A generation ago a little clique of wise men at Oxford patted themselves
on the back for having discovered "The Historical Method." But the
common people of all countries have always known it. The names of the
great dead are not forgotten, nor yet the great things for which they
stood. There may be no strict liturgy for the ancestor worship of the
West, but that worship is a simple fact, and it is a thing that timorous
politicians would do well to remember. Here Raemaekers appeals to his
countrymen to regard their past, to be worthy of the great seamen who
took the Dutch fleet up the Medway, and lashed brooms to the mast-head
of the ships that swept the sea clear of British enemies.
The Dutch were fighting for their liberty then. Great Britain is
fighting for liberty in Europe to-day--and for Dutch liberty to boot.
The enemy of all liberty uses Holland as a short cut whereby her pirates
of the air can get more quickly to their murder work in England. Would
the hero ancestors, of whom the Dutch so boast, have tolerated this
indignity? The artist seer supplies the answer.
Note the mixture of the ghostly and the real in this vivid and vivacious
drawing. But if it is easy to see through the faint outlines of the
sailor spirits, it is easier for these gallant ghosts to see through the
unrealities of their descendants' fears and hesitations. The anger of
the heroes is plainly too great for words. How compressed the lips! How
tense the attitude! The hands gripped in the angriest sort of
impatience! Mark the subtle mingling of seaman and burgher in the poise
and figures. Mark particularly Van Tromp's stiffened forefinger on his
staff.
Is the fate of L19 the fruit of our artist's stinging reminder that
Holland once had nobler spirits and braver days?