but for various reasons it is difficult for them to make an effective
protest. Meanwhile the innate brutality of submarine warfare is as
obvious as ever it was, and in Raemaekers’ cartoon the hideous gorilla
which represents the Teuton power is gloating over its victims and
breathing out defiance against all who attempt to curb it in its
reckless cruelty. The legend “Gott mit Uns” adds a biting irony to the
picture.
W. L. COURTNEY.
[Illustration]
_Those Horrible Britons_
The English have always been misunderstood by foreign peoples, and I
think one of the most beneficial effects of this war will be the better
understanding of John Bull by the Slavs, by the Gauls--and by the
Teutons.
The Slavs up to this time have not known us at all. In France till very
recently the Englishman has been the Englishman of the old Palais Royal
farces, a creature with red whiskers, front teeth like the double blank
in dominoes, shepherd’s plaid trousers, and a disengaging manner. Read
Daudet, read Hugo, read Loti and you will see that even the highest
intelligences in France have failed to appreciate John Bull at his true
worth, failed even to understand him.
Germany, who understands everything but humanity, has been even more
backward than France. To Germany John has figured as a robber grown fat
on plunder, soft, flabby, and only waiting to be plundered. To Germany
and to the Kaiser John has not figured as a power, simply because he has
not figured as a military power. They believed him effete.
The first seven divisions cut into this comfortable belief in a cruel
manner. The handful of English who drove the Hun hordes back from Calais
did not put balm on the wound. Slowly and by degrees the Kaiser has seen
his last hopes broken by the English.
“THOSE HORRIBLE BRITONS.”
Raemaekers, as always, has touched the truth.
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
[Illustration]
_Dr. Kuyper to Germany_
Of benevolent neutrality we have all heard; and of the existence of the
malevolent kind, too, we are quite frequently reminded. The Allied
countries failed to perceive the benevolence of the Vatican’s utterance
that the violation of Belgium “happened in the time of my predecessor,”
and so apparently called for no comment from the head of the Roman
Catholic Church. Since that interview the inaction of the Vatican, which
had till then been almost complete, and has since been troubled by one
or two tentative mentions of olive branches and no more, has appeared in
more than a dubious light to the Allied nations. In France, where the
opening of the war brought about something like a religious revival, the
Pope’s inaction and the Pope’s speech caused a cold Gulf Stream of
suspicion and disappointment to flow steadily Romeward. The spectacle of
a Protestant premier of a two thirds Protestant country favoring a
mission to the Vatican is one which would in any case have troubled
Protestants, and in this case does not even please Roman Catholics. Then
who does it please? Raemaekers knows.
Alas for the days when we associated screens with “little French
milliners”; what a Lady Teazle have we here! And what a school of
something worse than scandal holds its classes in the seminaries of
war-politics! Dr. Kuyper, “the snowy-breasted pearl” of the drawing, is,
perhaps, guilty of hoping a thing he does not avow; of working for it;
but at least even Raemaekers, a stern critic, admits that without being
a villain (we know the mark Raemaekers sets on the brow of his villains)
he may be still quite pleased with himself. But the two behind the
screen are furtive, are anxious, are unable to enjoy even an act that
should further their plans; they are pleased, but their pleasure is
sicklied o’er with the pale cast of a thought which turns ever more
eagerly to the future, and turns back ever more anxiously to the
present.
H. PEARL ADAM.
[Illustration]
_The Kaiser’s Diplomacy_
The true story of what happened in Montenegro, when the Austrians
reported that the country had submitted to superior force and accepted
the domination of the Central Powers, and that it was abandoning the
hopeless task of resisting their united strength, will perhaps be
revealed in the future. At present it is unknown. Probably it will turn
out to have been a great personal disappointment to the Kaiser and
another instance where his diplomacy failed. It would have been a
triumph to induce Montenegro to submit peaceably, and to have King
Nicholas accept the position of a client king at Berlin. But the
resistance of Montenegro was not wholly overcome. The king and the
people who had fought for freedom with success against all the forces of
Turkey and afterward of Austria during so many years could not submit to
being deluded by the blandishments of Hadji Wilhelm.
