is a drunken woman, who is just coming out from a public-house,
and is leaning against the door, hardly able to stagger on. The sign at
the door is inscribed in German: “Bierhaus zur Deutschen Kultur.”
Prussia shrinks back from the assault which Holland is threatening. Yet
the assault is not an armed one; it is the assault of criticism and
righteous indignation, as uttered in the press and through art. The
crown of the empire, with the iron cross hanging from the apex, is
tumbling off the head of the drunken woman. The right hand, which she
holds up in deprecation, is dripping with blood. The neck of a large
bottle protrudes from a pocket in her dirty and ragged apron on which
the bloody mark of a child’s hand is imprinted. But with her
bloodstained hand Prussia deprecates the attacks of criticism by the
protest: “A real lady like me does not do such a thing”--forgetting in
her drunken mind that she bears the marks of guilt on her person. She
has been indulging in “Kultur” until she is in the last stage of
intoxication, barely able to stand upright, and quite unable to preserve
the crown of empire. Another characteristic of Raemaekers is evident:
the perfect, absolute assurance of victory. There can be no question
what the future will be; the issue of conflict, either in discussion or
in other ways, between this stalwart young woman and the broken, drunken
wretch cannot be doubted for a moment. The crown is already slipping
away, and no gesture, no support, will be in time to keep it in its
place.
WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.
[Illustration]
_The Bill_
Even a dragon’s teeth decay
And then there comes a painful time
When morsels won’t be made away:
Hence spring this picture and this rhyme
Of dragons rather past their prime.
A varied menu spread before
The hungry Kaiser and his son,
From which the royal epicure
With other courses chose this one--
Paris to follow when ’twas done.
A dainty dish the waiter thought
To set before a king, or clown;
Yet though they gulped and chewed and fought
Not sire nor son could get it down--
This little, sturdy, ancient town.
And, what is more, their appetites,
That yesterday were sharp and keen,
This wretched dish of Verdun blights:
Its toughness they had not foreseen;
The cooking’s bad, the inn unclean.
“My son, I think we’ll try elsewhere.”
“Right O! dear father, so we will.
I’m spoiling for a change of air.
Don’t let this trifle make you ill:
Our cannon fodder pay the bill!”
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
“_You need not storm this place_”
The magnificent imagery of Isaiah is alone adequate to interpret the
artist’s picture. The German Kaiser is at the entrance to hell, on the
gloomy portals of which is written the motto: “Abandon hope all ye who
enter here.” The devil, with a Mephistophelian irony, tells his captive:
“You need not storm this place.” Hell is only too ready to house the
great malefactors who have sinned against light and are doomed to
torment.
It is inevitable to recall the great oracles of Isaiah on the King of
Babylon--that enemy of his race who had enslaved the Jewish people,
persecuted God’s elect and led them into captivity. “Hell from beneath
is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead
for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from
their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say
unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto
us?... How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How art thou cast down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”
But the King of Babylon was received with greater ceremony than falls to
the lot of the German Kaiser. To welcome the former the old kings rise
from their thrones. Wilhelm is led by the devil alone, and no pomp or
circumstance of war surrounds him. His sin is as the sin of those who
have believed in their transcendent power and are the victims of
megalomania. He, too, said in his heart: “I will ascend into Heaven, I
will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will be like the Most
High.” Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
And the sentence passed on such enemies of the human race is the same
which Isaiah uttered thousands of years ago. “Is this the man that made
the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a
wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house
of his prisoners?” The very catalogue of offenses is the same. And the
penalty is that no such posthumous glory as encircles the monarchs of
the past will come to him. He goes down to the stones of the pit, cast
out from all honorable burial, as “a carcass trodden underfoot.”
Never did Raemaekers dip his pen in bitterer gall than when he limned
this appalling picture of the fate which awaits a merciless and
bloodthirsty tyrant.
W. L. COURTNEY.
[Illustration]
_Hohenzollern Madness_
Maybe the French poet of genius is already born who will sing the Epic
of Verdun. One thinks of him staring into his mother’s face, and
blinking a pair of wondrous brown eyes at the summer sun. France is too
near, too careful and troubled about the present, too deeply plunged in
grief and pain to tell that story with the majestic isolation of genius,
or fling her inspiration wide enough, as yet, to catch the significance
of this supreme event.
