Chapter III: Part 3

The birth of Italy as a national unity was one of the great events of Europe, and nowhere was this struggle of a people toward freedom and a right to decide the future destiny of Italy more sympathetically encouraged, more warmly applauded, than in England. Then were laid and firmly set the foundations of friendship which were later to bring Italy and England into close and lasting alliance. Italian freedom was, however, long hampered by the yoke of forced subservience to the Central European Powers.

Germany, more positive in her policy than Great Britain, lost no time in riveting on Italy’s wrists the fetters of financial, industrial, and commercial thraldom. Englishmen, who could have prevented this, did nothing, and the new country, without developed resources, fell an easy prey to the barbarous German and the bullying Austrian. In this cartoon Raemaekers has succeeded in typifying the dominant feature of Austrian rule. The face of Austria is that of the bullying, brutal, and bestial police official, who sought to drive Italy as he has been accustomed to drive the unfortunate races which a series of cold-blooded and calculating international conferences and agreements have put under his heel.

The German type, the bland Hun, we are familiar with; the Austrian is new. He stands, _kourbash_ in hand, baffled and snarling at the thought of freedom--for to him freedom is anathema. It is true that nothing was more certain than that Italy would break her manacles. Strong in the virile force of a people sentient with national purpose and every day more truly finding themselves, no greater blow has been struck at the military despots of Berlin than the breaking free of Italy. The war has brought into being the real, new Italy--serious of purpose and ardent of aspiration--who till now has been unable to show herself, cramped and fettered by the medieval military chains of Germany and Austria.

ALFRED STEAD.

_The Shower-Bath_

President Wilson lends himself to caricature and the art of the cartoonist almost as readily as does the Kaiser himself. We fancy that the war will be over ere the average British mind grasps either the magnitude of the task of the President of the United States or the underlying principles which have actuated him throughout.

It has been the custom with many people (and this has been as marked in the United States as in Great Britain) to condemn the President for “kid glove” diplomacy, weakness, and indecision. And upon the surface one is bound to admit that there appear to be grounds for both criticism and disappointment. One would need to have the archives of the Foreign Office at one’s disposal to form a just and perfectly informed judgment concerning President Wilson’s “line of least resistance.”

Perhaps an American has put the matter as succinctly as anyone. “It needs a really strong man,” he said, “to keep one’s fingers out of a pie like the European War. A free people do not see another free people, and a weak nation at that, trampled, murdered, and destroyed, at least for the time being, by the greatest fighting machine in Europe without wanting to cut in. But I guess the best day’s work America and Wilson have done for the Allies has been to keep out of it. Some day you’ll see that we were cutting ice for you all the time.”

Time will perhaps make clear what some of us only suspect.

Whatever shortcomings President Wilson may appear to us to have as an active champion of right and civilization against hideous wrong and barbarism, he is a past-master in the art of the diplomatic shower-bath, as the Kaiser and his unscrupulous minions in the United States have discovered more than once. Every attempt to lead him into hostile acts toward the Allies, every skilful diplomatic ruse which was engendered with the object of involving America in hostilities, has been quietly but effectively countered by the President. He appears to have had the chain of the shower-bath ever in his hand. And the verbal “douches” administered, though couched in the unemotional phraseology of diplomacy, have always been effective. The officials of the Wilhelmstrasse must have abandoned hope long ago. And, in the words of an American friend, “they must turn up their collars and get out umbrellas and prepare for some rain when a diplomatic note arrives from Wilson.”

CLIVE HOLLAND.

_The Anniversary Bouquet_

There remain yet a few people who state that, in beginning this world war, Germany did not anticipate such slaughter as she has had to compass; but these are the people who have not studied the apostle of war whom Raemaekers portrays as presenting this bouquet of babies’ heads. This cartoon was first published in August, 1915, and was commemorative of the results of one year of war. It gained in significance during the second year, for to Belgium must be added Serbia, scene of unspeakable crimes against the civilian populace, and Armenia, of which the full horrors will never be told, since none of the victims remain to tell them.

In these later days, when the whole world can see that Germany is fighting a losing fight, one might admire the grim way in which the victors are made to pay for every step of the path they have yet to tread; if their hands were clean one might call magnificent the dogged courage of the fighting men who resist our own. But the list of slaughtered women and children is too long, the violation of the laws of humanity is too complete. This grinning barbarian with his bouquet is the German that the world will remember, not those exceptions to his kind who, by humanity in the presence of wounded enemies, have made themselves noteworthy--merely by their rarity.

In the last phase of the war, that in which approaching defeat is plainly evident, the German fights well--and so does a rat when it is cornered. Raemaekers’ symbol of the bouquet is not less to be kept in mind, nor would there be any hope of justice in the settlement if the victors, in generosity to a beaten foe, should forget it.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_The Stranded Submarine_

The circumstances of the incident depicted in this cartoon are well known. A British submarine was stranded, helpless, on the Danish coast. Its men were lined up--as men once lined up on the _Birkenhead_--and stood at attention while German guns poured shell on them and their craft. Further, this happened in Danish territorial waters, where, by all the laws of humanity, and by the law of nations as well, the crew of the submarine were entitled to consider themselves immune. Had there been any respect for international law on the part of their aggressors, they would have been immune.

