THERE is no doubt a certain unfairness in the inevitable wartime method of laying the burden of the crimes of war upon this or that pair of shoulders. Princes in particular must pay this penalty attached to their august station. And few can have less just reason to complain than this slim heir of the Hohenzollerns who so thirsted for the glory of war. He has found out by now that it is a less glorious affair than it seemed when set forth in heady, unwise speech (after unwise dining) from the box of a Danzig theater.
Deprived of his expected bays by the idiotic obstinacy of the so utterly decadent French, his fond parent bestows on him the Orderpour le Méritewith oak leaves. It is not quite easy to see why. Surely there cannot have been any obscure sardonic reference to tanning.
But if, as the artist suggests, and the plainest reading of the facts of the fruitless Verdun assault seems to confirm, lives of men were squandered in a reckless attempt to save the princeling’s face (which was, in fact, beyond saving), then does he richly deserve the grim decoration with which in the name of infamy he is here invested—the Order of Butchery, with knives. And you may view the crosses upon the pathetic mounds before Verdun as so many entries in the Recording Angel’s ledger.
JOSEPH THORP.
SAME here!
Same, I suppose, in every country.
The final necessity has put to the proof that which goes to the making of a man and of a nation.
The man who is prepared to lay down his life for his country simply regards it as a duty, and does it regardless of everything. And Duty is a noble leader.
The man who is not prepared to give up his usual pleasures and dissipations, even though his country be in extremity, looks askance at the call, labels it militarism, and will have none of it.
Every age and every nation has its shirkers, who have been only too willing to let any but themselves bear their burdens so that their own personal comfort might not be interfered with. And shirkers such as these have the deserved contempt of every honest man.
But, in strictest justice to the few—like the Friends, and those who believe with them that force is no remedy—while one cannot but wonder what would have become of the world if evil were to be allowed to ravage it at will, and while one finds it difficult to view matters from their standpoint, it must be acknowledged that the military coercion of genuine conscience in these days is an anachronism which galls one’s feelings.
The one thing we have now to guard against in this free land of ours is lest in breaking by force the unspeakable tyranny of Prussian militarism we lay our own necks under an equal yoke.
JOHN OXENHAM.
GERMANIA loved music and so the troubadour sang to her.
Gaily the troubadour sang of glory and empire, and the good German sword.
And he sang a song ofKultur, a pocketful of loot.
And a song of tears, the tears of widows and orphans in other lands, widows of foolish men who had denied her omnipotent will; and of foolish reluctant virgins to whom was given the shining compensation of bearing sons to her flushed warriors.
And if he sang of her own sons that lay before Liége, and by the Yser, and on the high road to Paris and to Calais, and Petrograd, it was still a song of glory in a minor but triumphant key.
For also he sang a song of an all-highest promise that, wreathed with the splendid bays of victory, her sons should return before the next ripening of the harvest. But the harvest was gathered and they came not.
And then he sang a song of the sea with the moan of the winds in it, and the cries of little children—which for a sea-song was not a pleasant song.
And thereafter with a fine operatic vehemence he broke into a song of glorious hate.
And again he sang (in a queer mocking voice) of the promise. But another harvest was garnered (and eaten) and still her sons returned not.
And she began to be afraid.
So (for he had a pretty wit) he sang again a song of glory and feasting, and there was laughter in his voice.
And at the last a song of thanks most indubitably sincere.
And she turned and looked upon the troubadour and found that he was Death—in the high boots of a German Hussar.
And she stopped her ears, not to mute his singing, but to shut out the thunder of the guns that came down all the winds.
JOSEPH THORP.
ABITTER satire on the moral and intellectual claims of Germany. The conquering hero of the twentieth century and the bearer ofKulturis no mere Hun. He is a “throw-back” to an ancestral type far more remote than Attila, who was a comparatively polished person. He is primitive Man, not Rousseau’s imaginaryl’homme naturel, but theUrmensch, a veritable monster, gross, bloated, abominable, compact of evil, and more repulsive than the wild beasts he has tamed to do his hideous will. They are monstrous creatures too, but dull and brutish. They are incapable of moral judgment; they follow their instincts and know no better. But he knows. He is Man, to whom has been given understanding and lordship over all the beasts. He is their master by reason of his superior brain, and that superiority is the measure of his depravity. By choosing these savage creatures to be his companions and to do his pleasure he proclaims himself far lower than they, because he might have chosen otherwise.
