EVER since the great poet, Willem Bilderdijk, more than a hundred years ago, finding the intellectual life of his country submerged in Teutonic sentimentality, turned the German doves out of the temple of the Dutch Muses, Holland has followed the intellectual example of France more than that of any other country. The Dutch have a passion for individualism which carries them in a direction exactly opposite to the moral and artistic tyranny of PrussianKultur, and gives a totally different coloring to their respect for mental distinction. But the insidious propaganda of Berlin had of late done fresh mischief, and when the war broke out a considerable portion of the Dutch clergy and a small but violently militant university clique of professors showed themselves surprisingly bitter against the Allies, and particularly against France. There was a reflection of this in the ruling class, while the conduct of the Government, although perfectly correct in regard to the Entente Powers, was not considered by the mass of the Dutch people to protect the nation vigilantly enough against the coarse propaganda of Germany.
In Raemaekers’ cartoon we see this propaganda in action. A corpulent journalist,bocheof theboches, fitted out with plenty of money and a suit of Dutch peasant clothes provided by Wilhelmstrasse, struts about in Holland, and being now “a genuine Dutchman,” will start a newspaper in the German interest. But the real Dutch see through him and laugh at his pretensions.
The fall of Mr. Trub, the eminent statesman whose sympathies were openly with the Allies, was considered in Germany to be a triumph for Teutonic intrigue in Holland. The success of Mr. Cort van der Linden seemed to confirm this impression. But the corpulent and beardedboche, in whom Raemaekers symbolizes the secret journalistic work of Germany in Holland, acted too insolently and went too far. He awakened the Vaderlandsche Club, or Club of Patriots, which has been formed specifically to guard Dutch interests and to oppose with vigor the advances of Germany. The response with which this association has been greeted in all parts of the country; the discomfiture of the “Toekomst,” the newspaper mainly financed by our stout friend in the baggy breeches; and the sustained prosperity of the “Telegraaf,” the patriotic journal which Germany attempted first to purchase and then to suppress, show that Holland can distinguish a travestied Prussian from “a genuine Dutchman.”
EDMUND GOSSE.
THERE is not much laughter in this war, but when Raemaekers chooses he can recall to us for a little while the hearty, lung-filling delight of other days. And here we have it. A Kaiser so prayerfully, passionately ridiculous, a Tirpitz so stupendously, monumentally coy, and a cause for rejoicing so very slender, must tickle even a hyphenated sense of humor. Since the Battle of Jutland, of course, the joke is better still. But even before that the German Navy was the one item in the German array which could legitimately be found amusing, rather than painful.
Did not the Germans, bottled up in Kiel, announce that they were roving the seas looking for the British Navy, which at the same time, they said, was cowering in its East Coast harbors? And did not our official report of the Battle of the Bight begin with that sublimely unselfconscious phrase, “Starting from a point near Heligoland, a squadron of our fleet,” etc., etc.? Look at Heligoland on the map, for every time one looks at it it is really farther from England and nearer Germany than one had remembered; farther from our East Coast havens, and nearer to that corked bottle of German fizz, the Kiel Canal. Those first six words are a naval victory in themselves.
So we can enjoy with special zest the idea of the Kaiser, bold and noble baron, violating the modesty of village-maiden Tirpie with his ardent embraces, because she has playedUnaso beautifully that even the lion did not know she was there!
H. PEARL ADAM.
MOST of the horrors committed in civilized societies are the work of men or women who loathe the things they do, but would rather do the thing they loathe than endure some other evil that seems intolerable. The wretched Crippen poisons his wife, not because he hates her, or takes any pleasure in killing her, but because her continued existence makes the kind of life he wishes to lead impossible. But crime—and particularly murder—seems to have a fascination of its own. It is a truth preserved to us in the popular phrase, “tasting blood.” Those who come under the spell grow into maniacs, fiends in human shape, who, having plotted their first murder to gain some end that seems irresistibly desirable, find an unexpected and terrible excitement in it, and go on to the second from an irresistible desire to taste that dreadful pleasure again. These men are the legendary figures of horror—Bluebeard of the nursery, Jack the Ripper of history.
When Germany resolved to assault the civilization of the centuries and conquer the western world before that world grew too strong to be conquered, having no other motive than to annex the territories and steal the wealth of neighboring nations who had done her no harm, she embarked upon a course of crime on so vast and appalling a scale that she was doomed to exemplify in her own monstrous person the whole psychology of crime. It is quite likely that the first murders committed in Belgium were done not for the love of killing, but with the excellent (?) military purpose of terrorizing a conquered population, and so lessening the necessity for a garrison to keep them in order. The first murders of English men, women, and children, perpetrated at the bombardment of Yarmouth, Scarborough, and Whitby, may have been intended merely as a demonstration that Germany could strike even at an island that was impregnable. The first use of the submarine against a merchant ship may have been made in the hope that a mere demonstration of frightfulness would save her from the necessity of repeating it, by frightening every trading ship off the sea. But indulgence in blood brought upon our enemy the cruellest of all punishments. It brought an insatiable appetite, until the killing of old men and boys, but particularly of women and small children, has become a thing necessary to the men that do it and to the nation that sends them on their mission of murder.
ARTHUR POLLEN.