Now, if one observes the faces of the two German naval officers in the cartoon, it is easy to understand why such outrages as this have come about. Raemaekers knows his German, and, whether he is portraying officer or man, emperor or soldier, he takes care in each case to bring out the fact that the man represented belongs to a nation that has either lost, or has not yet found, a soul. These two who stand above the guns are two of the world’s materialists, men who understand only that the end must be accomplished, no matter what the means may be.

From their soulless philosophy has arisen not only incidents like these, but the manufacture of a German God, such as the speeches of the Kaiser describe. There has arisen, too, the denial of Western Christianity altogether in a certain patronage of Islam, designed to placate Turkish opinion, a patronage that is inconsistent even with the worship of the German God. It is all means to the one end, world domination. Germany has set out to gain the whole world, and has lost what soul she had. Striving to set herself above the law, she has merely placed herself outside the law, and for this her punishment is at hand.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_Herod’s Nightmare_

Certain publications in neutral countries, notably in America, have given room in their pages during the course of the war to little sketches--obviously part of the German system of propaganda--designed to show that the Allied estimate of German barbarities is at the very least a huge exaggeration, and is possibly altogether fabricated. The term “undue sentimentality” is frequently used; travelers in the occupied territories are represented as seeing the inhabitants quite contented under German rule and surprised at the mention of atrocities. Their conquerors are quite good people, necessarily subjecting them to strict discipline, but in no way unjust. There _may_ have been atrocities somewhere, at some time, but these travellers cannot get any reliable accounts of them.

Many of the papers that publish this sort of thing are probably quite ignorant of its source; others, of course, do so with full knowledge of the merits of the case and of the reason for its publication. Evidence collected on oath from sufferers is ignored, and so cleverly are these little sketches done that one is inclined to believe the German is not so black as he has been painted.

But not one of these sketches ever ventures near the subject of the _Lusitania_, the _Arabic_, the Scarborough bombardment, or Louvain--or any other of those horrors that are established beyond question in the minds of men. And wherever these German efforts at lulling the world’s conscience by sophistries appear, there should this cartoon appear also, as a corrective. Throughout half the world these murdered children lie under earth and water, and to forget them in the day when Germany fears to add more to their number would be to share this modern Herod’s infamy.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_“My Beloved People”_

The old emperor of Austria was said to have very vague ideas about the present war. According to one fairly well authenticated story, he sometimes fancied himself in 1866, and hoped that his troops were killing a great many of those infernal Prussians. But Ferdinand of Bulgaria is no imbecile. He is not a very able man, though certain journalists have extolled his talents; he is merely cunning and ambitious. His subjects do not love him. He is very extravagant, and preferred, even before the war, to spend some eight months of the year in other countries, where the opportunities for amusement are greater than at Sofia. He is also a great stickler for etiquette, which his subjects despise, and his court is a queer mixture of complicated ceremony and bohemian license.

The Bulgarians have always disliked him, and his policy in involving them in a war with Russia is not likely to stimulate their loyalty. We cannot wonder that he feels safer in a neutral country, such as Switzerland. Bulgaria is a classic land of political assassination; every year several unpopular politicians are “removed,” and no one thinks much about it. Ferdinand’s chances of dying in his bed are not favorable, unless he decides to say good-bye to his “beloved people.” In that case, he may find distraction at Monte Carlo, which knows him well; and the sturdy peasants of Bulgaria, who have many good qualities, will be well rid of a knave.

W. R. INGE, _Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral_.

_On Their Way to Verdun_

Some time ago Louis Raemaekers drew a cartoon entitled “On Their Way to Calais,” representing German corpses floating toward the sea. It will be remembered that the Belgians let water into their dykes and so flooded great tracts of the northern country. The inundation was one of the obstacles--added to the determination of the Allies-which balked the second great ambition of the Kaiser. If he failed in winning Paris, he thought that at least he might win Calais.

The present picture portrays another of the German failures. The road to Verdun is blocked not only by the gallant resistance of the French, but by the heaps of German slain, amounting, we are told, to at least five hundred thousand men. In six months the enemy gained only a mile or so of country, and though the furious attacks continue, there is no reason for thinking they will be more successful than those which have broken down in the past.

Why the Germans elected to make their desperate assault on Verdun is another matter. Probably many motives entered into the decision. The German higher staff clearly underrated the fighting value of the French. After the much-advertised determination to smash the Russians on the Eastern frontier, and perhaps to press forward and capture Petrograd, it seemed necessary to gain some triumph in order to satisfy the wishes of Berlin and impress the Allies with the invincible character of the Teuton hosts. Supposing the enemy succeeded in taking Verdun, it would at all events be a spectacular victory, even though the military advantages might not be great. If the attack failed, at all events it might succeed in one of its objects--to destroy the French morale. Therefore the Crown Prince, whose susceptibilities were also to be considered, was set to work to destroy the French salient, and he has sacrificed division after division to accomplish his purpose.

