intrigue have placed upon the thrones of two small nations of
southeastern Europe. The peoples whom they respectively rule have every
conceivable reason for desiring the triumph of that principle of
international right for which the Allies stand in this war, and which is
the only possible defense of small nationalities. They have also special
obligations toward those who are to-day championing that principle, for
the Bulgarians owe their liberation from Turkish tyranny primarily to
Russia, while the Greeks owe the restoration of their national
independence to that very combination of Great Britain, France and
Russia which at Navarino nearly a century ago half-foreshadowed the
present Great Alliance.
But of these men one is an intriguer of mean origin, vile antecedents,
and corruptly personal aims, while the other is the husband of a
Hohenzollern. Therefore, in the one case the intriguer sells his people
to the enemy, while in the other the semi-German princeling deserts not
only his natural allies, but those to whom he is pledged by treaty. Of
the Balkan States, Serbia alone is faithful to the cause of nationality;
and it is not unimportant to note that of these states Serbia alone
possesses a native dynasty. It is to be hoped that after the war princes
will no longer figure among the exports of the German Empire.
CECIL CHESTERTON.
[Illustration]
_“How quiet it must be in the English harbors blockaded by our fleet”_
Raemaekers has here selected two typical naval officers, and has placed
them on the quay in Kiel Harbor, pacing along in sight of the water and
some of the ships of the High Seas Fleet lying at anchor.
The expressions on the two faces are worth careful study. On that of the
taller and nearer man one has a cleverly caught and underlying
indication of doubt. He seems to say: “Of course, we are blockading the
British Fleet, which has taken shelter from our invincible warships in
the Thames Estuary. And, of course, since the Battle of Jutland, we have
swept the seas and wrested the trident from the grasp of Britain.
But....” At the back of his mind is evidently at all events the germ of
a question. “Why, if this be so, do our ships lie at anchor, and our
people go short of the imported necessities of life?” And in the mind of
that type of man no amount of inspired press accounts of fictitious
victories, and no thanks of the Kaiser and profusion in the decoration
of “naval heroes,” can lull to rest the suspicion that all is not as it
should be.
The second type depicted is a more common one in the German Navy. He
carries his chin up, while his companion carries his down. He says: “Of
course, we have driven the British Battle Fleet to its harbors, and, of
course, we won a notable victory off Jutland, and, equally of course,
when we bombarded Scarborough and other seaside pleasure resorts we
actually destroyed immensely strong fortifications, and did enormous and
material damage to military and naval bases.” This type of man could
believe anything. And he does! He has assimilated greedily all the
mental pabulum that is designed to teach that Germany cannot be beaten
because she is Germany, and that the Germans are superior to every other
race. He swallowed it as greedily as a small boy, a collegian, or a
naval cadet, and it has become part of him. He neither can know, will
know, nor wishes to know the truth. There is something pathetic as well
as stupid in his blindness and imperviousness to facts. He is of the
type which will believe Germany invincible long after she has been
beaten. He is of the type that will prolong the war by continuing to
celebrate phantom victories even when the fleets of the Allies are
hammering at the gates of the Kiel Canal. In this cartoon Raemaekers’
satire is gentler than its wont, but not less effective on that account.
CLIVE HOLLAND.
[Illustration]
_The Brigands_
Ah, No! Not brigands! Not pirates! They belong to the good days of
youth, the “Boys’ Own Annual,” Stevenson, Henty, Kingston, when there
were words of pure magic that wrought spells. Is there a boy with soul
so dead who never to himself hath said “Sallee Rovers,” “High Barbary,”
“Masked Men on Maidenhead Thicket,” “A Toby Man on a Black Horse,” for
the sheer pleasure of evoking the little shiver that goes with Romance?
Has the deep villainy of _Long John Silver_ anything in common with
Tirpitz? _Long John_ would never have allowed the right of Tirpitz to
fly the Jolly Roger. Would _Claude Duval_ have taken the Kaiser’s hand?
Never!
