AMERICA
IN THE WAR
AMERICA
IN THE WAR
BY
LOUIS RAEMAEKERS
EACH CARTOON FACED WITH A PAGE
OF COMMENT BY A DISTINGUISHED
AMERICAN, THE TEXT FORMING AN
ANTHOLOGY OF PATRIOTIC OPINION
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, October, 1918_
_List of Cartoons_
PAGE
THE STARS AND STRIPES IN THE SERVICE
OF HUMANITY 2
“WHEN I WAS A CHILD, IT WAS YOU WHO
SAVED ME” _Hon. Myron T. Herrick_ 4
THE HUN: “KEEP NEUTRAL” _Robert Underwood Johnson_ 6
PEACE PLOTS REVEALED IN AMERICA AND
FRANCE _John Jay Chapman_ 8
BELGIUM, 1918 _Ralph Adams Cram_ 10
“WE WILL NOT WEAR CONVICTS’ STRIPES,
WEAR THEM YOURSELVES” _Poultney Bigelow_ 12
THE FINAL ARGUMENT _Charles Hanson Towne_ 14
THE END OF THE HINDENBURG LINE _Meredith Nicholson_ 16
“SOMETHING’S WRONG. SHE DOESN’T
SEEM TO INSPIRE CONFIDENCE” _Robert Grant_ 18
ANGELS OF THE WAR ZONE _Gertrude Atherton_ 20
AS THOU SOWEST, SO SHALT THOU REAP _Hon. A. S. Burleson_ 22
“DON’T STOP, OLD CHAP, KEEP IT UP!” _John Philip Sousa_ 24
“SO WE ARE ONLY A DOLLAR-MAKING
PEOPLE, ARE WE?” _John Kendrick Bangs_ 26
“NO, THANKS, I KNOW THESE PRINCES OF
YOURS TOO WELL” _Herbert Adams Gibbons_ 28
SPEEDING UP 30
TOWARD THE VALLEY OF DECISION _Rev. Stephen S. Wise,
Ph.D., LL.D._ 32
WAKE UP, AMERICA! _Mary E. Wilkins Freeman_ 34
“THERE ARE PLENTY OF LAMP-POSTS!” _Hudson Maxim_ 36
“WE DON’T SEEM TO INSPIRE ENOUGH
CONFIDENCE” _Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge_ 38
GERMAN SUBMARINES FIRE ON OPEN BOATS _Alice Brown_ 40
NOT THIS TIME! 42
THE PRESIDENT TO THE WORKERS 44
“WELL DONE, FELLOWS! KEEP THE HOME
FIRES BURNING!” _Hon. Lindley M. Garrison_ 46
A BIT OF THE HINDENBURG LINE _David Bispham_ 48
THE RATS IN OUR HOME TRENCHES _E. S. Martin_ 50
SEEING STARS _Booth Tarkington_ 52
THE TWO GIANTS _Hon. James W. Gerard_ 54
“WILL THEY LAST, FATHER?” _George W. Cable_ 56
“THE UGLY TALONS OF THE SINISTER
POWER” _John Burroughs_ 58
RESTITUTION AND REPARATION _Ellis Parker Butler_ 60
THE ONLY POSSIBLE POSITION FOR
TRAITORS _H. C. Chatfield-Taylor_ 62
“DO YOU MEAN TO MAKE A REAL WAR?” 64
JUSTICE! _Basil Lanneau
Gildersleeve_ 66
ANOTHER PEACE PROPOSAL _Henry Dwight Sedgwick_ 68
THE FINE AMERICAN SPIRIT _G. E. Woodberry_ 70
POISONING THE WELL OF PUBLIC OPINION 72
THE ENEMY WITHIN _William Roscoe Thayer_ 74
COUNT VON BERNSTORFF: “NOBLESSE
OBLIGE” _George Trumbull Ladd_ 76
PETER THE HERMIT _Ida M. Tarbell_ 78
THE GERM-MAN _Albert Bigelow Paine_ 80
“A TID-BIT FOR ‘THE SICK MAN’” _Hon. George W. Wickersham_ 82
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES 84
HELPING HINDENBURG HOME 86
A BAD PROPHET 88
AT THE HOLLAND FRONTIER _Hon. William Jennings
Bryan_ 90
A REHEARSAL 92
THE PATH OF KULTUR _Edwin Markham_ 94
TO THE VICTOR! _Geraldine Farrar_ 96
THE EYES OF THE ARMY _Thomas Mott Osborne_ 98
“IS IT NOTHING TO YOU, ALL YE WHO
PASS BY?” _Rachel Crothers_ 100
THE RAINBOW DIVISION LEAVES FOR
FRANCE _Hon. Frederic Courtland
Penfield_ 102
RUSSIA REBORN _Edward Alsworth Ross_ 104
HIGHER THAN A SOUR APPLE TREE _Samuel Hopkins Adams_ 106
“WHAT A MEAN TRICK TO TURN ON THAT
STRONG LIGHT!” 108
CHRISTMAS, 1917 _Henry Mills Alden_ 110
HELPING UNCLE SAM TO GET UP SPEED 112
THE WIND OF DEMOCRACY 114
“THIS ONE FOR THE BABIES!” _Rev. Lyman Abbott_ 116
A SCENE ON THE SOMME 118
HOLLWEG AS ROBESPIERRE _J. G. Phelps Stokes_ 120
PRESIDENT WILSON’S DECLARATION _John Luther Long_ 122
“DON’T STAND IN OUR WAY TO VICTORY!” _George Haven Putnam_ 124
“GERMAN SOLDIERS CUT THE THROAT OF
AN AMERICAN SENTRY” _Cleveland Moffett_ 126
BANG! 128
“I MUST BREAK IN HERE BEFORE THAT
COMES DOWN” _Palmer Cox_ 130
BRING HER IN! _Charles Edward Russell_ 132
GERMANY’S “PEACE” WITH RUSSIA _Arthur Train_ 134
THE BETTER FIGHTER 136
THE DUNGEON OF AUTOCRACY _Hon. Maurice Francis
Egan_ 138
“HURRAH FOR PEACE, LADS!” _S. Stanwood Menken_ 140
ECCE HOMO! _Robert W. Chambers_ 142
“WE MUST SO DESTROY FRANCE THAT SHE
CAN NEVER RESIST US” _Rev. Hugh Black_ 144
THE JAPANESE MOUSE 146
“UEBER ALLES” AND UNDERNEATH 148
EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY 150
THE SECOND ELECTION 152
THE MAD SHEPHERD _Alice Hegan Rice_ 154
“SINK WITHOUT A TRACE” _Oliver Herford_ 156
CHANGING THE GUARD _Agnes Repplier_ 158
THE PENITENT ARTIST 160
PEACE ANGELS OF DOUBTFUL PURITY 162
THE BLACK FLAG 164
THE ANNEXATION OF AMERICA _Rear Admiral Robert E.
