Chapter VI: Part 6

The wilful destruction of works of art as an act of war is a crime unknown among civilised peoples; and if there be degrees in that crime the destruction of such a work as Rheims Cathedral--the pious labour of a colony of artists directed to one end for seven generations--is surely the most monstrous. At Rheims, at Louvain, at Ypres, at a dozen places this spite of the grinning _crétin_ has been manifested; and perhaps after all we were never justified in our amazement. Dull savages do such things in mere incomprehension; and mere incomprehension before a work of art is Prussian nature. The best Prussian use of such a work is to build upon it some irrelevant statistic, some ludicrous _polemik_, some laborious medley of meaningless side-issue.

Let one thing be borne in mind, however, against the settlement to be made at the end of this war. It is against the policy of civilised peoples to trust savages with the possession either of works of art or weapons of precision.

ARTHUR MORRISON

“It was I who opened fire on Rheims.”]

Corn and Cattle

Cattle are skittish at times, and generally the skittishness is associated with heat. Corn and Cattle do not suggest anything fierce, unless hunger intervene, and then the cattle may become, not skittish, but fierce, and even furious. Are the cattle and the corn once again made to speak a language not their own?

Depicted is an incident of this revealing bloody time. The Austrian Francis Joseph has been brought into subjection by Wilhelm of Potsdam, second of that name overlord of Germany. But, you say, Wilhelm is not overlord of Francis Joseph of Schönbrunn! Facts are as they are. Do you see that spiked helmet crowning the head of intolerance, moustache challenging heaven, and outstretched finger dropping ultimata! The earth is the Kaiser’s, and the cattle thereof. “If you won’t let me have your corn, I will not let you have my cattle”--though the cattle came from Denmark they are “my cattle.” True, there is the other “Kaiser” opposite; but that is another story. We are told it is risky work going hunting with a tiger; and methinks aged Francis Joseph will confess that it is even so. His grey hairs have not saved him personally, his “ramshackle Empire” has been, time and again, over-run, his territory has been offered as sops by his younger brother and master of Potsdam. The only wonder in the legend below is “your corn”; above the artist depicts a raging tyrant whose is all, to dispose as the laws of Kultur may please.

Honour among thieves! That is only when they are in the retail trade. The appetite grows as it is fed, and masterly never becomes master-ful. Austria-Hungary is reputed already as satiated with war’s losses, not repentant, and her people in dire need. But her partner in iniquity is a master: and Austria’s need is an opportunity to bargain, and to make subject; hence the shrinking, cringing Hapsburg before the challenging moustache, strident voice, accusing finger of young Hohenzollern, lean and worn! Before the world, here is the fact, these Kaisers, like foot-pads quarrelling--and there are the two privates, so lean and abject, while the “swag” is in question.

W. M. J. WILLIAMS

His Master’s Voice

The manipulation of the Press is one of the weapons which Bismarck taught German Imperialism to use. Like others it has been developed by his successors into an instrument which the master himself would hardly have recognised. It is one of the most potent means of that “peaceful penetration” of all other countries which was nothing but a preparation for war. And it has been used in the war with a purposefulness of aim and a versatility of method that betoken long and systematic study. It is a ubiquitous influence and the most subtle of all. Yet the Press is held in greater contempt by official and other ruling circles in Germany than in any other country. They despise the tool, while tacitly acknowledging its utility by unsparing use.

This curious state of things is the fault of the Press. What has rendered it such a pliant tool in the hands of German Imperialism is either credulity or venality; and both are contemptible qualities. Credulity is probably the more prevalent, at least in this country, where shoals of newspapers, blinded by their own prejudices, were the dupes of German duplicity. But there has been venality, too, both crude and subtle. The case of the “Vlaamsche Stem,” here satirised by Raemaekers, is exceptional. So crude and gross a method of influencing the Press as bribing the proprietor of a newspaper (probably with the aid of threats) to hand it over with its staff and good-will could hardly be practised where any independence survived. It was not practised with success even in conquered Flanders, for the staff, to their eternal credit, refused to listen to the new master’s voice. But there are journalists who, less intelligent than the terrier, faithfully accept the voice from the _Pickelhaube_ and wag their little tails when they hear it. To them is offered the parable which shows their relation to their master.