The skull and crossbones have fallen on evil days, the black flag has
had its sable purity rent and torn; no boy is going to stick his nose
into a book about the Kaiser and Willie in future days, in order to
snuff up sensuously the very smell of such a jolly good tale. Ah, these
others were a merry company, and they swung very rightly on creaking
gallows, or walked the plank into glittering foreign seas, for crimes
which would show saintly white upon the Potsdam flag. They were bad men,
but witless, too; they did such petty sins, imagined such small crimes.
If they bullied a little boy, we thought them already damnable rascals!
One little boy! Anybody could count him on their fingers; but we need
the higher mathematics to compute the wrong of Potsdam. It is like
weighing Saturn, or measuring Lucifer; we must go outside our world to
do either.
Better the lonely gibbet on the heath than the stalled ox of Potsdam;
let us walk the plank like the honest murderers we are, and go to the
perdition that suits with our knaveries and cruelties and black crimes;
but let us from creaking chain and blanched sea-sand enter a protest
against having the Berlin brood fathered on us; nay, sirs, must even the
good fat swine in his filth be compared with such as these?
H. PEARL ADAM.
[Illustration]
_It Looks So in Serbia_
It emphatically does _not_ look so in Serbia. No artist dare portray the
infamous truth of it. I have found something of that in the report of an
inquiry conducted by Dr. Reiss, of the Lausanne University, in such of
the devastated districts as were not left in the actual occupation of
the enemy. “Belgium was a mothers’ meeting to it,” as some phrase-maker
put it. All that was worst in a nation, of whom a tolerant general
opinion held that it was unfortunate rather than unkindly, came out in
that second version of the “punitive expedition” of which the first
ended so ingloriously.
It is an attribute of chivalry to respect courage, and of civilization
to hold under control the passions that blaze up in the furnace of war.
Austria has eternally forfeited her reputation for chivalry and culture.
She has chosen to range herself with her allies: with the Germans of
Aerschot, Termonde, Dixmude; with the Turks of the Armenian holocausts;
with that glorious squadron of Bulgarian cavalry that charged and sabred
a square of defenseless prisoners.
The first Austrian legions, underestimating their enemy, broke
ignominiously against the intrepid mountaineers. They came back in
overwhelming force and wreaked their vengeance for their former defeat
with a more than German frightfulness.
One dare not take the responsibility of referring readers to Dr. Reiss’s
book. Its cold precision, its scientific tabulation, its sickening
photographs, make up a nightmare horror which should be thrust upon no
one who can avoid it.
But if there be a recording angel----
JOSEPH THORP.
[Illustration]
_Victory by Imposture_
The peacemaker, Ford, is sailing away in a boat, with the flag of the
United States at the stern, leaving behind him the four Germanic Powers.
On their alliance is inscribed: “Victory! Victory! Colossal victory!”;
but the alliance is only a life-buoy, and the Powers are struggling in
the sea of fate, and are in imminent danger of drowning. They strive by
loud words to maintain to the world their pretense of victory; but it is
all sham, and they know that their lives are at stake. The whole fabric
of the German alliance is to this artist a morally gigantic imposture,
and rests on an elaborate system for duping the surrounding world.
Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey have enough to do to hold on to the
life-buoy and save themselves from death. Turkey has a bad grip, and
looks as if he could hardly cling on. Bulgaria is, if possible, worse
situated; Ferdinand holds with one hand and with his chin. The Emperor
of Austria has his shoulder well over the life-saving buoy, but although
the hold is good, his physical strength is failing. The Kaiser alone has
a firm hold and plenty of strength left, but he has already been under
water, for his helmet is dripping; and his cry for help is addressed to
the retreating peacemaker. The boasting words inscribed on the alliance
are addressed to the surrounding world, but the word that comes from his
heart is a cry for peace.