Here the artist shows Nicholas with his bag packed for the journey to
France, and labelled “Lyon,” turning away from the Kaiser, who looks
toward him with seductive entreaty, and presses his hands in a gesture
of petition. He is making a last attempt to induce the king to submit to
fate and to himself; to come to Berlin, and to be received with royal
honors and enrolled alongside the many princely families of Germany.
The Kaiser set great store by success in this negotiation. It would have
been the beginning, as he hoped, of the breaking up of the alliance
among his foes. Even though it was only the small and poor Montenegro
that abandoned the Allied cause, still it was to be the first stage of a
general break-up, which would have been hailed with triumph as the
beginning of the end. The Kaiser wanted Nicholas badly, but Nicholas was
not going alone to Berlin, and his last word is that “we will all come
later.” Raemaekers, with his unfailing confidence in a final victory,
looked forward then, when the cause of the Allies seemed to be at its
lowest ebb, to the victory of the future, and to the victorious entrance
of the united Allies into Berlin. The artist judged by faith, and not by
sight. He was not a mere calculator of chances, and an estimator of
military power; for those neutrals who judged on such principles were
apparently all so profoundly impressed with the overwhelming military
strength of Germany, that their moral judgment was warped. Raemaekers
had lived too close to Germany to be ignorant of her enormous strength;
but he judges as a prophet, who bears witness to the moral quality of
the world, despite of the apparent balance of probabilities.
WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.
[Illustration]
_Cain_
Germany’s practical attitude to small countries has always given the lie
to her expressed benevolence. Her proposal at the beginning of the war
to localize conflict and leave Austria’s sixty millions to settle with
the four millions of Serbia will be remembered. Then, after solemn
assurance that her neutrality would be respected, “necessity” demanded
Germany’s broken oaths and unspeakable outrage upon an innocent nation.
It was merely a choice between Belgium and Switzerland; and convenience
decided for Belgium. Abroad we have seen the treatment of uncivilized
races and observed with what thanksgiving the indigenous peoples of West
Africa, East Africa, and the Cameroons have welcomed Germany’s downfall
as the first step to restoration of liberty and recognition of human
rights. Those fiends--Prince Arenberg, Carl Peters, Chancellor
Leist--are not forgotten, nor the Herero massacres.
Belgium has been sacrificed by the Cain of nations. He, who has talked
most loudly about the rights of small kingdoms and his unbreakable
resolution to protect them against the threat of the mighty and the
tyranny of the strong; he, who desired to be his brother’s keeper, has
Belgium murdered on her pyre. Within two days of the promise to leave
her inviolate, she lay battered and bleeding under the club of the
oath-breaker. But the smoke of the burning is beaten back into the
assassin’s eyes. Even from the tribal god of the Huns this sacrifice has
won no smiles.
It has been left for a Christian emperor in the twentieth century to
emulate the neolith barely emancipated from brutedom, and set an example
that the stone men of old might have hesitated to copy.
We have so long grown accustomed to the spectacle of martyred Belgium,
and are so familiar with the whole story of her rape and massacre by
this royal savage of Prussia, that the grief is like to be deadened and
the pang grown dull; but let no such narcotic drift over our spirits
until the war is won. Not the onset of poison gas would be more fatal
than any emotion of indifference, or inclination to accept the situation
now achieved by treachery, falsehood, surprise, and villainy beyond
example, as a basis whereon to build any sort of peace. Let the word be
anathema while the Hun still sucks the blood of his sacrifice and while
Belgium and Serbia fester at the touch of his feet; let none breathe it
until the Allies alone, without enemy question or neutral interference,
are in a position to impose a peace commensurate with their victory.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
_The Counter-Attack at Douaumont_
The fortress of Verdun will stand forever, a bastion cut against the
sky, and behind and above, like a flaming cresset, will burn Douaumont.
Verdun in March of 1916 was the name of a fortress and a town; to-day it
is no longer a name. It has become a word lifted among the star words
common to all languages and all times. Valor, splendor, devotion,
endurance, patriotism,--how grand are these words! Yet Verdun is the
grandest of them all, for it includes them all.
