Belgium in Holland

THE PROMISE"We shall never sheath the sword until Belgium recovers all, and more than all that she has sacrificed."—Mr. Asquith, 9th November, 1914.

In the present crisis of Belgian affairs there is much to remind the historical student of the events which led to the fall of Antwerp in 1585, and the outrageous invasion of the Southern Netherlands by the army of Parma. Then, as now, Holland opened her arms to her wounded and captive sister. The best Flemish scholars and men of letters emigrated to the land where Cornheert and Spieghel welcomed them.

Merchants and artisans flocked to a new sphere of energy in Amsterdam. Several of the professorial chairs in that city, and in the great universities of Leyden and Harderwijk, were filled by learned Flemings, and the arts, that had long been flourishing in Brussels, fled northward to escape from the desolating Spanish scourge. The grim pencil of Raemaekers becomes tender whenever he touches upon the relation of the tortured Belgium to her sister, Holland, his own beloved fatherland.

We do not know yet, in this country, a tithe of the sacrifices which have been made in Holland to staunch the tears of Belgium. "Your sufferings are mine, and so are your fortunes," has been the motto of the loyal Dutch.

EDMUND GOSSE.

Serbia

SERBIA"Now we can make an end of him."

The fight of the one and the four might, in view of the difference in the size of the combatants, be called quite fairly "the fight of the one and the fifty-three." Each of the assailants has his own character. Germany is represented as a ferocious giant; Austria follows Prussia's lead, a little the worse for wear, with a bandaged head as the souvenir of his former campaign: he does his best to look and act like Germany. Bulgaria loses not a moment, but puts his rifle to his shoulder to shoot the small enemy: he acts in his own way, according to his own character: kill the enemy as quickly as possible and seize the spoil, that is his principle. Turkey is a rather broken-down and dilapidated figure, who is preparing to use his bayonet, but has not got it quite ready. Serbia, erect, with feet firmly planted, stands facing the chief enemy, a little David against this big Goliath and his henchman, Austria; and the other two, so recently deadly foes, now standing shoulder to shoulder, attack him while his attention is directed on Germany.

The leader and "hero" of this assault is Prussia, big, brutal, remorseless. The Dutch artist always concentrates the spectator's attention on him. You can almost hear the roar coming out of his mouth: "Gott strafe Serbien." This is the figure, as Raemaekers paints him, that goes straight for his object, regardless of moral considerations. Serbia is in his way, and Serbia must be trampled in the mire. The artist's sympathy is wholly with Serbia, who is pictured as the man fighting against the brute, slight but active and noble in build, facing this burly foe.

And poor old Turkey! Always a figure of comedy, never ready in time, always ineffective, never fully able to use the weapons of so-called "civilization." Let it always be remembered that in the Gallipoli peninsula, when the Turks at first were taking no prisoners, but killing the wounded after their own familiar fashion with mutilation, for the sake of such spoil as could be carried away, Enver Pasha issued an order that thirty piastres should be paid for every prisoner brought in alive, a noble and humane regulation. Let us hope that the reward was always paid, not stolen on the way, as has been so often the case in Turkey.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

Jackals in the Political Field

JACKALS IN THE POLITICAL FIELDJackals(Flemish Pro-Germans) "What he leaves of Belgium will be enough for us."

When the tiger," says the naturalist, "has killed some large animal, such as a buffalo which he cannot consume at one time, the jackals collect round the carcase at a respectful distance and wait patiently until the tiger moves off. Then they rush from all directions, carousing upon the slaughtered buffalo, each anxious to eat as much as it can contain in the shortest time."

The human jackal is one of the most squalid and sordid creatures and features of war. We saw him in Dublin the other day emerging from his slum den to loot Sackville Street. Every battlefield feeds its carrion beasts and birds.

This picture of Belgium and its jackals is doubtless only too true. Mr. Raemakers and the Dutch have better means of knowing than we. The jackal, says the same naturalist, belongs to theCanidæ, the "dog tribe." The scientific name of the true dog isCanis familiaris,"the household dog." The jackal isCanis aureus, the "gold dog." The epithet describes no doubt his colour. The humanCanis aureusperhaps deserves his title on not less obvious grounds.

"The continent of Europe," the naturalist goes on, "is free from the jackal." It was supposed till yesterday to be free from the lion and tiger.

But in the prehistoric times of the cave man, geologists say, there was both in England and Europe the great "sabre-tooth" tiger. Kipling, who knows everything about beasts, knows him and puts him into his "Story of Ung": "The sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair."

