Alcoholism
Inthis cartoon the Dutch artist pays a high compliment to the British working man. The hideous figure of Alcoholism dressed in rags, with large bony hands at the end of her thin bony arms, with the glaring eyes, the distorted face and the dishevelled hair of a raging mad woman, approaches the workman, offering bottles of whisky which he has struck from her hand. Two of them lie smashed on the ground, the third is falling. The workman’s choice is made voluntarily. He will be neither the slave of drink, on the one hand, nor the slave of prohibitory law on the other. He will judge for himself, and his decision is expressed in this cartoon. He knows the nature of Alcoholism which assails him, and he looks at her with anger and contempt as he points to the answer which he has expressed in the bottles falling or broken.
It contains also the answer which this artist of a foreign and neutral country makes to the charges of drunkenness that were a year ago hurled against the British workman. He was said to be endangering the country by his self-indulgence. While there are exceptions, unfortunately, to the picture that Raemaekers here shows us, there need be no hesitation in believing that the workman’s attitude, as the artist sees it, is the attitude of the overwhelming majority. It is not often that a higher compliment has been paid to the workman than in this cartoon. It is the ideal truth; and the more widely it is seen and appreciated, the more it will make the ideal into the actual truth. It does not enter into the artist’s purpose to show the serious loss caused by the alcoholism of even a small minority, but this point of view must not be forgotten in real life.
Copies of this cartoon should be widely spread through the country.
WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY
ALCOHOLISM—BRITONS NEVER WILL BE SLAVES
ALCOHOLISM—BRITONS NEVER WILL BE SLAVES
ALCOHOLISM—BRITONS NEVER WILL BE SLAVES