It is the word that France has flung to the world not from her fleshly
lips, but from the lips of her soul.
To the cringing neutrals; to Swiss waiters, and Dutch hucksters and
English sedition-mongers, and Irish hole-and-corner men, and Swedish
marketmen. To the hordes of the Beast and the powers of darkness France
has flung the light of that one burning word, just as the Spartans, four
hundred and eighty years before the birth of Christ, flung to us the
light of the word Thermopylæ.
The old heroic times seemed dead, littleness seemed everywhere, till the
light of this war showed the soul of man great as in the days of
Alexander.
The counter-attack at Douaumont is but an incident, a crystallized
moment out of the endless battle on the Meuse.
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
[Illustration]
_The Morning Paper_
The Kaiser said “his heart bled” when the Allies raided Carlsruhe from
the air. The hemorrhage was not serious, but it had a value as tending
to show that the heart was there. Or was it that the Allies had
performed the classic feat of drawing blood from a stone? It was more
than his own airmen could do when they killed children and women in
London and Paris.
Perhaps some day a poet will arise who will be able to write for us the
epic of the Morning Paper during this war. It used to lie under doors
till wanted, and then Father had it, and Mother didn’t want it till
after lunch, and George got it after Father, and Arthur must therefore
buy an “evening” paper at the station where he caught the 9:19 to the
City. And it really didn’t matter much, after all, except that it was
something to talk about, and the Other Side was taking the country to
the dogs (a trip on which it has been entering any time these last five
hundred years), and one must know the latest entries for the Thousand
Guineas, anyway, and yesterday’s goals.
And now! “Hasn’t the paper come yet? Where’s the paper? Is there any
news? What are We doing? Have the French advanced? What about Verdun?
Why’s the paper late? How’s Russia this morning? Read it out, Father, or
else order a copy each!” The holy, classical, breakfast gloom of the
British family is shattered by machine-gun fire of questions, of
anxiety, of hope, of anguish, of pride, of horror, of hope again. Those
folded sheets of printing, less clear than it used to be, on paper less
good than it was, have even eclipsed that domestic Mercury, the postman!
Letters lie unopened till the news has been scanned. That alone
represents a revolution in British family life, and the same thing
obtains in all the Allied western countries.
And what it represents is the change of focus in our minds. We are all
living more or less intensely in an impersonal and selfless atmosphere,
where what others are doing matters more than what our friends are
doing, and where we are blatantly, flagrantly, despite all our national
traditions, sure of an Ideal. We can even talk about it! I believe this
cartoon by Raemaekers has a special appeal to the British for this
reason; that the morning paper has come to mean so much to us, and now
rouses in us such large, splendid feelings, such a magnificence of pain,
such a glory of anxiety, such a pride of suffering--has made possible to
us expression of so much which we thought it right and decent to hide in
our hearts before--that this spectacle of the Kaiser and his dame
gloating over innocent deaths has a force and a drive which the British
are bound to recognize in a special degree. And the faces of the maniac
and his senile wife, glowering at _their_ “good news,” cannot help but
recall to us Father’s look when he read that we had taken La Boisselle,
Mother’s face when she heard that casualties were “comparatively” light.
The paper is something more than paper and ink nowadays.
H. PEARL ADAM.
[Illustration]
_“And such a brave Zepp he was”_
Aestatem increpitans seram _Zepyrosque_ morantes.
Chiding the lateness of the summer still
And “Zeppers” all too tardy for his will.
This is rather the attitude we should have expected of the all-highest,
whom, of course, the seasons ought to obey. It is hard on him that we
should have had such a late summer, and that his “Zeppers” should have
had to wait so long and, after all, done so little.
For the “gentle Zeppers” from the east to-day, like those from the west
of old, come with fair weather and serene skies. They may find an
exceptional night in winter when “the moon is hid,” for, like all
evil-doers, “they love darkness rather than light,” and “the night is
still,” but it is in the calm of summer and autumn that they look to
make their best harvest and their boldest onslaughts. Equinoctial gales,
sleet and snow do not suit them, so brave are they. They are not keen to
face either the battle or the breeze, so brave are they.
