Of all forms of "Kultur" or "frightfulness" that which materializes in
the "the terror which flieth by night" is to the intelligent mind at one
and the same time the most insensate and damnable. It fails to
accomplish, either in Paris or in London, the subjugation by terror of
the people for which Germans seem to hope. It is only in German
imagination that it accomplishes "material and satisfactory damage to
forts, camps, arsenals, and fortified towns." In reality it inflicts
misery and death upon a mere handful of people (horrible as that may be)
and destroys chiefly the homes of the poor. It serves no military end,
and the damage done is out of all proportion to the expenditure of
energy and material used to accomplish it.
The fine cartoon which Raemaekers has drawn to bring home to the
imagination what this form of "Kultur" stands for makes it easy for us
in London to sympathize with our brothers and sisters in Paris. We have
as yet been spared daylight raids in the Metropolitan area, and so we
needed this cartoon to enable us to realize fully what "Kultur" by
indiscriminate Zeppelin bombs means.
Who cannot see the cruel drama played out in that Paris street? The
artist has assembled for us in a few living figures all the actors. The
dead woman; the orphaned child, as yet scarcely realizing her loss; the
bereaved workman, calling down the vengeance of Heaven upon the
murderers from the air; the stern faces of the _sergents de ville_,
evidently feeling keenly their impotence to protect; and in the
background other _sergents_, the lines of whose bent backs convey in a
marvellous manner and with a touch of real genius the impression of
tender solicitude for the injured they are tending. And faintly
indicated, further still in the background, the crowd that differs
little, whether it be French or English, in its deeper emotions.