"Gott Strafe Italien!"

"GOTT STRAFE ITALIEN!"

When Italy, still straining at the leash which held her, helpless, to the strange and unnatural Triplice, began to show signs of awakening consciousness, Germany's efforts to lull her back to the unhappy position of silent partner in the world-crime were characteristic of her methods. Forthwith Italy was loaded with compliments. The country was overrun with "diplomats," which is another name in Germany for spies. Bribery of the most brazen sort was attempted. The newspapers recalled in chorus that Italy was the land of art and chivalry, of song and heroism, of fabled story and manly effort, of honour and loyalty. Hark to theHamburger Fremdenblattof February 21, 1915:

"The suggestion is made that Italy favours the Allies. Preposterous! Even though the palsied hand of Englandâ€”filled with robber goldâ€”be held out to her, Italy's vows, Italy's sense of obligation, Italy'sword once given, can never be broken. Such a nation of noblemen could have no dealings with hucksters."

Germany is, indeed, a fine judge of a nation's "word once given" and a nation's "vows," which its Chancellor unblushingly declared to be mere scraps of paper. Now let us see what theHamburger Nachrichtenhad to say about Italy immediately after her secession from the Triple Alliance: "Nachrichten, June 1, 1915. That Italy should have joined hands with the other noble gentlemen, our enemies, is but natural. It would, of course, be absurdâ€”where all are brigandsâ€”were the classical name of brigandage not included in the number.... We do not propose to soil our clean steel with the blood of such filthy Italian scum. With our cudgels we shall smash them into pulp."

"Gott strafe Italien"indeed! Bombs on St. Mark's in Venice, on the Square of Verona, on world treasures unreplaceable. The poisoned breath of Germany carries its venom into the land of sunshine and song, whose best day's work in history has been to wrest itself free from the grip of the false friend.

RALPH D. BLUMENFELD.

Serbia

OCTOBER IN SERBIAThe Austro-German-Bulgarian attack on Serbia began in October, which in Holland is called the "butcher's month," as the cattle are then killed preparatory to the winter.

Serbia has suffered the fate of Belgium. Germany and Austria, with Bulgaria's aid, have plunged another little country "in blood and destruction." Another "bleeding piece of earth" bears witness to the recrudescence of the ancient barbarism of the Huns. Serbia's wounds,

"Like dumb mouths,Do ope their ruby lips,"

to beg for vengeance on "these butchers." Turkey, whom the artist portrays as a hound lapping up the victim's blood, is fated to share the punishment for the crime. But the prime instigator is the German Emperor, whose Chancellor, with bitter irony, claims for his master the title of protector of the small nationalities of Europe. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg can on occasion affect the mincing accents of the wolf when that beast seeks to lull the cries of the lamb in its clutches. The German method of waging war has rendered "dreadful objects so familiar" that the essential brutality of the enemy's activities runs a risk of escaping at times the strenuous denunciation which Justice demands. But the searching pencil of Mr. Raemaekers brings home to every seeing eye the true and unvarying character of Teutonic "frightfulness." All instincts of humanity are cynically defied on the specious ground of military necessity. Mr. Raemaekers is at one with Milton in repudiating the worthless plea:

"So spake the fiend, and with necessity,The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds."

SIR SIDNEY LEE.

"Just a Momentâ€”I'm Coming"

"JUST A MOMENTâ€”I'M COMING."

Here is a drawing that ought to be circulated broadcast throughout Australia and New Zealand, that ought to hold a place of honour on the walls of their public chambers; should hang in gilded frames in the houses of the rich; be pinned to the rough walls of frame-house and bark humpy in every corner of "The Outback." It should thrill the heart of every man, woman, and child Down Under with pride and thankfulness and satisfaction, should even bring soothing balm to the wounds of those who in the loss of their nearest and dearest have paid the highest and the deepest price for the flaming glory of the Anzacs in Gallipoli.

Here in the artist's pencil is a monument to those heroes greater than pinnacles of marble, of beaten brass and carven stone; a monument that has travelled over the world, has spoken to posterity more clearly, more convincingly, and more rememberingly than ever written or word-of-mouth speech could do. It is to the everlasting honour of the people of the Anzacs that they refrained from echoing the idle tales which ran whispering in England that the Dardanelles campaign was a cruel blunder, that the blood of the Anzacs' bravest and best had been uselessly spilt, that their splendid young lives had been an empty sacrifice to the demons of Incompetence and Inefficiency. To those in Australia who in their hearts may feel that shreds of truth were woven in the rumoursâ€”that the Anzacs were spent on a forlorn hope, were wasted on a task foredoomed to failureâ€”let this simple drawing bring the comfort of the truth.