It would be unfair to deny bravery altogether to the _Boches_. They have
shown it in their own “book of arithmetic” way on land, on sea, and in
the air. (H)immelmann, as the Tommies of course called him, certainly
showed himself “at ’ome in his native (h)element, as bold as a ’awk,”
though brought down by a half-fledged eagle at the finish. But he was an
aviator and took risks. The brave “Zepps” have not taken many; we do not
blame them. There is no reason why they should, and every reason why
they should not. They are delicate and expensive birds to rear. When
they are on the wing there are a good many “marks over,” and when the
anti-aircraft gun finds those “marks,” light currency though they be,
they fall even faster than on the Exchange.
Formidable, no doubt, the Zepps are. It is our good luck more than our
good management that they have not done more damage. But brave, as
bravery goes in this war, hardly that, so far. We should have expected
the Kaiser to curse them and the weather, not to weep. Weeping? Kaisers
and Kaiserins and Count Zeppelins should be made of sterner stuff. We do
not hear that Herod and Herodias were seen weeping because the attack on
Rachel cost them an assassin or two. Yet that is the picture Raemaekers
gives us here, scathingly, sarcastically, graphic as ever.
“They were brave.” “They fought against odds unnumbered” (of women and
children and men 10,000 feet below them). “They fell with their tails to
the foe.” Yes, the Zepps are very brave. They’ll have to be braver still
before they’re done!
HERBERT WARREN.
P.S.--This was written before September 2. Yes, they’ll have to take
more risks, and they and their friends will have to be braver yet.
H. W.
[Illustration]
_Flying Over Holland_
Holland has acted a rather more than neutral part in this war. Cocoa and
bacon, butter and potatoes, lard and oil, beef, fish, sugar, and
rice--the amount she has eaten of these has been truly astounding. She
has eaten so much and slept so soundly that she has not heard the
Zeppelins flying over her, bound for England.
Should aeroplanes fly over her, bound for Germany, would she wake up?
She has also eaten rubber and dry-goods, and so many other indigestible
things that if she doesn’t sulfer from somnolence, for decency’s sake
and as a proof that she still belongs to the human family, she ought to
pretend to suffer from it--when the aeroplanes fly over her, bound for
Germany.
One wonders what her opinions are on this cartoon presented to her by
her most illustrious son.
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
[Illustration]
_“If they don’t increase their Army”_
We were inclined at the beginning of this war to be a little
unreasonable in our demands on the sympathy of the neutral nations. This
was particularly the case with Holland, whose geographical position with
regard to Belgium and to ourselves is a most delicate one. We did not
always consider sufficiently what too lively an expression of opinion
friendly to the Allies might cost the Dutch. They saw themselves, three
years ago, watched through the peep-holes of their eastern frontier by a
neighbor without pity, without scruple, and without decency. To have
given the Germans an opportunity of attacking them unawares would have
been to see the tulips of Haarlem trampled into mud and the
church-windows of Gouda smashed; to let the libraries of Leyden be
pillaged and the art-treasures of The Hague be carried off to Berlin; to
find the cathedral tower of Utrecht used as a target for cannon, and the
canals of Amsterdam choked with the corpses of Dutch women and children.
What Belgium has endured would be poured out in fourfold horror upon
Holland. No wonder that the Dutch are prudent in their language,
circumspect in their actions.
Moreover, till the autumn of 1914, Holland had cultivated a pacific
spirit. She did not believe in military danger, and through the masses
of the people there ran a kind of resentment against the army, as a body
of men paid out of the taxes for doing nothing. In all this Holland was
wittingly the opposite of her ferocious and gigantic neighbor. But all
this is over now. Raemaekers shows us the sturdy Dutch soldier, with his
back turned to wheedling German whisperers, guarding the long eastern
frontier beyond the Maas. Holland has been roused out of her opiate
dream of non-resistance, and she vibrates with heroic echoes from Ypres
and from Dixmude. She is fully aware that she is called upon to be the
arbiter of her own destiny, and that she must meet force with force.
Holland is safe so long as she prepares her own defense, for Germany
never attacks unless she believes herself to be sure of victory. She
knows that the Dutch _have_ “increased their army,” and that the hour of
“easy” and insolent conquest is over.
