estimate the worst that can happen to Germans has happened already,
in that they are Germans. The world is not going to adjust itself
to their misfortune in this particular. It is they who will have to
adjust themselves to the world. They will not be able to make the world
an overgrown Germany in which the other peoples will have to live
under German direction. No. They will have to live in a world largely
populated and managed, as now, by folks who are not Germans and don’t
want to be, and whose primary concern for as long as is necessary will
be to keep Germans in their place.
E. S. MARTIN.
[Illustration]
_Seeing Stars_
_Canadian: “And you’ll soon see the Stars and Stripes.”
German: “Saw some already, sir.”_
This is the voice that he hears from Germany:
“We Germans are God’s chosen people, His special favorites, and God is
German Himself. God rules over us in the person of our Kaiser, whom He
has appointed for that purpose. We are better than all other peoples of
the earth; we are wiser and purer and nobler and more industrious and
more learned and stronger and cleverer and kinder and braver and more
spiritual and more warlike than all others.
“We are so much greater than they that whatever we do to advance our
own interests, at the cost of theirs, is right and praiseworthy.
If we kill a great many of them, those who survive will in the end
be improved, because they will work for us and learn something by
observing us. Any deceit is proper and morally correct if it benefits
us; and when we practise a policy of terror upon those who oppose us
it is really philanthropy and shows how gentle we are, because the
survivors learn through our cruelty that it is useless to oppose us,
therefore they the sooner submit their wills to ours. We can not do
wrong, no matter what we do, so long as all that we do is for our own
benefit. By our bright swords we will take possession of the earth
which ought to belong to us, because we are Germans. We believe in
the heaviest possible breeding of babies, that they may grow up and
be trained to carry liquid fire and poison against any opposition to
us. All the same, we are the only real peace-lovers in this malign
and prejudiced world, which, except for us and the Austrians and the
Bulgarians and the Turks, is composed exclusively of stupid ruffians
who were so jealous and envious of us that they forced this war upon
us, hoping to make some money out of us by annihilating us. We love
peace, and are fighting for our mere existence--that is, the right to
adjust our frontiers so that they will include the countries which we
have conquered by the sword. We must never AGAIN be threatened by those
rascals of Belgians!”
BOOTH TARKINGTON.
[Illustration]
_The Two Giants_
_Germany: “I destroy!”
America: “I create!”_
Uncle Sam has given the Germans three surprises.
It was believed in Germany:--
1st--That America would not break diplomatic relations;
2nd--That America would never fight;
3rd--That America could not fight.
Forced to it, in self-defense, we are now giving all our energies to
war, led by a President, whose vision meets the extent of the calamity
brought on the world by the selfish ambitions of material Germany.
American built ships will end the menace of the slinking U-boat.
And after the war the flags of the American Merchant Marine once more
will float on every sea.
JAMES W. GERARD.
_New York, July 12, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_Will They Last, Father?_”
The four greatest events in history; the advent of Christ, the
discovery of America, the Reformation, and the French Revolution, are
all we can compare with the days in which we are living--and dying.
In a cyclone of desolations surpassing the terrors of the insane, the
world, so far from recoiling, rolls forward into vast and irrevocable
changes that seemed but yesterday the remotest goals of laborious
evolution; rolling up the precipitous steep of custom in all the fury
with which we should look to see it roll down. And the unique wonder of
this fifth and last of these supreme events is that only it has sprung
primarily from an evil design and can attain its true end only by that
design’s everlasting overthrow.
So speaks the matchless hand of Raemaekers. The vastest murderer the
race has ever borne and, at his heels, his most remorseless waster of
blood together watch the glass of time, abhorring every upward plunge
of a maddened world and daily hounded by one implacable question, one
four-headed dog of hell: Will their treasury, will their sinking of
ships, will their delusion of their own people, last?
No. One or another will presently fail, and when one fails all fail and
the world, refined by fire, will be, shall be, saved.
GEORGE W. CABLE.
