Raemaekers' Cartoons Part 10

The Prussian military system a.s.sumes 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 MITCh.e.l.l RAMSAY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLUEBEARD'S CHAMBER

The horrors perpetrated by the Germans were brought to light by the Belgian Committee of Enquiry.]

THE RAID

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 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 pa.s.sed 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 mult.i.tudinous seas incarnadine."

ARTHUR POLLEN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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."]

BETTER A LIVING DOG THAN A DEAD LION

Here is the grim choice of alternatives presented to other nations by the creed of _Deutschland uber Alles_--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 att.i.tude 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BETTER A LIVING DOG THAN A DEAD LION

THE DRIVER: "You are a worthy Dutchman. He who lies there was a foolish idealist."]

"THE BURDEN OF THE INTOLERABLE DAY"

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 everything--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 true--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 b.u.t.tered 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 MITCh.e.l.l RAMSAY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AWAKENING

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

EAGLE IN HEN-RUN

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 pa.s.sage 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 tale--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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EAGLE IN THE HEN-RUN

GERMAN EAGLE: "Come along, Dutch chicken, we will easily arrange an agreement."

THE CHICKEN: "Yes, in your stomach."]

THE FUTURE

There can be no doubting of the future. The Allied forces, who in Raemaekers' drawing stand for Liberty, are a.s.suredly 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 law--my law; the law which I myself lay down." It is supererogatory to dispute either of these imperial p.r.o.nouncements. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: L'AVENIR]