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.
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 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.
ADROWNING 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.
THIS cartoon illustrates what is, perhaps, the fundamental principle which governsKultur. 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 inWeltmacht. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 aman, 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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Here is the fighting face of France, recalling the baggage carts of the Beresina no less than the guns of Austerlitz. The old soldier of the Emperor, the old soldier of the Republic. Cambronne no less than Joffre. It is the face that has seen the snows of Russia and the sunlight on the Pyramids, victory and defeat, the heights and the depths, and always, across all and through all, the fair land of France.
The secret is in the eyes. Look at them!
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.
THAT really is the essence of the matter, the summing up of the World War in an illuminating phrase. The Machineversusthe Man! Before the outbreak of war, in those far-off days when we talked so glibly of human progress and civilization, the machinery which controlled and coördinated life seemed to be a bigger thing than life itself. The Machine in politics, in our myriad industries, in our moments of relaxation was scrapping men relentlessly. The very few perceived this and protested vigorously, but quite in vain. Even in religion, using the word in its highest sense, the Machine held human souls in its grip and ground them out to an approved pattern.
Was the war inflicted upon a generation of fools to teach them wisdom? It may well be so.
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas!
Juvenal’s well-worn tag echoes down the centuries. We ask ourselves once more the eternal question: What makes life worth the living? None of us, to-day, dares to answer that question lightly, but all—even our enemies in the field—know by bitterest experience that Man is greater than the Machine, that he soars high above it and may be crushed but not killed by it. Humanity may be torpedoed, but it remains immortal.
Our beloved dead still live.
And what message do they send us?
Surely the gospel of kindness, which has always triumphed gloriously over cruelty. Indeed, the supreme lesson of the war would appear to be this, and this only: that kindness is the supreme virtue and cruelty the supreme vice.
If our enemies could be made to realize so fundamental a truth, if the men who control the destinies of the Allies could make it plain to the Central Powers that we are fighting against the Machine in life and not against men, the Dove of Peace might begin to preen its wings for flight.
Humanity has been torpedoed, but we look for its resurrection. Petard must be hoisted by petard; that, for the moment, is inevitable. A patched-up peace is unthinkable. Such a conclusion, most happily, has become almost universal.
And afterward?
If the hopes and aspirations of to-day bear fruit to-morrow, may we not envisage a brighter future during these dark hours?
To think otherwise, to maintain, with whatever specious argument, that Force must dominate mankind, is not merely a negation of Christianity, but a negation of Humanity. Such is the creed of the Hun. By it he has been judged and found wanting.
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.
THE suggestion of this caricature is perhaps not so obvious to Englishmen as might be wished, for it represents the Kaiser, and the forces behind him, as more broken down than we have reason to think they were, or at any rate, than they appeared to us at the time this cartoon first appeared. It may be that to the neutrals their cause seemed less hopeful, and more out-at-elbows, as here depicted. The continuous fall of the mark in neutral countries may mean this.
The figure of President Wilson is at any rate exceedingly clever. Detached, professorial, contemplative, slightly academic, not to say donnish, he contemplates “Mr. Turveydrop” and “Bill Sykes,” for such characters they appear to be, with pensive, amused speculation. He certainly cannot expect more than swagger and sham gentility, scarcely disguising brutal ruffianism, from such figures. But is not the reality more serious and murderous?
The Kaiser is doubtless an actor, but not quite such a shabby-genteel third-rater as this, and his bullies are no doubt burglars and ruffians, but not of the old-fashioned, bludgeon type; rather the smart, modern operators, armed with automatic revolvers, oxygen blowpipes, swift motors, and other appliances of up-to-date science. “Super-Hooligans” both doubtless are, but unfortunately not to be despised as enemies. This, however, would be less easy to present in caricature, and perhaps less telling.
The point is the folly of expecting any true “gentleness,” or anything but a veneer of gentility, from Germany.
HERBERT WARREN.
WHEN, in August of 1914, the German hosts set out on their way to victory and yet greater victory, they had in their minds a figure which, for them, had been girdled round with dignities almost sacred. Whatever their secret thoughts regarding this figure might have been, it was ostensibly something very nearly sacred; to the rest of the world it was an imperial figure, portrayed in many attitudes, but in practically every attitude there was the suggestion of illimitable pride. The world that is not Germany had laughed at this figure a little: over certain telegrams, over the assumption of genius in certain artistic fields, and over a versatility that was almost Neronic. There was not wanting, among free peoples, a certain amount of contempt for this figure.
Here you have the figure in a new attitude, and though at the time this cartoon was published the triumphs in Rumania were still to come, and the German lines of defense were apparently as strong as ever, yet the cartoon expressed a truth, as do all these cartoons of Raemaekers. As insecurely as is pictured here stood this man who aped Napoleon and Alexander, at whose bidding women and children were fed into the furnace of war, through whose senseless ambition countless homes were made places of mourning for the men who would return no more. More than three years of suffering, and the face of the world changed, the progress of the world arrested—for this!
Beneath him is the gulf; he has hurled millions into it, and here postures no more as second only to omnipotence, but waits the inevitable fall. Thank God that it is inevitable.
E. CHARLES VIVIAN.
IT is inevitable that there should be in every country degenerates who decline to play the game. England has her disreputable leaven of shirkers; France, whose heroism beggars description, has to reckon with herembusqués. The serene cheerfulness with which the bitterest sacrifices are faced daily by the mass of the nations engaged in the terrible conflict, bring into powerful relief the obliquity and depravity of the handful of men who seek to escape the heavy burden that lies upon all. There is no possibility of exaggerating the mean infamy of the men who seek their own safety by skulking behind the broad backs of the defenders of their country, when every call of duty and right demands their presence in the fighting-line. It is very difficult to distinguish between the sinfulness of shirking at a crisis like the present and the crime of overt treachery. No injustice would be done if every shirker were made to understand that he is liable to the traitor’s penalty if he persist in his offense.
The repetition of conscientious objections to war, at a time when a nation is committed to a strife in which any slackening spells for it practical annihilation, causes graver and graver perplexity. It is doubtful whether any healthy mind can now plead a conscientious objection without provoking suspicion of his powers of coherent reasoning. A condition of things has arisen in which private sentiment, however honestly cherished, is bound to yield to public needs. It is a tradition of the country in normal times to treat the conscientious objector with tenderness. As far as public safety allows, it is even now a proper function of Government to discriminate between an honest delusion, however anti-social, and a wilful defiance, from contemptible motives of selfishness or cowardice, of right principle. A very formidable danger clearly lurks in any continuance of the lax toleration which is often extended to the conscientious objector, by virtue of the opportunity such considerate treatment offers the shirker of indulging his evil propensities.
SIDNEY LEE.