The artist has seen deeper and further than most. The Turkish armies held from pouring on Russia and Serbia, from thumping down the scales of neutrality in Greece and Roumania perhaps, from massing their troops with the Central Powers; the Kaiser chained on the East and West for the critical months when men and munitions were desperately lacking to the Allies, when the extra weight of the Turks might have freed the Kaiser's power of fierce attack on East and West this is what we already know, what the artist here tells the wide world of the part played by the heroes of the Dardanelles. In face of this, who dare hint they suffered and died in vain?

BOYD CABLE.

The Holy War

THE HOLY WARThe Turk"But he is so great."William"No one is great, save Allah, and I am his prophet."

Surely the artist when he drew this was endowed with the wisdom of the seer, the vision of the prophet. For it was drawn before the days in which I write, before the Russian giant had proved his greatness on the body of the Turk, before the bludgeon-strokes in the Caucasus, the heart-thrust of Erzerum, the torrent of pursuit of the broken Turks to Mush and Trebizond.

We knowâ€”and I am grateful for the chance to voice our gratitude to himâ€”the greatness of our Russian Ally. We remember the early days when the Kaiser's hosts were pouring in over France, and the Russian thrust into Galicia drew some of the overwhelming weight from the Western Front. We realize now the nobility of self-sacrifice that flung an army within reach of the jaws of destruction, that risked its annihilation to draw upon itself some of the sword-strokes that threatened to pierce to the heart of the West. Our national and natural instinct of admiration for a hard fighter, and still greater admiration for the apex of good sportmanship, for the friend or foe who can "take a licking," who is a "good loser," went out even more strongly to Russia in the dark days when, faced by an overwhelming weight of metal, she was forced and hammered and battered back, losing battle-line after battle-line, stronghold after stronghold, city after city; losing everything except heart and dogged punishment-enduring courage.

And how great the Russian truly is will surely be known presently to the Turk and to the masquerading false "Prophet of Allah."

"No one is great save Allah," says William, and even as the Turk spoke more truly than he knew in calling the Russian great, even as he was bitterly to realize the greatness, so in the fullness of time must William come to realize how great is the Allah of the Moslem, the Christian God Whom he has blasphemed, and in Whose name he and his people have perpetrated so many crimes and abominations.

BOYD CABLE.

"Gott Mit Uns"

"GOTT MIT UNS"

When we consider the public utterances of the German clergy, we can very easily substitute for their symbol of Christian faith this malignant, grotesque, and inhuman monster of Louis Raemaekers. Indeed, our inclination is to thrust the green demon himself into the pulpit of the Fatherland; for his wrinkled skull could hatch and his evil mouth utter no more diabolic sentiments than those recorded and applauded from Lutheran Leipsic, or from the University and the chief Protestant pulpit in Berlin.

Such sermons are a part of that nationaldÃ©bÃ¢cleof reasoning faculty which is the price intellectual Germany has paid for the surrender of her soul to Prussia.

An example or two may be cited from the outrageous mass.

Professor Rheinhold Seeby, who teaches theology at Berlin University, has described his nation's achievements in Belgium and Serbia as a work of charity, since Germany punishes other States for their good and out of love. Pastor Philippi, also of Berlin, has said that, as God allowed His only Son to be crucified, that His scheme of redemption might be accomplished, so Germany, God with her, must crucify humanity in order that its ultimate salvation may be secured; and the Teutonic nation has been chosen to perform this task, because Germany alone is pure and, therefore, a fitting instrument for the Divine Hand. Satan, who has returned to earth in the shape of England, must be utterly destroyed, while the immoral friends and allies of Satan are called to share his fate. Thus evil will be swept off the earth and the German Empire henceforth stand supreme protector of the new kingdom of righteousness. Pastor Zoebel has ordered no compromise with hell; directed his flock to be pleased at the sufferings of the enemy; and bade them rejoice when thousands of the non-elect are sent to the bottom of the sea.