A. SHADWELL

The _Vlaamsche Stem_ (Flemish Voice), a Flemish paper, was bought by the Germans, whereupon the whole staff resigned, as it no longer represented its title.]

Hun Generosity

The All-Highest, so we are told, loves a joke at another’s expense, a trait in his character essentially barbaric. Raemaekers reproduces the twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of Hapsburg. The roar of anguish from the prostrate octogenarian provokes, as we see, not pity but a grim smile. Italy’s monarch, we may imagine, is muttering to himself:--

_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes._

The bribe, wrenched from another, was, of course, indignantly rejected, but one wonders what the secret feelings of the Hapsburgs may be towards the Hohenzollerns. We know that the Turk cherishes no love for the Hun who has beguiled him, but we cannot gauge as yet the real strength or weakness of the bond between the Huns on the one hand and the Austrians and Hungarians on the other. Raemaekers has pourtrayed Franz Josef flat on his back. In the language of the ring he is “down and out.” Possibly it may have been so from the beginning. At any rate, in this country, there is an amiable disposition to regard Franz Josef as a victim rather than an accomplice, a weakling writhing beneath the jack-boot of Prussia, impotent to hold his own. It may not be so. Time alone will reveal the truth.

But this much is reasonably certain. When peace is declared, the sincere friendship which once existed between ourselves and the Dual Monarchy may be re-established, but many years must pass before we forgive or forget the Huns. They are boasting to-day that as a nation they are self-sufficing and self-supporting. Amen! Most of us desire nothing better than to leave them alone till they have mended their manners and purged themselves of a colossal and unendurable conceit. I cannot envisage Huns playing tennis at Wimbledon, or English girls studying music at Leipzig. The grass in the streets of Homburg will not, for many years, be trodden out by English feet; the harpies of hotel keepers throughout the Happy Fatherland will prey, it may be presumed, upon their fellow Huns. Then they will fall to “strafing” each other instead of England. And then, as now, their mouthings will provoke inextinguishable laughter.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

Easter, 1915

Ever since with the beginning of Christendom a new soul entered the body of exhausted Europe, it is true to say that we have not only had a certain idea but been haunted by it, as by a ghost. It is the idea crystallised in legends like those of St. Christopher and St. Martin. But it is equally apparent in the most modern ethics and eloquence, as, for instance, when a French atheist orator urged the reconsideration of a criminal case by pointing at the pictured Crucifixion which hangs in a French Law Court and saying: “Voilà la chose jugée.” It is the idea that when oppressing the lowest we may actually be oppressing the highest, and that not even impersonally, but personally. We may be, as it were, the victims of a divine masquerade; and discover that the greatest of kings can travel incognito.

Such a picture, therefore, as the cartoonist has drawn here can be found in all ages of Christian history as a comment on contemporary oppression. But while the central figure remains always the same, the types of the tyrant and the mocker hold our temporary attention; for they are sketched from life and with a living exactitude. Upon one of them especially it would be easy to say a great deal; the grinning Prussian youth with the spectacles and the monkey face, who is using a Prussian helmet instead of the crown of thorns.

Such a scientific gutter-snipe is the real and visible fruit of organised German education; he is a much truer type than any gory and hairy Hun. In the face of that young atheist there is everything that can come from the congestion of the pagan with the _parvenu_; all the knowingness that is the cessation of knowledge; and that something which always accompanies _real_ atheism--arrested development.

G. K. CHESTERTON

“And they bowed the knee before Him.”]

Duty--and Safety

A large number of the Belgians are said to have been in German pay, and their support contributed to put the country helpless under German power. Does this cartoon show Belgians of that class, or only the ordinary selfish and pleasure-seeking element of society, too weak to be even worth purchase by the enemy? The scene is a café at The Hague. In the background the band is making music with all its heart and all its power. Two Belgians going out enveloped in greatcoats with capes to face the stormy weather stop for a moment to speak to an acquaintance, one of a party who are enjoying themselves at ease. They are joining the army.

The party is evidently not interested in such a trifle as their country and its fate: they are well out of Belgium, which must be an uncomfortable place to live in at present, and they are not going back till Belgium is a fit home for the butterflies of fashion. The fifth of the party, down in the right-hand corner, has the vacuous face of an imbecile. Two of the others wear a foolish grin, as the word passes between one of them, a lady, and the more capable-looking man seated next her: “Fancy, they’re off to fight.” What fools to think of duty and country, when it means leaving comfort and the life of society, and facing the storm, with the risk of death!

