of his country, society and God, from simple lying, through perjury,
robbery, piracy, up to wholesale murder, would be destroyed--for the
good of his fellowmen and as a warning to others. If he should escape
the noose the quieter but no less inevitable force of public morality
would destroy him. Neither man nor nation has ever long lived by force,
flaunting his crimes in the face of the world, committing, threatening
yet others. Nor will Germany. She is now, I believe, in the way of
destruction, either by the public executioner, or, more likely, by the
slower, but not less certain, process of isolation and decay.
She has unmasked herself and we now see the hideous, distorted face of
her. How can so monstrous a Thing have friends after this? Who will
trade with her? Who will ever again accept a promise of hers? Who but
must be ashamed of her name and her language? Anathema she will be to
all peoples--the outcast of nations--living for and upon herself, where
her life-doctrine of force must inevitably turn to her own destruction.
This has been the fate of every world-conqueror and his nation. And,
surely, none of them all has so richly deserved it as this intolerable
Germany. Ask History! And, yet, to the individual, there is always left
repentance and restoration--even though he, himself, must be destroyed.
So, if this besotted Germany had but the courage and virtue to lay down
her arms and retire behind her own borders, she could have the peace
she pretends to wish for in twenty-four hours--for so little and simple
and right a thing as that!
I think, indeed, that the nations she has so wantonly spoiled would
permit her to go without further punishment at their hands, leaving
that to the very God she has so vilely exploited as her partner in her
monstrous crimes. I think they would accept back the goods which she
has stolen, damaged as they are, beyond redemption, glad to be rid of
her and her debasing contact. But she is mad. Germany is quite mad. She
would laugh, like a blood-smeared, amuck-running lunatic at any such
proposition. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The
madness is accomplished. I believe that it will be for the peace of the
world that the rest shall be.
JOHN LUTHER LONG.
[Illustration]
“_Don’t Stand in Our Way to Victory_”
All wars bring their full measure of miseries and misfortunes, and this
world war, initiated by Germany for the purpose of imposing a military
domination upon Europe and America, and conducted with methods which
combine the barbaric standards of the Huns and Mongols with the skilled
mechanism of the twentieth century, has brought upon the world miseries
that can hardly be estimated or described. There are some offsets,
however, even in a contest like the present, which is a fight for the
preservation of civilization against the onslaughts of scientific
barbarism. No nation can take up arms for the defense of its rights and
liberties and for the fulfilment of its obligations without bringing
into the souls of the people some development of national and patriotic
spirit.
The soldiers in the trenches and the citizens working at home are
fighting and working for a common cause.
They come in this manner to have realization of what they owe to each
other, to their country and to their consciences.
We may feel assured that through the sacrifices that are being made
today in our country, of lives, of labor and of wealth, there will be
developed from a people which had in its prosperity been growing rich
and lazy-minded and forgetful of national morality, the soul of America.
Louis Raemaekers has done more than any one man to bring into
expression the spirit of fierce indignation and horror that has come
not only upon the people of Belgium and of northeastern France, who
have been directly exposed to the brutal despotism of the Prussians,
but upon all of those who are fighting to rescue the people of these
imprisoned devastated provinces, and upon the whole civilized world.
Raemaekers has been able with the powerful genius of his pencil to give
expression in cartoons that belong to the history of art and of the
world, to this protest of civilization.
He is a poet as well as an artist.
His weird and sombre conceptions gave evidence of a powerful
imagination. His work has been compared to that of Gilray, but the
caricatures which in 1805 amused English men and frightened English
children were merely clever pieces of drawing.
The wonderful designs of Raemaekers set forth the devilishness of
the policies and the actions of the Prussians as incisively and as
conclusively as if he had been sitting as judge in the court of final
appeal.
These grim pictures constitute indictments of great criminals. It is
impossible to tell how far they may as yet have penetrated Germany,
but sooner or later these irrefutable judgments of criminal acts will
be brought home to the consciousness not only of Prussia, and of the
leaders who are directly responsible for the murders and the other
horrors, but of the whole people of Germany who, poisoned by the fumes
of prussic acid from Berlin, have been willing to give their strength
and their force to the attempt to impose Prussian tyranny upon the
peoples of the world.
GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM.
_February 1, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_German Soldiers Cut the Throat of an American Sentry_”
A LAYMAN’S PRAYER FOR AMERICAN SOLDIERS
Our Father which art in Heaven, bless and inspire our armies in the
field, our ships upon the sea. Watch over the sons of America fighting
for Liberty. Strengthen and hearten them in the hour of pain and peril.
Grant them victory, we beseech Thee, and lead them safely home. Make us
who love them do our part loyally. Keep us united in our will to bring
upon earth a reign of right and freedom. _Amen._
CLEVELAND MOFFETT.
[Illustration]
_Bang!_
“_Dog-gone it, Hindenburg, don’t make your strategic moves when I am
standing directly behind you!_”
On one occasion, when Hindenburg reported having “carried out his
retreat according to plan,” the Kaiser, encamped at the rear, received
a very discomfiting bump. Evidently, the “plan” was no less an
inspiration of the moment than many others the Germans have announced,
in order to put a good face upon their reverses.
[Illustration]
“_I Must Break in Here Before That Comes Down_”
The small speck that at first seemed a dull mist hanging over the
Western Hemisphere caused little else than sarcastic flings at our
own Republic, and had it been possible to awaken pity in the breast
of the Arch Demon, striving to spread his wings over the whole world,
some sympathy might have fallen to us, for the weak mind we showed
in presuming we could do anything to check the Imperial army in its
brutal course. But happily great oaks from little acorns grow, from
stationary mists dark clouds may rise, from low uncertain rumblings
the ear-splitting thunder clap may spring, and make man and beast seek
cover. So, by the Grace of God, things have developed, and the mist
that was a banquet joke, is transformed, and spread into a veritable
storm, and its direction is across the wide ocean; it is an on-rusher
that awakens a craven fear; and it well may. It is no autumn cloud,
whose fleecy skirts the sun has painted with gold; but something
equalling the harbinger of death, that the soothsayers saw driving over
Rome when Cæsar’s end was nigh; on which could be seen “Fierce fiery
warriors in ranks, and squadrons and in right form of war”; and from
which blood is drizzling, not only to fall over France, or Flanders,
but perhaps to darken the sky, and crimson the soil, even at that nest
of iniquity, Potsdam.
PALMER COX.
[Illustration]
_Bring Her In!_
Yea, bring her in--the scarlet sign of shame!
Of shuddering horror to all times and lands!
Bring her, though late, to justice. Those, her hands,
With children’s blood thick-crusted, are the same
That stealing through night’s peaceful curtains came
To throttle blameless Belgium; from the brands
Of sacked and burning churches those dark bands
Befoul her garments, noisome as her name.
“Guilty of more than murder!” Not alone
Of broken hearts, drained eyes and myriad graves
Shall men make up the sum of her dread score,
But of faiths blasted, world hopes overthrown.
Then judgment write in tears of her bowed slaves,
“Earth sickens of her--Let her be no more!”
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL.
[Illustration]
_Germany’s “Peace” with Russia_
Count Hertling asks resentfully: “Who dares to suggest that I am not
on the side of justice?” Count Hertling is undoubtedly sincere. Until
this war began the world had almost forgotten the record for duplicity
and inhumanity of the military tyrants of Prussia,--the treachery and
barbarity of the race of which he and they are the offspring. They are
running true to type, but for the time we had forgotten what the type
was; yet it was known well enough to Julius Cæsar and to the others
who ruled the Roman world. For him the Germans were “that treacherous
race which is bred up from the cradle to war and rapine,” who “practise
the base deception which first asks for peace and then openly begins
war,” who are “outside the pale of negotiations”--yet Cæsar had not
heard of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk! History is repeating itself
after two thousand years, yet two thousand years ago it was then only
repeating itself. The Prussian has always been the same. His instincts
are today as they were when he roamed the swamp lands, naked and with
a stone club in his fist, pig-eyed and bull-necked, like the mastodon
of his native forests. Raemaekers has done well to symbolize him in his
treatment of helpless Russia, as a hairy prehistoric beast crushing
out the life of a bleeding nation beneath his ponderous feet. Count
Hertling says he is on the side of justice. He is--of German justice,
the justice of which the butchered civilians and outraged girls of
Belgium, the crucified Canadians, the murdered Edith Cavell, and the
martyred babies and their mothers of the _Lusitania_, are examples. It
is the justice of the mammoth and the cave-man, the sabre-toothed tiger
and the woolly rhinoceros,--all of whom would agree that Count Hertling
in his dealings with Russia was actuated by the only recognized
Prussian ideal--the right of the strongest brute to ravish and destroy.