Yes, we will give the green devil his robe and bands until Germany is in her strait-jacket; after which experience, her conceptions of a Supreme Being and her own relation thereto may become modified.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

The Widows of Belgium

THE WIDOWS OF BELGIUM

This deeply pathetic picture evokes the memory of many sad and patient faces which we have seen during the last eighteen months. It is the women, after allâ€”wives, mothers, sisters, and daughtersâ€”who have the heaviest load to bear in war-time.

The courage and heroism which they have shown are an honour to human nature. The world is richer for it; and the sacrifices which they have bravely faced and nobly borne may have a greater effect in convincing mankind of the wickedness and folly of aggressive militarism than all the eloquence of peace advocates.

We must not forget that the war has made about six German widows for every one in our country. With these we have no quarrel; we know that family affection is strong in Germany, and we are sorry for them. They, like our own suffering women, are the victims of a barbarous ideal of national glory, and a worse than barbarous perversion of patriotism, which in our opponents has become a kind of moral insanity.

These pictures will remain long after the war-passion has subsided. They will do their part in preventing a recrudescence of it. Who that has ever clamoured for war can face the unspoken reproach in these pitiful eyes? Who can think unmoved of the happy romance of wedded love, so early and so sadly terminated?

THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.

The Harvest Is Ripe

THE HARVEST IS RIPE

The artist spreads before you a view such as you would have on the great wheat-growing plains of Hungary, or on the level plateau of Asiatic Turkeyâ€”the vast, unending, monotonous, undivided field of corn. In the background the view is interrupted by two villages from which great clouds of flame and smoke are risingâ€”they are both on fireâ€”and as you look closer at the harvest you see that, instead of wheat, it consists of endless regiments of marching soldiers.

"The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few": here is only one, but he is quite sufficientâ€”"the reaper whose name is Death," a skeleton over whose bones the peasant's dressâ€”a shirt and a pair of ragged trousersâ€”hangs loose. The shirt-sleeves of the skeleton are turned well up, as if for more active exertion, as he grasps the two holds of the huge scythe with which he is sweeping down the harvest.

This is not war of the old type, with its opportunities for chivalry, its glories, and its pride of manly strength. The German development of war has made it into a mere exercise in killing, a business of slaughter. Which side can kill most, and itself outlast the other? When one reads the calculations by which careful statisticians demonstrate that in the first seventeen months of the war Germany alone lost over a million of men killed in battle, one feels that this cartoon is not exaggerated. It is the bare truth.

The ease with which the giant figure of Death mows down the harvest of tiny men corresponds, in fact, to the million of German dead, probably as many among the Russians, to which must be added the losses among the Austrians, the French, the British, the Belgians, Italians, Serbs, Turks, and Montenegrins. The appalling total is this vast harvest which covers the plain.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

"Unmasked"

UNMASKEDThe Yellow Book.

The "Yellow Book," it may be remembered, was the official publication of some of the details of atrocities committed by the Huns on the defenceless women and children of ravished Belgium. It told in cold and unimpassioned sentences, in plain and simple words more terrible than the most fervid outpourings of patriot or humanitarian, the tale of brutalities, of cold-blooded crimes, of murders and rape and mental and physical tortures beyond the capabilities or the imaginings of savages, possible only in their refinements of cruelty to the civilized apostles of Kultur. There are many men in the trenches of the Allies to-day who will say that the German soldier is a brave man, that he must be brave to advance to the slaughter of the massed attack, to hold to his trenches under the horrible punishment of heavy artillery fire.

As a nation we are always ready to admit and to admire physical courage, and if Germany had fought a "clean fight," had "played the game," starkly and straightly, against our fighting men, we couldâ€”and our fighting men especially could, and I believe wouldâ€”have helped her to her feet and shaken hands honestly with her after she was beaten. But with such a brute beast as the unmasking of the "Yellow Book" has revealed Germany to be we can never feel friendship, admiration, or respect.

The German is a "dirty fighter," and to the British soldier that alone puts him beyond the pale. He has outraged all the rules and the instincts of chivalry. His bravery in battle is the bravery of a ravening wolf, of a blood-drunk savage animal. It is only left to the Allies to treat him as such, to thrash him by brute force, and then to clip his teeth and talons and by treaty and agreement amongst themselves to keep him chained and caged beyond the possibility of another outbreak.

BOYD CABLE.

The Great Surprise

THE GREAT SURPRISEMoses II leads his chosen people through the Red Sea to the promised (Eng)land.

In the note to another picture I have remarked on the farcical hypocrisy of the German Emperor in presenting himself, as he so often does, as the High Priest of several different religions at the same time. They are nearly all of them religions with which he would have no sort of concern, even if his religious pose were as real as it is artificial.