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY

“Fancy, they’re off to fight!”

Many Belgians live at ease in Holland.]

The New Dutch Oil Line

Whether the artist’s eye be turned to Germany or to Holland, he gives proof that his vision is clear and his sense of propriety and humour keen. But the “new oil line” is Dutch, and here the humour is more genial, the satire less sharp and biting. In the foreground, drawn with great force and dignity, is the Lion of England, in blandest mood, who with his back to the German, astride the cask in strikingly complacent smiles, holds the dish to the tap in England, pouring out oil which is carried by an ingenious use of the Lion’s tail to the German’s cask. Over the great Lion, and held by the Lion, is the umbrella, inscribed N.O.T. [the Netherlands Oversea Trust], under cover of which the oil is thus cleverly carried to the smiling German. The artist touches safely and surely a delicate subject which a journalist could not treat without rousing anger; but in result a situation is shown which is sure to prove, and is proving, a trying one both to the Dutch and to the British people. However, there can be little question but that the edge of his wit is turned upon his “ain countrie” by this formidable artist-commentator.

The cunning and brutality of a German debased by the worship of Kultur, of force, are almost wholly absent here; and instead the artist treats the question of Neutrality, and smiles in line and colour at both Holland and Britain. Poor “human nature” is held up to the mirror; foibles, failings, and futility reflected. That the Lion should think that N.O.T. umbrella shelters him from trickery only shows his vanity: that the oil goes to the “enemy” shows the artist’s views of some Dutchmen; that N.O.T. may also suggest that the German’s need is supplied even by the Lion’s tail of pride. Is there a further satire of men in war? While men are mown down on the field by death’s improved tools, some men will always find it “good business” to deal in “oil,” or something else at the expense of a belligerent. If the Dutchman does the business, and the German, broadly pleased, has his sore need supplied, there is the generous Lion, ’neath an umbrella which he upholds himself, made to oil an enemy, the German of the age of Kultur! _Canto virginibus puerisque._

W. M. J. WILLIAMS

Pan Germanicus as Peace Maker

Imagine the feelings of the hindlegs of a stage elephant on being told that the performance is to be a continuous one and you will have some inkling of the dismay of the Kaiser and his henchman, concealed in the plumage of the War Eagle and the Dove of Peace respectively. The one bird is as useless as the other in bringing the war to the end desired in Berlin. The stage eagle is daily losing its plumage, and is rapidly becoming but a moulty apology for the king of birds. As for the dove, it has been used so often, with constantly changing olive branch in its beak, that it now makes its appearance shamefacedly and absolutely without heart.

Imperial eagle mask with half-mad military quasi-deity inside and dove of peace, on the German model, with calculating miscalculating statesman, you rang the curtain up, you cannot ring it down, either to the music of the Hymn of Hate or the Te Deum for peace--the eagle can no longer look boldly straight into the sun, looking for his place in it; the dove has taken permanent quarters in the German ark as it whirls round and round in the whirlpool of impotent effort, ever drawing nearer to the final crash. When the Dove of Peace does come, it will be a real bird of good omen, not a German reserve officer masquerading as one.

ALFRED STEAD

THE DOVE: “They say they do not want peace, as they have time enough.”

THE EAGLE: “Alas! That is just what we haven’t got.”]

Gott Mit Uns

This picture is a perfectly accurate symbolic study of the German Empire. Therefore, naturally, it is one of the most dreadful that were ever drawn. In all the gruesome “Dances of Death” in which the fifteenth century took so grim a pleasure, no artist ever conceived the horrible idea of a fat skeleton. But we have not only conceived the thought, we have seen the thing--“a terror in the sunshine.” We know that chest, puffed up with a wind of pride, and that stomach heavy with slaughter and rich living; and above them the Death’s Head. We have seen it. We have felt its foul breath. Its name is Prussia.

Look at a portrait of Frederick the Great, the “onlie true begetter” of this abortion. It oddly suggests what Raemaekers has set down here; the face a skull, the staring eyes those of a lost soul. But the skeleton has grown fat since Frederick’s day--fat on the blood and plunder of nations. Only there is no living flesh on its bones, nothing of humanity about it.