ARTHUR TRAIN.
[Illustration]
_The Better Fighter_
CANADA’S PART IN THE WAR
“Bound by no constitution, bound by no law, equity or obligation,
Canada has decided as a nation to make war. We have levied an army;
we have sent the greatest army to England that has ever crossed the
Atlantic, to take part in the battles of England. We have placed
ourselves in opposition to great world powers. We are now training and
equipping an army greater than the combined forces of Wellington and
Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.”
_Speech of Sir Clifford Sifton at Montreal._
[Illustration]
_The Dungeon of Autocracy_
There is a part of Germany that longs for freedom; but that is not the
Prussian part. The soul of Germany is not entirely killed by her mortal
sins of money and land-lust; and Raemaekers here paints the remorseful
soul, crowned with the blurred cross. Germany turns her back to the
sky; she prefers to look at the dark ground of her dungeon rather than
to face that light. She is chained by her own will, and yet her inmost
soul revolts.
Let us not imagine that there are two Germanys. Before the war the
Social Democrat was the official hater of the despotism of the
Hohenzollerns. The war came, he ceased to be a Social Democrat when
he became a Prussian. Before the war, the Centrum defended the rights
of conscience against the Hegelian dogma of the absolute supremacy of
the State. The Kaiser rushed from Norway, war was declared, and the
recalcitrant Centrum,--the creature of the indomitable Windhorst, whom
even Bismarck could not terrify,--becomes subservient! The Emperor does
not say, “The State is I.” He says,--“Germany over all, and the German
God must rule.”
Germany has chained herself. For more than ten years, I have lived
geographically in Germany,--for Denmark, though one of the freest
nations of the world, is a few miles from Berlin,--and I have seen the
Old Germany growing into the New, materialized Germany. Bismarck helped
this process with blood and iron. The New Germany has a soul, but she
has chained it to avarice and pride and power.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN,
_American Minister to Denmark_.
_May 28, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_Hurrah for Peace, Lads!_”
Early in the war the great writers and poets of the Allied nations
joined in combating, with all the inspiration of the cause of liberty,
the campaigns launched in varied guise by seditionists here and abroad.
In this effort literature has made a worthy contribution to the battle
for civilization. It remained, however, for the art and genius of
Raemaekers to rout the propagandists of the enemy by delineating the
great basic truths of war as waged by the Huns. It has been his work,
more than that of any other person, to delineate the righteousness of
the Allied cause.
His portraiture is a protest, an indictment, and an inspiration. He
destroys the foe’s misrepresentation and exposes his mendacity while
constructively informing the mind and awakening the imagination. He
enables us to grasp all the details of sorrow, of devotion, together
with all the splendor of modern battle behind his story. He horrifies
us with the brutality of uncivilized warfare, and at the same time
arouses within us the determination to right the wrongs of an outraged
world. His very shock is a stimulus, for in telling us of the horror
of war, Raemaekers makes us understand that to stop it forever by
victory is the only thing worthy of thinking and feeling human beings.
By speaking the universal language which art alone possesses, he has
made the war clear to those who cannot read. Because of this genius
for arousing our emotions, he is the premier recruiting agent of the
armies of civilization for and behind the battle-line. He is truly a
mainspring of our armed forces.
S. STANWOOD MENKEN,
_President of the National Security League_.
_January, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Ecce Homo!_
An’ Thou art God, and be not one
With the god of the hun--Behold Thy Son!
Only belov’d begotten Son
And see with Thine eyes what the hun hath done.
See how His tender temples bleed!