Marble and bronze will record it, and imperishable verse--of that we may
be sure; for the nation that has defended Verdun against the might of
Germany holds the seeds of magistral art. Art must spring quickened,
enlarged, and ennobled from these furnace fires; and it will happen, as
of old, that a people great enough to do great deeds lack not for
children of genius to record their immortality in achievements
themselves immortal.
That follows in fullness of time; for at this moment, while cannon
thunder and men die happy, with the light of coming victory for a crown,
we may well think of such men alone and pay our homage to the heroes who
have saved Verdun at the cost of their lives.
But what of Germany’s sons? What of the thousands who have fallen in
fruitless attempts to take the hill of Dead Men?
It may be ere long that these armies, driven by whip and revolver from
behind, will wake to the futility of their continued destruction and
begin to measure the worth of the royal command still hurling them to
death, that its own wounded vanity and strategical and political
incompetence shall find a salve in their sacrifice.
Raemaekers imagines nothing here, for his picture is a transcript of
familiar truth. Death welcomes to its bony bosom the pride of a kingdom,
while the rulers of that kingdom flog their subjects on to the
annihilation that awaits them. Such forlorn tactics are all that remain
to the beggared tyrant and his son. But men are not as corn or the
beasts of the field: this harvest cannot be renewed by the passage of a
year; and when Death has fed full, he must wait for another such meal
until the boyhood of Germany has come to man’s estate. May the youthful
Teutons with their manhood win sanity also, and escape forever the
slavery that has driven more than half a million of their fathers to
fruitless destruction before Verdun.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
“_My master asks you to look after these peace doves_”
Raemaekers in this excellent cartoon is not less direct, although he is
at the same time more subtle, than in some others. Holland, typified by
the seated figure, has an expression of amazement and suspicion, if not
actual fear, upon her face. The _Boche_ is not content with merely
offering the basket of spurious doves, but has thrust it upon Holland’s
lap. The bearer who, in the name of his master, asks the latter to look
after the “doves” is obviously trying to look agreeable as well as
innocent, but the battered helmet and the leer upon his face serve to
betray him.
Holland, says her great artist in this picture, has no use for “peace
doves,” or, at least, for those of the breed that wear the spiked
helmets of the Prussians. One may suspect, as the artist and Holland
herself apparently do, that the “doves,” symbolic of peace, may prove
the stormy petrels of war. They may be said to typify the propagandists
who, having settled in Holland from the early days of the war, have
carried on a crafty campaign of misrepresentation and calumny not alone
against the Allies, but against the country which has hitherto preserved
neutrality and sacrificed so much in works of benevolence in regard to
Belgian and other refugees, and the British airmen and seamen which the
accidents and tides of war have brought to or thrown upon her shores.
The “doves of peace,” and there are many Germans now resident in
Holland, have probably all of them “Mannlichers” as well as spiked
helmets for use if needed.
In regard to all transactions with the Huns or their master, Holland
will do well to remember Virgil’s oft-quoted line: “Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes.”
Every “dove,” whether in the guise of propagandist, commercial
representative, official, or agent for the purchase of foodstuffs, and
whether bringing a cage of “peace doves” or bags of gold, is a potential
enemy to the peace and independence of Holland. The triumph of the
Central Empires means the subjugation of the Dutch people, and the
“peace doves” within her borders would soon quit their cooing and be
transformed into the “Prussian Eagle’s brood.”
CLIVE HOLLAND.
[Illustration]
_Famine in Belgium_
“When the German conquers Belgium and Poland the first thing he does is
to raise agriculture, commerce, and industry to a state of immediate
prosperity. Gain and comfort for the new subjects cling to the soles of
his feet.”
Thus the Rev. Gerhard Tolzien preaching in Schwerin Cathedral last
autumn at the harvest festival held on the 19th Sunday after Trinity. We
must suppose he believed it. One of the stock attributes of Kultur,
proclaimed by its apostles and obediently repeated by their pupils, is
the beneficent influence it sheds on other lands. It showers gratuitous
benefits on all, but only those fortunate enough to be brought under
German sway reap the full harvest of its blessings. So the domination of
the world by Germany is justified. It is for the people’s good; it would
be the millennium.
Raemaekers shows it to us at work in Belgium. We see the Germans who
have conquered the land carrying out those beneficent functions
described by the German preacher. Having brought agriculture, commerce,
and industry to a state of unprecedented prosperity, they are watching,
with benevolent satisfaction, the signs of gain and comfort among the
inhabitants. If the emaciated peasants, leaving their roofless cottage,
limping down the empty street with the few odds and ends of rubbish not
worth looting which they still possess, or stopping to poke about in the
gutter for a scrap of food--if they seem to be at the last extremity of
misery, that is, no doubt, because they are too dull to appreciate the
blessings of Kultur.
