This picture is a perfectly accurate symbolic study of the German
Empire. Therefore, naturally, it is one of the most dreadful that were
ever drawn. In all the gruesome "Dances of Death" in which the fifteenth
century took so grim a pleasure, no artist ever conceived the horrible
idea of a fat skeleton. But we have not only conceived the thought, we
have seen the thing--"a terror in the sunshine." We know that chest,
puffed up with a wind of pride, and that stomach heavy with slaughter
and rich living; and above them the Death's Head. We have seen it. We
have felt its foul breath. Its name is Prussia.
Look at a portrait of Frederick the Great, the "onlie true begetter" of
this abortion. It oddly suggests what Raemaekers has set down here: the
face a skull, the staring eyes those of a lost soul. But the skeleton
has grown fat since Frederick's day--fat on the blood and plunder of
nations. Only there is no living flesh on its bones, nothing of humanity
about it.
"Can these dry bones live?" was the question asked of the prophet. It
might have been asked of Frederick: "Can this nation live, created of
your foul witchcraft, without honour, without charity, without human
brotherhood or fellowship, without all that which is the flesh and blood
of mankind?" The answer must have been that it could live, though with a
life coming from below and essentially infernal. It could live--for a
time. It could even have great power because its time was short.
But now it has waxed fat--and kicked. And its end is near.