[Illustration: DINANT--I SEE FATHER.]
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"HESPERIA" (WOUNDED FIRST)
Sailors of all nationality except German have from time immemorial
looked upon themselves as the guardians and protectors of land folk at
sea.
That is why every sailor in the world, outside the doggeries of Hamburg,
felt his calling spat upon and his personal pride injured by the sinking
of the _Lusitania_--by a sailor.
It seemed that nothing could be worse than that, and then came the
sinking of the _Hesperia_, a ship filled with wounded soldiers and
Hospital nurses.
Raemaekers brings the fact home to us in this cartoon, not the fact of
the English nurses' heroism, which goes without saying, but of German
low-down common infamy. The fact has become so commonplace, so
accustomed, so everyday that pictures of burning cathedrals, murdered
children, and terrified women no longer move us as they did, but this
artist, whose command of language seems as infinite and varied as the
crimes of the criminals whom God sent him to scourge, has always some
stroke in reserve, something to add to what he has said, if need be. In
the case of this picture it is the medicine bottle, glass, and spoon
flying off the shelf, flung to the floor by the bursting charge of
Tri-nitro-toluine that adds the last touch as distinctive as the
artist's signature.