We know those favorite satellites of his. One flies overhead—a vulture with gore dripping from beak and claws. Two others walk behind their master in docile servitude and ape his bearing as well as their dull senses and uncouth forms allow. One is a gorilla, with bared fangs and the glare of senseless destructiveness in his eyes; the other is a whiskered wolf, sly, murderous and ruthless. They bear the hero’s train and wear the marks of approbation he has bestowed upon them for the services they have rendered by the exercise of the qualities proper to their kind.
And there is one other. Ever as he goes, there wriggles along by his side a snake—that old serpent, the devil and the father of lies.
So accompanied and swelling with pride the conquering hero swaggers on over the bleached bones that bear witness to his triumph. He has decked his repulsive form with the incongruous trappings of civilization, and his foul visage wears an air of ineffable self-satisfaction and arrogant disdain. In his own conceit he cuts a splendid figure and is the object of universal admiration. From his girdle hang the heads of his latest victims and in his right hand he carries, delicately poised as a scepter and sign of sovereignty, a cudgel tipped with the hand of a child hacked off at the wrist. This is his title of honor. The savage beasts that accompany him cannot aspire to such majesty; they do not prey on their own kind.
And that is how a neutral sees the German hero.
ARTHUR SHADWELL.
IT appears to me that Raemaekers’ wonderful cartoons more often than not fall naturally into two main classes: the subtle and the direct. In both methods of appeal he is a past-master, and his message never fails to drive itself home, either through the medium of one’s intellect or one’s heart. Here we have a good and vivid example of the direct method of gaining our sympathy. An appeal to the emotional rather than to the intellectual within us.
The woes of devastated Belgium, of its starving population, of its desolate homes, of its orphaned children, may be said by some to be an “oft told tale.” But surely none looking upon this most poignant drawing can fail to understand much of the tragedy and misery brought about by the German occupation of Belgian soil and the methods ofKulturwhich for a period of three years now have held sway in that unhappy land.
Those of us who know the facts—the things which do not always get into the papers, as the phrase is—the wilful starvation of the poor by their relentless conquerors, can best understand and appreciate the artist’s message.
What a pathetic picture this is! The starved woman—all the roundness and beauty of womanhood and motherhood brutally stamped out of her face and figure by the state of things brought about by the rule of the Hun; the child clinging to her mother with the terror and amazement which is the most piteous of all expressions that can come into and be graven upon the face of childhood. Both bear in their faces and forms the cruel marks of starvation and suffering.
And yet there are those abroad in the land who can talk and write of “saving Germany from too much humiliation.” Too much humiliation! For one, I say that if Germany can be dragged in the dust; if her rulers can be made to eat the bread of humiliation; if her bestial-minded military officials, who have deported women and girls from Belgium and France to God only knows where and to what end, can be brought to adequate punishment, then there is still some justice left in this warring world and some hope for poor, struggling, vexed, and fearful humanity. Unless Germany is conquered and humiliated, unless the wrongs of Belgium and the other devastated territories are avenged, we and the millions of our Allies will have suffered, fought, and died for the greatest cause the world has ever known—and in vain.
From the welter of battle, after the shouts of the fighting men have died away, must emerge a new basis of society and a set of new ideals in international conduct. And it is up to all of us to see to it that this comes about.
CLIVE HOLLAND.
“ISEE you can hold them up, but——”
The whole world sees that Germany can hold them up. Strength is concentrated first on one side, and then on the other, and at the time this cartoon was first published the little figure sitting up on the Western side watched, unmoved alike by German promises and German threats. It watched while the days of the Marne went by and proved that German efforts in the West would be confined to “holding up”—that the capture of Paris and of Calais were mere dreams that must pass unfulfilled. It watched the steady thrusting back of Russia, the apparent success in building an Eastern defense that could be held up indefinitely. Then it added its weight to the Western boulder, and the holding up process went on.