RAEMAEKERS is a citizen of a small neutral nation, and it is a great part of his European significance that he has perceived that such nations cannot really remain neutral in an ultimate and spiritual sense in a conflict like the present one. Whether they shall remain neutral in a purely political sense is a matter for them and for them alone to decide; and the Allies—in marked contrast to the consistent policy of Prussia—have made many sacrifices in this war rather than violate justice by attempting to interfere with their liberty of decision.
The fact remains that there is no small, free State in Europe which does not know that the victory of Prussia would be the end of its freedom. Were so abominable a conclusion to this war still thinkable, it is certain that the independent self-governing thing called Holland would exist no more. Her fate would, indeed, be ultimately worse than that of the martyred and ravaged Belgian nation; for she would not even be able to point to a heroic legend of resistance such as has always presaged the resurrection of murdered nationalities. She would simply be a part of the Prussian Empire. No Dutchman, with the memory of the great historic achievements of his race before his eyes, desires her to become that.
Indeed, it is the whole condemnation of Prussia that no human being outside the limits of her direct control could possibly desire such a fate for his own people. Yet that is unquestionably the fate that would have befallen every free people in Europe had the conspiracy, so long matured by Prussia, and so nearly successful, accomplished what its promoters hoped.
CECIL CHESTERTON.
“NOW’S our chance; he’s asleep.” Mr. Raemaekers is, it must be remembered, a Dutchman, and a certain percentage of his “picture sermons” is addressed especially to the “congregation of faithful Dutch people” and meant first and foremost to be understood, and taken to heart, by them. This is one. A German officer, whose spurs act as a sort of cloven hoof and betray his real character, is posing as a Dutch pastor, orPredikant. He wears the preacher’s gown and the white bands of his sacred office, and holds before his face an elaborate and ingenious mask, representing the fat and foolish face, the snowy whiskers and innocent “goggles” of a pastor, surmounted by his professional tall hat, which it will be noticed is only the front half of the “cylinder.” The contrast of the real face behind the mask, with its grin of low cunning, is very clever.
Armed with this disguise, he has crept up to a Dutch fisherman, a Vollendammer or some one of this sort, in his fur cap, and broad-beamed breeches, peacefully sleeping on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, and, likeHamlet’streacherous stepfather, “stealing upon his secure hour” pours into his ear from a phial the “leperous distilment” of falsehood, which, if it is not to take his life, is to poison his mind and whole being.
For the Dutch, doubtless, there is some special allusion, and perhaps the mask may suggest a portrait. But for all men everywhere the meaning is patent enough. Poison gas and poisoned wells are not the only poisoned weapons the German has used against the Allies—including our Dutch compatriots in Southwest Africa—or against neutrals the world over. The moral air we breathe, the wells of truth—he has sought to poison these also, and has not hesitated to enlist either the Catholic priest or the Lutheran pastor in his sinister service.
HERBERT WARREN.
THE professorial pedant who directs the internal administration of the Prussian autocracy has created a system which justly rouses the admiration of all who study the methods of cleverness and ingenuity. The last ounce of food is weighed out, the last egg is counted and distributed, and the last pfennig is taken from the safe of the private individual for the use of the State and replaced by the paper of War Loans. It is an astonishing triumph of economy and skill, but to Raemaekers it is all imposture. Such achievements of mere cleverness mean nothing to him; he knows that this is not the truth of the world, for he cannot hear in it any trace of the harmony and the divine music of the universe; and here he points the real fact that lies under and behind this whole pretentious sham. The very ham which lies on the table is merely wood, painted to look like a ham, while the safe is labelled in Dutch with the words: “All is gold that glitters in here.” The wisdom of experience struck out the proverb “All is not gold that glitters,” but the official direction of the German Empire will have it that everything that glitters in the Germanbureauis gold. The future will reveal whether that proverb or the new professorial dictum is correct. The Dutch artist has no doubt about it.
The official who is now putting on his coat is going to button it over a great cushion of imposture, which will give him the appearance of good feeding and good condition of body. He has arranged his wares to deceive the people and to make them think that they have everything, when they have only the barest minimum. What more should they require? Everything that is needed is at their disposal, whether it be food or wood. What more could they want? The world wants a good deal more, but the docile German is content—up to a certain point.
WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.
THE “Black Hole of Calcutta” and the “Well of Cawnpore,” those dark spots on the history of India, stand out in their blackness against fairly light surroundings. Wittenberg, as dark in its way as either, scarcely stands out in the History of Brutality which is the history of the German conduct of the great war.
The terrible thing about Germany is the fact that she seems to have taken out letters patent for vileness; that vileness has become her right and prerogative, and that the neutral nations have accepted the fact as a natural one.
A very mean man, once he gets a reputation for meanness, can commit mean acts without raising much adverse comment.
In the same way Germany, by a system of uniform brutality, can commit “Wittenbergs” without creating any great excitement in the minds of neutral onlookers.
If England were to starve her German prisoners and set dogs on them and thrash them, and force them to labor after the fashion of Germany, the howl of outraged neutrals would be heard through the two Americas and the Scandinavias.
Germany does these things and worse, and there is no excitement over the business. It is the German method.
But, thank God, the future of humanity is not in the hands of the neutrals, and the men whose part it will be to punish crimes will remember Wittenberg. If not, Raemaekers will remind them.
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
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,kourbashin 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.
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.
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 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 theBirkenhead—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.
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. Theremayhave 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 theLusitania, theArabic, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 thecoup 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.
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.
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.