[Illustration]
“_The Ugly Talons of the Sinister Power_”
The attitude of scorn, of contempt and of defiance with which
Raemaekers in his cartoon, “America’s Choice,” represents Uncle Sam
as he confronts the treacherous Kaiser, bearing the olive branch in
his talons, well expresses the attitude of the United States towards
Germany at the time we entered the war, and this attitude will probably
continue for a generation or two after the war ends.
“The Intolerable Thing,” which President Wilson so aptly named the
irresponsible German Government, can never disguise itself so that
we will not detect the terrible menacing claws with which Raemaekers
portrays the Kaiser. It will continue to be an Intolerable Thing until
the horrors of this war are forgotten.
The German philosophers brazenly justify their nation’s course in this
aggressive war with all its attendant horrors, by an appeal to the
Darwinian doctrines of the struggle for existence, and the consequent
survival of the fittest, which play such a prominent part in biological
evolution.
Germany must be taught the lesson that while man is the product of
evolution like all other creatures, yet in his case new factors come
into play--he is a part of the animal kingdom, but is a new kind of
animal, and new factors, not operative in the orders below him, have
played leading rôles in his development. These factors are his reason,
which gives him a sense of the true and the false, and his conscience,
which gives him a sense of right and wrong. These faculties subordinate
the rule of might to the rule of right, and they have resulted in the
establishment of conduct for individuals, for communities, and for
organized governments that do not exist in the lower animal orders, and
only in a limited sense in the lower human orders.
Amid a national rejoicing, a waving of flags and ringing of bells, such
as are evoked by a great national festival, the Germans celebrated
the _Lusitania_ murders--the entire nation suddenly slumping into a
barbarism worse than that of their ancestral Huns. The Hun was again
triumphant, gloating over his unspeakable crimes, his plunders and
piracies, his orgies of crime and lust--a spectacle to make the Genius
of Humanity veil her face and weep tears of blood.
It is a comfort to know that the Allies have killed or rendered
harmless several million of these modern barbarians, and that many of
their carcases have gone to enrich the soil of France and Belgium. In
this way a dead Hun may help to undo some of the evil which a living
Hun has wrought. If two or three of their bodies could be planted in
every shell hole which their guns have made in France and Belgium,
though the inoffensive soil might sicken, yet in the course of years
the poison of the Hun would disappear, rendered innocuous by the
beneficient alchemy of Nature.
JOHN BURROUGHS.
_Tryon, N. C.
February 12, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Restitution and Reparation_
It is with good reason the Prussian covers the thick bone of his
head with a helmet, for into it ideas of right and justice can only
be battered with a club. The tough, club-resisting helmet is the
arch-symbol of Prussianism. From its earliest days Prussia has taught
its neighbors the Prussian theory of right and justice by means of
a club. When the Prussian wishes to educate his neighbors to an
appreciation of Prussian ethics he puts on his helmet, picks up a club
and slugs the neighbor on the head.
The Prussian theory of right and justice is this: “What is mine is
mine. What is yours is also mine if I want it.”
This idea is deep buried beneath the thick bone of the Prussian head.
He holds it with stolid stupidity and deep, prehistoric crudity, like a
pig or an idiot. He cannot understand that there are any rights higher
than Prussian greed. “If I want it, it is mine because I want it.” It
is the logic of the primitive human animal, the cave-man.
Cornered and accused of his thefts he clings to his loot like the pig
that has stolen a carrot. When asked to disgorge he is shocked by the
suggestion. “But they are mine! I wanted them, so they are mine!” he
says. Right and Justice answer, “They are not yours; you stole them.”
“Maybe so!” says the Prussian. “But just the same they are mine--I
stole them a long time ago.”
The logic of the Prussian fills ten thousand volumes. It is written in
hundred-line paragraphs and six-inch words. It can be condensed into
two short words--piggish greed: piggish because it knows neither right
or justice, greed because it is greed.
ELLIS PARKER BUTLER.
[Illustration]
_The Only Possible Position for Traitors_
While the submarine controversy was at its height, a Hun high in
authority in his nefarious land said that it was impossible for the
United States to enter the war, because there were a half million
German reservists in our country. “That is true,” replied the American
to whom this contemptuous remark was addressed; “but there are also a
half million lamp-posts.”