To-day the cave tiger has come back and with him the cave jackal. There is a terrible beauty about the tiger. The jackal is a mean and hideous brute. But both are out of date. Did not Monsieur Capus say the other day that Europe "cannot allow a return of the cave epoch?"

HERBERT WARREN.

A Letter from the German Trenches

A LETTER FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES"We have gained a good bit, our cemeteries now extend as far as the sea."

In this cartoon Raemaekers has contrived to indicate powerfully what is after all the dominant and peculiar note of the German people. No European nation has ever taken war—as people say so "seriously," that is, with so much concentration of attention and elaborate preparation, as has the German Empire. No people has ever had it so thoroughly drilled into its collective mind as have the German subjects of that Empire that war is not only, as all Christian people have always believed, an expedient lawful and necessary upon occasion, but a thing highly desirable in itself, nay, the principal function of a "superior" race and the main end of its being.

And yet after all the actual German is never, like the Frenchman, a natural and instinctive warrior—any more than he is, like the Englishman, a natural and instinctive adventurer. The whole business of Prussian militarism, with the half-witted philosophy by which it is justified, has to be imposed upon him from without by his masters. He fights just as he works, just as he tortures, violates, and murders, because he is told to do so by persons in a superior position, holding themselves stiffly, dressed in uniform, and able to hit him in the face with a whip.

Long before the war the absurd Koepenick incident gave us a glimpse of this astonishing docility on its farcical side. Its tragic side is well illustrated by the droves of helpless and inarticulate barbarians driven into the shambles daily (as at Verdun) for the sole purpose of covering up the blunders of their very "efficient" superiors. One could pity the wretches if there were not so considerable a leaven of wickedness in their stupidity.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

His Master's Voice

HIS MASTER'S VOICETheVlaamsche Stem(Flemish Voice), a Flemish paper, was bought by the Germans, whereupon the whole staff resigned, as it no longer represented its title.

The manipulation of the Press is one of the weapons which Bismarck taught German Imperialism to use. Like others it has been developed by his successors into an instrument which the master himself would hardly have recognized. It is one of the most potent means of that "peaceful penetration" of all other countries which was nothing but a preparation for war. And it has been used in the war with a purposefulness of aim and a versatility of method that betoken long and systematic study. It is a ubiquitous influence and the most subtle of all. Yet the Press is held in greater contempt by official and other ruling circles in Germany than in any other country. They despise the tool, while tacitly acknowledging its utility by unsparing use.

This curious state of things is the fault of the Press. What has rendered it such a pliant tool in the hands of German Imperialism is either credulity or venality; and both are contemptible qualities. Credulity is probably the more prevalent, at least in this country, where shoals of newspapers, blinded by their own prejudices, were the dupes of German duplicity. But there has been venality, too, both crude and subtle. The case of the "Vlaamsche Sten," here satirized by Raemaekers, is exceptional. So crude and gross a method of influencing the Press as bribing the proprietor of a newspaper (probably with the aid of threats) to hand it over with its staff and goodwill could hardly be practised where any independence survived. It was not practised with success even in conquered Flanders, for the staff, to their eternal credit, refused to listen to the new master's voice. But there are journalists who, less intelligent than the terrier, faithfully accept the voice from thePickelhaubeand wag their little tails when they hear it. To them is offered the parable which shows their relation to their master.

A. SHADWELL.

Hun Generosity

"HAVE ANOTHER PIECE?"

The All-Highest, so we are told, loves a joke at another's expense, a trait in his character essentially barbaric. Raemaekers reproduces the twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of Hapsburg. The roar of anguish from the prostrate octogenarian provokes, as we see, not pity but a grim smile. Italy's monarch, we may imagine, is muttering to himself:—

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

The bribe, wrenched from another, was, of course, indignantly rejected, but one wonders what the secret feelings of the Hapsburgs may be toward the Hohenzollerns. We know that the Turk cherishes no love for the Hun who has beguiled him, but we cannot gauge as yet the real strength or weakness of the bond between the Huns on the one hand and the Austrians and Hungarians on the other. Raemaekers has portrayed Franz Josef flat on his back. In the language of the ring he is "down and out." Possibly it may have been so from the beginning. At any rate, in this country, there is an amiable disposition to regard Franz Josef as a victim rather than an accomplice, a weakling writhing beneath the jack-boot of Prussia, impotent to hold his own. It may not be so. Time alone will reveal the truth.

