Raemaekers' Cartoons Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: THROWN TO THE SWINE

The Martyred Nurse]

THE LAND MINE

What does this cartoon suggest? I am asked and I ask myself. At first very little, almost nothing, only uninteresting, ugly death, gloomy, ghastly, dismal, but dull and largely featureless, blank and negative.

Has the artist's power failed him? No, it is strongly drawn. Has his inspiration? What does it mean? Is it indeed meant? As I gaze and pore on it longer, I seem to see that it is just in this blank negation that its strength and its suggestion lie. It is meant. It has meaning. A blast has pa.s.sed over this place, and this is its sequel, its derelict rubbish.

It is death unredeemed, death with no very positive suggestion, with no hint of heroism, none of heroic action, little even of heroic pa.s.sion; just death, helpless, hopeless, pointing to nothing but decomposition, decay, disappearance, _aneantiss.e.m.e.nt_, reduction of the fair frame of life to nothingness. That is the peculiar horror of this war. Were the picture, as it well might be, even more hideous, and did it suggest something more definite, a story of struggle, say, recorded in contortion, or by wounds and weapons, it might be better.

But men killed by machines, men killed by natural forces unnaturally employed, are indeed a fact and a spectacle squalid, sorry, unutterably sad.

All wars have been horrible, but modern wars are more in extremes.

Heroism is there, but not always. It is possible only in patches. There is much of the mere sacrifice of numbers. Strictly, there are scenes far worse than this, for death unredeemed is not the worst of sufferings or of ills. But few are sadder. This is indeed war made by those who hold it and will it to be "not a sport, but a science." There is no sport here. Men killed like this are like men killed by plague or the eruption of a volcano. And, indeed, what else are they? They are victims of a diseased humanity of the eruption--literal and metaphorical--of its hidden fires. And wars will grow more and more like this. What can stop them and banish these scenes? Only the hate of hate, only the love that can redeem even such a sight as this when at last we remember that it is for love's sake only that flesh and blood are in the last retort content to endure it.

HERBERT WARREN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LAND MINE]

"FOR YOUR MOTHERLAND"

England's your Mother! Let your life acclaim Her precious heart's blood flowing in your heart; Take ye the thunder of her solemn name Upon your lips with reverence; play your part By word and deed To shield and speed The far-flung splendour of her ancient fame.

England's your Mother! Shall not you, her child, Quicken the everlasting fires that glow Upon your birthright's altar? England smiled Beside your cradle, trusting you to show, With manhood's might, The undying light That points the road her free-born spirits go.

England's your Mother! Man, forget it not Wherever on the wide-wayed earth your fate Calls you to labour; whatsoe'er your lot-- In service, or in power, in stress or state-- Whate'er betide, With humble pride, Remember! By your Mother you are great.

England's your Mother! What though dark the day Above the storm-swept frontier that you tread?

Her vanished children throng the glorious way; A myriad legions of her living dead Those starry trains That shared your pains Shall set their crown of light upon your head.

England's your Mother! When the race is run And you are called to leave your life and die, Small matter what is lost, so this be won: An after-glow of blessed memory, Gracious and pure, In witness sure "England was this man's Mother: he, her son."

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MY SON, GO AND FIGHT FOR YOUR MOTHERLAND!"]

THE GERMAN LOAN

The bubble is very nicely balanced, for German "kultur," which is in reality but another word for "system" or "organization," rather than that which English-speaking people understand by "culture," has built up a system of internal credit that shall ensure the correct balance of the bubble--for just as long as the militarist policy of Germany can endure the strain of war. But money alone is not sufficient for victory; the peasant hard put to it to suppress his laugh, and the crowned Germania that built up the paper pedestal of the bubble, needed many other things to make that pedestal secure; there was needed integrity, and the respect of neighbouring nations, and the understanding of other points of view beside the doctrine of force, and liberty instead of coercion of a whole nation, and many other things that the older civilizations of Europe have accepted as parts of their code of life--the things this new, upstart Germany has not had time to learn. Thus, with the paper credit--and even with the gold reserve of which Germany has boasted, the pedestal is but paper. And the winds that blow from the flooded, corpse-strewn districts of the Yser, from Artois, from Champagne and the Vosges hills and forests, and from the long, long line of Russia's grim defences--these winds shall blow it away, leaving a nation bankrupt not only in money, but in the power to coerce, in the power to inspire fear, and in all those things out of which the Hohenzollern dynasty has built up the last empire of force.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GERMAN LOAN

"Don't breathe on the bubble or the whole will collapse."]