Neither boulder has yet fallen; the strong man is not yet exhausted, but the whole world knows what the end must be. Germany could not afford a mere defensive war—from the outset she knew that decision must be won in the first months, and that the alternative to this was defeat. This grim figure, bent on “holding up” the two main fronts, is typical of Germany to-day, a raging barbarian, wearying under the impossible task. For such a task there was needed not only physical strength, but spiritual strength, ideals as well as machinery, and soul as well as brain. By his methods of war this soulless barbarian has added to the weights that he must hold up; he has misinterpreted the meaning of civilization, misunderstood the aims common to humanity outside Germany. The weight that he must hold up and away is not merely that of Britain, Russia, France, and the rest of the Allies; it is the weight of all men who understand freedom rightly, steadily crushing freedom’s antithesis.
E. CHARLES VIVIAN.
YOU shall, Germany, you shall!
You shall have even more than ever you expected—but not after the manner of your expectation.
Even the burglar who, after long and arduous and risky training in his profession, and careful plotting and planning, and detailed hard work with jimmies and blowpipes and center-bits, has collared the swag and been caught in the act, does not whine like this. If he is a wise man he surrenders at discretion, puts a philosophic face on it, and plans more artistic work while in confinement. If he is a hothead, he puts up a fight and gets it in the neck.
But he never whines for recompense for the nefarious trouble he has gone to.
Germany has not yet learned her lesson. She has burglariously and treacherously broken into her neighbors’ houses and seized them and their contents.
The cost to herself, in life, money—and, more than all, in the estimation of the world at large—is as yet hidden from her. When the bill is presented and her bloodshot eyes are opened to it, it will astound her.
For—somehow or other—it will have to be paid—to the last farthing. And while she is in confinement for her diabolical misdeeds, the world, it is to be fervently hoped, will see to it that all further power for mischief will be taken from her forever.
This burglar has intrenched himself among his plunder. He would negotiate with the besieging police to be allowed to keep something at all events for all his trouble.
He shall. He shall keep what he has earned—the loathing and contempt of every honest man under the sun.
JOHN OXENHAM.
IT seems to be the irony of fate that Germany possesses everything good in an inverted, it may perhaps be said a “perverted,” form.
We all know the charms of the “Chocolate Soldier,” who originated, if we remember rightly, like the best flavored chocolate, in France.
Here we have a “Chocolate Soldier” of a very different kind. A young officer, of the familiar decadent Lothario type, is presenting a handsome stick of chocolate to a little Belgian or French girl.
At the side is an old man, evidently got up as a stage property, his face exceedingly cross as though he disliked the job, but his attitude rather ambiguous.
In the distance is the official military “filmer,” smug and grinning, waiting to turn the handle in order to obtain a “moving” picture for the German “movies.”
Mr. Raemaekers’ satire is most strongly displayed in the child’s face and clenched fists, fully visible to the spectator, but whichwill not appearin the film. It appears also, though less obviously, in the cross old gentleman who will come out there as a benevolent pastor blessing the whole proceeding.
It is another instance of the systematic deception practised on the German people and the neutrals.
Monsieur Forain, the French Raemaekers, has something like it in his “Haltez-la, et souriez.” It is not quite the same, but suggests that both cartoons are based on fact, as doubtless they are.
HERBERT WARREN.
AT the beginning of his reign Ferdinand was, or pretended to be, an ardent Russophile. Then something happened which made him think that he had been backing the wrong horse. Perhaps it was the result of the Russo-Japanese War; perhaps it was because little Prince Boris did not receive the usual decoration from St. Petersburg when he was made honorary colonel of the Russian Regiment of Minsk. We may be sure, at any rate, that the motive was not affection for Germany or the German Empire. That great nation has not the gift of inspiring affection, least of all in small peoples within reach of her claws.
Ferdinand was bribed, and bribed heavily, we may be certain; and, like the rulers of other Balkan States, he and his advisers thought for a time that the Central Powers were going to win. He thought he saw his way to an increase of territory at the expense of Serbia, perhaps also of Greece. Some say that he dreamed of reigning at Constantinople. These hopes must be wearing rather thin now. The time has not yet come for turning his coat; but if, or when, it seems to him safe and expedient to leave the Kaiser in the lurch, he will do it without the slightest scruple.