Peary_ 166
“WELCOME, MATE; YOU’RE JUST IN TIME!” 168
THE EDITOR 170
GERMAN INTRIGUES IN MEXICO _Albert Bushnell Hart_ 172
GERMAN “MILITARIST” SOCIALISM _William English Walling_ 174
THE OLD HAMMER AND THE NEW 176
THE SPIRIT OF WASHINGTON 178
THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS _William Dean Howells_ 180
IN THE RING TO STAY _Harvey O’Higgins_ 182
“WE ATTACKED THE ‘FORTRESS OF LONDON’” 184
NOT A BAD START! _Hon. Thomas R. Marshall_ 186
AN ECHO OF THE LUXBERG CASE 188
GERMAN CHIVALRY TO WOUNDED OFFICERS _Hamilton Holt_ 190
SOCIALISM IN GERMANY _John Spargo_ 192
THE SPIRIT OF GERMAN SCIENCE _J. Mark Baldwin_ 194
HUMANITY AND HER GERMAN LOVERS 196
THE STRIKERS _Carrie Chapman Catt_ 198
1776-1917 _William Allen White_ 200
“NOW, HINDENBURG, BRING ON THE REST
OF MY PEOPLE” _Hon. David Jayne Hill_ 202
THE MASTER OF THE HOUNDS 204
PROCESSIONAL _Cale Young Rice_ 206
AMERICA
IN THE WAR
_The Stars and Stripes in the Service of Humanity_
“We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the
sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the
rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been as
secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can make them.”
_From President Wilson’s Message to Congress, April 2, 1917._
[Illustration]
“_When I was a Child, It was You who Saved Me_”
Whether it is that an invigorating climate has given our Anglo-Saxon
blood a piquant Gallic flavor or because Europe sent us for ancestors
only those light-hearted and adventurous souls with a spirit akin to
that we admire in the French people, true it is that Americans have
always had an especial liking for France and the French. They were our
first allies as they are the latest. From Lafayette and Rochambeau
to Joffre and Viviani, a host of Frenchmen have won the affectionate
regard of Americans and are numbered with our national heroes.
But our relation to the French has a deeper foundation than admiration
for a courageous and accomplished race which for centuries has
made generous contribution to the sum of the world’s knowledge and
achievement. The French were early settlers on this continent; LaSalle
and Champlain were the forerunners of a host of French explorers and
settlers whose descendants are today taking active and honorable part
in the life of community and nation.
Before the war one of the foremost French statesmen said to me, with
a certain note of sadness, that in the course of two thousand years
of advancing civilization his countrymen had lost something of their
initiative: that he believed it would not now, for instance, be
possible to build up in France vast industrial organizations like those
which are so effectual in establishing the commercial prestige of the
United States.
If that were true before the war, it can scarcely be credited now.
France has never failed to provide effective military organization for
the protection of western civilization against the repeated attacks of
her enemies from the east. She defeated the forces of Mohammedanism
and saved Christianity. Time and again through the Middle Ages she
beat back the invading Huns and kept them from overrunning Europe. The
victory at the Marne which definitely stopped their latest irruption is
only the latest and greatest of many such victories by which France has
laid mankind under lasting obligation. And the industrial organization
which supplies the armies of France with the products of farm and
factory, and even produces a surplus for her allies, including the
United States, is additional proof that the genius of the French race
is neither decadent nor limited, but as broad as all human activity and
as ardent today as when Joan of Arc inspired kings and peasants alike
with her mystic fervor.
With their French allies Americans can work in most cordial
understanding and sympathy. That subtle spirit of unselfish dedication
to country which has won for the French the admiration of the world
consecrates the alliance of the peoples who are giving their sons
in common sacrifice to save liberty to the world. Out of the heat
and turmoil of war bonds are being forged between the Allied nations
which time and circumstance can never sever. On that alliance the hope
of civilization depends; from it may come, in God’s good time, some
great forward step in the march of progress which began at a manger in
Bethlehem.
MYRON T. HERRICK.
_Cleveland, Ohio,
March, 1918._
[Illustration]
_The Hun: “Keep Neutral”_
Every great event is an occasion for the moral education of the world.