When this cartoon was published, Germany was apparently going on from
victory to victory. Many people feared that the Prussian victory was
assured, but Raemaekers never doubted. His confidence in the victory of
truth and justice never failed for an instant. In his cartoons he sees,
like a prophet or a poet, right into the heart of the great movements in
history. It is not that he conveys the impression of mere blind,
unreasoning confidence in the victory of any particular nation which he
admires, or in which he believes, or which he considers to be most
wealthy and most capable of paying the expenses and supplying the
“silver bullets” in unceasing abundance. His sublime assurance is based
on moral issues; he hates the cruel and the deceitful nation and man,
because among other things they are an outrage on nature, a blotch
disfiguring the fair face of the world, and he knows that a cause which
is based on disregard of international obligations, and buttressed by a
policy of “frightfulness” and a general system of imposture and
deception, must fail. The world of men will not endure it; the divine
order of things has rejected it. He can no more doubt about the issue
than could one of the old Hebrew prophets. He has seen, and he knows.
WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.
[Illustration]
_Shell-Making_
Shells! Shells! In the name of the Prophet, shells! Shells for Britain
and Belgium, for France and Russia and Italy, for Serbia and Roumania!
Shells, shells, and ever more shells! It is a cry with which we are
familiar now, terribly familiar. We remember--though events crowd on so
fast that we forget much--how a year or two ago it was yet more
terrible, for it was a cry unanswered and unanswerable.
Our little army--so little, but so great in heart--“our dauntless army,
scattered and so small,” _sans_ machine-guns, _sans_ howitzers, _sans_
shells, _sans_ masks, _sans_ everything, still snatched for us, if not
victory, yet time, time for everything. To-day it has grown from
hundreds to thousands, and thousands to millions, and its munitions have
grown faster still. What were Mr. Montagu’s figures the other day? They
were incredible. Britain’s output of “heavy shell” has been multiplied
_ninety-four_, wellnigh _one hundred_, times. The tale of shells it took
a whole weary year to make in 1914 can now be made in _four days_!
How has it been brought about? Largely by the enthusiasm, the faith and
fire, of one man and many women,--by Mr. Lloyd George and the workers
who have rallied to his call.
This picture show’s the process. It is a picture truly striking,
graphic, beautiful, gladdening yet saddening.
These countless, shapely, well-knit figures bending over their task
eagerly, earnestly; the power-bands revolving, the lathes turning
unceasingly, the tools biting, polishing, finishing; creation in full
swing!
All the rare gifts of womanhood are here, but how strangely used! What a
pathetic paradox! It is women’s privilege to be the mothers, the nurses,
the ministers, the angels of life. But these are mothers and angels of
death. They know what they are doing. It is for their men, their babes,
their honor, they transform themselves. All the woman’s love and
passion, her enthusiasm, her neat and delicate hand, her docility are
here, making, moulding these shining shells, multitudinous as their
namesakes of the ocean; and like them each is fashioned nicely to
pattern, voluted, enamelled, burnished, with their strange knobs and
grooves the product of long evolution, exact and right, and then stacked
gross by gross, and thousand by thousand, canned earthquakes, bottled
death, to be broken and to break to-morrow in the storms and on the
ridges of war.
_Dux femina facti!_ What work to-day is not woman’s?
Shells, shells, ever more shells!
HERBERT WARREN.
[Illustration]
_Another Australian Success_
A London snapshot in lighter mood and a pretty compliment to the
Australians, who are cutting out Jack, Tommy, and even Sandy in bonnet
and kilt, under the shadow of Nelson’s lions. Well, none but the brave
deserve the fair, and no one grudges them their success.
But the picture may be read in a different sense. After all, whose is
the success here? If there were one Australian and two girls, now, that
would be something like success. Too much success, indeed! He might say:
“How happy could I be with either!” The girl does not say that; no girl
ever does. She wants them both and apparently she has got them. The
success is hers, and other girls will certainly grudge it to her,
particularly, one fancies, those in Australia, who may have their own
reasons for a qualified approval of conquests in Trafalgar Square. So
Britannia’s sons may be cut out, but Britannia’s daughter carries off
the honors and redresses the balance.
This snapshot, by the way, was evidently taken before London was laid in
ruins by Zeppelins (see the Wolff Bureau and German papers _passim_).