Being in fact the ruler and representative of a country which alone among European countries builds with complete security upon the conviction that all Christianity is dead, he can only be, even in theory, the prince of an extreme Protestant State. Long before the War it was common for the best caricaturists of Europe, and even of Germany, to make particular fun of these preposterous temporary Papacies in which the Kaiser parades himself as if for a fancy-dress ball; and in the accompanying picture Mr. Raemaekers has returned more or less to this old pantomimic line of satire.

The cartoon recalls some of those more good-humoured, but perhaps equally contemptuous, sketches in which the draughtsmen of the French comic papers used to take a particular delight; which made a whole comic Bible out of the Kaiser's adventures during his visit to Palestine. Here he appears as Moses, and the Red Sea has been dried up to permit the passage of himself and his people.

It would certainly be very satisfactory for German world-politics if the sea could be dried up everywhere; but it is unlikely that the incident will occur, especially in that neighbourhood. It will be long before a German army is as safe in the Suez Canal as a German Navy in the Kiel Canal; and the higher critics of Germany will have no difficulty in proving, in the Kiel Canal at all events, that the safety is due to human and not to divine wisdom.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

Thou Art the Man!

THOU ART THE MAN"We wage war on Divine principles."

The Man of Sorrows is flogged, and thorn-crowned, and crucified, and pierced afresh, by this other man of sorrows, who has brought greater bitterness and woe on earth than any other of all time. And in his soulâ€”for soul he must have, though small sign of it is evidencedâ€”he knows it. Deceive his dupes as he mayâ€”for a timeâ€”his own soul must be a very hell of broken hopes, disappointed ambitions, shattered pride, and the hideous knowledge of the holocaust of human life he has deliberately sacrificed to these heathen gods of his. No poorest man on earth would change places with this man-that-might-have-been, for his time draws nigh and his end is perdition.

Let That Other speak:

"Their souls are Mine.Their lives were in thy hand;â€”Of thee I do require them!"The fetor of thy grim burnt-offeringsComes up to Me in clouds of bitterness.Thy fell undoings crucify afreshThy Lordâ€”who died alike for these and thee.Thy works are Death:â€”thy spear is in My side,â€”O man! O man!â€”was it for this I died?Was it for this?â€”A valiant people harried to the void,â€”Their fruitful fields a burnt-out wilderness,â€”Their prosperous country ravelled into waste,â€”Their smiling land a vast red sepulchre,â€”â€”Thy work!"Thou art the man! The scales were in thy hand.For this vast wrong I hold thy soul in fee.Seek not a scapegoat for thy righteous due,Nor hope to void thy countability.Until thou purge thy pride and turn to Me,â€”As thou hast done, so be it unto thee!"

JOHN OXENHAM.

Sympathy

SYMPATHY"If I find you again looking so sad, I'll send you to Germany after your father."

The cartoon requires no words to tell the story. It holds chapter upon chapter of tragedy. "I will send you to Germany after your father!" Where is the boy's father in Germany? In a prison? Mending roads? Lying maimed and broken in a rude hospital? Digging graves for comrades about to be shot? Or, more likely still, in a rough unknown stranger's grave? Was the father dragged from his home at Louvain, or Tirlemont, or Vise, or one of the dozen other scenes of outrage and murderâ€”a harmless, hard-working citizen-dragged from his hiding-place and made to suffer "exemplary justice" for having "opposed the Kaiser's might," but in reality because he was a Belgian, for whose nasty breed there must be demonstrations of Germany's frightfulnesspour encourager les autres?

And the child's mother and sistersâ€”what of them? He is dejected, but not broken. There is dignity in the boy's defiant pose. The scene has, perhaps, been enacted hundreds of times in the cities of Belgium, where poignant grief has come to a nation which dared to be itself.

Follow this boy through life and observe the stamp of deep resolve on his character. Though he be sent "to Germany after your father," though he be for a generation under the German jack-boot, his spirit will sustain him against the conqueror and will triumph in the end.

RALPH D. BLUMENFELD.

The Refugees

THE REFUGEES FROM GHEELGheel has a model asylum for the insane. On the fall of Antwerp the inmates were conveyed across the frontier. The cartoon illustrates an incident where a woman, while wheeling a lunatic, herself developed insanity from the scenes she witnessed.