But this much is reasonably certain. When peace is declared, the sincere friendship which once existed between ourselves and the Dual Monarchy may be reëstablished, but many years must pass before we forgive or forget the Huns. They are boasting to-day that as a nation they are self-sufficing and self-supporting. Amen! Most of us desire nothing better than to leave them alone till they have mended their manners and purged themselves of a colossal and unendurable conceit. I cannot envisage Huns playing tennis at Wimbledon, or English girls studying music at Leipzig. The grass in the streets of Homburg will not, for many years, be trodden out by English feet; the harpies of hotel keepers throughout the Happy Fatherland will prey, it may be presumed, upon their fellow Huns. Then they will fall to "strafing" each other instead of England. And then, as now, their mouthings will provoke inextinguishable laughter.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

Easter, 1915

EASTER, 1915"And they bowed the knee before Him."

Ever since with the beginning of Christendom a new soul entered the body of exhausted Europe, it is true to say that we have not only had a certain idea but been haunted by it, as by a ghost. It is the idea crystallized in legends like those of St. Christopher and St. Martin. But it is equally apparent in the most modern ethics and eloquence, as, for instance, when a French atheist orator urged the reconsideration of a criminal case by pointing at the pictured Crucifixion which hangs in a French Law Court and saying: "Voilà la chose jugée." It is the idea when that oppressing the lowest we may actually be oppressing the highest, and that not even impersonally, but personally. We may be, as it were, the victims of a divine masquerade; and discover that the greatest of kings can travel incognito.

Such a picture, therefore, as the cartoonist has drawn here can be found in all ages of Christian history as a comment on contemporary oppression. But while the central figure remains always the same, the types of the tyrant and the mocker hold our temporary attention; for they are sketched from life and with a living exactitude. Upon one of them especially it would be easy to say a great deal: the grinning Prussian youth with the spectacles and the monkey face, who is using a Prussian helmet instead of the crown of thorns.

Such a scientific gutter-snipe is the real and visible fruit of organized German education; he is a much truer type than any gory and hairy Hun. In the face of that young atheist there is everything that can come from the congestion of the pagan with theparvenu; all the knowingness that is the cessation of knowledge; and that something which always accompaniesrealatheism—arrested development.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

Pan Germanicus as Peace Maker

PAN GERMANICUS AS PEACE MAKERThe Dove: "They say they do not want peace, as they have time enough."The Eagle: "Alas! That is just what we haven't got."

Imagine the feelings of the hindlegs of a stage elephant on being told that the performance is to be a continuous one and you will have some inkling of the dismay of the Kaiser and his henchman, concealed in the plumage of the War Eagle and the Dove of Peace respectively. The one bird is as useless as the other in bringing the war to the end desired in Berlin. The stage eagle is daily losing its plumage, and is rapidly becoming but a moulty apology for the king of birds. As for the dove, it has been used so often, with constantly changing olive branch in its beak, that it now makes its appearance shamefacedly and absolutely without heart.

Imperial eagle mask with half-mad military quasi-deity inside and dove of peace, on the German model, with calculating miscalculating statesman, you rang the curtain up, you cannot ring it down, either to the music of the Hymn of Hate or the Te Deum for peace—the eagle can no longer look boldly straight into the sun, looking for his place in it; the dove has taken permanent quarters in the German ark as it whirls round and round in the whirlpool of impotent effort, ever drawing nearer to the final crash. When the Dove of Peace does come, it will be a real bird of good omen, not a German reserve officer masquerading as one.

ALFRED STEAD.

Gott Mit Uns

IT'S FATTENING WORK

This picture is a perfectly accurate symbolic study of the German Empire. Therefore, naturally, it is one of the most dreadful that were ever drawn. In all the gruesome "Dances of Death" in which the fifteenth century took so grim a pleasure, no artist ever conceived the horrible idea of a fat skeleton. But we have not only conceived the thought, we have seen the thing—"a terror in the sunshine." We know that chest, puffed up with a wind of pride, and that stomach heavy with slaughter and rich living; and above them the Death's Head. We have seen it. We have felt its foul breath. Its name is Prussia.

Look at a portrait of Frederick the Great, the "onlie true begetter" of this abortion. It oddly suggests what Raemaekers has set down here: the face a skull, the staring eyes those of a lost soul. But the skeleton has grown fat since Frederick's day—fat on the blood and plunder of nations. Only there is no living flesh on its bones, nothing of humanity about it.