A. SHADWELL.
[Illustration]
_The Sea the Path of Victory_
The Kaiser and the Prussian people doubtless encourage themselves by
remembering the tremendous struggle which Frederick, so-called the
Great, waged against an almost overwhelming coalition of the neighboring
peoples, but they carefully and intentionally forget that Prussia had as
its ally throughout that desperate struggle of the Seven Years’ War the
power of England, which it hates. It deliberately forgets that the sea
was always open then, that its friends could come and go, and that
supplies of every kind could be brought in over a friendly “German
Ocean.” It has often been said that the Kaiser, when he fixed the date
for the beginning of the war, had forgotten to take counsel with the
naval command, but there seems no reason to doubt that at least he took
counsel with Tirpitz, the responsible head of the navy.
Tirpitz was not a man to be ignored, but neither was he a man whose
opinion about naval strategy was to be trusted. He has shown himself a
typical German organizer, marvellously excellent in the building of a
fleet of ships, but his ignorance of the real principles of naval
warfare and of naval power has proved itself to be colossal and truly
Germanic. It would surprise no one if history should hereafter disclose
that Tirpitz, through some quaint perversion of reasoning power, had
come to the conclusion that the time for the war had arrived at the end
of July, 1914. The true principle of naval power manifests itself
steadily in the course of history, and the artist in this cartoon
expresses it through the figure of the hydraulic press, under which the
Kaiser is being slowly crushed. Beneath the irresistible weight of its
descent his sword is bending and useless; it will soon break. The figure
of the hydraulic press is more apt than the phrase which was applied to
the Russian armies at the beginning of the war by the English press. The
“steam-roller” has proved itself a singularly unsuitable figure to
express the strength of the Russian armies, for it is totally unlike the
lightning strategy of Brussilof or the enduring blows of the Grand Duke.
To Raemaekers the hydraulic press becomes a sort of compendium of naval
power; and a quaint resemblance to the turrets and protruding guns of a
fleet of battleships is imparted by the artist to the upper parts of the
engine. The sea is the friend of Britain. The sea expresses its
friendship in many ways. It is the friend of the Netherlands to save
that country from German invasion, and it is the instrument through
which Great Britain crushes down the armies of Prussia.
WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.
[Illustration]
_Balaam and his Ass_
We know the story of the oracles of Balaam as narrated in chapters XXII
and XXIII of “Numbers.” Balaam is sent for by Balak, king of the
Moabites, in order that he might curse the children of Israel whose
invasion threatened Moab with dire peril. Balaam first refuses to
journey to Balak; then, subsequently, he is induced to change his mind.
Riding on his ass the prophet accompanies the princes of Moab, and on
his way is confronted by the angel of the Lord. The ass, much wiser than
his master, dares not pass. Balaam, who could not see the obstacle in
the path, struck his ass three times. Thereupon his eyes were opened,
and the ass, speaking with the mouth of a man, rebuked the prophet for
his senselessness and his brutality. In the sequel, though Balaam meets
with Balak, he is not permitted to curse; he can only bless the children
of the Lord.
This is the story which is in Raemaekers’ mind in his spirited cartoon.
Balaam is, of course, the German emperor; his ass is the long-suffering
German people, forced by threats to advance over millions of strewn
corpses and rotting skulls, and the angel in the path bears on its
shield the words Justice, Liberty, Humanity.
Unlike the prototype whom Raemaekers has selected, the German emperor
refuses to recognize that his real opponent in the tremendous war is the
civilized conscience of mankind. But the German people is beginning to
understand and realize at what appalling cost it is being sent to the
shambles. Perhaps in time the eyes of the Kaiser himself may be opened,
and when that day of enlightenment comes he will discover that no amount
of iron crosses or lying telegrams will induce the German fatherland to
fight any longer against the ordinances of God.
Far away on the horizon are to be observed the funeral crosses which
reveal so eloquently the history of the war. For, indeed, the best and
bravest youth of most of the nations of Europe is being sacrificed to
suit the truculent ambition of a blind and reckless autocrat.