Since the German reservists have failed to fulfil the expectations
of the Fatherland, the lamp-posts of the United States are as yet
unadorned with their lifeless bodies. But history has shown that while
Americans are an easy-going race, when once their anger is aroused
there is no withholding it; therefore let the traitors in our midst
take warning from the cartoon upon the opposite page.
One may pardon a murderer who kills in a moment of passion, one may
even revere a military spy who penetrates an enemy’s lines to gather
information needful for victory; but for the skulking traitor who
whispers sedition within the land which harbors him and seeks to hamper
the efforts of its government by a stealthy means, no punishment seems
too severe, since of all crimes his is the most despicable.
It is not to the half million German reservists alone that Mr.
Raemaekers’ warning is addressed; for, inconceivable though it be,
there are native-born traitors aplenty to shame the land which gave
them birth. For these, the only position which will seem possible
to Uncle Sam, when once his anger, ever slow to rise, bursts forth
in righteous indignation, will be the one which Mr. Raemaekers has
depicted. Let these traitors remember that there is an abundance of
lamp-posts in the land as well as a goodly supply of hempen rope.
H. C. CHATFIELD-TAYLOR.
[Illustration]
“_Do You Mean to Make a Real War?_”
“Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide
whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether
right as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shall
determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one
response possible for us: Force, force to the utmost, force without
stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make
right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the
dust.”
--_From President Wilson’s Message on the First Anniversary
of the Declaration of War, April 6, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Justice!_
The woman figure called Justice in Raemaekers’ cartoon has a Greek
name. She is Themis, consort of Zeus, Themis, who sits by his side on
the judgment seat. The scales are the scales of Ægina, in her day a
great money centre, whose talent was the standard of value then, as the
American dollar is to-day. Ægina was the mother of Æacus, one of the
three great judges of the lower world, and be it remembered, it was
Æacus that administered justice. Ægina is called by one of the greatest
Greek poets the place where Themis is worshipped more than anywhere
else on earth, and he tells us further that there was much weighing in
Ægina, the Merchant State. Heavy weights there were in either scale.
Much care was needful in the weighing, no little balancing doubtless.
So there were many in our Ægina who felt the draw of kindred, of
friendship, of fellowship. But this is the Day, the Day of Decision,
the Day of Lord Æacus. After the knife edge of the balance comes the
knife edge of the guillotine.
BASIL LANNEAU GILDERSLEEVE.
[Illustration]
_Another Peace Proposal_
The artist has depicted a spectacled Old Gentleman wearing a triple
crown and a pontifical mantle, who is offering a proposal of peace to a
heroic young woman, torn, bleeding, thorn-crowned, but dauntless, who
spurns it with scorn. The spectacled Old Gentleman is the Pope; the
heroic young woman is, I take it, outraged Justice.
Since Justice is our cause, we must try to be just. The Pope is not
lying on a bed of roses. He is in a position of the utmost difficulty.
He has faithful adherents on both sides, he dislikes war, and finds
his perplexities, great enough in time of peace, now magnified an
hundred-fold. He is not a hero; he is old, he is a lover of ease,
and would dearly like to wear a King’s crown and hear multitudes in
St. Peter’s cry out “Papa-Rè, Papa-Rè.” Let us be just. The first
Pope (according to Roman Catholic reckoning), received the grace of a
great opportunity to be true to his Master, but he denied Him thrice.
Why should we be surprised to find Benedict XV denying his Master?
Fate has held out her hand to him, as she held it out to St. Peter,
and offered him his opportunity to be greatly true. In the old happy
days when all the world cried “hosanna” to Justice, the Pope also had
professed himself a disciple of Justice. But now Justice has been
taken by bloody-minded men to be crucified, and the Pope has stayed
afar off. Many witnesses have remarked, “This man also was a professed
disciple of Justice.” And now the Pope denies it vehemently. He has
put forward a series of humiliating proposals that Justice--heroic,
bleeding Justice--should hold out her hand to the murderers of Belgium
and confer, as if there had been _equal error_ on both sides, upon the
crafty schemes of peace by which Germany hopes to dominate the world.