The Crown Prince has not obtained much distinction in the present war, and if the object was to crown him with laurels of victory, the result has been disastrous. To lose as many as five hundred thousand men, when the question of man-power is becoming serious for the Central Empires, is a reckless policy which could only be justified, if justified at all, by a colossal success. As we know, in six months’ fighting the positions remained very much the same--attack and counter-attack, loss and gain, masses of Germans driven up to slaughter and the French still holding the much-coveted positions. Both east and west of the Meuse the story has been the same.

Mr. Raemaekers’ picture remains as true to the facts as ever it was. “On Their Way to Verdun” is a history of enormous massacre and little triumph for the Germans, to whom Verdun appeared originally an easy prey.

W. L. COURTNEY.

_Bethmann-Hollweg’s Peace Song_

One felt interested in the “Campaign for Honorable Peace,” until it was learned that the propagandists designed to proceed on Herr Bethmann-Hollweg’s formula. But the map to which the German Chancellor referred has already altered since he offered it as a basis for negotiation, and before the German speakers have stumped the Fatherland it may happen that still deeper modifications will appear on the existent lines. The “honorable peace” at present in the minds of Prince Wedel and his committee bears a suspicious resemblance to a very respectable victory for Germany, and it is only the continued, carefully fostered ignorance of that country that can make the forthcoming campaign less ridiculous to the German man-in-the-street than it appears to ourselves. The Kaiser’s sham door is still stuffed with high explosives, and Herr Bethmann-Hollweg’s tears will help to water no olive branch.

Consider the only possible conditions of peace that do not involve a treasonable attitude of mind in England and the Allies, and then observe Germany’s attitude to those conditions.

We may reduce the vital points to three, with M. Gustave Hervé; and in taking his terms, be it remembered that we speak with the lips of a great man and a great pacifist.

He recognizes the awful need to destroy the domination of the Central Powers and crush German militarism for the sake of his own ideals; and, that done, dreams of the only possible peace and sees it based on a triple foundation. The first and obvious need is that which the Union of Democratic Control and those who think in its terms seem unable to perceive as the most vital: a defeated Germany. Germany is the obstacle that militates against any sort of future safety for great or small States. It follows, therefore, that until we can impose our peace ideal upon her, no Allied peace worthy the name is possible; and since our terms must be profoundly distasteful to Germany and her first accomplice, it is vain to present them until her power to decline them has been destroyed.

Only from a vanquished Germany may the remaining vital conditions of peace follow. With her defeat she must be called upon to scrap the fatal poisons that led to her insanity, and take her daily food no more from the hands of war lords, hireling professors, and publicists. She must be cleansed, freed of her seven devils, and taught that the only sovereign power human progress can henceforth recognize is the sovereignty of a people’s will. For the fighting kingdoms know now at this bitter cost one eternal truth: that not nations, but their rulers will wars and make them.

If ideals of internationalism falter before this condition, and M. Hervé’s peace will increase the enthusiasm of nationality, his far-reaching view sees greater hopes beyond. For his third stipulation allows no subject peoples. He would have Europe found a practical and living system of justice upon these ruins--a system sprung of honor and honesty, and based on international physical strength.

From such a system federation must sooner or later spring, and the peace ideals of nationalist and internationalist alike grow from dreams into realities.

The victory that can win such terms will in truth be “a victory of industry, commerce, the arts, and humanity.”

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_A German “Victory”_

Although this manifestation of the German spirit is new, and belongs to this war only, yet the spirit itself is as old as Prussian power. That spirit was evident in 1813, in the Napoleonic wars; it was evident in the campaign of Sadowa, and again in the Franco-German war of 1870, when the murder of women and children was proved to be the Prussian form of retaliation for perfectly legitimate acts of war. This cartoon, which first appeared after one of the earlier Zeppelin raids on England, gives another result of the Prussian belief in terrorism as an aid to war; the result is new, but the policy behind it is old.

Because that policy is old, and is a deep-rooted principle of Prussianism, any talk of “peace terms” is futile, and the “honorable peace” of which German deputies talk in their gatherings is an impossibility. There can be no terms for the nation that does these things, no bargaining with it, and the world that has wakened to the real nature of the thing which has attacked civilization will take care that the thing itself has no power to impose “terms” in the day when peace returns.

It is worth noting that Germany alone among the nations has built Zeppelins, and worthy of note, too, that these machines have served no useful military purpose in the decisive actions of the war. Along the battle fronts they do not appear, for they are too fragile to be risked in purely military work. In the great naval battle of Jutland they served no useful purpose, and the war has proved them instruments of murder, safe only in darkness and undefended areas. And in saying that Germany alone has built them in fleets, one says that Germany alone has pinned faith to terrorism and a policy of murder, which is steadily winning its just reward.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_“Waiting”_

Imperial utterances are, or were till lately, treated with great respect in Germany. What the “all-highest” says must surely be true. But a modern oracle, if he wishes to keep his credit, should avoid prediction. He may falsify the past and misread the present with impunity; but he will be wise to leave the future alone. The Kaiser has been imprudent. He began by telling his troops to walk over the “contemptible little British army,” the finest and most experienced professional soldiers in the world; next he informed them that they would all be at home again “at the fall of the leaf,” in 1914; then he hazarded the statement that Russia was done for, and the Allies generally at the end of their resources; and lastly the carefully prepared thrust, which, he declared, was to give France the _coup de grâce_, has missed its aim.