W. L. COURTNEY.
[Illustration]
_A Genuine Dutchman_
Ever since the great poet, Willem Bilderdijk, more than a hundred years
ago, finding the intellectual life of his country submerged in Teutonic
sentimentality, turned the German doves out of the temple of the Dutch
Muses, Holland has followed the intellectual example of France more than
that of any other country. The Dutch have a passion for individualism
which carries them in a direction exactly opposite to the moral and
artistic tyranny of Prussian _Kultur_, and gives a totally different
coloring to their respect for mental distinction. But the insidious
propaganda of Berlin had of late done fresh mischief, and when the war
broke out a considerable portion of the Dutch clergy and a small but
violently militant university clique of professors showed themselves
surprisingly bitter against the Allies, and particularly against France.
There was a reflection of this in the ruling class, while the conduct of
the Government, although perfectly correct in regard to the Entente
Powers, was not considered by the mass of the Dutch people to protect
the nation vigilantly enough against the coarse propaganda of Germany.
In Raemaekers’ cartoon we see this propaganda in action. A corpulent
journalist, _boche_ of the _boches_, fitted out with plenty of money and
a suit of Dutch peasant clothes provided by Wilhelmstrasse, struts about
in Holland, and being now “a genuine Dutchman,” will start a newspaper
in the German interest. But the real Dutch see through him and laugh at
his pretensions.
The fall of Mr. Trub, the eminent statesman whose sympathies were openly
with the Allies, was considered in Germany to be a triumph for Teutonic
intrigue in Holland. The success of Mr. Cort van der Linden seemed to
confirm this impression. But the corpulent and bearded _boche_, in whom
Raemaekers symbolizes the secret journalistic work of Germany in
Holland, acted too insolently and went too far. He awakened the
Vaderlandsche Club, or Club of Patriots, which has been formed
specifically to guard Dutch interests and to oppose with vigor the
advances of Germany. The response with which this association has been
greeted in all parts of the country; the discomfiture of the “Toekomst,”
the newspaper mainly financed by our stout friend in the baggy breeches;
and the sustained prosperity of the “Telegraaf,” the patriotic journal
which Germany attempted first to purchase and then to suppress, show
that Holland can distinguish a travestied Prussian from “a genuine
Dutchman.”
EDMUND GOSSE.
[Illustration]
_Another Victory for the Germans_
There is not much laughter in this war, but when Raemaekers chooses he
can recall to us for a little while the hearty, lung-filling delight of
other days. And here we have it. A Kaiser so prayerfully, passionately
ridiculous, a Tirpitz so stupendously, monumentally coy, and a cause for
rejoicing so very slender, must tickle even a hyphenated sense of humor.
Since the Battle of Jutland, of course, the joke is better still. But
even before that the German Navy was the one item in the German array
which could legitimately be found amusing, rather than painful.
Did not the Germans, bottled up in Kiel, announce that they were roving
the seas looking for the British Navy, which at the same time, they
said, was cowering in its East Coast harbors? And did not our official
report of the Battle of the Bight begin with that sublimely
unselfconscious phrase, “Starting from a point near Heligoland, a
squadron of our fleet,” etc., etc.? Look at Heligoland on the map, for
every time one looks at it it is really farther from England and nearer
Germany than one had remembered; farther from our East Coast havens, and
nearer to that corked bottle of German fizz, the Kiel Canal. Those first
six words are a naval victory in themselves.
So we can enjoy with special zest the idea of the Kaiser, bold and noble
baron, violating the modesty of village-maiden Tirpie with his ardent
embraces, because she has played _Una_ so beautifully that even the lion
did not know she was there!
H. PEARL ADAM.
[Illustration]
_Submarine “Bags”_
Most of the horrors committed in civilized societies are the work of men
or women who loathe the things they do, but would rather do the thing
they loathe than endure some other evil that seems intolerable. The
wretched Crippen poisons his wife, not because he hates her, or takes
any pleasure in killing her, but because her continued existence makes
the kind of life he wishes to lead impossible. But crime--and
particularly murder--seems to have a fascination of its own. It is a
truth preserved to us in the popular phrase, “tasting blood.” Those who
come under the spell grow into maniacs, fiends in human shape, who,
having plotted their first murder to gain some end that seems
irresistibly desirable, find an unexpected and terrible excitement in
it, and go on to the second from an irresistible desire to taste that
dreadful pleasure again. These men are the legendary figures of
horror--Bluebeard of the nursery, Jack the Ripper of history.