Froude, in his essay “On the Science of History,” says that the value
of history is that it sounds across the centuries the eternal note
of right and wrong. Along with the unbelievable calamities that have
come in the train of the war that in August, 1914, was shamelessly,
dishonorably and with malice aforethought precipitated by the Kaiser
and his fellow highwaymen, there stands out one colossal good: it
has made the world increasingly ethical. The flaunting by the German
military party of all that we associate with fair play, chivalry,
democracy, humanity, even Christianity itself, has aroused the Allied
peoples to the fact that the foundation principles of happiness are at
stake.
’Tis for the holiness of life
The Spirit calls us to the Cross.
The brutality of the Teutons--Austrians and Germans alike--their
willingness, in order to win, to throw away everything we think
admirable in conduct, created a reaction in America by arousing us
from our laissez-faire attitude to the conviction that there can be no
neutrality between right and wrong. The opportunity should not be lost
to enforce this lesson upon the young, who should be taught to hate the
devilish spirit by which the Teutons are obsessed. In due time, when
their defeat is accomplished, a reaction will set in among themselves.
The cost is appalling, but I believe that nations, like men, can
“rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.”
Meantime, with what pride we realize that--as eventually even German
historians will admit--our own part in the war is on a higher plane of
disinterestedness than we have ever reached before, a level of altruism
that has rarely, if ever, been attained by any other nation!
ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.
_February 22, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Peace Plots Revealed in America and France_
Mr. Rathom, Editor of the “Providence Journal,” whose exposure of von
Bernstorff’s plots seemed to show a gift of necromancy, states that
his information came to him through men and women (often Bohemians
and Slavs) “who not only took grave risks in the work--for they were
braving German vengeance--but gave up their time and in many cases
their own funds, without a dollar of compensation from the ‘Journal’
or anyone else, in order to give us the facts which would prove to the
American people the manner in which they were being tricked and fooled.”
If this cartoon of Mr. Raemaekers shall serve to make the native
American take seriously a situation which is serious in the extreme,
it will not have been made in vain. Whenever an American hears
or overhears any one in any station of life uttering treasonous
language, he should report the matter and give the name of the culprit
immediately to the Secret Service,--not content himself with repeating
the words at the club as a good story.
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN.
[Illustration]
_Belgium, 1918_
You, who on the tree of shame show forth again the Sacrifice of
Calvary: you for whom scourge and thongs and the mockery of dull beasts
are the circumstance of martyrdom: you who freely offered yourself that
man might be saved, “yet so as by fire”:--Belgium! in the depth of your
agony and the long torment of a red martyrdom, remember that the Cross
of your own Passion endures only until the Resurrection that comes
after the third day.
God, in mercy Incarnate, as Man suffered the shameful death of the
Cross that the world might be saved from the penalty of its sins. The
Tree of Scorn is raised up on Calvary, becoming the instrument of shame
and of death, yet “the leaves of that Tree shall be for the healing of
the Nations.”
Nails and spear, scourge and thongs, crumble and fall away; the obscene
mockers “that watched Him there,” and watch you, O Belgium, go hence
to that place prepared for them by Eternal Justice, but with the sun
of Easter morning, behold a great wonder! The Cross, that was a dead
engine of death, is transformed by Divine miracle. It lives, it throws
out branches and leaves; it is now the Tree of Mercy, “and the leaves
of that Tree shall be for the healing of the Nations.”
RALPH ADAMS CRAM.
[Illustration]
“_We will not Wear Convicts’ Stripes, Wear Them Yourselves_”
[Mr. Raemaekers refers in this cartoon to the insulting proposal of
the German Government, just before the entrance of the United States
into the war, that American ships at the rate of one a week would be
permitted to pass the submarine “blockade” if they were painted in
stripes in a specified manner.]
When Attila laid Rheims in ashes, cut the throats of his hostages,
tortured his prisoners, and thus earned fame as the Scourge of God,
he found priests and professors to justify his acts and to predict
the speedy Hunnification of the world. Attila is to-day popular in
Prussia--mothers have their babes called Etzel and when William II
sends forth his armies he bids them be worthy of their illustrious
namesake.
Attila was the first of the great Junkers. His army was largely German
and he held court in the centre of Thuringia. He is the hero of
Germanic song and legend; and his spirit animates the _Hymn of Hate_,
the murder of Edith Cavell, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and above
all the hired criminals who have been operating in America in the
disguise of patriotic citizens.
POULTNEY BIGELOW.
_Malden-on-Hudson.
Washington’s Birthday, 1918._
[Illustration]
_The Final Argument_
In the now happily distant days of August, 1914, the people of the
United States found themselves facing an opaque wall of neutrality.
But we are an emotional people; and the rape of Belgium had hit us
emotionally. Though we were asked not to applaud the pictures of Allied
soldiers that flashed across the screen in every motion-picture theatre
of the country, we did clap our hands; and, what is more, we valiantly
hissed the Kaiser when he strutted before our view. Let the American
people ever rejoice that in those first tragic days they had eyes of
the heart. Oh, those months of shame for us who felt that the cause
of England and France and Belgium was the cause of the United States
of America! They have passed now, thank God; and the man of vision
who first brought home to us what Belgium’s sorrow meant, was Louis
Raemaekers. Each line he drew was a full platoon of soldiers advancing
toward Berlin. His vivid, ironic pencil was a gun thrust at Prussian
autocracy. His art opened the door in that opaque wall I have spoken
of; and it was a garden that we looked upon--though a garden filled
only with red flowers: the poppies of everlasting sleep; crimson blooms
that spoke of the blood so nobly shed in the name of national honor;
fiery blossoms that burst upon our gaze through the smoke of German
guns; dark passion-flowers that breathed pain, but never despair. The
sad garden of Belgium--this it was that one man of genius revealed to
us, in all its pity and sorrow. And America looked, and wept, and sent
messengers into that place of desolation. For never for an instant had
we been neutral, never had we really dreamed of standing by and letting
this agony go on. Had we done so, the years to be would have held only
grief for us. We could not have lifted up our heads in the world of
nations if we had not seized our splendid opportunity.