It is impolite to treat an emperor in this way; he is not used to it and does not like it. It is the business of his subjects to see that his reign is a blaze of triumph. A breakdown after so many years of rehearsals! It is really too bad; there must have been gross mismanagement somewhere.

W. R. INGE, _Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral_.

_The Kaiser as a Diplomatist_

To many people, and especially to all Germans, the attitude of the South African Boers in the Great War has been one of its most surprising features. It was not a surprise to Raemaekers, and here, in this cartoon, he states his reason, as the plain homely figure of the old President Kruger expresses it to General Christian de Wet, who took the wrong side. Kruger does not forget how the Kaiser led him on by telegrams and secret messages of sympathy, and after all, when the war broke out in South Africa, this same Kaiser made no attempt to implement his promises. Some time later all the world learned the facts from the Kaiser’s own lips, when he boasted of having been the friend of the British and of having helped them during the South African War, by communicating to General Roberts a strategic plan for crushing the Dutch. There is certainly no reason to suppose that Roberts or Kitchener made any use of the Kaiser’s plan, because they won the victory. If they had used the plan, the result would have been different.

In this cartoon the Kaiser is the ingenious diplomatist once more. Though he deceived the Dutch formerly, he is now trying to induce them to join him against Britain; and he did succeed in perverting the judgment of de Wet. But the solid, homely sense of the Dutch came to the right conclusion. The man who has once deliberately deceived a people is not likely to succeed in deceiving them a second time.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

_Hun Hypocrisy_

When the history of this war is written with a sense of detachment which only time can give--written, moreover, by an impartial neutral, with the insight and intelligence of a Motley or a Hume--it will be interesting and instructive to read the chapters which deal with the conviction obsessing an entire nation that England for some mysterious purposes of her own brought about hostilities, and that Germany, very reluctantly, was forced to draw the sword in defense of the fatherland. No reasonable man can doubt that this conviction is sincere upon the part of a large majority of our enemies. From first-hand evidence it is equally indisputable that the few, the Court Party, for example, and certain writers, have frankly admitted the Teuton aims and ambitions, crystallized into the famous phrase--“Weltmacht oder Niedergang.” The amazing thing--perhaps the most amazing fact of the war--is the moral Atlantic which heaves between the few who know and the many who do not. And the bridging of this illimitable ocean, the future enlightenment of at least sixty million persons, must be, for the moment, the problem which is perplexing and tormenting the minds of the Great General Staff.

Sooner or later--sooner, possibly, than we think--the truth must out. What will happen then? Conjecture is simply paralyzed at the issues involved. Briefly, it comes to this: these sixty millions have been humbugged to an extent unparalleled in history. During three years they have been gorged with lies, swallowed always with avidity and with increasing appetite. The credulity of the ignorant may be taken for granted; in this case it is the credulity of the wise, the so-called intellectuals of Germany, which clamors to Heaven for explanation. Are these schoolmasters, publicists, theologians, and scientists hypocrites? That is the question which our cartoonist puts to us here. That is the question which the impartial historian will be called upon to answer.

Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, have answered that question already. We believe firmly that the informed Huns deliberately befooled their uninformed fellow-countrymen. The few were honest and sincere in the Jesuitical faith that the end, world dominion, justified the means. They scrapped ruthlessly all principles which stood between themselves and an insensate ambition. Had they won through to Paris and London, a nation drunk with victory would have acclaimed their policy. But they have not won through, and the reckoning has to be met.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

_The Prussian Guard_

The German army has fought in this war with the Allies in front of it and behind it the German press.

Never has a war been accompanied by such ink-shed and such wholesale massacre of truth. The Allies have done their bit in this direction, but their bit has been as a mole-hill to Everest compared with the work of the Central Powers.

The fighting men resent it. They don’t like to be told that their foe is a fool, even if they are getting the better of him. When they are getting the worse the statement is a more peculiarly exasperating insult.

They don’t like to be told that their victories are defeats, but they like even less to be told that their defeats are victories. In the one case they feel that the press men are fools, in the other they feel that the press men have made fools of them.

There is a whole lot of common sense in human nature, even in German human nature, and an army hit in its common sense receives a blow.

This is why, perhaps, Hindenburg has been issuing reports lately approaching the truth.

There is a lot of common sense in the old Marshal.

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

_Greek Treachery_

Raemaekers is a keen prophetic politician as well as satirist, and not seldom his pencil has pointed to future events as yet unanticipated by our “sufficient for the day” diplomacy.

One would have thought, however, that the tergiversation of the King of Greece had made it sufficiently clear no good thing could come out of his country while he continued to rule it.

Yet justice must be done to him. To Serbia, indeed, he proved false, borrowing the “scrap of paper” doctrine from his masters; but to the Allies he has preserved an unchanging front, and the logical action of those Powers who affirmed his throne should long ago have been to remove him from it, when he proceeded to abuse the constitution and deprive Venizelos of the power the nation had put into that minister’s hands. Hesitancy and delay have divided a Greece that was united when Venizelos fell, and the sleepless activity of Germany bears the present fruits--so poisonous for us. It passes the wit of the man-in-the-street to understand what secret influence permitted the deadlock; but it seems hard to believe that difficulties connected with Greece’s future have not arisen in the councils of the Allies. Soon the hand that is willing to wound, but afraid to strike, may be powerless to do so, for the situation develops very swiftly and the attitude of the French Admiral du Fournet has left no doubt of the Allied determination.