Truly this is a terrible picture, a veritable nightmare. There is
nothing more poignant in the whole series. It would be a relief to be
able to believe Herr Tolzien’s account, but we fear that the ghastly
contrast drawn by the neutral artist is only too well founded on fact.
A. SHADWELL.
[Illustration]
_Poor Old Thing_
An old English proverb, disdaining to be cramped by so feeble and
academic a thing as grammar, tells us that “courtesy is cumbersome to
him that kens it not.” It is one of the essential signs of breeding that
courtesy is natural and not cumbersome; and if we may take the saying of
the German naval officer as true, that the English will always be fools
and the Germans will never be gentlemen (though it is true that the
maker of such a saying must be a gentleman himself), we shall be able to
understand much about the Central Powers that is otherwise puzzling.
Despite their aristocracies and their history, and this applies
especially to Austria, those Powers have a streak of cheapness running
through them. They are cads. They snarl and bicker with each other like
a grocer’s family in a back parlor. Unlike Lamb’s “party in a parlor,”
they are not all silent; possibly the rest of the sentence holds true.
Where was Wilhelm? Why doesn’t Franz Joseph do better? But for him we’d
have done such and such. Why didn’t the fellow do better?
They growl about each other to all the winds of heaven. Some of their
griefs are legitimate. Between allies of different race there must
always be grounds of difference and even of acute divergence of opinion.
For generations the Austrians have disliked the Germans with a hearty
and vigorous dislike. If ten years ago you called a German an Austrian,
he corrected you with superciliousness; if you called an Austrian a
German, he corrected you with fury. Germans called Austrians “stuck-up”;
Austrians called Germans merely “those Germans.” And now that they are
fighting side by side for their existence, now that their whole history
and homogeneity as European Powers are at stake, they carp and snap like
fretful sick puppies.
We--the Allies--are Latin and Slav and Saxon and Celt, and we shall
never understand each other really well. The friendship of England with
France is new, and has been grafted on centuries of clean warfare and
honorable hostility; but on the many points on which we think
differently, do we reproach each other? We have all retreated since the
war began, and in each case our Allies have hurried up to tell us that
our retreat was a masterpiece, as honorable as a victory. Why?
Because: _Noblesse oblige_.
H. PEARL ADAM.
[Illustration]
_Germany and the Neutrals_
There are some points in Germany’s attitude toward the neutrals which
are ambiguous. Others are only too tragically clear. If we consider in
its general character the German submarine crusade, we find that its
original intention--to damage not only ships of war but the merchantmen
of Great Britain, including passenger boats--involves also a studied
neglect of the rights of neutral ships. Everything that might
conceivably help Great Britain, either in respect to food-stuffs,
commerce, or international trade, or the voyage of harmless tourists on
the seas, was, from the point of view of Berlin, to be exposed to the
fury of submarine attacks without any nice discrimination between
enemies and neutrals. Clearly at one stage of the war the submarine
commanders had their orders to stop and overhaul whatever they met on
the seas, to give very inadequate time for the crews to escape, and to
refuse all assistance to the victims struggling in the water.
The crisis of this submarine crusade was reached in the sinking of the
“Lusitania.” Thereupon the American Government took action, and the
Notes interchanged between President Wilson and the Wilhelmstrasse
eventually, after much correspondence, brought about a temporary
cessation of the more violent methods of the Teuton pirates. For it
became clear that the patience of President Wilson was almost exhausted,
and the possibility of a rupture of diplomatic relations gave some pause
to the German Higher Command. The leading principles, however, of the
enemy’s crusade have never been altered. Indeed, many observers have
foreseen the recrudescence of submarine attacks, with the aid of newer
and more formidable vessels with a wider range of action and a stronger
armament.
The Berlin contention is that Great Britain, through her preponderance
of naval power, is a despot on the seas, infringing the liberties of
other nations. To restore freedom by limiting the activity of British
vessels has been a constant parrot-cry of the Teutonic enemy. The real
truth, of course, is that the blockade is having such serious effects on
Germany that she is almost bound to initiate new movements, if only to
shake off the fatal grasp of the British ships of war.