Hervé’s peace will increase the enthusiasm of nationality, his
far-reaching view sees greater hopes beyond. For his third stipulation
allows no subject peoples. He would have Europe found a practical and
living system of justice upon these ruins--a system sprung of honor and
honesty, and based on international physical strength.
From such a system federation must sooner or later spring, and the peace
ideals of nationalist and internationalist alike grow from dreams into
realities.
The victory that can win such terms will in truth be “a victory of
industry, commerce, the arts, and humanity.”
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
_A German “Victory”_
Although this manifestation of the German spirit is new, and belongs to
this war only, yet the spirit itself is as old as Prussian power. That
spirit was evident in 1813, in the Napoleonic wars; it was evident in
the campaign of Sadowa, and again in the Franco-German war of 1870, when
the murder of women and children was proved to be the Prussian form of
retaliation for perfectly legitimate acts of war. This cartoon, which
first appeared after one of the earlier Zeppelin raids on England, gives
another result of the Prussian belief in terrorism as an aid to war; the
result is new, but the policy behind it is old.
Because that policy is old, and is a deep-rooted principle of
Prussianism, any talk of “peace terms” is futile, and the “honorable
peace” of which German deputies talk in their gatherings is an
impossibility. There can be no terms for the nation that does these
things, no bargaining with it, and the world that has wakened to the
real nature of the thing which has attacked civilization will take care
that the thing itself has no power to impose “terms” in the day when
peace returns.
It is worth noting that Germany alone among the nations has built
Zeppelins, and worthy of note, too, that these machines have served no
useful military purpose in the decisive actions of the war. Along the
battle fronts they do not appear, for they are too fragile to be risked
in purely military work. In the great naval battle of Jutland they
served no useful purpose, and the war has proved them instruments of
murder, safe only in darkness and undefended areas. And in saying that
Germany alone has built them in fleets, one says that Germany alone has
pinned faith to terrorism and a policy of murder, which is steadily
winning its just reward.
E. CHARLES VIVIAN.
[Illustration]
_“Waiting”_
Imperial utterances are, or were till lately, treated with great respect
in Germany. What the “all-highest” says must surely be true. But a
modern oracle, if he wishes to keep his credit, should avoid prediction.
He may falsify the past and misread the present with impunity; but he
will be wise to leave the future alone. The Kaiser has been imprudent.
He began by telling his troops to walk over the “contemptible little
British army,” the finest and most experienced professional soldiers in
the world; next he informed them that they would all be at home again
“at the fall of the leaf,” in 1914; then he hazarded the statement that
Russia was done for, and the Allies generally at the end of their
resources; and lastly the carefully prepared thrust, which, he declared,
was to give France the _coup de grâce_, has missed its aim.
It is impolite to treat an emperor in this way; he is not used to it and
does not like it. It is the business of his subjects to see that his
reign is a blaze of triumph. A breakdown after so many years of
rehearsals! It is really too bad; there must have been gross
mismanagement somewhere.
W. R. INGE, _Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral_.
[Illustration]
_The Kaiser as a Diplomatist_
To many people, and especially to all Germans, the attitude of the South
African Boers in the Great War has been one of its most surprising
features. It was not a surprise to Raemaekers, and here, in this
cartoon, he states his reason, as the plain homely figure of the old
President Kruger expresses it to General Christian de Wet, who took the
wrong side. Kruger does not forget how the Kaiser led him on by
telegrams and secret messages of sympathy, and after all, when the war
broke out in South Africa, this same Kaiser made no attempt to implement
his promises. Some time later all the world learned the facts from the
Kaiser’s own lips, when he boasted of having been the friend of the
British and of having helped them during the South African War, by
communicating to General Roberts a strategic plan for crushing the
Dutch. There is certainly no reason to suppose that Roberts or Kitchener
made any use of the Kaiser’s plan, because they won the victory. If they
had used the plan, the result would have been different.
In this cartoon the Kaiser is the ingenious diplomatist once more.