As we write, after needless bloodshed, Greece gives way, the fighting is at an end and her batteries of mountain guns are about to be surrendered. We are told, also, that the refusal of the Government was not inspired by the King, but by the military, who have formed a secret league with the reservists.

The exasperating problem of Greece has delayed progress very seriously and, indeed, may be seen to have modified the whole course of the war in the Balkans; for had we enjoyed her confidence and insisted on the recognition of Venizelos from the first, the country must long since have become an ally. With her aid, instead of the withdrawal from Gallipoli, there might have been recorded a triumphant campaign with radical results.

But to cry over spilt milk is no business of the present. Concerning the modern Greek it may be written that “unstable as water, he shall not excel”; but we can yet hope that with our adequate recognition and support of the only Greek who counts, his power will triumph and his great spirit fortify a feeble people. His marvellous patience has been worthy of our utmost admiration, and those who would withhold absolute support from him at this critical juncture are certainly not the friends of Greece. That a country of such majestic tradition--a nation that has played her paramount part in the philosophy and art of the world--should be extinguished in this conflagration would not be the least of the tragedies our eyes may yet see; but the danger still exists, unless a sterner and more comprehensive attitude be taken to save Greece from herself and the ruler who is still permitted to occupy her throne.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_The World’s Judgment Seat_

The former German Chancellor was well known to be neither a Pan-German nor a lover of war. He did his best to propitiate the war party by the truculence of his harangues against England; but Reventlow and his friends were notoriously dissatisfied with him. He probably belongs to a large class of moderate-minded Germans who were brought over to the war party by appeals to their fears. The militarists dinned into their ears the ominous facts that Russia was reorganizing and increasing her army, and planning strategic railways; that France was doing the same; that everything pointed to a concerted attack upon Germany, say in 1917. “It is absolutely necessary,” they said, “to strike now, before our enemies are ready.”

This large class probably included the emperor, and without its concurrence the war could hardly have been launched. It is natural for such men to protest that they had no aggressive designs, and that they only wished to protect themselves against attack. It may be true, as far as they are concerned; but it is not true of the soldiers who frightened them for their own ends. Behind the Chancellor, in this picture, hides a ruffian in uniform.

It is also true that Germany has conducted the war in such a manner that that nation is really fighting with a rope round its neck. The moderate party would now welcome peace. But on what terms? These have been divulged; but the Allies do not seem to have thought them worth serious consideration. As long as the military caste is the director of German policy it does not seem likely that any statesmanlike proposal will come from Berlin. Meanwhile, Justice holds the scales and waits in vain for some offer to make reparation for outrages unparalleled in civilized warfare.

W. R. INGE.

_The Kaiser’s Cry for Peace_

A drowning man catches at straws. The Kaiser, when the rising waters threaten to overwhelm his bark, looks for salvation to the dove.

At fairly regular intervals through the length of the war the German Chancellor, speaking in his master’s name, has announced to an unsympathetic world--to the western as well as to the eastern hemisphere--that Germany is ready, nay is longing, for peace--for peace on her own terms. None can doubt the sincerity of the declaration. Her powerful preparations have yielded her, in the field and on the sea, successes of a kind, but they are successes which decide nothing. Her reiterated pleas for peace acknowledge that only the voluntary withdrawal of her foes from the fray can assure her a final triumph. The Kaiser and his friends profess from time to time that they are weary of war’s brutalities and are eager to enjoy its spoils unmolested. The fatuous cry rings very hollow in the ears of the Allies and neutral peoples alike, and humanity outside Germany and her impotent kinsfolk in America marvel at the Kaiser’s and his Chancellor’s waste of breath.

Mr. Raemaekers’ cartoon supplies the key to the situation. The tide, despite all local and temporary appearances to the contrary, is running against the Kaiser. His men and money are dwindling. Foolhardy exploits, which speciously look like victories, are straining his resources to the breaking point. The waves are buffeting him, and unless the dove, which he releases from his hand, brings back to him tidings of a falling flood--tidings beyond all rational hope, his doom is sure.

SIDNEY LEE.

_Tit for Tat_

This cartoon illustrates what is, perhaps, the fundamental principle which governs _Kultur_. The “Will to Conquer” has become such an obsession that it defies not only law, but also those instinctive and primitive compromises upon which law establishes itself. The Huns say: “I hold you to your obligations; I scrap mine.” A Hun can sell munitions to belligerents. During the Boer War they supplied England with anything she wanted. But it is monstrous, according to the Hun code, that Uncle Sam should munition the Allies. The Huns starved the women and children of France. But it is abominable that Hun women and children should be starved by England. One could cite a score of such instances. Raemaekers remembers the treatment accorded by the “All Highest” to Oom Paul. So does everybody--except, apparently, the “All Highest” himself. He and his expected the cordial coöperation of the South Africans whom they had flouted and abandoned.

To what can we attribute this singular expectation?