Poor Old Gentleman! Timidity, love of ease, fear of Austria, and
fantastic ambition, have induced him to deny his Master. The cock will
crow, and he will weep bitterly. Poor, pitiable Old Gentleman.
HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK.
[Illustration]
_The Fine American Spirit_
Who are these, watching from ancestral doors
The instant passing of our youth to France?
Henceforth, a chapter of the world’s romance
Their eyes have seen; it fills their native shores
With an undying moment; now it pours
On silent breasts, o’erawed, the voice, the glance,
The last, fond gleam of each loved countenance,
And the heart trembles, while the spirit soars.
The generations draw immortal breath
That breathe a nation’s soul. From sire to son
The glory of the fathers entereth
The children’s hearts, and maketh all as one:
Bright, at time’s touch, breaks out the holy flame,
And to all lands doth freedom’s blood proclaim.
G. E. WOODBERRY.
[Illustration]
_Poisoning the Well of Public Opinion_
Aliens in this country must assist in maintaining the liberty they
enjoy, or we shall know the reason why.
“Ninety-five per cent. of the people of the United States would die as
willingly for their beliefs as the men of 1776. It is for the other 5
per cent. to show not the slightest manifestation of disloyalty.
“Our message to them will be delivered through the criminal courts all
over the land. And may God have mercy on them, for they need expect
none from an outraged people and an avenging government.”
--_Speech of Attorney-General Gregory in New York, November, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Enemy Within_
Not even the prodigious Cruelty of the Germans in this Atrocious War
has shocked the moral sense of mankind as much as has their Deceit.
We are horror-stricken by the reports of their premeditated cruelties
which link the Germans with the beasts--the wolf, and tiger, and boa
constrictor, and vulture. The beast does these things because he has
never risen to a higher plane than that of the beast. But Deceit is the
attribute of Man; of one who dwells above the standards of the brute
creation, who has had the moral sense developed in him, who has known
the compulsions of conscience, who has acknowledged the obligations of
duty, and has recognized himself as being a striver after the Ultimate
Good. Through some flaw in the German’s nature all these qualities
in him changed, turned bad, and he hailed Evil as his guide and
inspiration. Whatever of good there was in him he uses to promote his
wicked designs. Had he not been human he could never have understood
how to make his perverted nature work successfully to deceive his
fellow-men. The snake and panther do not deceive us, we know their ways
and guard against them. But the moral pervert can deceive, because he
hides his purpose and his method behind the mask of a counterfeited
virtue.
Lying is the commonest form of Deceit. The German Emperor practised
it for twenty-five years, when he proclaimed to the world his ardent
desire for peace; and it was natural for him to lie when, on making
war, he declared that the sword was forced into his hands. Then the
German nation, fed so long on falsehood, accepted this. Another
common form of German Deceit has been to accuse their enemies of
the very enormities which they themselves invented and carried out.
Diplomatic chicane is a commonplace tool which the Germans employed,
only clumsily. But we cannot measure the full extent of German Deceit
unless we follow it in its varied propaganda among foreign peoples, in
its spies, its instigators to violence, its corrupters of the press.
It poisons food and wells; it sets fires to burn crops or forests; it
hires ruffians to burn factories or blow them up, to hide bombs in
ships; it incites sabotage and strikes.
So universally do Germans take to Deceit, that it has evidently become
their national trait. The soul of Germany is a lost soul, which
worships Satan as its master and welcomes Evil as its Good.
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER.
[Illustration]
_Count von Bernstorff: “Noblesse Oblige”_
Behold this group of sinister and menacing forms surrounding the
nation as typified in the person of its President. For four years past
they have been coming, one by one, out of the darkness. We can now
only too well recognize them and the dangers with which they threaten
us. In front, there is arrogant, boastful, jealous and unscrupulous
Hate, with its policy of “might before right,” and its doctrine of
“frightfulness,” conscienceless and cruel, in its murder of the
innocent, its arson, its robbery, its slavery of the weak, and its
outrages of womanhood. Crouching, while it tramples on our flag, is
Treachery, ready to use pistol and dagger, to burn bridges, to place
bombs, to blow up ships, to hide and sneak and cringe, if only it
can deliver its blow more surely and safely. And back of both, is
hypocritical and lying Diplomacy, with its protestations of innocence
and friendliness,--studiedly polite in manner, but really black at
heart.