Though he deceived the Dutch formerly, he is now trying to induce them
to join him against Britain; and he did succeed in perverting the
judgment of de Wet. But the solid, homely sense of the Dutch came to the
right conclusion. The man who has once deliberately deceived a people is
not likely to succeed in deceiving them a second time.
WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.
[Illustration]
_Hun Hypocrisy_
When the history of this war is written with a sense of detachment which
only time can give--written, moreover, by an impartial neutral, with the
insight and intelligence of a Motley or a Hume--it will be interesting
and instructive to read the chapters which deal with the conviction
obsessing an entire nation that England for some mysterious purposes of
her own brought about hostilities, and that Germany, very reluctantly,
was forced to draw the sword in defense of the fatherland. No reasonable
man can doubt that this conviction is sincere upon the part of a large
majority of our enemies. From first-hand evidence it is equally
indisputable that the few, the Court Party, for example, and certain
writers, have frankly admitted the Teuton aims and ambitions,
crystallized into the famous phrase--“Weltmacht oder Niedergang.” The
amazing thing--perhaps the most amazing fact of the war--is the moral
Atlantic which heaves between the few who know and the many who do not.
And the bridging of this illimitable ocean, the future enlightenment of
at least sixty million persons, must be, for the moment, the problem
which is perplexing and tormenting the minds of the Great General Staff.
Sooner or later--sooner, possibly, than we think--the truth must out.
What will happen then? Conjecture is simply paralyzed at the issues
involved. Briefly, it comes to this: these sixty millions have been
humbugged to an extent unparalleled in history. During three years they
have been gorged with lies, swallowed always with avidity and with
increasing appetite. The credulity of the ignorant may be taken for
granted; in this case it is the credulity of the wise, the so-called
intellectuals of Germany, which clamors to Heaven for explanation. Are
these schoolmasters, publicists, theologians, and scientists hypocrites?
That is the question which our cartoonist puts to us here. That is the
question which the impartial historian will be called upon to answer.
Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, have answered that question
already. We believe firmly that the informed Huns deliberately befooled
their uninformed fellow-countrymen. The few were honest and sincere in
the Jesuitical faith that the end, world dominion, justified the means.
They scrapped ruthlessly all principles which stood between themselves
and an insensate ambition. Had they won through to Paris and London, a
nation drunk with victory would have acclaimed their policy. But they
have not won through, and the reckoning has to be met.
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.
[Illustration]
_The Prussian Guard_
The German army has fought in this war with the Allies in front of it
and behind it the German press.
Never has a war been accompanied by such ink-shed and such wholesale
massacre of truth. The Allies have done their bit in this direction, but
their bit has been as a mole-hill to Everest compared with the work of
the Central Powers.
The fighting men resent it. They don’t like to be told that their foe is
a fool, even if they are getting the better of him. When they are
getting the worse the statement is a more peculiarly exasperating
insult.
They don’t like to be told that their victories are defeats, but they
like even less to be told that their defeats are victories. In the one
case they feel that the press men are fools, in the other they feel that
the press men have made fools of them.
There is a whole lot of common sense in human nature, even in German
human nature, and an army hit in its common sense receives a blow.
This is why, perhaps, Hindenburg has been issuing reports lately
approaching the truth.
There is a lot of common sense in the old Marshal.
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
[Illustration]
_Greek Treachery_
Raemaekers is a keen prophetic politician as well as satirist, and not
seldom his pencil has pointed to future events as yet unanticipated by
our “sufficient for the day” diplomacy.
One would have thought, however, that the tergiversation of the King of
Greece had made it sufficiently clear no good thing could come out of
his country while he continued to rule it.
Yet justice must be done to him. To Serbia, indeed, he proved false,
borrowing the “scrap of paper” doctrine from his masters; but to the
Allies he has preserved an unchanging front, and the logical action of
those Powers who affirmed his throne should long ago have been to remove
him from it, when he proceeded to abuse the constitution and deprive
Venizelos of the power the nation had put into that minister’s hands.