EDMUND GOSSE.
[Illustration]
_Religion and Patriotism_
This horrible war that has been sprung upon us has taught the Empire
many useful lessons. It has been a revelation in character value. In the
long piping time of peace, before grim-visaged war broke in upon us, we
were much too self-centered. Colonials and others returning from our
overseas dominions to the “Old Country” did not hesitate to say how
appalled they were by the wealth and how shocked they were by the uses
to which it was being put in England.
It seemed to them, coming home from the simple life to the lap of
luxury, that men and women in England were living to pile up colossal
wealth and to bask in the sunshine of newspaper notoriety. I might
continue in this strain for pages more, but that is not my purpose. What
I do want to say is that, as soon as the tocsin of war was heard across
the silver sea, and the bugle-call of duty was sounded, these same
club-loungers and society-loafers rolled up, rallying to the flag as
though they had been born for nothing else. In the story of England’s
life only will the headline “Five Millions of Volunteers to the Colors”
be read, topping the chapter telling of this European war to our
children’s children.
Not only have those on the highest rung of the social ladder responded
to the King’s call for service, but those on the lowest rung also--never
was there such a fellowship in arms by land and on sea.
But if England with her overseas peoples stands out in such fine relief
against the dark war background, we must not forget that our Allies have
shone out as conspicuously as ourselves as fighting patriots, resolved
to do or die.
Chaplains, too, have done fine work for country as well as for religion.
Conspicuous among all Churchmen rises the lithe, imposing, ascetic
figure of His Eminence Cardinal Mercier. If ever there was a follower of
the Good Shepherd, ready to lay down his life for his sheep, it is the
Cardinal Archbishop of Malines. “The Good Shepherd giveth his life for
his sheep.” Nothing could have pleased the Cardinal better than to have
escaped the sights forced upon him by sacrificing his own life for his
flock. But it was not to be; his life has been spared that all the world
might find in this good shepherd its object lesson in true religion and
in true patriotism.
BERNARD VAUGHAN.
[Illustration]
_The Prisoners_
Among the suggestions for treating our German prisoners, the public has
misunderstood that emanating from the Government. To utter the word
“reprisals,” when we know right well that the whole sense and tradition
of this country would rise in rebellion against any such system, is to
speak in vain. Moreover, other and juster lines of action are within our
reach. It has been suggested that we should treat our prisoners exactly
as Germany treats hers; but since her system is beneath the accepted
standards of humanity, and such as no civilized country could practise
without loss of self-respect, that course remains unjustified. A
worthier way would seem to be that those responsible for the crime are
made to suffer, and that, instead of doing injustice now by punishing
men not to blame for our enemy’s cruelties, we exact justice after the
war is ended and then look to it that all--chiefs and subordinates
alike--who have tortured and starved the Allied prisoners, in military
or internment camps, should be brought to pay the penalty for their
cowardly villainies. That will lie within our power; and did Germany
clearly understand the intention, it is reasonable to hope she might
take steps to save herself from the consequences of her brutality.
Moreover, the threat is no mere thunder, for though the country is still
in ignorance, still buoyed by false news and fatuous _communiqués_,
those at the helm know well enough the Central Empires are on a lee
shore of ultimate defeat.
With some truth these boys, spectacled students and stunted human
failures swept into the net of France’s prisoners, may echo their
“all-highest” and say: “We did not want to do it.” They, indeed, did
not, and who can feel for them much more than pity? Such men are not
even good cannon fodder; and no more striking comment on the passes to
which Germany is coming in her efforts to fill the failing lines need be
sought than in the material our prisoners often reveal. She has, indeed,
many thousands more of the cream of her manhood to destroy before the
end; but to offer such feeble stuff as this to the combustion of war
cannot long delay the final need.
Señor Gomez Garrillo, writing as a neutral in the “Gaulois,” has told us
how the British, though fully realizing the hatred of the German people,
do not echo it; for they see in their prisoners only unhappy men, to be
treated with compassion and respect. That is not a spirit that will be
found on the losing side of the World War.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
_Well, My Friend!_