Behind, all engaged in tying the nation’s hands, lest it might strike
promptly and forcefully, is Pacifism, cowardly and self-seeking,
more anxious to avoid temporary suffering than to preserve the honor
and safety of the nation; and Divided Allegiance, traitorous to both
causes which it vainly endeavors to harmonize; and Intrigue, working
in secrecy to part friends, and stir up strife between those whose
interests are common, or even identical.
But out of the darkness comes also the call to the nation: “America!
awake. Open your blinded eyes. Banish partisanship. Abjure political
jealousies. Leave it to the men who know. Make your hearts stout. Grasp
the sword firmly. Listen to no compromises, until the nation is proved
worthy of its birthright, civilization is rescued, and the world made
safe for Democracy.”
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
[Illustration]
_Peter the Hermit_
“_Dieu le Veult!_”
The Prussian outdoes the world in his single-minded devotion to
physical things. He believes and frankly declares that mercy and honor
weaken human power, that if you consider them you must eventually
fall before the strong who disregard them. Germany’s attempt to prove
the soundness of the Prussian thesis has gradually loosened the moral
consciousness of the world. It has gathered to defend the things of
the spirit in what is as truly a crusade as that which Peter the
Hermit led, a crusade to preserve the sanctity of contract, the few
laws between nations that men have worked out, the right of the weak
to their chance. Germany, disbelieving in the strength that love of
mercy and of honor give men, cannot counter-attack in kind. Every day
develops more clearly that the weak place in the Prussian armor is its
indifference to moral considerations.
IDA M. TARBELL.
[Illustration]
_The Germ-Man_
The stout gentleman on the opposite page wears a pleased look, as if he
were enjoying his occupation. That is natural, for he is a scientist
engaged in a very pretty process--the propagation of lockjaw, typhus
and other malignant germ cultures with which he expects to speed up the
annihilation of his enemies. How does he propose to accomplish this?
I will tell you: he is going to introduce those young and vigorous
colonies of germs into those little packages marked with a cross which
you see lying on the table before him. Those are Red Cross bandages,
and they will presently be binding the wounds of our soldiers, and the
lockjaw and typhus hordes in them will awake, and rally in a silent
loathsome attack that will lay torture and death upon thousands which
the noisy, mis-aimed guns have failed to destroy. The germ-man is
assured that his atomic missiles will not be mis-aimed. His government
has efficiently arranged for those packages to go to the hospitals of
Roumania and Belgium and France. That is why he smiles--that is why he
has that roguish look.
In the germ-man’s smile is incarnated “Deutschland über Alles” and
its correlative, “The end justifies the means.” We in America have
produced exponents--criminal exponents--of a similar psychology, and
we have generally (when we could catch them) hung or electrocuted or
imprisoned for life these moral perverts, in order to make the world a
safer and cleaner place to live in. Only a little while ago the State
of New York electrocuted a man who, having set up his individual “Ueber
Alles and General Justification” court, had proceeded cheerfully to
introduce malignant germs and other deadly things into the foods and
medicines of his wife’s parents, who stood between himself and fortune.
Here we have an exact parallel. Those defenceless old people were doing
him no wrong. They in fact admired and trusted him, just as Rumania
and Belgium and America only a little while ago admired and trusted
Germany. They stood in his way, however, and from the “Ueber Alles”
standpoint any means for their removal was warranted.
Secret assassination is an ancient art. It has been practised in
every age and in every nation and its votaries have been hunted down
and exterminated by decent people. To-day, for the first time in the
history of the world, we have the spectacle of stealthy death for the
defenceless adopted as a government policy. For the decency and safety
of mankind the allied nations have highly resolved that the government
which promotes such a policy must “perish from the earth.”
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE.
[Illustration]
“_A Tid-Bit for ‘The Sick Man’_”