Who has ever doubted the integrity of the American people? As one man
we rose when war was at last declared, and as one man we will fight, in
the name of Democracy, in the name of Humanity, until the Prussian yoke
is lifted from the Belgium we love and reverence. A task lies before us
of unbelievable magnitude. But we shall not falter, we shall not fail;
for if we fail, life itself must crumble in ashes on the hearthstone of
the world. With a triumphant Kaiser, existence would be unbearable. The
pacifists lay all the emphasis on mere living. They forget that most of
us do not wish to live on a Prussian-ruled earth. Surely it is not much
to die for a principle that is higher than the stars.
Louis Raemaekers, you have opened a door on life. You have brought news
to thousands who had not heard and seen. And great is your reward.
CHARLES HANSON TOWNE.
[Illustration]
_The End of the Hindenburg Line_
The Hindenburg line is a menace to every courthouse in America. In
my recent journeys through the West I have never seen a courthouse
tower printed against the sky without relating it to the great world
conflict. We are fighting for all that is embodied and expressed and
safeguarded in these citadels of democracy. A little while ago I looked
with reverence at a log hut preserved at Decatur, Illinois, the first
courthouse of the county. In that little room Abraham Lincoln appeared
as attorney for pioneer citizens who understood perfectly the promise
of American democracy. The laws invoked to preserve their rights were a
crystallization of the thought and the hope of liberty-loving peoples,
and no settler in wilderness or prairie, no matter how humble, but felt
himself a partner in the benefits of American institutions and the
great tradition of English law. Every American courthouse is founded
upon Magna Charta. If we are indebted for anything in our democracy
to the Teutonic-Turkish combination I am unaware of it. Dull of wit
indeed, the Hohenzollern BEAST, to think his mailed fist could ever
splinter the door of one of these American courthouses! The price our
forefathers paid for their liberty was too great for any yielding to
a devil gone mad and attempting to bestride the world. During the
Civil War Lincoln once remarked to Seward, speaking of Weems’ “Life
of Washington” which he had read before the fireplace in his father’s
cabin in Spencer County, Indiana, “It occurred to me that it must have
been something pretty fine those men were fighting for.” It was; and it
is for that same fine thing that America has again drawn the sword.
MEREDITH NICHOLSON.
[Illustration]
“_Something’s Wrong. She Doesn’t Seem to Inspire Confidence_”
It is Germany’s “Kultur,” her spiritual code, that is responsible for
America’s entrance into the war; her gruesome sacrifice to Moloch of
all which distinguishes humanity from the brute and the savage. It is
her philosophy which has made us her horrified but resolute foe.
The fruits of her spirit stand forth alike in her speech and acts.
“Kultur is a spiritual organization of the world, which does not
exclude bloody savagery. It raises the daemoniac to sublimity. It is
above morality, reason, science,” so wrote a Teutonic expounder in the
first year of the war. “We have become a nation of wrath; we think
only of the war. We execute God Almighty’s will, and the edicts of
His justice we will fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon
the ungodly. God calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should
thereby fall to ruins,” so wrote one of Germany’s poets. “Whoever
cannot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom of his heart
the sinking of the _Lusitania_, whoever cannot conquer his sense of
the gigantic cruelty to unnumbered perfectly innocent victims--and
give himself up to honest delight at this victorious exploit of
German defensive power--him we judge to be no true German,” so wrote
one of her pastors. And for hideous, ruthless deeds which violate
every sanctity and deify falsehood we need but cite her slaughter of
children and the aged, her poisoning of wells, her shooting of nurses,
her sinking of hospital ships, her brutal deportations and all the
revolting sinuosities of her spy system.
It is this catalogue of crimes committed in the name of moral
superiority that has incensed the American people. It is to combat
“Kultur” which Germany extols as the quintessence of civilization, this
gospel which constitutes military might the only inviolable law, that
we have pledged our precious sons, our abundant resources, our supreme,
indefatigable energies. If Prussian arrogance be not rebuked, Christian
civilization fails. Hence the growing and embattled sentiment that a
world in ruins yet free for man would be preferable to the sway of
Satanic Teuton efficiency.
ROBERT GRANT.
[Illustration]
_Angels of the War Zone_
I have sometimes wondered if it is really possible to hate a country
for which one has such unbounded contempt and disgust as one has for
Germany. It is quite possible to fear without hate; one would not
hate a rattlesnake or a shark, even at close quarters. On the other
hand it is conceivable that you might hate a fearsome but still noble
beast like the lion, if you were camping on the desert and he sat
persistently in front of your tent, alternately licking his chops and
shaking your soul with his loud anticipatory roars.
Usually we do fear what we hate. But the Germans have overshot the
mark. They have been so dully and unchangeably brutal, that many of us
have come to feel for them the same mental condition of loathing we
should feel for an obscene, flat-headed giant running amok, while doing
our best to hit him in a vulnerable spot. Even if they reached these
shores and went automatically about disciplining the natives I feel
sure we should continue to despise them and to find them ridiculous.