Meanwhile, there was no danger in making the Emperor of Austria his confidant; the poor old gentleman, if he understood what was said to him, probably thought the idea a very sensible one, and wished heartily that he had come to terms with Russia.
W. R. INGE.
GERMANY stands convicted of such bestial crime upon land and sea that one can only come to the conclusion her offence results not from passing aberration or the ebriety of war, but indicates an infection deep-seated and chronic. Her recent Imperial Government statistics of crime before the war indicated very surely that some deep, moral distemper was conquering the German character and running like a plague through her spiritual and sociological life.
It has been said that the problem is one for the anthropologist rather than the lawyer; yet even if the Prussian be not a Teuton, but a Tatar, his indifference to every human instinct would still remain inexplicable. For others of the Tatar stock are amenable to the evolution that time brings, and now pursue the business of war under modern conditions that embrace respect for prisoners and wounded, non-combatants, women and children.
Among the numberless instances of murder and piracy on the high seas space permits here but to dwell upon one, which has by no means received the attention it deserves. International problems involved by the destruction of American citizens have tended to focus public opinion on the “Lusitania” and “Essex” murders; but consider again a crime in the Black Sea and the depraved temper it implies.
On the thirtieth day of March, while lying motionless off Cape Fathia, the Russian hospital ship “Portugal” was destroyed in broad daylight by a submarine, despite the fact that she bore all necessary marks demanded by the Geneva Convention and Hague Covenant.
There perished fourteen ladies of the Red Cross; fifty surgeons and physicians; many male and female nurses; many Russian and French sailors. But for the fact that a Russian destroyer was in the vicinity, the fatalities must have been larger. A great hospital equipment was also lost to humanity.
Well might the Russian Government declare this outrage a flagrant infraction of the rights of man and an act of common piracy, while asking the judgment of all civilized countries on such barbarism.
The people that perpetrated and applauded this act denies civilization, and one may fairly argue that the national conscience, not only of her fighting forces, but of those behind them, will soon reach a pitch where disintegration must follow. The evolution of morals alone must break them, for human nature cannot suffer this reaction.
Meantime we wait in vain for the Allies’ Note informing Germany of our intention with respect to her shipping. Did she know that we designed an eye for an eye, a ton for a ton, she might yet hesitate upon a course that promised to deplete her merchant marine after the war in the ratio of her destruction. The point is equally vital to the weak maritime neutrals, who see their merchant fleets dwindle and their protests ignored by a nation that respects nothing on earth but force.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
“IWONDER how long my dear friend and ally will be able to stand this?”
So “Wilhelm” is made to remark, as he peers over from behind his parapet, safely guarded with barbed wire, and sees the aged Francis Joseph receiving blow after blow, on the one side from the Italians, on the other from the Rumanians. The caricature, it must be admitted, is not quite up-to-date in one respect, for Wilhelm has certainly done his best, and so far only too successfully, to tear off the smaller of these foes. But it is more than up-to-date in another, for the ancient “Dual Monarch” has already succumbed to his years and his enemies. And for reasons best known to himself, “Wilhelm” has run away from his funeral, and thinks he will consult his delicate health and his no less delicate dignity, by sending the Crown Prince instead, that young man being no longer wanted imperatively or imperially on the French front. How young Wilhelm will get on with young Carl remains to be seen. The experience may have dangers of its own. Mr. Raemaekers might look out for a further opportunity in this new situation.
HERBERT WARREN.
THE Roman Emperor Tiberius, that gloomy tyrant, is said to have remarked that governing the Roman people was like holding a wolf by the ears. Here the position is reversed. The patient, obedient, and faithful German people, for such, however infatuated, we must allow it has been, is represented as by no means like a wolf, but more like the traditional opposite, a sheep. But even the sheep may turn if driven beyond measure. Meanwhile, this caricature may help to bring home to it the true position.
The Kaiser, stout, with all his heavy, comfortable clothes, his military cloak, his helmet, and boots and spurs, one of which he digs into his beast of burden, rides comfortably on the back of “German Michael,” the common soldier, and cheerfully bids him “hold out” and struggle up the toilsome hill of victory, with its shifting, clogging soil.
