I am not sure that in this cartoon of Raemaekers the most pleasing
detail is not the servant's right eye. You will observe in that
servant's right eye an expression familiar in those who overhear this
sort of comment upon the peculiar bestialities of the Prussian in
Belgium and Poland, this extenuation of his baseness. When the war was
young the opportunity for giving that glance was commoner than it is
now. There were many even in a belligerent country who would tell you in
superior fashion how foolishly exaggerated were the so-called
"atrocities." The greater number of such men (and women) talked of "two
Germanies"--one the nice Germany they knew and loved so well, and the
other apparently nasty Germany which raped, burned, stole, broke faith,
tortured, and the rest. Their number has diminished. But there is a
little lingering trace of the sort of thing still to be discovered: men
and women who hope against hope that the Prussian will really prove good
at heart after all. And it is usually just after some expression of the
kind that the most appalling news arrives with a terrible irony to
punctuate their folly. It reminds one a little of the man in the story
who was sure that he could tame a wild cat, and was in the act of
recording its virtues when it flew in his face. To an impartial observer
who cared nothing for our sufferings or the enemy's vices, there would
be something enormously comic in the vision of these few remaining (for
there are still some few remaining) that approach the wild beast with
soothing words and receive as their only reward a very large bomb
through the roof of their house, or the news that some one dear to them
has been murdered on the high seas. But to those actively suffering in
the struggle the comic element is difficult to seize, and it is replaced
by indignation. This fantastic misconception of the thing that is being
fought is bound to be burned right out by the realities of the enemy
acts in belligerent countries. It will be similarly destroyed--and that
in no very great space of time--in all neutral countries as well.
Prussia will have it so. She is allowing no moral defence to remain for
her future. It is almost as though the men now directing her affairs
lent ear carefully to every word spoken in praise of them abroad, and
met it at once by the tremendous denial of example. It is almost as
though the Prussian felt it a sort of personal insult to receive the
praise of dupes and fools, and perhaps it is.