It is a fine touch, or a fortunate accident, in this sketch of
Raemaekers' that it depicts the officer who has made the mistake as
exhibiting the spruceness of a Prussian, and the officer who has found
out the mistake as having the comparatively battered look of an old
Turk. The moustaches of the Young Turk are modelled on the Kaiser's,
spikes pointing to heaven like spires; while those of his justly
incensed superior officer hang loose like those of a human being. The
difference is in any case symbolic; for the sort of instinctive and
instantaneous self-laudation satirized in this cartoon is much more one
of the vices of the new Germany than of the antiquated Islam. That
spirit is not easy to define; and it is easy to confuse it with much
more pardonable things. Every people can be jingo and vainglorious; it
is the mark of this spirit that the instinct to be so acts before any
other instinct can act, even those of surprise or anger. Every people
emphasizes and exaggerates its victories more than its defeats. But this
spirit emphasizes its defeats as victories. Every national calamity has
its consolations; and a nation naturally turns to them as soon as it
reasonably can. But it is the stamp of this spirit that it always thinks
of the consolation _before_ it even thinks of the calamity. It abounds
throughout the whole press of the German Empire. But it is most shortly
shown in this figure of the young officer, who makes a hero of himself
before he has even fully realized that he has made a fool of himself.