It is possible that if they had won the war in three months we should
feel differently. Then we might have hated them for devastating France,
but she it would have been who received our contempt. Her course in
history would have been run; she would have been as degenerate as the
Germans so fondly hoped. We might have hated Germany for subjugating so
vast and potential a country as Russia, but we should have respected
her might, the magnificence of her great army. We should have hated her
roundly, and the hate would have done us all good, for it would have
been a great emotion provoked by a great cause.
But Germany as a fighting machine is a failure. She has been defeated
where she has been compelled to depend upon force of arms alone. Her
only striking successes have been won by hitting below the belt,
cowardly underhand methods, sneaking propaganda, millions expended upon
buying human tools, and furnishing them with other millions necessary
to work wholesale destruction, and sacrifice the helpless proletariat.
In the Death House at Sing Sing the robust murderers have no
sympathy for the poisoner, refuse to admit him to that last tragic
companionship. So it is with Germany. She is the poisoner, the
Medici, among nations. From strangling her enemy with gas to bombing
unfortified towns, torpedoing passenger ships and firing on the life
boats, or sinking hospital ships, often carrying her own wounded
to ease and plenty, she has merely shown herself the super-snake,
supercharged with venom, not the lion, who proudly stands in the open
spaces and challenges his enemy to battle. The bewildered expression on
the faces of these German clods in the act of being rescued by British
women nurses, while a home torpedo burrows in the vitals of the ship,
is a fair portent of the minds of the German people after the war when
they learn that they have been fooled, and martyred, and crushed,
not by the enemy but by their own unregenerate rulers in Berlin. If
they annihilate that caste and set up a Republic they may win back
the respect of the world. Otherwise not. We sometimes forgive those
we hate, but only a miracle forces a man to respect where he has both
instinctively and thinkingly despised.
GERTRUDE ATHERTON.
[Illustration]
_As Thou Sowest, so Shalt Thou Reap_
Creeping behind a mask--stooping, cringing and cowardly--the planter
of sedition sows his seed in the dark. The masks behind which he hides
are numerous and of great variety. No sooner is his identity disclosed
than he assumes another disguise. Behind “Freedom of Speech,” “Liberty
of the Press,” “Conscientious Objector,” and “Pacifism” he hides. He
makes his masks similitudes of virtue. Whispered rumors, distortion of
truth, appeals to fear, and appeals to prejudice are mixed with even
the grosser seeds he sows. When other disguises are torn away he may
fashion a mask of spurious patriotism. Most dangerous of all traitors
is he who keeps just within the law of trespass while scattering afar
his seed of sedition throughout the Land of Liberty.
A. S. BURLESON,
_Postmaster-General of the United States_.
[Illustration]
“_Don’t Stop, Old Chap, Keep It Up!_”
“Cheer up, Willie, the worst is yet to come. Don’t view me with alarm
and suspicion. Don’t avert your eyes from my smile. It may be sardonic,
but I cannot control my facial expression. I must look as I think. I am
not like you, Wilhelm, looking God and thinking devil. Oh, but you are
a cute one, friend of mine! I love you for a thousand things you have
done, but don’t fool yourself, friend of my heart,--I beg pardon, I
forgot, I have no heart. In that and some other aspects, Willie, we are
as alike as two peas in a pod. Willie, we are so close in our method
of working that I am going to give you permission to call me ‘_Du_’
hereafter.
“How in the world could or can you, for all these years, make the
German people believe that the firm name of their Empire is ‘Me and
God.’ You and I know that God withdrew His Name, His Goodness, His
Honor and His Capital from the firm when you signed up as Emperor.
God is a one-price God. God never adulterates His goods; God never
advertises one quality and sells another. Since you have been Kaiser,
Wilhelm, a multitude of firm names could be exhibited on the sign
board; none of them, I imagine would rate high with Bradstreet, but
they would be truthful. ‘Me and Ambition,’ ‘Me and Power,’ ‘Me and
Ruin’ are a few I would suggest. Of course, your people would have
shunned you just as a mother shuns a house with a Board of Health
sign on it, had you given the real name of the firm. You are the most
worried looking potentate I have ever met, Wilhelm. Yes, Wilhelm,
there will be Hell to pay when your people awake to the fact that you
have no partnership with God, but are simply a vassal of mine. I’d be
scared out of my wits if I were in your place. While you are thinking
of the horrible mess you have made of your manifold opportunities be
good enough to note a deadly parallel. Once I was a prince, a prince
in a vast and beautiful Empire where all was tranquillity, peace,
holiness and bliss. I was called Lucifer, Son of the Morning--I had an
all-absorbing ambition to rule or ruin. I revolted and seduced some
restless spirits to ally themselves with me, fellows like your von
Tirpitz. I rebelled against the King and Kingdom of Heaven. The King
of Heaven still reigns and the Kingdom of Heaven still retains all
its tranquillity and beauty. After the row was over I found myself
in Chaos. From there I was rushed to Pandemonium, and it is needless
to tell you that I am now in Hell--and it lives up to its name. Note
the deadly parallel, Wilhelm, and while you are getting it into your
noddle, I will whistle the music of our national Hymn of Hate so you
can memorize it. Try it on your piano. The words are--
“‘Strafe Hope. Strafe Manhood. Strafe Womanhood. Strafe Everything
But
ME.’”
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.
[Illustration]
“_So We Are Only a Dollar-making People, are We?_”
It has for many years been a favorite gibe of thousands of foreigners,
living for the most part upon inherited wealth, and taking the
customary snobbish attitude of the consumer toward the producer, that
Americans are “only a dollar-making people,” as Mr. Raemaekers has it
in his forceful cartoon. Barring the word “only” perhaps the indictment
is true--I hope it is. One of the fondest of my many fond wishes for my
fellow-Americans is that they may all become successful dollar-makers,
since he who makes his own dollars is able always to maintain his
independence, to look his creditors large and small squarely in the
eye, and live by grace of his own powers, and not by favor of potentate
or patron.