EUROPE, 1916

There are some English critics who have not yet considered so simple a thing as that the case against horrors must be horrible. In this respect alone this publication of the work of the distinguished foreign cartoonist is a thing for our attention and enlightenment. It is the whole point of the awful experience which has to-day swallowed up all our smaller experiences, that we are in any case confronted with the abominable; and the most beautiful thing we can hope to show is only an abomination of it. Nevertheless, there is horror and horror. The distinction between brute exaggeration and artistic emphasis could hardly be better studied than in Mr. Raemaekers' cartoon, and the use he makes of the very ancient symbol of the wheel. Europe is represented as dragged and broken upon the wheel as in the old torture; but the wheel is that of a modern cannon, so that the dim background can be filled in with the suggestion of a wholly modern machinery. This is a very true satire; for there are many scientific persons who seem to be quite reconciled to the crushing of humanity by a vague mechanical environment in which there are wheels within wheels. But the inner restraint of the artist is suggested in the treatment of the torment itself; which is suggested by a certain rending drag in the garments, while the limbs are limp and the head almost somnolent. She does not strive nor cry; neither is her voice heard in the streets. The artist had not to draw pain but to draw despair; and while the pain is old enough the particular despair is modern. The victim racked for a creed could at least cry "I am converted." But here even the terms of surrender are unknowable; and she can only ask "Am I civilized?"

G. K. CHESTERTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EUROPE, 1916

"Am I not yet sufficiently civilized?"]

THE NEXT TO BE KICKED OUT--DUMBA'S MASTER

Uncle Sam is no longer the simple New England farmer of a century ago.

He is rich beyond calculation. His family is more numerous than that of any European country save Russia. His interests are world-wide, his trade tremendous, his industry complex, his finance fabulous. Above all, his family is no longer of one race. The hatreds of Europe are not echoed in his house; they are shared and reverberate through his corridors. It is difficult, then, for him to take the simple views of right and wrong, of justice and humanity, that he took a century ago. He is tempted to balance a hundred sophistries against the principles of freedom and good faith that yet burn strongly within him. He is driven to temporize with the evil thing he hates, because he fears, if he does not, that his household will be split, and thus the greater evil befall him. But those that personify the evil may goad him once too often.

Dumba the lesser criminal--as also the less dexterous--has betrayed himself and is expelled. When will Bernstorff's turn come? That it will come, indeed _must_ come, is self-evident. The artist sees things too clearly as they are not to see also what they will be. He therefore skips the ign.o.ble interlude of prevarication, quibble, and intrigue, and gives us Uncle Sam happy at last in his recovered simplicity. So we see him here, enjoying himself, as only a white man can, in a wholehearted spurning of lies, cruelty, and murder.

Note that Bernstorff--the victim of a gesture "fortunately rare amongst gentlemen"--is already in full flight through the air, while Uncle Sam's left foot has still fifteen inches to travel. The promise of an added velocity indicates that the flight of the unmasked diplomatist will be far. The sketched vista of descending steps gives us the satisfaction of knowing that the drop at the end will be deep. Every muscle of our sinewy relative is tense, limp, and projectile--the mouthpiece of Prussia goes to his inevitable end. There is no need of a sequel to show him shattered and crumpled at the bottom of the stairway.

ARTHUR POLLEN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NEXT TO BE KICKED OUT--DUMBA'S MASTER]

THE FRIENDLY VISITOR

Raemaekers is never false, and he never works for effect alone. That is what makes him so terrible to the people he criticises, and so effective.

When he wants to depict the st.u.r.dy Dutch soul he draws a st.u.r.dy Dutch Body--ready to defend her home. No flags, no highfalutin, no symbolical figure posed for show; just cleanliness, determination, and good sense facing b.e.s.t.i.a.lity and oppression.

The figure that stands for the Freedom of the Home opposed to the figure that stands for the Freedom of the Seas.

Many an Englishman might take this picture to heart.

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FRIENDLY VISITOR

THE GERMAN: "I come as a friend."

HOLLAND: "Oh, yes. I've heard that from my Belgian sister."]