Idyllic Neutrality
Inthe picture opposite the best elements of the great cartoonist’s genius have full scope. One has the biting satire, the humour and the extraordinary gift of representing facial expressions with an economy of line reminding one of some of the best work of the late Phil May, that prince of humorous British caricaturists.
Raemaekers does not spare even his own countrymen when he discovers a situation inimical to the welfare of the Allied cause, or one which involves an obvious absurdity.
Here we have such a situation. In the early days of the War of far greater frequency than at present, thanks to the ever tightening “strangle hold” of the British Fleet. There can be no doubt that for many months Holland (greatly to her material gain) turned herself into a conduit pipe for the supply of contraband of War to the Central Empires and more especially to Germany. Daily there were scenes such as that depicted, though possibly veiled with some thin veneer either of legality or subterfuge.
Dutch peasants (as well as the agents of the rich merchants and the resident German smugglers) of all ages and grades flocked to the frontier figuratively if not literally to drop their bags of contraband over the slenderly marked line which divides Holland from Germany.
On the faces of the smugglers one sees the grin of satisfaction and the smug recognition of the truth of the ancient saw, “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.” They are all doing their little bit—though strictly neutral, of course—to keep the Huns alive, to provide the means of killing the soldiers of the Allies, and—at the same time are adding to that “nest egg” which is so dear to the Dutch heart.
At the frontier line are two soldiers. The Dutch guard with a stolid appearance in his back, and with a look of detachment and bland unconsciousness of what is going on behind it, discoverable even on the small portion of his face that is visible. On the other side of the frontier stands the Hun guard smiling sardonically at the Dutch ideas of neutrality, and the eagerness with which the people of the land he covets, and hoped to take, play his game.
CLIVE HOLLAND
IDYLLIC NEUTRALITYA daily smuggling scene on the Dutch Belgian frontier.
IDYLLIC NEUTRALITYA daily smuggling scene on the Dutch Belgian frontier.
IDYLLIC NEUTRALITY
A daily smuggling scene on the Dutch Belgian frontier.