There is nothing disgraceful about a dollar, and it may be said on its
behalf that it differs from the Sovereign Incarnate of the Germans in
that it is redeemable always at par, being worth the full one-hundred
cents that it calls for; in that it rings true; in that whether it be
of gold, of silver, or of paper, that which it promises it fulfills,
and has never yet been known to dishonor itself. It may occasionally
be seen in bad company, but it never falls below the level of its evil
associations, and is genuine to the core. Loose thinkers sometimes
speak of the “tainted dollar,” but there is no such thing. If any taint
lingers near it is not in the dollar itself, but in the holder. So
excellent, indeed, and so immune to the effects of evil association is
the character of the dollar, intrinsically, that any one of Uncle Sam’s
many billions could pass from the pocket of a Burglar into that of a
Bishop, and be worthy of its latter estate.
I have yet to meet an American who confounds this true and honest
servant of his well-being with his God, but, alas, I have met countless
Germans who call it our American King, and themselves bow ignobly down
to a Lord and Master whose assumption of a divine relationship has made
of his life a prolonged blasphemy; a King whose deeds of savagery are a
complete negation of his hypocritical pretensions to the possession of
lofty ideals; whose ring is the ring of a brazen counterfeit, and whose
word has been so dishonored by himself that it has become the synonym
for worthlessness throughout the world.
If Kings or Masters of any sort must be endured who would not rather
abase himself before the American Dollar, true and honest to the core,
than debase himself by bending the knee to a Kaiser who by his infamies
has made an Attila appear to be an Angel of Peace, a Bill Sykes a
Gentleman, and the word of an Ananias a Bond of Faith?
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
[Illustration]
“_No, Thanks, I Know These Princes of Yours Too Well._”
On November 5, 1916, Poland was “restored” by Germany and
Austria-Hungary to her old place as an independent member of the
family of nations. High hopes were aroused in the hearts of the
Poles. They had suffered for over a hundred years, and in this war of
liberation, which was to form the Society of Nations, the Austro-German
proclamation was the first recognition of their aspirations. The
Entente Powers had committed the serious blunder of refusing to
encourage the Poles for fear of offending Czarist Russia. But very soon
the Poles realized that the Central Empires were playing them false.
The “independence” was for to-morrow and not for to-day, and even for
to-morrow it was contingent upon “being good.”
At the beginning of 1917, which was the year of national rebirth,
hatred of Russia and resentment against the policy of expediency of
France and Great Britain, as well as the necessity to accept the
_de facto_ Austro-German occupation, influenced most of the Poles
to trust--in defiance of history and experience,--the good faith of
Germany and Austria-Hungary. At the beginning of 1918, they had learned
the lesson Raemaekers’ pencil eloquently depicts--not to put their
trust in German princes. At Brest-Litovsk, “independent” Poland was
refused a place in the peace negotiations. Answering President Wilson
and Premier Lloyd George, Chancellor von Hertling impudently asserted
that the future status of Poland concerned only her conquerors.
The cartoon, drawn to illustrate the scepticism of the Poles, should
drive home a truth to the Americans. We must realize that camouflage
is not confined to military operations. Its use to deceive armies is
not so dangerous as its use to deceive the nations behind armies. From
bitter experience the Poles are learning that behind the prince put
forward as ruler is hidden German militarism and German imperialism.
This form of political camouflage is as dangerous for the United States
as for Poland. Peace proposals may come to us--they will come to us--in
plausible and appealing form. They will have the appearance of fairness
and justice. What is behind them? What inspires them?
Our mission in this war is sanctified by its goal. To attain that goal
we have consented to make sacrifices unprecedented in the history
of our nation. From a purely military standpoint, no camouflage can
possibly obscure the path to the goal, and the method of reaching the
goal. The German armies, as yet unconquered, stand in front of us,
defending the loot of German imperialism, won by German militarism. We
must dispossess these armies of their loot, and punish them for having
looted. But--alas!--diplomacy is at work in 1918 to attempt to save by
wile what cannot indefinitely continue to be held by force. Every means
of diplomatic camouflage will be used by our enemies. Our inspiration,
our determination to pursue the struggle to the bitter end, will be
kept alive only if we see, through various forms of camouflage, the
spiked helmet hidden behind them. To make peace with Germany _wearing
the spiked helmet_ would mean to consecrate the success of her
imperialistic policy.
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS.
[Illustration]
_Speeding Up_
_Uncle Sam: “I think I had better speed up and build a ship or two!”_
April 8. Keel laid.
4th day. Double bottom completed.
6th ” Frames and bulkheads erected and portion of shell plating
finished.
7th ” Stern-frame in place.
14th ” Boilers put on board.
21st ” Stern-post bored and stern-tube put in place.
22d ” Masts stepped and engine installation begun.
24th ” Funnel put in place.
26th ” Machinery all in and engines completely installed.
Finishing touches.
May 5 (27th day). Launched.
_The building of the “Tuckahoe,” April-May, 1918, at Camden._
[Illustration]
_Toward the Valley of Decision_
They shall go down to the Valley of Decision, multitudes of young
Americans from East and West, from North and South, some slow to have
gone into the war but none ever to go out until a Decision shall have
been reached.
Into the Valley of Decision,--for a Decision final and irrepealable
we are battling. Not a Decision as to the victor in the war, but
a Decision that shall give us victory over war, its defenders and
glorifiers! For the German Empire which wars made this war shall unmake.
