[Illustration: BETTER A LIVING DOG THAN A DEAD LION
THE DRIVER: "You are a worthy Dutchman. He who lies there was a foolish
idealist."]
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"THE BURDEN OF THE INTOLERABLE DAY"
Most people have wondered from time to time what the Kaiser thinks in
his inmost heart and in the solitude of his own chamber about the
condition of Germany and about the War. What impression has been made on
him by the alternation of victories and failures during the last twenty
months? After all he has staked everything--he has everything to lose.
What does he feel? What impression do the frightful losses of his own
people make on him?
Raemaekers tells in this cartoon. The Kaiser has this moment been
wakened from sleep by the entrance of a big gorgeously dressed footman,
carrying his morning tea. The panelling of the royal chamber in the
palace at Potsdam is faintly indicated. The Kaiser sits up in bed, and a
look of agony gathers on his face as he realizes that he has wakened up
to the grim horror of a new day, and that the delightful time which he
has just been living through was only a dream. He had dreamed that the
whole thing was not true--that the War had never really occurred, and
that he could face the world with a conscience clear from guilt; and now
he has wakened up to bear the burden for another day. It is written in
his face what he thinks. You see the deep down-drawn lines in the lower
part of the face, the furrows upon the forehead, and the look almost of
terror in the eyes. But a smug-faced flunkey offers him a cup of tea
with buttered toast, and he must come back to the pretence of that
tragi-comedy, the life of the King-Emperor.
The Dutch artist is fully alive to the comic element which underlies
that tragedy. The King-Emperor, as he awakes from sleep and sits forward
from that mountain of pillows, would be a purely comic figure were it
not for the terrible tragedy written in his face. A footman in brilliant
livery is a comic figure. The splendour of this livery brings out the
comic element by its contrast to, and yet its harmony with, the stupid
self-satisfaction of the countenance and the curls of the powdered hair.
The Kaiser, however, awakens to more than the pretences and shams of
court life. The vast dreams which he cherished before the War of
world-conquest and an invincible Germany are fled now, and he must face,
open-eyed and awake, the stern reality.