The wonder is not that women went mad, but that there are left any sane civilians of the ravished districts of Belgium after all those infamies perpetrated under orders by the German troops after the first infuriating check of LiÃ©ge and before the final turning of the German line at the battle of the Marne. We have supped full of horrors since, and by an insensible process grown something callous. But we never came near to realizing the Belgian agony, and Raemaekers does us service by helping to make us see it mirrored in the eyes of this poor raving girl. This indeed is a later incident, but will serve for reminder of the earlier worse.

It is reallynotwell to forget. These were not the inevitable horrors of war, but a deliberately calculated effect. There seems no hope of the future of European civilization till the men responsible for such things are brought to realize that, to put it crudely and at its lowest, they don't pay.

What the attitude of Germany now is may be guessed from the blank refusal even of her bishops to sanction the investigation which Cardinal Mercier asks for. It is still the gentle wolf's theory that the truculent lamb was entirely to blame.

JOSEPH THORP.

"The Junker"

THE JUNKER"What I have most admired in you, Bethmann, is that you have made Socialists our best supporters."

There were few things that Junkerdom feared so much in modern Germany as the growth and effects of Socialism; and it is certain that the possible attitude of the German Socialistsâ€”who were thought by some writers to number somewhere in the neighbourhood of two millionâ€”in regard to the War at its outset greatly exercised the minds of Junkerdom and the Chancellor. A few days after the declaration of War a well-known English Socialist said to us, "I believe that the Socialists will be strong enough greatly to handicap Germany in the carrying on of the War, and possibly, if she meets with reverses in the early stages, to bring about Peace before Christmas."

That was in August, 1914, and we are now well on in the Spring of 1916. We reminded the speaker that on a previous occasion, when Peace still hung in the balance, he had declared with equal conviction that there would be no War because "the Socialists are now too strong in Germany not to exercise a preponderating restraining influence." He has proved wrong in both opinions. And one can well imagine that the Junker class admires Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg for the astute manner in which he has succeeded in shepherding the German Socialist sheep for the slaughter, and in muzzling their representatives in the Reichstag.

CLIVE HOLLAND.

"Milieu De FantÃ´mes Tristes Et Sans Nombre"

"Mais quand la voix de Dieu l'appela il se voyait seul sur la terre au milieu de fantÃ´mes tristes et sans nombre."

There is something daunting, even to the mind of one not guilty of war or of massacres, in the thought of multitudes: the multitude of the dead, of the living, of one generation of men since there have been men on earth. And war brings this horror to us daily, or rather nightly, because such great companies of men have suddenly died together, passing in comradeship and community from the known to the unknown. Yet dare we say "together?" The unparalleled solitariness and singleness of death is not altered by the general and simultaneous doom of battle.

And it is with the multitude, and all theonesin it, that the maker of war is in unconscious relation. He does not know their names, he does not know them by any kind of distinction, he knows them only by thousands. Yet every one with a separate life and separate death is in conscious relation withhim, knows him for the tyrant who has taken his youth, his hope, his love, his fatherhood.

What a multitude to meet, whether in thought, in conscience, or in another world! We all, no doubt, try to make the thought of massacre less intolerable to our minds by telling ourselves that the sufferers suffer one by one, to each his own share, and not another's; that though the numbers may appeal, they do not make each man's part more terrible. But this is not much comfort. There is not, it is true, a sum of multiplication; but there is the sum of addition. And that additionâ€”the multitude man by manâ€”the War Lord has to reckon with: Frederick the Great with his men, Napoleon with his, the German Emperor with hisâ€”each one of the innumerable unknown knowing his destroyer.

ALICE MEYNELL.

Bluebeard's Chamber

BLUEBEARD'S CHAMBERThe horrors perpetrated by the Germans were brought to light by the Belgian Committee of Enquiry.

The Committee of Enquiry, like another Portia, clothed in the ermine-trimmed robe of Justice and the Law, has unlocked with the key of Truth the door of the closed chamber. The key lies behind her inscribed in Dutch with the name that tells its nature. The Committee then pulls back the curtain, and reveals the horrors that are behind it. Before the curtain is fully drawn back, Enquiry sinks almost in collapse at the terrible sight that is disclosed. There hang to pegs on the wall the bodies of Bluebeard's victims, a woman, an old man, a priest, two boys, and a girl still half hidden behind the curtain. The blood that has trickled from them coagulates in pools on the ground.