We go down to the Valley of Death for a Decision whether the world
shall be ruled by Germany or by civilization, be subject to Prussianism
or master of its own fate and freedom.
And America knows the cost, which it refuses to count,--knows its sons
must be slain if liberty and justice are to live.
To the God of Justice, America lifts its heart in prayer, beseeching
not security for its beloved sons but vowing that the sun shall perish
out of the heavens ere we and our Allies surrender our liberty, the
freedom of the least of men, to the barbarism of force and the forces
of barbarism.
Out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death shall emerge the
Decision,--Never again. The war against war has brought freedom to
nations, and secured peace to them that seek public right as the law of
mankind.
STEPHEN S. WISE, PH.D., LL.D., _Rabbi of the Free
Synagogue, New York._
[Illustration]
_Wake Up, America!_
This was done to Canadians by the Huns
America wakes! The White Christ has called her;
She has seen the devils abroad in His world;
Evil vaunting himself has appalled her;
To the War-wind of Heaven her flag is unfurled!
America wakes--with his murder and lust
Let the Hun take the path he has carved into hell.
No longer blaspheming the Cross with his trust.
America wakes, the sick world shall be well.
America wakes--God’s last peace-lover,
God’s fighter to death, when her peace is assailed.
Shout, sing, fling out the flags, War is over;
When America battles, right has prevailed!
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN.
[Illustration]
_There are Plenty of Lamp-posts!_
There are creatures that to be hated need but to be seen.
The sight of the serpent awakens all the dead, old body-memories of
ancient ages, when that reptile was man’s ever-present, mortal enemy.
The domestic horse, made unafraid by a thousand generations, when he
smells his ancient enemy, the bear, will rear and plunge to break and
run for his life.
The face features a man’s character, his eyes window his soul. There
are faces that instantly beckon all our better nature and bind us in
loving thrall. There are other faces that repel us as the snake repels.
There are human tongues voiced with the serpent’s hiss. There are
persons about whom hangs an odor of the reptile that wakens all the
dead old memories of primal hate.
The poet is born the poet. Genius is an inheritance. Human character
is a summation of ancestral traits. So the traitor-spy is an atavic
embodiment of all that is reptilian in a line of ancestry back to the
serpent of Eden.
Though after-acquaintance may camouflage him to our eyes, still the
first sight, the first impression of the traitor-character has in it
the temper of aversion. One who has in him the heart and taste for
atrocious conduct, one who has in him the grass-lurking viper’s soul,
wears a warning in his face for the safety of others.
The true caricaturist--and Raemaekers is one--sees and accentuates what
God has placed in the face of the scoundrel, the traitor, the spy, for
our protection.
Great occasions are great opportunities for great genius. War exacts
the supreme from all men and all women. Only the superlative poet can
give the inevitable expression to master deeds on the stage of war,
and only the supreme artist can picture them with the due and true
inevitable expression, which is more aptly and more truly given in
caricature than in any other form, because in caricature that and only
that which is supremely characteristic is portrayed. Of all the artists
of this world war, none has, better than Raemaekers, given in clean and
lucid unit view, the true character of what he has pictured.
HUDSON MAXIM.
[Illustration]
“_We Don’t Seem to Inspire Enough Confidence_”
The one memorable contribution to art produced by the great war is to
be found in the cartoons of Louis Raemaekers. It is not necessary here
to analyze the qualities of his fine and powerful drawings as art.
They must be apparent to everyone who looks at them with considerate
eyes. But Raemaekers’ cartoons also have a high literary and historic
quality. I do not mean by this that they tell or suggest stories, which
are used generally as an attraction for very commonplace pictures,
but that they have that quality of enduring literature which awakens
the deepest feelings and points to the loftiest ideals which are as
enduring as the history of the race in its striving to reach the
heights of achievement. Hogarth was one of the few men in the history
of art who possessed these qualities, but great as Hogarth was,
Raemaekers has always been upon a higher level. Raemaekers has the
poetic imagination and we can feel in his work the
“prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.”
In his cartoons we find the appeal to all that is best in human nature,
to the finest impulses of man, to his deepest passions and his noblest
emotions.
All Raemaekers’ work is marvellously effective, but I take one single
example, not perhaps the most important--his treatment of the rulers
of Germany and Austria--in order to show his genius. By the power of
his cartoons Raemaekers has fixed in the public mind a truer and deeper
conception of the two emperors and the German crown prince than endless
pages of print could possibly produce. The brutality, the over-weening
arrogance, the hideous religious cant of the Emperor of Germany,
with the touch of lunacy upon him, will live forever in Raemaekers’
portraits. The feeble senility of the late Emperor of Austria--joined
as he frequently is with the Sultan and the King of Bulgaria, kindred
spirits--a senility marked by the drivelling insensibility of extreme
old age--those unlovely attributes are all there. As for the Crown
Prince, he is known through these cartoons to millions who have never
seen him and never will see him and will have only this image of him
graven in their minds. As depicted by Raemaekers, he has a figure and
face of low dissipation in which degeneracy and ferocity contend for
mastery. And yet all these figures harmonize with the rest of the
cartoons in teaching the one overpowering lesson as to the meaning of
German victory. The barbarism, the belief in might as against right,
the faith in brute force, the absence of human feeling,--these cry out
to us through the pencil of the great artist that a world in which
Germany should be dominant would be a world of slaves in which no free
man could wish to live.
HENRY CABOT LODGE.
[Illustration]
_German Submarines Fire on Open Boats_
Lord God made the earth and its wonders,
The sea and the land.