The desperate agony and pain of the poor victim, the drops of sweat falling from his brow, his eyes starting from his head, are well depicted, and also the complacency of the emperor, blended with senile vanity and self-glorification. His aspiration not long ago was to be the “Young Man of the Sea.” Here he is depicted as the “Old Man” of that element.
HERBERT WARREN.
IT is always difficult, after a series of catastrophic events, to go back to one’s mental outlook of the time before they happened. But if the civilized world could recapture its pre-war view, I believe it would realize the most startling of all the results of Armageddon to be that we now take Germany’s outrages on neutrals for granted. At first the bulk of us simply could not believe the tale of the horrors inflicted on non-combatant men, women, and children of innocent and neutral Belgium. But Germany had at any rate made Belgium a belligerent, before beginning them. Now that similar horrors should fall on men, women, and children of Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and America, surprises no more: it has become a mere matter of course.
It is the business of the prophet, the seer, and the poet to awaken the world when it is worshipping false gods, when from fear, or self-interest, or sheer bewilderment, it fails to see the things that are in their naked horror and their awful shame. But prophet, seer, and poet can speak only through the printed word, and in the maze and mass of conflicting appeals the words of truth are lost and ineffective. But if the ear be deaf and the mind numb, the eyes of all retain their childlike curiosity. It is Raemaekers’ secret that he can present his own clear vision of the truth in figures that pierce instantly to the conscience of the dullest. To kill a child at all for a political purpose, is the sin of Herod. To kill the children of those with whom you have no nominal quarrel, stipulates just that negation of soul which we call beastly. The truth about Tirpitz, and all that that accursed name stands for, is personified in the loathsome Satyr of the Sea portrayed in this cartoon.
ARTHUR POLLEN.
RAEMAEKERS is not merely a clever draftsman and a keen observer, but also a deep and careful student of modern history and diplomacy. He knows the by-paths, thecoulisses, and the intrigues of the diplomatic world, which are eternally going on behind the almost impenetrable curtain with which the chancelleries of Europe seek to veil their proceedings.
Everyone knows, of course, that it was not merely affection or esteem that has ranged Ferdinand of Bulgaria and Enver Pasha upon the side of the Central Empires. In the case of the first, greed had not a little to do with the final decision to which he came. He was not unwilling to be persuaded by the blandishments of his “dear brother the Kaiser,” always provided it was made worth his while at the time as well asin futuro. In the case of the second, ambition played its part, backed up by years of “ground baiting” of the kind in which German diplomacy excels.
It has been left to the pencil of this great artist and satirist to bring home to the mind of the man-in-the-street a knowledge of the actual situation that has been created, and of the methods by which it was brought about. In this cartoon we have the Kaiser in shop-walker attitude, an oily smile upon his lips, bending forward and washing his hands with invisible soap, while he exclaims, “I hope you have been well served and are satisfied.” His dupes are shown bound hand and foot, with an expression of their doubts as to the ultimate genuineness and benefit of the bargain which they have struck shown upon the face of the one and the back of the other. Bound hand and foot they stand in the presence of this “artful dodger” among crowned heads, and in that of the decrepit Franz Joseph, in whose figure the artist has succeeded in so cleverly conveying an idea of the unstable and effete nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The “dear friends and allies” show neither the feeling of comfort nor confidence about which their imperial taskmaster speaks and inquires so glibly.
Bound thus to the wheels of the car of Germany’s destiny, they begin evidently to question the wisdom of their choice. Already Ferdinand’s doubts must have commenced to take definite shape, for the luck of “the great game” has begun to run against him at Monastir, and “crushed and destroyed” Serbia is once more in fighting trim and eager to expel the invader.
CLIVE HOLLAND.
ON September 9, 1914, Joseph Walker enlisted for the duration of the war; on January 11, 1916, the sea bore his dead body to the dyke at West Capelle. Usually a body washed ashore in this neighborhood is buried at the foot of the dunes, without coffin, without ceremony. But not this time. This afternoon, at 1P.M., while the northwest wind whistled over Walcheren, the English soldier was buried in the churchyard of West Capelle. Behind the walls of the tower where we sought protection from the gale the burial service was read.