Hesitancy and delay have divided a Greece that was united when Venizelos
fell, and the sleepless activity of Germany bears the present fruits--so
poisonous for us. It passes the wit of the man-in-the-street to
understand what secret influence permitted the deadlock; but it seems
hard to believe that difficulties connected with Greece’s future have
not arisen in the councils of the Allies. Soon the hand that is willing
to wound, but afraid to strike, may be powerless to do so, for the
situation develops very swiftly and the attitude of the French Admiral
du Fournet has left no doubt of the Allied determination.
As we write, after needless bloodshed, Greece gives way, the fighting is
at an end and her batteries of mountain guns are about to be
surrendered. We are told, also, that the refusal of the Government was
not inspired by the King, but by the military, who have formed a secret
league with the reservists.
The exasperating problem of Greece has delayed progress very seriously
and, indeed, may be seen to have modified the whole course of the war in
the Balkans; for had we enjoyed her confidence and insisted on the
recognition of Venizelos from the first, the country must long since
have become an ally. With her aid, instead of the withdrawal from
Gallipoli, there might have been recorded a triumphant campaign with
radical results.
But to cry over spilt milk is no business of the present. Concerning the
modern Greek it may be written that “unstable as water, he shall not
excel”; but we can yet hope that with our adequate recognition and
support of the only Greek who counts, his power will triumph and his
great spirit fortify a feeble people. His marvellous patience has been
worthy of our utmost admiration, and those who would withhold absolute
support from him at this critical juncture are certainly not the friends
of Greece. That a country of such majestic tradition--a nation that has
played her paramount part in the philosophy and art of the world--should
be extinguished in this conflagration would not be the least of the
tragedies our eyes may yet see; but the danger still exists, unless a
sterner and more comprehensive attitude be taken to save Greece from
herself and the ruler who is still permitted to occupy her throne.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
_The World’s Judgment Seat_
The former German Chancellor was well known to be neither a Pan-German
nor a lover of war. He did his best to propitiate the war party by the
truculence of his harangues against England; but Reventlow and his
friends were notoriously dissatisfied with him. He probably belongs to a
large class of moderate-minded Germans who were brought over to the war
party by appeals to their fears. The militarists dinned into their ears
the ominous facts that Russia was reorganizing and increasing her army,
and planning strategic railways; that France was doing the same; that
everything pointed to a concerted attack upon Germany, say in 1917. “It
is absolutely necessary,” they said, “to strike now, before our enemies
are ready.”
This large class probably included the emperor, and without its
concurrence the war could hardly have been launched. It is natural for
such men to protest that they had no aggressive designs, and that they
only wished to protect themselves against attack. It may be true, as far
as they are concerned; but it is not true of the soldiers who frightened
them for their own ends. Behind the Chancellor, in this picture, hides a
ruffian in uniform.
It is also true that Germany has conducted the war in such a manner that
that nation is really fighting with a rope round its neck. The moderate
party would now welcome peace. But on what terms? These have been
divulged; but the Allies do not seem to have thought them worth serious
consideration. As long as the military caste is the director of German
policy it does not seem likely that any statesmanlike proposal will come
from Berlin. Meanwhile, Justice holds the scales and waits in vain for
some offer to make reparation for outrages unparalleled in civilized
warfare.
W. R. INGE.
[Illustration]
_The Kaiser’s Cry for Peace_
A drowning man catches at straws. The Kaiser, when the rising waters
threaten to overwhelm his bark, looks for salvation to the dove.
At fairly regular intervals through the length of the war the German
Chancellor, speaking in his master’s name, has announced to an
unsympathetic world--to the western as well as to the eastern
hemisphere--that Germany is ready, nay is longing, for peace--for peace
on her own terms. None can doubt the sincerity of the declaration. Her
powerful preparations have yielded her, in the field and on the sea,
successes of a kind, but they are successes which decide nothing. Her
reiterated pleas for peace acknowledge that only the voluntary
withdrawal of her foes from the fray can assure her a final triumph. The
Kaiser and his friends profess from time to time that they are weary of
war’s brutalities and are eager to enjoy its spoils unmolested. The
fatuous cry rings very hollow in the ears of the Allies and neutral
peoples alike, and humanity outside Germany and her impotent kinsfolk in
America marvel at the Kaiser’s and his Chancellor’s waste of breath.
