Raemaekers' Cartoons Part 13

FERDINAND THE CHAMELEON

There is one whole field of the evil international influence of Germany in which Ferdinand of Bulgaria is a much more important and symbolic person than William of Prussia. He is, of course, a cynical cosmopolitan. He is in great part a Jew, and an advanced type of that _mauvais juif_ who is the princ.i.p.al obstacle to all the attempts of the more genuine and honest Jews to erect a rational status for their people.

Like almost every man of this type, he is a Jingo without being a patriot. That is to say, he is of the type that believes in big armaments and in a diplomacy even more brutal than armaments; but the militarism and diplomacy are not humanized either by the ancient national sanct.i.ties which surround the Czar of Russia, or the spontaneous national popularity which established the King of Serbia. He is not national, but international; and even in his peaceful activities has been not so much a neutral as a spy.

In the accompanying cartoon the Dutch caricaturist has thrust with his pencil at the central point of this falsity. It is something which is probably the central point of everything everywhere, but is especially the central point of everything connected with the deep quarrels of Eastern Europe. It is religion. Russian Orthodoxy is an enormously genuine thing; Austrian Romanism is a genuine thing; Islam is a genuine thing; Israel, for that matter, is also a genuine thing.

But Ferdinand of Bulgaria is not a genuine thing; and he represents the whole part played by Prussia in these ancient disputes. That part is the very reverse of genuine; it is a piece of ludicrous and transparent humbug. If Prussia had any religion, it would be a northern perversion of Protestantism utterly distant from and indifferent to the controversies of Slavonic Catholics. But Prussia has no religion. For her there is no G.o.d; and Ferdinand is his prophet.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FERDINAND THE CHAMELEON

"I was a Catholic, but, needing Russian help, I became a Greek Orthodox.

Now I need the Austrians, I again become Catholic. Should things turn out badly, I can again revert to Greek Orthodoxy."]

THE LATIN SISTERS

The Latin Sisters! Note carefully the expression of France as contrasted with that of Italy. France, violated by the Hun, exhibits grim determination made sacrosanct by suffering. Italy's face glows with enthusiasm. One can conceive of the one fighting on to avenge her martyrs, steadfast to the inevitable end when Right triumphs over Might.

One can conceive of the other drawing her sword because of the blood tie which links them together in a bond that craft and specious lies have tried in vain to sunder. What do they stand for, these two n.o.ble sisters? Everything which can be included in the word--ART. Everything which has built up, stone upon stone, the stately temple of Civilization, everything which has served to humanize mankind and to differentiate him from the beasts of Prussia.

Looking at these two sisters, one wonders that there are still to be found in England mothers who allow their children to be taught German.

One hazards the conjecture that it might well be imparted to exceptionally wicked children, if there be any, because none can question that the Teutonic tongue will be spoken almost exclusively in the nethermost deeps of Hades until, and probably after, the Day of Judgment.

For my sins I studied German in Germany, and I rejoice to think that I have forgotten nearly every word of that raucous and obscene language.

Had I a child to educate, and the choice between German and Choctaw were forced upon me, I should not select German. French, Italian, and Spanish, cognate tongues, easy to learn, delightful to speak, hold out sweet allurements to English children. Do not these suffice? If any mother who happens to read these lines is considering the propriety of teaching German to a daughter, let her weigh well the responsibility which she is deliberately a.s.suming. To master any foreign language, it is necessary to talk much and often with the natives. Do Englishwomen wish to talk with any Huns after this war? What will be the feeling of an English mother whose daughter marries a Hun any time within the next twenty years? And such a mother will know that she planted the seed which ripened into catastrophe when she permitted her child to acquire the language of our detestable and detested enemies.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACh.e.l.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LATIN SISTERS

ITALY: "Indeed she is my sister"]

MISUNDERSTOOD

It need not necessarily be supposed that the directors of German destiny, who are not devoid of intelligence, took the ravings of Bernhardi over-seriously. He had his special uses no doubt before the day. But on the morrow of the day, when questions of responsibility came to be raised, he became one of many inconvenient witnesses; and there has scarcely been a better joke among the grim humours of this catastrophe than the mission of this Redhot-Gospeller of the New Unchivalry of War to explain to "those idiotic Yankees" that he was really an ardent pacifist. The most just, the most brilliant, the most bitter pamphlet of invective could surely not say so much as this reeking cleaver, those b.l.o.o.d.y hands, that fatuous leer and gesture, this rigid victim. Bernhardism was not a mere windy theory. It was exactly practised on the Belgian people.

And this spare, dignified figure of Uncle Sam, contemptuously incredulous, is, I make bold to say, a more representative symbol of the American people than one which our impatience sometimes tempts us now to draw. Most Americans now regret, as Pope Benedict must regret, that the first most cruel rape of Belgium was allowed to pa.s.s without formal protest in the name of civilization. But that occasion gone, none other, not the _Lusitania_ even, showed so clear an opportunity. A people's sentiments are not necessarily expressed by the action of its Government, which moves always in fetters. Nor has President Wilson's task been as simple as his critics on this or the other side of the Atlantic profess to believe.