How they have mocked Him in their scorn--
Thrust in his hands a withered reed
To hail Him King--Thine only born--
And crowned His shrinking brow with thorn!
Where must He pass--Lord Christ--Thy Son?
Calvary looms in the West again:--
We thought the sad world lost and won
When He died on the Cross for the sins of men.
Must He die again? And where? And when?
Where, in their hell, the heathen rage,
The hun’s imperial priest appears
Smeared with the blood of youth and age
Dragging his god that nods and leers
Dripping with murdered children’s tears.
God of the bright, swift sword, how long?
Moloch rides with the swinish hun:--
The boche is boasting with shout and song
That Thou and his bestial god are one,--
Thou and Moloch and Christ, Thy Son!
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
_New York, April 30, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_We Must so Destroy France That She can Never Again Resist Us_”
Heine, when he warned the world that the real God of Germany was Thor
and that when the Christian veneer wore off the old pagan god would
with his hammer break in pieces the Gothic Cathedrals, especially
warned France, whom above all the Beast hated. The warning has been
justified by history. Before the war I have heard Germans speak
gloatingly of what they did to France in 1870, and of what they
meant to do next time. The phrase “bleed France white” had become a
commonplace of German speech.
This hatred is rather mysterious. England fought France many times
during five hundred years, but whenever peace was declared Paris would
be full of Englishmen to celebrate, to shake hands and be friends.
There never was this ferocious hate, and France has always been
generous and chivalrous and human. Germany hates Great Britain and
America with her head, but she hates France with her soul.
It must be that the modern Hun feels that there is something in his
hated enemy which he does not possess and never can possess. And
because the rest of the world loves France, he hates her all the more,
with a cold and cruel and scientific hatred, as our artist depicts it
in his terrible cartoon.
Perhaps some light is thrown on the problem by a typical piece of
Gallic wit. A French writer commenting on the wanton destruction of the
Cathedral of Rheims declared it to be the greatest single calamity to
art that was conceivable, and then added that there could be another
greater calamity--to allow the Germans to restore it! It adds fuel to
the flame to know that the only great period of German literature--the
period of Heine himself--was when it was under the complete influence
and inspiration of France.
In a true sense the whole civilized world is fighting for France, to
decide whether it is to lose all that France stands for, or whether the
future is to be dominated by the ugly bestial force, without conscience
and without heart, which Germany represents. The world knows that if
it is a case of alternatives, civilization can do without Germany, but
would be eternally poor without _la belle France._
HUGH BLACK.
[Illustration]
_The Japanese Mouse_
“_Can the Japanese mouse free the Russian bear from the German
netting?_”
“Japan must act on the broad principle that she is the guardian of
peace in the Far East, and I am sure that to fulfil her duty she will
utilize every resource at her disposal. Her part, instead of attempting
the impossible, will be to stand on safe and reasonable ground. Through
her control of the Southern Manchuria Railroad she is in a position
to cut off communication between Harbin and Vladivostok now afforded
by the trans-Siberian line. Harbin is the military, economic, and
political base of Russia in the Far East. That means that the Russian
possessions in East Siberia would be protected by Japan from German
domination or aggression. Let me say, however, that any suggestion that
Japan intends to seize these Russian possessions is monstrous. Japan
would offer protection and assistance, but that is all.”
--_Dr. T. Iyenaga, in the New York “Tribune.”_
[Illustration]
_“Ueber Alles” and Underneath_
[Illustration]
_Expostulation and Reply_
“We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a
guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by
such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people
themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in
accepting.”
--_From President Wilson’s Reply to the Pope, August 27, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Second Election_
_Bernstorff: “We have defeated Wilson!”_
_Wilson: “Wait a moment!”_
[Illustration]
_The Mad Shepherd_
THE GERMAN SUBSTITUTE FOR THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM
The Kaiser’s our shepherd, we shall not rest.
He maketh us to desecrate green pastures; he forceth us to kill in
still waters.
He claimeth our soul, he leadeth us in the paths of frightfulness for
his name’s sake.
Yea, though he plunge us into the valley of death, we must call him not
evil, for he is our master, his rod and his staff they drive us.