Bluebeard himself comes suddenly: he hurries down the steps brandishing his curved sword, a big, burly figure, with square, thick beard, and streaming whiskers, wearing a Prussian helmet, his mouth open to utter a roar of rage and fury. The hatred and scorn with which the artist inspires his pictures of Prussia are inexhaustible in their variety: Prussia is barbarism attempting to trample on law and education, brutality beating down humanity, a grim figure, the incarnation of "frightfulness." I can imagine the feelings with which all Germans must regard the picture that the Dutch artist always gives of their country, if they regard Prussia as their country. "For every cartoon of Raemaekers," said a German newspaper, "the payment will be exacted in full, when the reckoning is made up." To this painter the Prussian ruling power is incapable of understanding what nobility of nature means. He can practise on and take advantage of the vices and weaknesses of his enemies; he can buy the services of many among them, and have all the worser people in his fee as his servants and agents; but he is always foiled, because he forgets that some men cannot be bought, and that these men will steel their fellow-countrymen's minds to resist tyranny to the last. The mass of men can be led either to evil or to good.

The Prussian military system assumes the former as certain, and is well skilled in the way. But there is the latter way, too, which Prussia never knew and never takes into account as a possibility; and men as a whole prefer the way to good before the way to evil, when both are fully explained and made clear. This saves men, and ruins Prussia.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

The Raid

THE RAID"Do you remember Black Mary of Hamburg?""Aye, well.""She got six years for killing a child, whilst we get the Iron Cross for killing twenty at Hartlepool."

The seaman of history is a chivalrous and romantic figure, a gallant and relentless fighter, a generous and a tender conqueror. In Codrington's first letter to his wife after the battle of Trafalgar, he tells her to send Â£100 to one of the French captains who goes to England from the battle as a prisoner of war. The British and French navies cherish a hundred memories of acts like these. If the German navy survives the war what memories will it have? It must search the gaols for the exemplars in peace of the acts that win them the Iron Cross in war.

Note in this drawing that the types selected are not in themselves base units of humanity. They have been made so by the beastly crimes superior orders have forced them to commit. But even this has not brought them so low but they wonder at the topsy-turvydom of war that brings them honour where poor Black Mary only got her deserts in gaol.

The crimes of the higher command have passed in Germany uncondemned and unbanned by cardinals and bishops. But the conscience of Germany cannot be wholly dead. Nor will six years only be the term of Germany's humiliation and remorse. The spotless white of the naval uniform, sullied and besmirched by those savage cruelties, cannot, any more than the German soul, be brought back "whiter than snow" by any bestowal of the Iron Cross. The effort to cleanse either would "the multitudinous seas incarnadine."

ARTHUR POLLEN.

Better a Living Dog Than a Dead Lion

BETTER A LIVING DOG THAN A DEAD LIONThe Driver: "You are a worthy Dutchman. He who lies there was a foolish idealist."

Here is the grim choice of alternatives presented to other nations by the creed ofDeutschland Ã¼ber Allesâ€”the cost of resistance and the reward of submission. On one side lies the man who has fought a good fight "for Freedom." He has lost his life but won an immortal memory inscribed upon the cross. The other has saved his life, and lo! it is a "dog's life." He is not even a well-treated dog. Harnessed, muzzled, chained, he crawls abjectly on hands and knees and drags painfully along the road, not only the cart, but his heavy master too.

In the Netherlands and other parts of the Continent, where dogs are used to pull little carts, the owner generally pulls too; it is a partnership in which the dog is treated as a friend and visibly enjoys doing his share. Partnership with Germany is another matter. The dog does all the work, the German takes his ease with his great feet planted on the submissive creature's back.

The belligerent nations have made their choice. Germany's partners have chosen submission and are playing the dog's part, as they have discovered. The Allies on the other side are paying the price of resistance in the sacrifice of life for Freedom. And what of the neutrals? They are evading the choice under cover of the Allies and waxing fat meanwhile. It is not a very heroic attitude and will exclude them from any voice in the settlement. But we understand their position, and at least they are ready to fight for their own freedom. There are, however, individuals who are not ready to fight at all. They call themselves conscientious objectors, prate of the law of Christ, and pose as idealists. If they followed Christ they would sacrifice their lives for others, but they are only concerned for their own skins. Their place is in the shafts The true idealist lies beneath the Cross.

ARTHUR SHADWELL.

"The Burden of the Intolerable Day"

THE AWAKENING"I had such a delightful dream that the whole thing was not true."