Mr. Raemaekers’ cartoon supplies the key to the situation. The tide,
despite all local and temporary appearances to the contrary, is running
against the Kaiser. His men and money are dwindling. Foolhardy exploits,
which speciously look like victories, are straining his resources to the
breaking point. The waves are buffeting him, and unless the dove, which
he releases from his hand, brings back to him tidings of a falling
flood--tidings beyond all rational hope, his doom is sure.
SIDNEY LEE.
[Illustration]
_Tit for Tat_
This cartoon illustrates what is, perhaps, the fundamental principle
which governs _Kultur_. The “Will to Conquer” has become such an
obsession that it defies not only law, but also those instinctive and
primitive compromises upon which law establishes itself. The Huns say:
“I hold you to your obligations; I scrap mine.” A Hun can sell munitions
to belligerents. During the Boer War they supplied England with anything
she wanted. But it is monstrous, according to the Hun code, that Uncle
Sam should munition the Allies. The Huns starved the women and children
of France. But it is abominable that Hun women and children should be
starved by England. One could cite a score of such instances. Raemaekers
remembers the treatment accorded by the “All Highest” to Oom Paul. So
does everybody--except, apparently, the “All Highest” himself. He and
his expected the cordial coöperation of the South Africans whom they had
flouted and abandoned.
To what can we attribute this singular expectation?
The answer may be found by the psychologist who has imagination enough
to Prussianize himself, and to look, panoramically, at the world from
the Prussian viewpoint. Prussia still believes in _Weltmacht_. A
Prussian is self-constituted a superman. So convinced is he of world
victory that he is amazed and exasperated with those--be they weak or
powerful--who dare to question his future supremacy. That supremacy, as
he admits candidly, must be established by force. He proposes to rule by
fear. He is confounded when he discovers that there are men and women
who do not fear him. In this cartoon Kruger puts a question which it may
be instructive to attempt to answer.
KRUGER: “You want my people to help you now, and yet when I came to ask
you for help you chased me from your door like a dog.”
KAISER: “Quite true. I had forgotten your little affair, which was
essentially negligible then as now. Had I helped you, I might have
embroiled myself with a Great Power with whom I was not ready to fight.
To-day, I am ready. Behold in me, my friend, a World-Conqueror! I give
you my All-Highest word that I shall win. What pains and perplexes me is
that you don’t back a certain winner. _Hoch dem Kaiser!_”
That, in fine, is the Prussian point of view. Woe to those who do not
realize that it “pays” to bow down before the juggernaut of might!
But there must be moments, ever-recurring moments, when the
“All-Highest” mutters to his august self: “What will become of ME if I
don’t win?”
And at such moments he may recall the vast and pathetic figure of Oom
Paul, whom he chased from his door like a dog.
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.
[Illustration]
_Forced Labor in Germany_
England has always had the credit for hypocrisy. The historic
commonplace, not wholly undeserved, was this, that with the advantages
of Puritanism, we developed its odious features and, from the
Commonwealth, began to thank God we were not as other men. The spirit
then created proved anathema to the Latin nations, and their accusation,
founded on truth, stuck to us.
But civilization may cede the distinction to Germany henceforth, for
never until now has self-interest been practised and enforced under the
name of God as by the fatherland. Their archaic deity is invoked daily,
from the Kaiser to the last poor boy, whose bloodstained pocket-book is
found upon his corpse, with penciled prayer that the cup may be taken
from him.
Few things have more illuminated the spirit that actuates Germany’s
higher command than the answer to America’s Note on the subject of the
Belgian and French deportations.
America, as might have been expected, was peculiarly sensitive before a
return to the principle of slavery. None has known and felt the meaning
of that awful word; none has fought to expunge the fact from
civilization as she did. But her Note met the fate of all her Notes. She
was told that Germany, and not America, is Belgium’s true friend and
that an all-wise and prevenient Government has torn out the remaining
adult population of conquered territory into the bosom of the
fatherland--for its own sake. Such transparent insults to the
intelligence of a great nation were flung at America for two years; but
one must rejoice that the day of reckoning has come.
