THE BOER WAR AND THE DREYFUS CASE
A cartoon which was a forerunner of the Transvaal War and the railway
between Capetown and Cairo was that entitled "The Rhodes Colossus,"
which appeared in _Punch_ December 10, 1892. It was by the hand of
Linley Sambourne. It shows a colossal figure of Cecil Rhodes standing
on a map of Africa with one foot planted in Egypt and the other at the
Cape. In his hands he holds a line suggesting the telegraph wire
connecting the two places.
[Illustration: The Rhodes Colossus.
_By Linley Sambourne._]
[Illustration: The Situation in South Africa.
_By Gillam in "Judge."_]
[Illustration: The English World Kingdom, or Bloody Cartography.
_From the "Lustige Blaetter."_]
Although the German Government refused to interfere in the protracted
struggle in the Transvaal, the sympathy of Germany with the Boers
found expression in a host of cartoons, bitterly inveighing against
British aggression. Thoroughly characteristic is one which appeared in
the _Lustige Blaetter_ entitled "English World-Kingdom; or, Bloody
Cartography." A grossly distorted caricature of Victoria is standing
before a map of the world, and dipping her pen in a cup of blood, held
for her by an army officer. Chamberlain, at her elbow, is explaining
that "the lowest corner down yonder, must be painted red!" Another of
the _Lustige Blaetter's_ grim cartoons, alluding to the terrible price
in human life that England paid for her ultimate victory in the
Transvaal, depicts Britannia, as Lady Macbeth, vainly trying to wash
the stain from her bloody hands. "Out, damned spot!" In lighter vein
is the cartoon which is here reproduced from the _Wiener Humoristische
Blaetter_ showing "Oom Paul at His Favorite Sport." Kruger, rakishly
arrayed in tennis garb, is extracting infinite enjoyment from the
congenial exercise of volleying English soldiers, dressed up as
shuttlecocks, over the "Transvaal net" into the watery ditch beyond.
[Illustration: Britannia as Lady Macbeth trying to wash away the
Stains of the Boer War.
_From the "Lustige Blaetter."_]
[Illustration: The Flying Dutchman.
_Minneapolis "Journal."_]
Judged by the manner it was mirrored in the caricature of Europe and
America, the Dreyfus Case assumed the magnitude of a great war or a
crisis in national existence. During the last two or three years that
the degraded Captain of Artillery was a prisoner at Devil's Island,
when Zola was furiously accusing, and the General Staff was talking
about "the Honor of the Army," and France was divided into two angry
camps, one had only to glance at the current cartoons to realize that
Dreyfus was, as the late G. W. Steevens called him, "the most famous
man in the world." For a time the great personages of the earth were
relegated to the background. The monarchs and statesmen of Europe were
of interest and importance only so far as their careers affected that
of the formerly obscure Jewish officer.
[Illustration: Oom Paul's Favorite Pastime.
_From the "Wiener Humoristische Blaetter."_]
[Illustration: Up against the Breastworks.]
[Illustration: Mr. Rhodes--The Napoleon of South Africa.
_From the Westminster "Budget" (London)._]
Perhaps the most famous of all the admirable cartoons dealing with
_l'Affaire_ was the "Design for a New French Bastile," which was of
German origin and which caused the paper publishing it to be excluded
from French territory. It appeared just after Colonel Henry had cut
his throat with a razor in his cell in the Fortress of Vincennes, when
suspicions of collusion were openly expressed, and some went so far as
to hint that the prisoner's death might be a case of murder and not
suicide. The "Design for a New French Bastile" showed a formidable
fortress on the lines of the famous prison destroyed in the French
Revolution with a row of the special cells beneath. In one of these
cells a loaded revolver was placed conspicuously on the chair; in the
next was seen a sharpened razor; from a stout bar in a third cell
dangled a convenient noose. The inference was obvious, and the fact
that the cells were labeled "for Picquart," "for Zola," "for Labori"
and the other defenders of Dreyfus gave the cartoon an added and
sinister significance. In caricature the Dreyfus case was a battle
between a small number of Anti-Dreyfussard artists on the one hand,
and the Dreyfus press with all the cartoonists of Europe and the
United States as its allies on the other. The opportunity to exalt the
prisoner, to hold him up as a martyr, to interpret pictorially the
spirit of Zola's ringing "_la verite est en marche, et rien ne
l'arretera_!" offered a vast field for dramatic caricature. On the
other hand the cartoon against Dreyfus and his defenders was
essentially negative, and the wonder is that the rout of the minority
was not greater--it should have been a veritable "_sauve qui peut_."