The rain of delight and the thunders
Fall alike from His hand,
To gladden His children,--and warn them
Who will not understand.
And the Lord God cried in His anger:
“Who has poisoned My sea?
Who has made it a desert of danger
For My ships sailing free?
I am God! and ye who have done it
Shall account unto Me.
“I have planted the wasteland of water
For My folk to find food;
And ye sow it with whirlwind and slaughter,
Ye Devil’s dark brood.
So now shall ye reap in full measure
The harvest of blood.”
ALICE BROWN
_Hill, N. H.
July 18, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Not This Time!_
RAEMAEKERS THE PROPHET
“For twenty years I have clearly foreseen Germany’s present attack on
the world. For twenty years I have been drawing and publishing the
same type of cartoons which have attracted so much notice since the
war. Seven years before the war I was already being called ‘_ein feind
Deutschland_’ by the German press. I cannot possibly express to you the
unhappiness which I felt at being absolutely certain of the impending
doom, and at the same time being incapable of making people foresee and
believe it. My friends used to call me ‘the man who can see ghosts even
in sunshine.’ Yet it was I, not they, who really knew the beasts as all
the world knows them today; I was born in the little town of Lemberg
near Roermond, at a distance of only a few miles from the German
frontier, and have known the beasts all my life, not only in my own
country, but also in theirs, which I have visited many times. I might
almost say that I have visited it every year of my life. In Holland we
have a saying that ‘even the best German has stolen a horse.’ I do not
believe that there is any German who is not a pan-German. All of them
suffer from this national and nation-wide megalomania.”
_--From a conversation with Raemaekers reported in Eric
Fisher Wood’s “Note-Book of an Intelligence Officer.”_
[Illustration]
_The President to the Workers:_
“_If you are with me, I am with you._”
“If we are true friends of freedom--our own or anybody else’s--we will
see that the power of this country, the productivity of this country,
is raised to its absolute maximum and that absolutely nobody is allowed
to stand in the way of it. When I say that nobody is allowed to stand
in the way, I don’t mean that they shall be prevented by the power of
the Government, but by the power of the American spirit. If we are to
do this great thing and show America to be what we believe her to be,
the greatest hope and energy of the world--then we must stand together
night and day until the job is finished.”
_From President Wilson’s speech before the American Federation of
Labor, November 12, 1917._
[Illustration]
“_Well Done, Fellows! Keep the Home Fires Burning!_”
This cartoon brings home to us the imperative necessity of putting
our own house in order and keeping it in order. If the world is to be
made safe for democracy, our own conspicuous example of democracy must
be made safe for those who dwell under its protection. If we cannot
conquer and control the enemy within our gates, we will be but impotent
instruments of conquest over him abroad. Both at home and abroad we
must rid ourselves of all hampering and distracting illusions and stare
the facts in the face. The facts are that we are at war,--the grim and
grimy business of killing or being killed.
The issues involved in this war have been appealed to the sword, and
he who lives by the sword must die by the sword. The time for doubt,
debate, discussion or diplomacy is past. The only thing left to do is
to fight,--fight for all that is in us,--fight as long as we can and as
hard as we can, and until there is no fight left in our enemies. Then
and not until then is it worth while to consider other aims,--so-called
war aims. The only real war aim now is victory. We must not let
anything distract us from that essential aim.
LINDLEY M. GARRISON.
[Illustration]
_A Bit of the Hindenburg Line_
THESE FELLOWS ARE HOT ON THE TRAIL. LET US FOLLOW SUIT.
WHEREVER YOU FIND A HUN YOU FIND AN ENEMY. GET HIM!
DAVID BISPHAM.
[Illustration]
_The Rats in Our Home Trenches_
Really, the great question of the war is: What kind of people are the
Germans?
Can they be reformed, or are they incurable?
All Germans are not alike. There are those who distinguish between
North and South Germans, and tell us that the Saxons, in particular,
have in them the making of excellent people. Doubtless all Prussians
are not alike; doubtless all Bavarians are not of the type of the
“Black Bavarians” whose exploits in the war have had unfavorable
mention. But what has come to be the image that “German” calls up in
the mind? It is an image of ruthlessness, of frightfulness, of poison
gas and traceless sinkings; of murder, pillage, spies and lies; of a
black and formidable ambition for mastery on any terms and at any cost;
of treachery; of a tireless industry that gets up early to fetch away
by work or wile whatever in the world is worth taking from any one who
has it! The current image of the German is an image of an enemy--a
savage enemy. Since 1914 German descent has been terribly prejudiced.
As to every man of German blood the observer asks himself: What manner
of man is this?
The Hohenzollerns did not invent the Germans. They found, acquired,
trained and used them. For centuries--a thousand years at least--the
Germans have had a known and demonstrated rating for brutality and
brutishness. They have been cruel in war and destructive and greedy in
pillage beyond most other nations that were their neighbors. When one
hears it said that the trouble with Germany is Germans, there comes to
mind abundant basis for that suggestion.
Yet the Germans are far too many and too useful to exterminate, and
even if that were possible, no nation but Germany could seriously
entertain the idea of exterminating a whole people.
So what do we come to?
To this: that Germany’s fate rests in the hands of the Germans. Their
qualities will determine their destiny. Along with their abilities
go enormous disabilities. They must do according to what is in them.
They must obey the demon that drives them until, out of the extreme of
suffering, they gain the courage to expel it. They must destroy, and
so invite destruction, until their racial propensity has wrought its
own correction. They must keep on accumulating enemies, exasperating
neutrals, alienating allies, until blind and wicked policies have
perfected their work.