"Can these dry bones live?" was the question asked of the prophet. It might have been asked of Frederick: "Can this nation live, created of your foul witchcraft, without honour, without charity, without human brotherhood or fellowship, without all that which is the flesh and blood of mankind?" The answer must have been that it could live, though with a life coming from below and essentially infernal. It could live—for a time. It could even have great power because its time was short.

But now it has waxed fat—and kicked. And its end is near.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

Our Lady of Antwerp

OUR LADY OF ANTWERP

"Here I and sorrows sit. This is my throne, bid Kings come worship it." Such seems to be an appropriate legend for Raemaekers' beautiful triptych which he has entitled "Our Lady of Antwerp." Full of compassion and sympathy for all the sufferings of her people, she sits with the Cathedral outlined behind her, her heart pierced with many agonies. On the left is one of the many widows who have lost their all in this war. On the right is a soldier stricken to death, who has done his utmost service for his country and brings the record of his gallantry to the feet of Our Lady of Antwerp.

Antwerp, as we know, was at the height of its prosperity in the sixteenth century. We have been told that no fewer than five hundred ships used to enter her port in the course of a day, while more than two thousand could be seen lying in her harbour at one time. Her people numbered as many as one million, her fairs attracted merchants from all parts of Europe, and at least five hundred million guilders were put into circulation every year. We know what followed. Its very prosperity proved a bait to the conqueror. In 1576 the city was captured by the Spaniards, who pillaged it for three days. Nine years later the Duke of Parma conquered it, and about the time when Queen Elizabeth was resisting the might of Spain Antwerp's glory had departed and its trade was ruined. At the close of the Napoleonic wars the city was handed over to the Belgians.

A place of many memories, whose geographical position was well calculated to arouse the cupidity of the Germans, was bound to be gallantly defended by the little nation to which it now belonged. Whether earlier help by the British might or might not have altered the course of history we cannot tell. Perhaps it was not soon enough realized how important it was to keep the Hun invader from the sacred soil. At all events we do not look back on the British Expedition in aid of Antwerp in 1914 with any satisfaction, because the assistance rendered was either not ample enough or else it was belated, or both. So that Our Lady of Antwerp has still to bewail the ruthless tyranny of Berlin, though perhaps she looks forward to the time when, once more in possession of her own cities, Belgium may enter upon a new course of prosperity. We are pledged to restore Belgium, doubly and trebly pledged, by the words of the Prime Minister, and justice will not be done until the great act of liberation is accomplished.

W. L. COURTNEY.

Deportation

HUSBANDS AND FATHERSBelgian workmen were forcibly deported to Germany.

Nothing, when one analyzes it, could be imagined more thoroughly characteristic of Prussia than the particular stroke of policy by which a large proportion of the male population of Belgium—as also in a somewhat lesser degree of Northern France—was separated from its family ties and hurried away into exile in Germany, there to be compelled to work for the profit of enemies.

It had all the marks of Prussianism.

Firstly, it was a violation of the civilized and Christian tradition of European arms. By the rules of such warfare the non-combatant was spared, wherever possible; not only his life but his property and liberty were secure so long as he did not abuse his position.

Secondly, it was an affront to decent human sentiment quite apart from technical rules; the man, guilty of no offence save that of belonging to a country which Prussia had invaded without justice and ravaged without mercy, was torn from his family, who were left to the mercy of their opponents. We all know what that mercy was like.

Thirdly, it was an insult to the human soul, for the unfortunate victims were not only to be exiled from their country, but to be driven by force and terror to serve against it.

Fourthly, and finally, like all the worst Prussian crimes, it was a stupid blunder. Prussia has paid already a very high price for any advantage she may have gained from the mutinous and unwilling labour of these men, and for the swelling of her official return for the edification of her own people and of neutrals by the inclusion of "prisoners of war" of this description. To-day, when she knows not where to turn for men, she is obliged to keep a huge garrison tied up in Belgium to guard her line of retreat. And when the retreat itself comes, the price will rise even higher, and the nemesis will be both just and terrible.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

The German Band

WAR LOAN MUSIC"Was blazen die Trompeten Moneten heraus?"

The German Band, as we know it in this country, has never been noted for harmonious music. Blatancy, stridency, false notes, and persistency after the coppers, have been its chief characteristics.

And the same things prevail when it is at home.