“Can these dry bones live?” was the question asked of the prophet. It might have been asked of Frederick: “Can this nation live, created of your foul witchcraft, without honour, without charity, without human brotherhood or fellowship, without all that which is the flesh and blood of mankind?” The answer must have been that it could live, though with a life coming from below and essentially infernal. It could live--for a time. It could even have great power because its time was short.

But now it has waxed fat--and kicked. And its end is near.

CECIL CHESTERTON

Idyllic Neutrality

In the 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

A daily smuggling scene on the Dutch Belgian frontier.]

Alcoholism

In this 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

Political and Economic Rapprochement

A German business firm never lets go of a customer once it seizes him. Of course that is an extreme statement, for customers die or change their country, or even revolt against the importunities of the German bagman. Still, it may be taken as a fact that Germany exhibits a pertinacity in trade that rivals her pertinacity in war.

Now Foreign Trade in the conception of Germany does not mean, though it includes, the selling of goods; it means the destruction of all other than German interests. Politics and economics are convertible terms in the mind of the Fatherland. To absorb and make German the world--that is the idea woven in invisible thread in the fabrics she sells, written in invisible ink in her contracts, stamped in invisible letters on her metal goods.

Before the war she was fast reducing great free nations to economic serfdom, so that to buy a rat-trap they had to turn to Germany, who sold them, with a certain grim humour, even the very guns to fight her in, what she considered to be, an already won war.

She paralysed England, Russia, and France economically and politically, just as a snake paralyses its victims, and she was about to swallow them one after the other, and would have swallowed them only that she opened her mouth too soon.

Consider then the fate of a little nation entering into a political and economic rapprochement with this cormorant people who have so nearly devoured England:

The fate of the rabbit in the jaws that could swallow an ox.

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

GERMANY: “You must cut your throat with this knife, otherwise I shall have to use force to you.”]

Why They Were Taken

I remember very early in the war a distinguished neutral saying to me: “Germany hopes for swift and wide conquests, not so much that she believes that she can retain all she seizes as that she hopes in the end to have much to bargain with. Her policy, should she fail in her world conquest, will be analogous to that of a thief who seeks to purchase liberty and immunity from punishment for a crime with the money he has stolen.” It is an aspect of Germany’s policy that will repay watching. When peace terms come to be discussed, the Allies must not accept stolen goods even in part settlement for German crimes and aggression.

Raemaekers here suggests, what has been present in many other minds, the idea that the capture of Dutch ships was stage-managed to enable the new Ambassador at The Hague to “create a good impression” in his favour by a release of the ships.

The action may have impressed shipping circles, and have avoided “strained relations” between the two Governments of The Hague and of Berlin; but the Dutch must indeed be a simple folk and blind if they did not on this occasion “look the gift horse in the mouth” with a view to ascertaining its exact value.

To clumsy diplomacy Germany has more than once added a lack of humour of an astonishing degree of obtuseness in dealing with neutral nations, of which this incident of the Dutch ships is an excellent example.

CLIVE HOLLAND

THE NEW AMBASSADOR: “I am empowered by my Government to restore them--(_sotto voce_) that will create a good impression in my favour.”

The new German Ambassador at the Hague at once restored the captured ships.]

Mon Fils, Belgium, 1914

Raemaekers’ terrible picture represents a scene of frequent occurrence in Belgium during the earlier months of the war. The tragedy depicted requires no comment; it is sufficiently explicit in the cynical smile of the German soldier, the agony of the Belgian mother, and the heap of corpses before her amongst which she is to find her son.

German military ethics have been the wonder and the detestation of the whole world. But they have been practised and carried out by the present army in accordance with principles laid down long ago by German military writers, especially by Clausewitz. It was Clausewitz above all who enunciated the axiom that in times of war every elementary consideration of humanity must be postponed in pursuit of victory. Prince Bismarck adopted the doctrines of Clausewitz and often blamed the German soldiers for the leniency with which they at times treated the French in the war of 1870. It was not enough, so Bismarck thought, to slay the actual combatants. “It will come to this,” he said, “that we will shoot down every male inhabitant.”