Most people have wondered from time to time what the Kaiser thinks in his inmost heart and in the solitude of his own chamber about the condition of Germany and about the War. What impression has been made on him by the alternation of victories and failures during the last twenty months? After all he has staked everythingâ€”he has everything to lose. What does he feel? What impression do the frightful losses of his own people make on him?

Raemaekers tells in this cartoon. The Kaiser has this moment been wakened from sleep by the entrance of a big gorgeously dressed footman, carrying his morning tea. The panelling of the royal chamber in the palace at Potsdam is faintly indicated. The Kaiser sits up in bed, and a look of agony gathers on his face as he realizes that he has wakened up to the grim horror of a new day, and that the delightful time which he has just been living through was only a dream. He had dreamed that the whole thing was not trueâ€”that the War had never really occurred, and that he could face the world with a conscience clear from guilt; and now he has wakened up to bear the burden for another day. It is written in his face what he thinks. You see the deep down-drawn lines in the lower part of the face, the furrows upon the forehead, and the look almost of terror in the eyes. But a smug-faced flunkey offers him a cup of tea with buttered toast, and he must come back to the pretence of that tragi-comedy, the life of the King-Emperor.

The Dutch artist is fully alive to the comic element which underlies that tragedy. The King-Emperor, as he awakes from sleep and sits forward from that mountain of pillows, would be a purely comic figure were it not for the terrible tragedy written in his face. A footman in brilliant livery is a comic figure. The splendour of this livery brings out the comic element by its contrast to, and yet its harmony with, the stupid self-satisfaction of the countenance and the curls of the powdered hair.

The Kaiser, however, awakens to more than the pretences and shams of court life. The vast dreams which he cherished before the War of world-conquest and an invincible Germany are fled now, and he must face, open-eyed and awake, the stern reality.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

Eagle in Hen-run

THE EAGLE IN THE HEN-RUNGerman Eagle: "Come along, Dutch chicken, we will easily arrange an agreement."The Chicken: "Yes, in your stomach."

The Dutchman who could see this cartoon and not admit its simple truth would have to be a very blind pro-German. At present time it pays Germany to pretend a friendship for Holland, but the premeditated murder of Belgium is a plain object-lesson of the sort of friendship and agreement that Germany makes with a country and people which stand in her way and are too small to withstand her brute force. Can any Dutchman doubt what would be Holland's fate if Germany emerged even moderately victorious from this war? The German War Staff would give a good deal to have the control of Holland and a free passage to the sea from Antwerp. They refrain from using force to gain that control only because they cannot afford to have a fresh frontier to guard and because it is quite useful to have Holland neutral and a forbidden ground and water to the Armies and Navies of the Allies, a shield over the heart of Berlin and Germany. It would pay the Germans to have Holland with them and openly against the Allies, and they would no doubt gladly make an "agreement" to that effect; but there is little likelihood of that as long as the Dutch can visualize the "agreement" as clearly as the cartoonist has done here.

There are many people who for years past have suspected Germany's sinister designs on the whole of the Netherlands. The brutal ravaging of Belgium, the talk that already runs, openly or in whispers, in Germany of "annexation of conquered territories" and "extended borders," tell plainly the same taleâ€”that any agreement between a small country and Germany means merely the swallowing-up of the small nation, the "agreement" of a meal with the swallower-up.

BOYD CABLE.

The Future

L'AVENIR

There can be no doubting of the future. The Allied forces, who in Raemaekers' drawing stand for Liberty, are assuredly destined to wring the neck of the Prussian eagle, which typifies the tyranny of brute force.

"For freedom's battle, once begun ...Though baffled oft, is ever won."

"There is only one master in this country," the Kaiser has said of Germany. "I am he, and I will not tolerate another." He has also told his people: "There is only one lawâ€”my law; the law which I myself lay down." It is supererogatory to dispute either of these imperial pronouncements. The Future contents herself with the comment: "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee."

The Kaiser and his counsellors have now translated words into deeds, and every instrument of savagery has been since August, 1911, enlisted by Tyranny in the attempt to overthrow Liberty. "A thousand years ago," the Kaiser once declared to his Army, "the Huns under their king Attila made themselves a name which still lives in tradition." The Future replies to him that he and his fighting hordes will also live in tradition. They will be remembered for their defiance of the conscience of the world, which obeys no call but that of Liberty.

SIDNEY LEE.

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