The Committee of Enquiry, like another Portia, clothed in the
ermine-trimmed robe of Justice and the Law, has unlocked with the key of
Truth the door of the closed chamber. The key lies behind her inscribed
in Dutch with the name that tells its nature. The Committee then pulls
back the curtain, and reveals the horrors that are behind it. Before the
curtain is fully drawn back, Enquiry sinks almost in collapse at the
terrible sight that is disclosed. There hang to pegs on the wall the
bodies of Bluebeard's victims, a woman, an old man, a priest, two boys,
and a girl still half hidden behind the curtain. The blood that has
trickled from them coagulates in pools on the ground.
Bluebeard himself comes suddenly: he hurries down the steps brandishing
his curved sword, a big, burly figure, with square, thick beard, and
streaming whiskers, wearing a Prussian helmet, his mouth open to utter a
roar of rage and fury. The hatred and scorn with which the artist
inspires his pictures of Prussia are inexhaustible in their variety:
Prussia is barbarism attempting to trample on law and education,
brutality beating down humanity, a grim figure, the incarnation of
"frightfulness." I can imagine the feelings with which all Germans must
regard the picture that the Dutch artist always gives of their country,
if they regard Prussia as their country. "For every cartoon of
Raemaekers," said a German newspaper, "the payment will be exacted in
full, when the reckoning is made up." To this painter the Prussian
ruling power is incapable of understanding what nobility of nature
means. He can practise on and take advantage of the vices and weaknesses
of his enemies; he can buy the services of many among them, and have all
the worser people in his fee as his servants and agents; but he is
always foiled, because he forgets that some men cannot be bought, and
that these men will steel their fellow-countrymen's minds to resist
tyranny to the last. The mass of men can be led either to evil or to
good.
The Prussian military system assumes the former as certain, and is well
skilled in the way. But there is the latter way, too, which Prussia
never knew and never takes into account as a possibility; and men as a
whole prefer the way to good before the way to evil, when both are fully
explained and made clear. This saves men, and ruins Prussia.