Never since the world began has there been such a campaign of barefaced humbug and lying as that organized by William, Hindenburg, Hollweg and Co. for the deceiving and fleecing of the much-tried countries temporarily under their sway.

But the money had to be got in by hook or by crook, and by hook and by crook and in every nefarious way they have milked their unfortunate peoples dry.

But there is another side to all this. In time, the veil of lies and false intelligence of victories in the North Sea, and at Verdun, and, indeed, wherever Germany has fought and failed, will be rent by the spear of Truth.

Then will come thedébâcle. And then, unless every scrap of grit and backbone has been Prussianized out of the Teuton, the revulsion of feeling will sweep the oppressors out of existence; and Germany, released from the strangle-hold, may rise once more to take the place among the civilized nations of the world which, by her foul doings of the last two years, she has deliberately forfeited.

JOHN OXENHAM.

Arcades Ambo

ARCADES AMBOThe Professor: "I have discovered a new mixture which will blind them in half an hour."Satan: "You are in very truth my master."

Looking at this cartoon one can understand why Raemaekers is notpersona gratain the Happy Fatherland. With half a dozen touches he has changed Satan from the magnificent Prince of Evil whom Gustave Doré portrayed into a—Hun. Henceforth we shall envisage Satan as a Hun, talking the obscene tongue—now almost the universal language in Hades—and hailed by right-thinking Huns as the All Highest War Lord. Willy senior must be jealous.

With the learned Professor, the cartoonist not only produces a composite portrait of all theHerren Professoren, but also drives home the point of his amazing pencil into what is perhaps the most instructive lesson of this monstrous war—the perversion to evil uses of powers originally designed, nourished, and expanded to benefit mankind. When theFuror Teutonicushas finally expended itself, we do not envy the feelings of the illustrious chemists who perfected poison gas and liquid fire! Will they, when their hour comes, find it easy to obey the poet's injunction, and, wrapping the mantle of their past about them, "lie down to pleasant dreams?"

We are assured that these professors have not exhausted their powers of frightfulness. It may be so. This is certain: Such frightfulness will ultimately exhaust them. With this reflection, we may leave them, grist to be ground by the mills of God.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

"Is It You, Mother?"

"IS IT YOU, MOTHER?"

Since the opening of hostilities in the present war the Scottish regiments have given repeated proofs of a valour which adds new lustre to the great traditions of Scottish soldiership. Through all the early operations—on the retreat from Mons and at the battles of the Marne and the Aisne—the Royal Scots Guards, the Scots Greys, the Gordon, the Seaforth and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the King's Own Scottish Borderers gained many fresh laurels by their heroism and undaunted spirit. The London Scottish Territorials, too, have shown a prowess as signal as that of the Scots of the Regular Army; while the mettle of men of Scottish descent has made glorious contribution in France and elsewhere to the fine records of the Overseas armies.

It is the inevitable corollary that death should levy a heavy toll on Scottish soldiers in the field. Thousands of kilted youth have suffered the fate which Raemaekers depicts in the accompanying cartoon. It is not, of course, only the young Scot whose thought turns in the moment of death to the hearth of his home with vivid memories of his mother. But the word "home" and all that the word connotes often makes a more urgent appeal to the Scot abroad than to the man of another nationality. There is significance in the fact that, far as the Scots are wont to wander over the world's surface, they should, under every sky and in every turning fortune, treasure as a national anthem the song which has the refrain:—

"For it's hame, an' it's hame, fain wad I be,O! it's hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!"

The German soldier in this war would seem to have lost well nigh all touch of humanity. Yet the draughtsman here suggests that even the German soldier on occasion yields to the pathos of the young Scot's death-cry for home and mother. There is grim irony in the dying man's blurred vision which mistakes the hand of his mortal foe for that of his mother.

Of such trying scenes is the drama of war composed.

SIDNEY LEE.