The answer may be found by the psychologist who has imagination enough to Prussianize himself, and to look, panoramically, at the world from the Prussian viewpoint. Prussia still believes in _Weltmacht_. A Prussian is self-constituted a superman. So convinced is he of world victory that he is amazed and exasperated with those--be they weak or powerful--who dare to question his future supremacy. That supremacy, as he admits candidly, must be established by force. He proposes to rule by fear. He is confounded when he discovers that there are men and women who do not fear him. In this cartoon Kruger puts a question which it may be instructive to attempt to answer.

KRUGER: “You want my people to help you now, and yet when I came to ask you for help you chased me from your door like a dog.”

KAISER: “Quite true. I had forgotten your little affair, which was essentially negligible then as now. Had I helped you, I might have embroiled myself with a Great Power with whom I was not ready to fight. To-day, I am ready. Behold in me, my friend, a World-Conqueror! I give you my All-Highest word that I shall win. What pains and perplexes me is that you don’t back a certain winner. _Hoch dem Kaiser!_”

That, in fine, is the Prussian point of view. Woe to those who do not realize that it “pays” to bow down before the juggernaut of might!

But there must be moments, ever-recurring moments, when the “All-Highest” mutters to his august self: “What will become of ME if I don’t win?”

And at such moments he may recall the vast and pathetic figure of Oom Paul, whom he chased from his door like a dog.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

_Forced Labor in Germany_

England has always had the credit for hypocrisy. The historic commonplace, not wholly undeserved, was this, that with the advantages of Puritanism, we developed its odious features and, from the Commonwealth, began to thank God we were not as other men. The spirit then created proved anathema to the Latin nations, and their accusation, founded on truth, stuck to us.

But civilization may cede the distinction to Germany henceforth, for never until now has self-interest been practised and enforced under the name of God as by the fatherland. Their archaic deity is invoked daily, from the Kaiser to the last poor boy, whose bloodstained pocket-book is found upon his corpse, with penciled prayer that the cup may be taken from him.

Few things have more illuminated the spirit that actuates Germany’s higher command than the answer to America’s Note on the subject of the Belgian and French deportations.

America, as might have been expected, was peculiarly sensitive before a return to the principle of slavery. None has known and felt the meaning of that awful word; none has fought to expunge the fact from civilization as she did. But her Note met the fate of all her Notes. She was told that Germany, and not America, is Belgium’s true friend and that an all-wise and prevenient Government has torn out the remaining adult population of conquered territory into the bosom of the fatherland--for its own sake. Such transparent insults to the intelligence of a great nation were flung at America for two years; but one must rejoice that the day of reckoning has come.

Meantime the raided Belgians, of whom a hundred thousand have been swept into Germany, are working at the point of the bayonet for their conquerors, and this drawing is no cartoon, but a simple transcript of truth repeated in a thousand of the enemy’s munition factories to-day. The German lathe-worker joins the army, and his place is taken by the father of those he goes to slay.

And neutral nations still listen patiently, while this people proclaims itself the “Chosen of the High God.”

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_The Fall of the Child-Slayer_

This is an artist’s fanciful version of the headlong fall of one of those inflated monsters on which the enemy had set such high hopes. Well, we have been inconvenienced not a little by them in our goings and comings by night, and no one need pretend that he likes bombs being dropped on his or his children’s heads out of a midnight sky. But in the old glorious volunteering days we never had such a recruiting sergeant, so that the military value of the Zeppelin need not be denied.

Apart from this manifest effect, there has transpired in this whole business little to disturb the verdict of our optimists that there was nothing to worry about. They venture only under cover of a darkness which prevents them hitting what they dimly see from their once safe heights, which is little, or seeing what they hit, which is much--England being a biggish mark.

And advertising their presence as burglars who knock over coal-scuttles, a boy in an aeroplane flies over them and their miles of aluminium and acres of silk make a Brock’s benefit for an awakened city to cheer. We should cheer less, thinking with some pity of the imprisoned crews, if the affair were conceived with less reckless vagueness, without such disproportion between aim and result. A blind ape with a ton of high explosives could do a good deal of damage in a city with ordinary luck.

But Raemaekers sees this in symbol: “a vulnerable gasbag,” he seems to say, “flaming, spectacular always, to destruction.”

JOSEPH THORP.

_The Climber_

Fritz, apart from the blood with which he stained every rung of his two ladders, climbed well, as these things go; unfortunately for him, he was not careful at the outset to see that his ladders were solidly based. Not only did he base them both in bad diplomacy, but he added to these bases a lack of understanding of the temper of the nations whom he opposed, and then again he added a scrupulous disregard for what are generally termed the humanities. He viewed mankind as subservient to the machinery that mankind should control, whether it be machinery of government, of war, of trade, or of thought and philosophy. Organization was of more moment to him than the spirit that should control organization, and for that he will pay the penalty.

One may observe, with a second glance at this cartoon, that though Fritz has reached very nearly to the tops of his two ladders, yet he will never get beyond the last rungs, even if he steadies himself and his supports sufficiently to get on to those rungs. For over his head there outthrusts a ledge. Could he surmount it, he might overlook the world, and one may call that ledge the universal conscience, which the artist has pictured elsewhere in different form. It is the last obstacle, and it is insurmountable. With his crimes and cruelties, it is unthinkable that Fritz should ever finish his climb, for the conscience of the world will not permit it.

