Looking at this cartoon one can understand why Raemaekers is not
_persona grata_ in the Happy Fatherland. With half a dozen touches he
has changed Satan from the magnificent Prince of Evil whom Gustave Dore
portrayed into a--Hun. Henceforth we shall envisage Satan as a Hun,
talking the obscene tongue--now almost the universal language in
Hades--and hailed by right-thinking Huns as the All Highest War Lord.
Willy senior must be jealous.
With the learned Professor, the cartoonist not only produces a composite
portrait of all the _Herren Professoren_, but also drives home the point
of his amazing pencil into what is perhaps the most instructive lesson
of this monstrous war--the perversion to evil uses of powers originally
designed, nourished, and expanded to benefit mankind. When the _Furor
Teutonicus_ has finally expended itself, we do not envy the feelings of
the illustrious chemists who perfected poison gas and liquid fire! Will
they, when their hour comes, find it easy to obey the poet's injunction,
and, wrapping the mantle of their past about them, "lie down to pleasant
dreams?"
We are assured that these professors have not exhausted their powers of
frightfulness. It may be so. This is certain: Such frightfulness will
ultimately exhaust them. With this reflection, we may leave them, grist
to be ground by the mills of God.