The Fate of Flemish Art at the Hands of Kultur

THE FATE OF FLEMISH ART AT THE HANDS OF KULTUR

It will not be possible to estimate the injury suffered by the monuments of art wherein Belgium was so rich till the war is ended and the ruins examined. Much of the irreparable loss we know, as in the cases of Louvain and Ypres. In general we may fairly conjecture that whatever is portable behind the German lines is stolen, or will be, and the rest destroyed. What is portable is stolen for its cash value, just as are money, furniture, clothes, and watches. So much of respect for works of art we may expect from the Prussians—the measure of respect for the cash shewn by the Prussian general at Termonde who robbed a helpless civilian of the 5,000 francs he had drawn to pay his workmen's wages, and then called earth and heaven to witness his exalted virtue in not also murdering his victim. But what cannot be carried—a cathedral, a monument, an ancient window—that is destroyed with an apish zest. Even a picture in time or place, inconvenient for removal, that also will be defiled, slashed to rags, burnt. And indeed why not? For the best use of a work of art as understood among the Prussian pundits is to make it the peg whereon to hang some ridiculous breach of statistics, some monstrous disquisition of bedevilled theory; and for such purposes a work no longer existing so as good as any—even better.

And so the marvels of the centuries go up in dust and flames, and the memorials of Memling and Matsijs, Van Eyck, and Rubens are treated as the masters' own bodies would have been treated, had fate delayed their time till the coming of the Boche.

ARTHUR MORRISON.

The Graves of All His Hopes

THE GRAVES OF ALL HIS HOPES

"Look at the map," says the German Chancellor. Look at the map, and mark with a cross every German disappointment and you will have a history of the war more illuminating than many books on the subject. The Marne, Ypres, South Africa, West Africa, Egypt, Bagdad, India, Tripoli, Verdun. Look at the map indeed. The map of the world that Germany set out to conquer. Consider the vapouring and vainglory that marked each of these "successes" in political or military trickery and the fact that of the military crosses each upbears above a mountain of losses the refrain of the old German song Verdorben—Gestorben—Ruined—Dead.

It is a wonderful map to consider, this map of the world in 1916. A wonderful map to be studied by the mothers of the Fatherland who have suckled their children to manure the crops of the future, to feed the crematoriums and blast furnaces of Belgium, to fill the mad houses, blind asylums, and homes for incurables, when the frosts of Russia and the guns of the Allies have done with them.

And every cross marks the grave of a hope.

ParisRegrets eternels.

That wonderful inscription was the first to be cut. Galliene was the mason. Verdun was the last and will not be the least. But, whatever may come to be written on stone, on the heart of the mourner when he comes to die only one inscription will be found: "Calais." If he has a heart large enough to have even these six letters.

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

"My Sixth Son Is Now Lying Here—Where Are Yours?"

"MY SIXTH SON IS NOW LYING HERE—WHERE ARE YOURS?"

There is a picture in Brussels that the Kaiser ought to study on one of his visits to the Belgian capital. It is Wertz's picture of Napoleon in Hades.

Wertz was a madman, he knew something of the horrors of war, but he knew, also, something of the grandeur and nobility of Napoleon.

Napoleon is surrounded by women holding up the mutilated remains of sons, lovers, and fathers, and still he remains Napoleon, the child of Destiny, the Inscrutable, the Calm, and, if one may say so, the Gentleman.

Women knew, at least, that their dead had fallen before the armies or at the will of a great man in those Napoleonic days; there was something of Fate in the business.

But to-day the widow or the mourning mother, whilst knowing that her son or her husband has fallen in defending Humanity from the Beast can find no quarter in their hearts for the form or the shape of manhood that stands, in the words of Swinburne:

"Curse consecrated, crowned with crime and flame!"

No taunt could be too bitter for their lips and none more bitter than the words of Raemaekers:

"My sons are lying here—where are yours?"

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

Bunkered

BUNKERED

The Crown Prince is in a very awkward predicament. He has driven his ball into a deep sand-pit from which a very clever professional golfer might perhaps extricate himself by a powerful stroke with a niblick. But young William is not a professional, and indeed knows nothing about the game. So he takes his driver and his other wooden clubs, and smashes them all, with much bad language, while he whacks at the ball, which only buries itself deeper in the sand. He is pondering what to do next. There is, however, only one thing to do. He must take up his ball and lose the hole. The real players on his side must be disgusted at being saddled with such a partner. But what is to be done when a fool is born a war-lord by right of primogeniture? In a few years, in the course of nature, this fortunate youth will be the Supreme War-Lord himself; it will be his business to "stand in shining armour" by some luckless ally who has been selected to pick a quarrel for Germany's benefit, and to shake a "mailed fist" in the face of a trembling world. That will be a spectacle for gods and men. But perhaps something will happen instead.

W. R. INGE.

Gott Strafe Verdun

GOTT STRAFE VERDUN"If only I knew whether it is less dangerous to advance or to retire."