And yet another point that the cartoon suggests. This climber, the typical German, is not the stuff of which successful climbers are made. Muscle is there, and a certain amount of brain, but success in an enterprise of such magnitude demands a soul, and for sign of that one may look in vain.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_Culture at Wittenberg_

Ecce Homo!

In the hideous record of what took place at Wittenberg, the fact which to me, personally, stands out in grotesque salience is the cowardice of the Hun doctors, who lied, incontinent, from the ravages of the pestilence which their negligence had provoked. In England, before the war, Hun doctors were exalted above our own. That we owe much to their indefatigable patience and research cannot be denied. To belittle their achievements, especially in bacteriology, would be fatuous. And it would be as fatuous to indict the courage of the many because we hold indisputable evidence of the cowardice of the few. Nevertheless, the facts of Wittenberg remain, an indelible stain upon the Herren Professoren, and Raemaekers, in this cartoon, indicates unerringly the cause which brought about so ignominious a retreat.

They had turned their faces from that ineffable Face which looks down in sorrow and pity upon the sufferings of Mankind.

However we may regard that Face, whether as a precious symbol of the Love which redeemed the world or as a Real and Divine Presence, this much is certain. What It stands for in the history of civilization cannot be ignored. It sustained the early martyrs and countless myriads since during bitter hours of suffering and torment; It has illumined all battlefields; It shines most steadfastly in storm and stress; It loses its incomparable splendor only in the sunshine of a too smug prosperity.

The doctors of Wittenberg may have glimpsed It, and glimpsing It reviled It! Even to them that Face, divested by them of divine attributes, must possess a material significance, inasmuch as none can escape sorrow and pain. The cartoonist portrays the “All-Highest” hiding behind the colossal image of Culture, the culture which has sprung to life at his touch, the machine which has mastered its monarch, the machine which defies God!

Cowering behind that machine, aghast at the power he is unable to control, we may leave the “All-Highest,” who boasts that he is God’s vice-regent upon earth.

Culture at Wittenberg!

Culture bolting from Wittenberg!

Perhaps Raemaekers will give us a cartoon showing the back of Culture. We behold her in this cartoon crowned: we should like to see her uncrowned.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

_The “Civilians”_

Here, with a vengeance, is majesty shorn of its externals. Although in this cartoon we get Raemaekers in lighter vein, yet the irony and force of the artist are as fully expressed as in those grimmer studies from which he who runs may read the fate of Belgium, of Serbia, and of the many non-combatants who have found death at sea through Germany’s mad dream of conquest.

The elder Willie, obviously, does not like the set of his coat, after the glory of his many uniforms; the younger Willie, apparently, has finished his trying on, and from his expression the result is as much as he could expect, and no more. In both there is that suggestion of posturing, of playing to the gallery and being determined that the clothes shall be suited to the part, for which William Hohenzollern was noted before ever this war showed him as the most infamous ruler of modern time.

There is a certain bitter correctness in Raemaekers’ estimate of these exalted personages. Shorn of their uniforms, posturing before a mirror in a slightly Parisian (using the adjective in the pre-war, foppish sense) garb, they show as very little men--rather contemptible, in fact, as, of course, they are. For it is open to any man to dream of ruling the world, and of setting nations by the throat for the sake of an ambition that civilization cannot tolerate; it is open to any head of a government to set the machinery in motion which might gratify that ambition--but it is open only to a _man_, in the very best of that one syllable, to bring his ambition to fruition, and even then only by strict adherence to natural law. And these two, posturing as Raemaekers makes them posture here, have ignored law; they had the wit to dream, but not the brain to make reality of dream, nor the moral sense through which they might have made the world acknowledge the dream as worth while translating into actualities. Probably, if they were set in a St. Helena of to-day, they would fold their arms and try on cocked hats, as once they tried on uniforms. But though the clothes declare the man, they cannot make of him other than he is, and these two are mere posturers, whatever may be their attitudes.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_Two Peals of Thunder_

Here the artist has depicted the Kaiser as a modern Ajax, not defying the lightning but afraid of it. The arch Hun sees the neutral Powers one by one abandoning their neutrality and entering the lists against him and his gospel of force and world-power for Germany. Italy, after slow progress and positive and seemingly disastrous set-backs, has emerged to the fullness of a success which has proved invaluable to her Allies as a whole. In Rumania’s dark hour there is yet a gleam of hope and the indications of a dawn which shall see her triumphant and reaping where she has sown, and ultimately honored among the nations for the part she has determined to play in the struggle for freedom and for international integrity. The reward of high courage and faith is often not at the moment, but is none the less certain for all that. Truly the keenest of all edges is upon the sword drawn in the cause of freedom. Rumania has drawn that sword, and it will not be sheathed until freedom from tyranny has been won, not alone for her but for the nations of Europe as a whole.

CLIVE HOLLAND.