Surely horror and evil shall follow us all the days of our life till we
flee from his rule forever.
ALICE HEGAN RICE.
_March 16, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_Sink Without a Trace_”
To his dark minions undersea
Flashed the Imperial decree:
Sink Everything!
Spare naught! Sink everything that floats:
Merchantmen, liners, fishing boats;
Sink ships on Mercy’s errand sped,
Dye Christ’s red cross a deeper red:
Sink Everything!
Sink honor, faith, forbearance, ruth;
Sink virtue, chivalry, and truth,
Sink Everything!
Sink everything that men hold dear,
That devils hate, that cowards fear,
All that lifts Man above the ape,
That marks him cast in God’s own shape:
Sink Everything!
OLIVER HERFORD.
[Illustration]
_Changing the Guard_
With the entrance of the United States into the Great War, we Americans
laid aside forever our spiritual isolation. We accepted our share of
responsibility for the assaulted civilization of the world, and our
share of danger at the hands of its great assailant. A free people,
we willingly chose the path of uttermost pain, and we chose it for
the sake of our nation’s honor, our nation’s ultimate safety, and the
salvation of our nation’s soul.
When Germany denied us the waterways of the world, she struck hard at
our commerce, at our just rights, and at our decent pride. What were
the Hohenzollerns to us that we should have taken our orders from the
Kaiser, tied up our ships in harbor at his behest, and, cowering by our
own firesides, have waited for his permission to carry our flag across
the sea? Was it for this that our forefathers had bought our freedom
with their lives? Had we revolted when we were colonists, weak, poor,
and without resources, from the tyranny of Great Britain (a stupid
but never a brutal tyranny), only to bow the strength of our manhood
before Germany’s shameful threats? Had we preached the sacredness of
human rights for over a hundred years, only to acquiesce in Germany’s
campaign of murder; and, by consenting to her crimes, become a partner
of her guilt? We had suffered cruel injury at her hands. Were we also
to lose our souls through ignoble submission to wrong-doing?
Our answer was given when President Wilson asked Congress to declare
a state of war. We had then, and we have now, no choice but to fight
for our liberty, or to lose it. Our ships had been sunk, our seamen
drowned. Treacherous officials had plotted to embroil us with friendly
nations. Treacherous hands had fired our factories and murdered our
citizens. The careless lie or the insolent taunt which were Germany’s
alternate answers to our remonstrances, and which she seemed to think
would keep us quiet until she had leisure to turn her arms upon us, are
silenced now. We are upholding the safety and decency of the world,
which has been as deeply degraded by vandalism as when Attila swept
his hordes across the ravaged face of Europe. Our young soldiers are
changing guard with the war-worn veterans of France and Great Britain.
Valiant and gay, they face the oppressor. “He that loveth his life
shall lose it”; and these men stand ready to lay down their lives for
all they hold sacred and dear. Faithful to their country, faithful to
their allies, faithful to the freedom in which they were reared, they
strike their blow in the great name of America, and for the peace of
God.
AGNES REPPLIER.
[Illustration]
_The Penitent Artist_
“_I will never make drawings against the Yellow Peril again!_”
The Kaiser has a good many things in his past to live down, but he
certainly never foresaw that some day his inept activities as an artist
would stand across his path. Raemaekers, who was not likely to forget
anything that Wilhelm had done in this particular line, shows him
on his knees to Japan (and incidentally to Mexico), as the infamous
Zimmermann note to the German minister at Mexico City revealed him,
full of remorse for those drawings he once made against the Yellow
Peril. And what is Japan’s reply? The expression which Raemaekers has
caught certainly agrees very well with the following statement of
Count Terauchi, Japanese Prime Minister: “Nothing is more repugnant to
our sense of honor and to the lasting welfare of this country than to
betray our friends and allies in time of trial and to become a party to
a combination directed against the United States, to whom we are bound
not only by the sentiments of true friendship but also by material
interests of vast and far-reaching importance.”
[Illustration]
_Peace Angels of Doubtful Purity_
_William: “Go, my doves; your charms may prove more fatal than my
armies.”_
[Illustration]
_The Black Flag_
_Germany Sinks British Hospital Ships_