An impartial military verdict on the German strategy and tactics at Verdun has not yet been delivered. After the failure of the Allies to break through last year, the German higher command issued a paper, which has been printed in American newspapers, advocating "nibbling" tactics, instead of attempts to carry a strongly fortified line by a coupde main. The Germans have buoyed up their hopes by assuring each other that their troops have been making a slow but methodical progress toward the "fortress," according to program. But even if we grant that the disproportion in casualties is probably not so great as some of our critics have supposed, it is difficult to believe that the enemy was prepared for such resistance as he has met with. To all appearance, the Germans expected to break through in a few days, and hoped that this success would rehabilitate the credit of the paltry young prince whom we here see entangled in barbed wire, his uniform in rags, and despair depicted on his haggard face. Another confessed failure would finish the career of the Crown Prince; and yet there are limits to the endurance of any troops, and these limits have now been reached. There is nothing left to young William but useless imprecations. He swaggered into this war, for which he is partly responsible, expecting to win the reputation of a general; he will sneak out of it with the reputation of a burglar.

W. R. INGE.

The Last Throw

THE LAST THROW

The first throw, of course, was that great rush which was stayed at the Marne by the Genius of Joffre; then there was the throw of the great attack on Russia, that which laid waste Serbia, and that which would have thrust men down from the Alps on to the Italian plain. In each of these Raemaekers' symbolism is applicable, for in each case death threw higher than either Germany or Austria could afford.

But in none is the symbolism so terribly fitting as in this case of Verdun, where the fighting men went forward in waves and died in waves—here death threw higher in every attack than Germany could throw, and to such heights was the slaughter pushed that it was, in truth, the last throw of which these war-makers were capable. It is significant, now that Germany can no longer afford such reckless sacrifices as were made before Verdun, that the German press contains allusions to heavy sacrifices on the part of the Allies, and tries to point to folly in allied policy. Surely, in the matter of sacrifice of life, no nation is so well qualified to speak from experience as Germany.

There is clumsy anxiety expressed in every line of the figure that holds the dice box, and in every line of the figure in the background is nervous fear for the result of the throw—fear that is fully justified. But Death, master of the game, waits complacently to mark the score, knowing that these two gamblers are the losers—and that the loser pays.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

The Zeppelin Bag

THE ZEPPELIN BAG

Here the artist has depicted the Kaiser in one of his favourite rôles, that of a sportsman. In pre-war times it was one of "The All Highest's" chief ambitions to be taken for an English sportsman! We believe there were people in those now seemingly remote days who took him at his own valuation in this regard. Our picture papers were full of photographs of him shooting at this or that nobleman's estate, lunching after the morning's battue, in the act of shooting, inspecting the day's "bag," etc.; and other pictures were reproduced from the German papers from time to time of a similar character showing him as a sportsman in his native land.

There is still, thank God, something clean about British sport and sportsmen of which the Kaiser never caught the inwardness and spirit. It has come out on the battlefields to-day as it has on those of past generations. It has taught the British soldier to fight clean, and even chivalrously though the foe may be a past master in "knavish tricks," and steeped in unspeakable methods of cruelty in warfare.

How thin the veneer of a sportsmanship was upon the Kaiser, which is after all but symbolic of the higher and sterner virtues, all the world has had a chance of judging. And in this remarkable and arresting drawing the genius of the artist has taken and used a sporting incident with telling and even horrifying effect.

In the old days it was pheasants, partridges, grouse, hares, rabbits, and other feathered game, with the nobler stags and boars that formed "the Butcher of Potsdam's 'bag.'" To-day he has his battues by proxy on sea, land, and from the air. Thousands of victims, as innocent as the feathered folk he slaughtered of yore; and women and little children form the chief items of the bag; and especially is this true of the "fruit of the Zeppelin raids."

He counts the bag and rewards the slayers of the innocent as he doubtless did the beaters, huntsmen, and keepers of the estates over which he formerly shot. It has been his ambition to make Europe one vast Kaiserdom estate. But the sands are running out, and each "bag," whether by Zeppelin or submarine, serves but to stiffen the backs of the Allies and horrify neutral nations. Some day the accumulated horrors of the Kaiser's ideas of sportsmanship will have taught the latter the lesson that Kaiserdom with Europe as a Kaiser estate means the death of liberty, the extinction of the smaller nations, and the setting up of a despotism as cruel as that of Attila and his Huns—the self-accepted and preached examples of William II of Germany.

CLIVE HOLLAND.

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