First the vice-consul in the name of England spread the British flag over him who for England had sacrificed his young life. Four men of West Capelle carried the coffin outside and placed it at the foot of the tower, that old gray giant, which has witnessed so much world’s woe, here opposite the sea. The Reverend Mr. Fraser, the English clergyman at Kortryk, himself an exile, said we were gathered to pay the last homage to a Briton who had died for his country. It was a simple, but touching ceremony.
“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live.... He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down.” Thus spoke the voice of the minister and the wind carried his words, and the wind played with the flag of England, the flag that flies over all seas, in Flanders, in France, in the Balkans, in Egypt, as the symbol of threatened freedom—the flag whose folds here covered a fallen warrior. Deeply were we moved when the clergyman in his prayer asked for a “message of comfort to his home.”
Who, tell me, oh silent field,Who lies buried here? Here?
Who, tell me, oh silent field,Who lies buried here? Here?
Who, tell me, oh silent field,Who lies buried here? Here?
Yes, who is Walker, No. 16092, Private Joseph Walker, Bedfordshire regiment? Who, in loving thoughts, thinks of him with hope even now when we, strangers to them, stand near to him in death? Where is his home? We know it not, but in our inmost hearts we pray for a “message of comfort and consolation” for his people.
And in the roaring storm we went our way. There was he carried, the soldier come to rest, and the flag fluttered in the wind and wrapped itself round that son of England. Then the coffin sank into the ground and the hearts of us, the departing witnesses, were sore. Earth fell on it, and the preacher said: “Earth to earth, dust to dust.”—From the Amsterdam“Telegraaf,”January, 1916.
“THE Religion of Valor”—that new creed for which Germany now claims to be fighting—will call for many martyrs behind the fighting lines, and we may suppose that the middle classes of the fatherland as little like the sacrifices demanded from them as any other members of the community, whose savings are the result of their own energy and enterprise. That Germany is subscribing to her loans with generosity and self-denial we have no reason to doubt; but since there is no free press, the nation as a whole remains under delusion as to the value of its securities. The dust, however, cannot be in every eye much longer, and before another spring is spent, Germany’s people will know that she is powerless to keep her paper promises.
For the one hope that a victorious trade war would instantly break out upon the arrival of peace is destined to be disappointed.
As Mr. Kitson recently and very effectively showed, economic power is the basis of political power, the root from which all national power, which can be interpreted into force, must spring. “Trade warfare is therefore a struggle for economic power, for the control of men and of all factors of wealth production.”
The British Empire seems to be grasping this fact for the first time in her national history; and though we have far to go, and the panacea of free trade will doubtless be vended again after the war—by those who, before it, knew so well that Germany would never fight—a growing conviction is none the less apparent that only by a direct and strenuous offensive shall we win the war after the war.
Let us banish inter-tariffs, as Germany did, and unite the nation in a closer economic understanding; and let us not leave our frontiers open to the legions of German and Austrian bagmen, who only await peace to swarm over them.
It depends largely upon us whether the gentleman in the picture will get his money back.
The grand total of the fatherland’s indebtedness, were war to go on until last April, has been calculated in Germany to represent £4,500,000,000, which would demand in annual interest a sum near £800,000,000.
One does not desire to be vindictive, but let no man forget the barefaced villainy and devilish brutality with which the Central Nations prosecuted war. It is not for us to forward the peaceful penetration of such a people through the length and breadth of our empire if we desire to preserve that empire as an entity.
Let Germany redeem her pledges if she can; it will be no part of our post-war activities to assist her task.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
NOT only the father and his sick child ride storm-foundered and lost through night, with the phantom king steadily gaining upon both: the frantic, over-driven brute they ride should also be conscious of approaching doom. But is it?
We may take their steed to be the nation of the royal fugitives, and wonder when Germany—a kingdom whose native qualities had won such ample recognition among her elder sisters on the road to civilization—will awaken into consciousness of her accursed load and perceive that the Hohenzollerns ride only to death. They started on their gallop when Bismarck fell, and now the end is in sight.