Meantime the raided Belgians, of whom a hundred thousand have been swept
into Germany, are working at the point of the bayonet for their
conquerors, and this drawing is no cartoon, but a simple transcript of
truth repeated in a thousand of the enemy’s munition factories to-day.
The German lathe-worker joins the army, and his place is taken by the
father of those he goes to slay.
And neutral nations still listen patiently, while this people proclaims
itself the “Chosen of the High God.”
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
[Illustration]
_The Fall of the Child-Slayer_
This is an artist’s fanciful version of the headlong fall of one of
those inflated monsters on which the enemy had set such high hopes.
Well, we have been inconvenienced not a little by them in our goings and
comings by night, and no one need pretend that he likes bombs being
dropped on his or his children’s heads out of a midnight sky. But in the
old glorious volunteering days we never had such a recruiting sergeant,
so that the military value of the Zeppelin need not be denied.
Apart from this manifest effect, there has transpired in this whole
business little to disturb the verdict of our optimists that there was
nothing to worry about. They venture only under cover of a darkness
which prevents them hitting what they dimly see from their once safe
heights, which is little, or seeing what they hit, which is
much--England being a biggish mark.
And advertising their presence as burglars who knock over coal-scuttles,
a boy in an aeroplane flies over them and their miles of aluminium and
acres of silk make a Brock’s benefit for an awakened city to cheer. We
should cheer less, thinking with some pity of the imprisoned crews, if
the affair were conceived with less reckless vagueness, without such
disproportion between aim and result. A blind ape with a ton of high
explosives could do a good deal of damage in a city with ordinary luck.
But Raemaekers sees this in symbol: “a vulnerable gasbag,” he seems to
say, “flaming, spectacular always, to destruction.”
JOSEPH THORP.
[Illustration]
_The Climber_
Fritz, apart from the blood with which he stained every rung of his two
ladders, climbed well, as these things go; unfortunately for him, he was
not careful at the outset to see that his ladders were solidly based.
Not only did he base them both in bad diplomacy, but he added to these
bases a lack of understanding of the temper of the nations whom he
opposed, and then again he added a scrupulous disregard for what are
generally termed the humanities. He viewed mankind as subservient to the
machinery that mankind should control, whether it be machinery of
government, of war, of trade, or of thought and philosophy. Organization
was of more moment to him than the spirit that should control
organization, and for that he will pay the penalty.
One may observe, with a second glance at this cartoon, that though Fritz
has reached very nearly to the tops of his two ladders, yet he will
never get beyond the last rungs, even if he steadies himself and his
supports sufficiently to get on to those rungs. For over his head there
outthrusts a ledge. Could he surmount it, he might overlook the world,
and one may call that ledge the universal conscience, which the artist
has pictured elsewhere in different form. It is the last obstacle, and
it is insurmountable. With his crimes and cruelties, it is unthinkable
that Fritz should ever finish his climb, for the conscience of the world
will not permit it.
And yet another point that the cartoon suggests. This climber, the
typical German, is not the stuff of which successful climbers are made.
Muscle is there, and a certain amount of brain, but success in an
enterprise of such magnitude demands a soul, and for sign of that one
may look in vain.
E. CHARLES VIVIAN.
[Illustration]
_Culture at Wittenberg_
Ecce Homo!
In the hideous record of what took place at Wittenberg, the fact which
to me, personally, stands out in grotesque salience is the cowardice of
the Hun doctors, who lied, incontinent, from the ravages of the
pestilence which their negligence had provoked. In England, before the
war, Hun doctors were exalted above our own. That we owe much to their
indefatigable patience and research cannot be denied. To belittle their
achievements, especially in bacteriology, would be fatuous. And it would
be as fatuous to indict the courage of the many because we hold
indisputable evidence of the cowardice of the few. Nevertheless, the
facts of Wittenberg remain, an indelible stain upon the Herren
Professoren, and Raemaekers, in this cartoon, indicates unerringly the
cause which brought about so ignominious a retreat.