It is especially interesting to see what attitude the Teuton savages assumed towards the efforts of those who were anxious to mitigate the horrors of war. In a handbook published in 1902 by the German General Staff, we observe the ruthless effrontery with which all the efforts of the men who negotiated The Hague, Geneva and Brussels conventions were swept away. It was laid down with absolute frankness that “German military authorities do not recognise the validity of any international conventions dealing with the laws of war.”

Thus the scenes which have so shocked us in the present campaign are not inconsistent with, are, indeed, the logical outcome of, principles long since accepted by Berlin. War must be carried to its extreme, even against a peaceful population, because in this way the strongest inducements will be brought to bear upon them to admit conquest and therefore to accept the ultimate conclusion of peace. We know from recent reports of the French Government and other authorities that the murder of prisoners and wounded men has been of frequent occurrence, and that not once but many times orders have been issued to give no quarter. Hostages, also, have been terrorised. Taken in order to serve as securities for the good conduct of the civil population, they have not only been put in the forefront of danger but frequently killed in order to execute the decrees of “Terrorism.”

What in point of fact is the German idea of waging war? Inasmuch as the duty of a nation at war is to conquer, all measures, however indefensible in time of peace, are justified. Moreover, if any engagements have been entered into during the pre-war period, they become cancelled when war has begun.

Is it not absolutely necessary that a nation which adopts, principles like these should be so weakened in military strength as to render it impotent for mischief for at least half a century?

W. L. COURTNEY

“Ah! was your boy among the twelve this morning? Then you’ll find him among this lot.”]

Holland to Belgium

Raemaekers knows far more about the real feelings of his own countrymen than a foreigner can do. We have seen that the Dutch people are full of sympathy for the Belgian refugees, and that they have helped them with great generosity. English fugitives from the war zone have also been kindly treated in Holland. But from what I have heard myself, I fear that there are many Dutchmen who do not realise that the existence of their country as an independent nation is bound up with the success of the Allies.

All the corrupt and malign influences which Germany has been sedulously and treacherously exercising in neutral countries have been exerted in their worst forms in Holland. The country is honeycombed with German intrigues, and half-strangled in a network of commercial interests and obligations. The Press is practically not free, and a numbing sense of terror is spread over the population.

In the long run the fate of Belgium, terrible as it has been, may be preferable to that of Holland, unless the countrymen of De Reuter and Van Tromp have the resolution to strike a blow for their honour and freedom, while there is yet time. They are in danger of becoming the vassals of a Power which has no more sympathy with the ideals of a free commonwealth than Philip II., and which has shown that it can surpass the Duke of Alva in cruelty.

W. R. INGE
_Dean of St. Paul’s_

“Outwardly, I must be neutral; inwardly, I am full of pity and sympathy.”]

A Conflict of Testimony

Just so!

The Huns pay the price of lies by being constrained “to lie on still.” But, sooner or later--sooner, perhaps, than they think--their lies will come home to roost. The great gullible Hun public, the slaves of an iron discipline, will learn the truth. No people in the history of the world has been so consummately befooled, so systematically humbugged. One wonders what the awakening will be like? The army, if we may credit the testimony of some prisoners, is just beginning to ask questions; the women of Hunland are on the ragged edge of revolt. The Junkers, it is true, sit heavily upon public opinion, the safety-valve of every nation. Meanwhile, hidden forces are accumulating strength. A cataclysmic explosion must take place. And then the savage instincts of the great blonde beast, instincts fostered by an intelligence perverted to evil, will glut themselves to satiety. La Carmagnole will be danced in Berlin.

As with individuals, so with nations--the most terrible humiliations come from within.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

“Sire, it’s quite easy: for every witness who swears we’ve murdered innocent people we will produce two who will swear they did not see it.”]

The Ferocious Bellicose Party

Mynheer van Ploomp, Frau van Ploomp, and Fräulein van Ploomp sitting censoriously on the newspaper, _may_ be raging for their country to come into the war, but they certainly don’t look like it.

One can never judge, of course, by outside appearances, but the casual observer might reasonably infer from the surface look of things that Mynheer had not done so very badly by keeping out of the scrap.

As “Patriot”--“Nederlander,” etc., he _may_ write ferocious epistles to the papers demanding a firm stand by his country on the side of right. But the compression of his left optic belies the supposition.