JOSEPH THORP.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MISUNDERSTOOD

BERNHARDI: "Indeed I am the most humane fellow in the world."]

PROSPERITY REIGNS IN FLANDERS

Wherever Prussia rules she has only one method of ruling--that of terror. Wherever she finds civilization and the wealth which civilization creates, she can do nothing but despoil. She is as incapable of persuasion as of creation. No people forced to endure her rule have ever been won to prefer it as the Alsatians came to prefer the rule of France or as many Indians have come to prefer the rule of England. In Belgium she has been especially herself in this respect.

A wise policy would have dictated such a careful respect for private rights and such a deference to native traditions as might conceivably have weakened the determination of the Belgians to resist to the death those who had violated their national independence. But Prussia is incapable of such a policy. In any territory which she occupies, whether temporarily or permanently, her only method is terror and her only aim loot. She did indeed send some of her tame Socialists to Brussels to embark on the hopeless enterprise of persuading the Belgian Socialists that honour and patriotism were _ideologies bourgeoises_ and that the "economic interests" of Belgium would be best promoted by a submission.

These pedantic barbarians got the answer which they deserved; but on their pettifogging thesis Raemaekers' cartoon is perhaps the best commentary.

The "prosperity" of Belgium under Prussian rule has consisted in the systematic looting, in violation of international law, of the wealth acc.u.mulated by the free citizens of Belgium, for the advantage of their Prussian rulers; while to the ma.s.s of the people it has brought and, until it is forever destroyed, can bring nothing but that slavery which the Prussians have themselves accepted and which they would now impose upon the whole civilization of Europe.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROSPERITY REIGNS IN FLANDERS

Four hundred and eighty millions of francs have been imposed as a war tax, but soup is given gratis.]

THE LAST HOHENZOLLERN

Behind him stands the embodiment of all that Prussian kultur and efficiency mean, wooden uninventiveness, clockwork accuracy of movement--without soul or inspiration. He himself is thin and scraggy--Raemaekers has intensified these characteristics, but even so the caricature of the reality is more accurate than unkind. Many months ago, this vacuous heir of the house of Hohenzollern set to work on the task of overcoming France, and the result ... may be found in bundles of four, going back to the incinerators beyond Aix, in the piled corpses before the French positions at and about Verdun; some of the results, the swag of the decadent burglar, went back in sacks from the chateaux that this despicable thing polluted and robbed as might any Sikes from Portland or Pentonville.

He is the embodiment, himself, of the last phase of Prussian kultur.

Somewhere back in the history of Prussia its rulers had to invent and to create, and then kultur brought forth hard men; later, it became possible to copy, and then kultur brought forth mechanical perfection rather than creative perfection, systematized its theories of life and work, and brought into being a cla.s.s of men just a little meaner, more rigid, more automaton-like, than the original cla.s.s; having reduced life to one system, and that without soul or ideal, kultur brought forth types lacking more and more in originality. Here stands the culminating type; he will copy the good German Gott--he is incapable of originating anything--and will "do the same to France."

As far as lies in his power, he has done it; in the day of reckoning, Germany will judge how he has done it, and it is to be hoped that Germany will give him his just reward, for no punishment could be more fitting. The rest of the world already knows his vacuity, his utter uselessness, his criminal decadence. As his father was stripped of the Garter, so is he here shown stripped of the attributes to which, in earlier days, he made false claim. There remains a foolish knave posturing--and that is the real Crown Prince of Germany.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND!

"Father says I have to do the same with France."]

PIRACY

In the summer of 1914 Germany stood before the world, a nation of immense, and to a great extent of most honourable, achievement. Her military greatness had never been in dispute. But in the previous twenty years she had developed an internal industry and an external commerce on a scale and with a rapidity entirely unprecedented. She had to build a navy such as no nation had ever constructed in so short a time. She seemed destined to progress in the immediate future as she had progressed in the immediate past.

What has the madness for world conquest done for her now? She has made enemies of all, and made all her enemies suffer. Like the strong blind man of history, she has seized the columns of civilization and brought the whole temple down. But has she not destroyed herself utterly amid the ruins? Her industry is paralyzed, her commerce gone. Her navy is dishonoured. Some force she still possesses at sea, but it is force to be expended on sea piracy alone. And it is not piracy that can save her.

At most, in her extremity, it will do for her what a life belt does for a lone figure in a deserted ocean. It prolongs the agony that precedes inevitable extinction. It is the throw of the desperate gambler that Germany has made, when she flings this last vestige of her honour into the sea.

ARTHUR POLLEN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TIRPITZ'S LAST HOPE--PIRACY]

WEEPING, SHE HATH WEPT