Great must be the subjugation before a practical people can reach this pass, or still fail to perceive, if on a material basis only, where the legend of world-power and world-trade has brought them. As sleepwalkers they pursued their dream and have not yet awakened to see where now they stand. Still they believe the issue undetermined; still is it hidden from them that their might is broken, that roughly half their foreign trade, which lay with the Allies, has vanished. Only ignorance and the tradition of servility postpone inevitable revolution.
Of Germany’s evil-genius and arch-enemy, now far advanced on the road that leads to his destruction, an illuminating picture has just been flashed to us. One who was long a publicist in the capitals of Europe has spoken of “Things I remember,” and he quotes a German author—a woman—who spoke thus of the “War Lord” before the war. None is a more shrewd and subtle student of character than a woman, when she holds an object worthy of her study.
“I can assure you that he extirpates, as of fell purpose, every independent character, root and branch. Think of the number of poor devils in prison for the crime oflèse majesté, not one instance of which he has ever pardoned; while there is not a case of a man having killed his opponent in a duel, however disgraceful might have been its cause, whom he has not pardoned, or at least remitted the sentence. Never has a monarch encouraged Byzantine servility to such a degree as this man. No sunbeam but it must radiate from him; no incense but it must fill his nostrils.”
May Germany use her waking hour to be rid forever of this archaic incubus; and if, at the end, she still cries for the domination of Prussia, then it is to be hoped that, when they have won the war, the Allies will save her from her own blindness and themselves perform the act of liberation.
EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
ONE may characterize the figures in this cartoon as not altogether imaginary. In the villages behind the lines of the Somme, and in the tumbled country north of Verdun, there must be many such little homes as that in which the old man is pictured, homes befouled and desecrated by the presence of these hard-faced men who look on contemptuously while the old man listens. He and his kind know the voices of the guns, for they have heard them before. What memories of ’70 and his own fighting days must come to him and to all his kind as they wait the coming of the guns that shall drive out this scourge of France—this vileness that for nearly half a century has poisoned the life of all Europe, and on France especially has set an abiding mark? What hopes must be his for the day when Prussianism shall be no more than a vague name, and the sons of those sons of his who fight to-day shall work content in the knowledge that their fathers have freed them from this Damoclean threat?
How these people in the conquered territories have endured, how they have waited and hoped, even when there seemed no ground for hope, in the darkest of the days, we shall perhaps know when peace comes again. Yet even then we in Britain can never know all, for there is given to us a shield that France has never known—our shield, and in a measure our danger. For no man in Britain sits and listens for the guns that shall free his house and his land, and in that fact is possible lack of comprehension and consequent great danger; as once it has been, so it may be again.
Yet it may be that, when the stories of these old men behind the enemy lines are told, they will waken the whole of the world, not only to the need for destruction of such a thing as the militarism of Prussia, but to the knowledge that only the strong man armed may keep his house. Hadallrealized this in time——
Meanwhile, as this third year of the war ends, the guns that speak freedom come nearer.
E. CHARLES VIVIAN
IN Greek mythology Nemesis personified the moral law which chastises arrogance and wanton excess by the inexorable consequences of their own wrong-doing. So none who had offended could escape her.
The Death’s-Head Hussars are a perfect example of that boastful pride and transgression of the bounds of due proportion which it is the function of Nemesis to punish. By their name and their device they make a mock of the most solemn tragedy—of Death itself. Whether their emblem threatens death to others or signifies their own contempt for death it is a wanton and arrogant jest. The skull and cross-bones were the traditional device of pirates, and it well became those grim outlaws who declared a ruthless war against all mankind. There was no jest about it, but a dreadful seriousness, and their proper end was the yard-arm. But the Death’s-Head Hussars are what is called a “crack” regiment, one officered by rich, aristocratic, and elegant young men, who have not set themselves against the world, but are very much of it. Nor are they any braver or more formidable than other regiments. The Death’s-Head business is a silly and boastful affectation.
Here is the just sentence of chastising Nemesis. The last of the Death’s-Head Hussars, its imperial colonel, is being shot over the head of his skeleton charger on to the heaped ranks of dead soldiers which ring him round. He has his fill of skulls and cross-bones now. The Crown Prince of Germany has confessed it to the world.
A. SHADWELL.