[Illustration: Fire!
_From "Psst" (Paris)._]
[Illustration: The last Phase of the Dreyfus Case.
Justice takes Dreyfus into her car.
_From "Amsterdammer."_]
The spirit of anti-Dreyfussard caricature was Anti-Semitism. One of
the most striking of the cartoons on this side purported to contrast
France before 1789 and France at the end of the Nineteenth Century.
In the first picture we were shown a peasant toiling laboriously along
a furrow in the ground, bearing on his shoulders a beribboned and
beplumed aristocrat of the old regime, whose thighs grip the neck of
the man below with the tenacity of the Old Man of the Sea. That was
France before the Revolution came with its bloody lesson. In the
picture showing France at the end of the Nineteenth Century there was
the same peasant toiling along at the bottom, but the burden under
which he tottered was fivefold. Above him was the petty merchant, who
in turn carried on his shoulders the lawyer, and so on until riding
along, arrogantly and ostentatiously, at the top was the figure of the
foreign-born Jew, secure through the possession of his tainted
millions.
[Illustration: Toward Freedom.
MADAME LA REPUBLIQUE--"Welcome, M. Le Capitaine. Let me hope that I
may soon return you your sword."
_From "Punch" (London)._]
[Illustration: A Dutch View.
The present condition of the French general staff.
_From "Amsterdammer."_]
[Illustration: Between Scylla and Charybdis.
WALDECK-ROUSSEAU--"Forward, dear friends, look neither to the right
nor the left, and we will win through at last."
_From "Humoristische Blaetter" (Berlin)._]
The dangerous straits through which the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry was
obliged to pass were hit off in a cartoon appearing in the
_Humoristische Blaetter_ of Berlin, entitled "Between Scylla and
Charybdis." On one side of the narrow waterway a treacherous rock
shows the yawning jaws of the Army. On the other side, equally hideous
and threatening, gleam the sharpened teeth of the face typifying the
Dreyfus Party. Waldeck-Rousseau, appreciating the choppiness of the
sea and the dangerous rocks, calls to his gallant crew: "Forward, dear
friends, look neither to the right nor to the left, and we will win
through at last." Many of the cartoons dealing with the Dreyfus case
were mainly symbolic in their nature; full of figures of "Justice
with her Scales," "Justice Blindfolded and with Unsheathed Sword,"
"Swords of Damocles" and so on. A Dutch cartoon in _Amsterdammer_,
entitled "The Last Phase of the Dreyfus Case," showed Justice taking
the unfortunate captain into her car. The horses drawing the car were
led by Scheurer-Kestner and Zola, while following the chariot, to
which they are linked by ignominious chains, were the discredited
Chiefs of the Army. The same paper humorously summed up the condition
of the French General Staff in a picture showing a falling house of
which the occupants, pulling at cross-purposes, were accelerating the
downfall. The decision upon Revision and the dispatching of the Spax
to Cayenne to bring Dreyfus back to France was commemorated in London
_Punch_ in a dignified cartoon called "Toward Freedom." Madame la
Republique greeted Dreyfus: "Welcome, M. le Capitaine. Let me hope I
may soon return you your sword." The same phase of the case was more
maliciously interpreted by _Lustige Blaetter_ of Berlin in a cartoon
entitled "At Devil's Island," which showed the Master of the Island
studying grinningly a number of officers whom he held in the hollow of
his hand, and saying: "They take away one captain from me: but look
here, a whole handful of generals! Oh, after all, the arrangement is
not so bad."
[Illustration: At Devil's Island.
THE MASTER OF THE ISLAND.--"They take away one captain from me; but
look here, a whole handful of generals! Oh, after all, the arrangement
is not so bad."
_From "Lustige Blaetter" (Berlin)._]