_A Universal Conscience_

Nothing should have more utterly “staggered humanity” in the conduct and prosecution of a war that has been from first to last an exhibition of Hunnish ferocity than the elasticity of the Hun “conscience.” The Prussian, indeed, seems to have assembled in his person all the most ignoble qualities of the untutored savage, and the most despicable vices of the political and moral Chadband and Stiggins of common quotation. Deeds which should have served to bring the whole neutral world actively upon the side of the Allies, which should have called forth protests that could not be misunderstood by the offenders, have been made even more revolting and unforgivable by reason of the horrible association by the Kaiser and his myrmidons of the Divine Being with them.

“Gott mit Uns” has not merely been adopted as a motto by a people who have been guilty of atrocities which rank with those of Nero and Attila, but has been used as a cloak for deeds of diabolism which have caused a shudder to run through the civilized world. And in this cartoon the artist has sought to depict an outraged conscience pointing the finger of accusation at the world which has looked on, contenting itself with mild protests. Grasped in the hand of this accusing figure is the Hun; a dripping dagger, which has been used to assassinate innocent women, children, and civilians is in one hand, and a bomb containing poison gas in the other. A Hun with his favorite motto inscribed upon his belt. Surely a sight to make angels weep, and the Recording Angel to seek to veil her face.

The Hun at bay has added to the list of crimes to be ultimately laid at his door that of slave-raider. And the tears of women and girls, and the blood of the men who resisted the slave-raiders, cry aloud to Heaven from the stricken land of Belgium and the conquered Provinces of France.

And the slave-raider’s cry is, “Gott mit Uns,” accompanied by the crack of rifle, the agonized cry of mothers and daughters separated from their men folk, and the wail of little children left to starve and die.

There is an old saying, “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” That madness, productive of diabolical wickedness, is eating into the very brain and vitals of Germany. And like a mad dog she must, in the persons of her responsible leaders, be destroyed utterly.

CLIVE HOLLAND.

_Joan of Arc and St. George_

Not only those who are fighting the battle of tyranny and defending force against the arms of civilization have failed to see this dazzling white light in which they stand. Many who now support the Central Kingdoms, to the extent of desiring an indecisive peace, are similarly blind to the pure ray which bathes these allegorical figures. The foulness of the shadowed protagonists comes from within. It belongs to their spirits; and yet those who desire peace can survey facts and, in the name of righteousness, wish that no humility or indignity should fall upon them. The hearts of men are being searched out and by their deeds shall men be judged. Vain, then, to beg that Germany be not thrust beyond the pale of nations, for who put her there? Vain to pray that no humiliation or indignity fall to her lot when peace returns, for who have brought them upon her? She has outraged herself and stands humiliated before her own conscience. “Let no wound fall upon her inviolate land,” cry the peacemakers. As well might they pray that a man shall escape the harvest he has sown. Not Belgium, not Serbia, not Armenia stream with innocent blood and lie polluted under the filthiness of these premeditated crimes; but Germany, Austria, Turkey reek to the hearts of their capitals. Their kingdoms are defiled, their streets shadowed and stained by their own abominations; the unnumbered ghosts of murdered women and children haunt their homes.

Let us hear no more cant that Germany is a great and noble nation, that the Turk is an honorable, clean fighter and a good friend. We cannot see one or other of them for the blood and tears of their defenseless victims; nor do we desire to see them, nor breathe the same air with them until the lustral waters have washed and the cleansing fires have purged. We must know with whom we are called to make peace before the word can touch our lips; for shall honest kingdoms be ordered to treat with this horned murderer, or the leprous reptile crawling away from the light into familiar darkness? Let the defeated nations cast out the devils that have led them into their present degradation before they dare to call upon the sacred name of Peace.

A distinguished Academician, Mr. Nicholas Butler, President of Columbia University, has very effectively voiced the situation in a recent utterance. He holds that “no greater opportunity for an act of constructive and far-reaching statesmanship has ever presented itself in modern history than that now presented to the Governments of the Allied Powers.”

May we be found equal to this tremendous task when the way to humanity’s triumph has been flung open by the spirits of Joan of Arc and St. George, who typify our united arms.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_The Bringers of Happiness_

“We will bring happiness to the conquered country after the war.”

Pomposity, ponderosity, machine-like movement, ruthless, cold, and calculating logic, which sticks at nothing, not even the lowest of low cunning, want of sense of humor, the absence of anything like sportsmanship or chivalry--these are qualities which the average Englishman does not admire, and finds it difficult even to understand. He cannot help reading his own characteristics, which are for good and bad so different, into other men and creatures. He cannot understand their entire absence, and it is difficult for him to believe that men so differently constituted can exist.

Mr. Raemaekers wants to make us realize the fact, to present it embodied. The legitimate emphasis of his caricature has this for its object.

Ponderous, pompous, pachydermatous, self-satisfied, fat, successful and comfortable; but without feeling for the comfort of others. We have here the type of German military domination. Submit to Germany and you will be happy, in the German way, which is the best way, because it is German. If you don’t like that, you must lump it. That is the message of this speaking likeness.

HERBERT WARREN.

_The Old Poilu_

Of all Raemaekers’ cartoons this is the one that pleases me most. It is the French Army.

The Grand Army that tramped away into the night after the bugles of 1812-15 left behind it more than a sentiment and a story. It was the spirit of that army that broke the Germans at the Marne and held them at Verdun, and it is the same spirit that is holding them now on the Somme.