Mynheer’s “neutrality” has very comfortably lined his own nest and his own inside. And yet he knows--none better that, should the tiger take it into his head, he would be gobbled up at a mouthful. Knows moreover that, if by any fatal chance the tiger won the game, he would inevitably be the next morsel to be gobbled.

When Germany is at last on the run, the ferocious bellicose party will probably come in on the side of the winners. It is not a lofty game. But it probably pays.

JOHN OXENHAM

There existed a considerable party in Holland who were held up to derision for wishing their country to come into the war.]

Holland and Militarism

Louis Raemakers knows his own countrymen better than we can, and this satire at the expense of the peace at any price brigade is doubtless well deserved. The attitude might have been pardoned two years ago, but it is merely insane to-day. And none knows that fact better than Holland. Like America, she is taking care of herself; indeed, no nation has better reason to do so with a neighbour at her elbow unamenable to reason and uncontrolled by conscience.

Historians to come, however, will argue that our blindness was unpardonable, and our surprise and unpreparedness before the advent of war must cast a heavy slur on the future credit of our past diplomacy. For what could be clearer than Germany’s attitude or brighter than the beacons which had directed and were still directing her course? Bernhardi tells us all there is to know; Frederick the Great established the Prussian tradition on a basis of fraud and force; Bismarck sustained it and William II. has striven to reap the harvest of their sowing. It has needed the united might of Europe to prevent him from doing so. But to cry out against Teutonic principle and practice, as though it were a thing of yesterday sprung upon us in these wars, is absurd. Every politician worthy the name had the pages of history open for his perusal. Frederick pointed out that alliances in which each contracting party has different interests must never hold good under all conditions, or represent a permanent political system. He declared that no alliance or agreement in the world can be effective after the bond of common and reciprocal interest is broken.

Why then marvel at the Belgian “Scrap of paper,” or any number of them? It was a political commonplace with the German Chancellor and his Master that oaths should be broken at the moment it became inconvenient to keep them. Bernhardi himself says that political agreements must always be concluded with a tacit reservation and can only hold as long as the interests of both contracting parties are satisfied.

“La guerre,” said Mirabeau, “est l’industrie nationale de la Prusse.” She came into existence by that industry and no other; and until civilisation can crush that industry, peace terms with Prussia must not depend upon her promise to fulfil them but upon our power to make her do so. To cry “Down with militarism!” therefore is emphatically to play the German game, and she will always support that cry in other mouths, just as she applauds our “Free Trade” and other traditions that have played into her hands so long.

Holland at least is alive to danger, and since the artist drew this picture we have learned by _communiqué_ from Dutch General Headquarters that the army is equipped in every possible respect, and able to face the prospect of war with confidence. The nation as a whole has supported Parliament with enthusiasm, and the preparations have been directed and inspired by the spectacle of modern warfare and its highest needs.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS

THE GERMAN: “That’s right. So much the sooner you will be ours.”]

Our Lady of Antwerp

“Here I and sorrows sit. This is my throne, bid Kings come worship it.” Such seems to be an appropriate legend for Raemaekers’ beautiful triptych which he has entitled “Our Lady of Antwerp.” Full of compassion and sympathy for all the sufferings of her people, she sits with the Cathedral outlined behind her, her heart pierced with many agonies. On the left is one of the many widows who have lost their all in this war. On the right is a soldier stricken to death, who has done his utmost service for his country and brings the record of his gallantry to the feet of Our Lady of Antwerp.

Antwerp, as we know, was at the height of its prosperity in the sixteenth century. We have been told that no fewer than five hundred ships used to enter her port in the course of a day, while more than two thousand could be seen lying in her harbour at one time. Her people numbered as many as one million, her fairs attracted merchants from all parts of Europe, and at least five hundred million guilders were put into circulation every year. We know what followed. Its very prosperity proved a bait to the conqueror. In 1576 the city was captured by the Spaniards, who pillaged it for three days. Nine years later the Duke of Parma conquered it, and about the time when Queen Elizabeth was resisting the might of Spain Antwerp’s glory had departed and its trade was ruined. At the close of the Napoleonic wars the city was handed over to the Belgians.

A place of many memories, whose geographical position was well calculated to arouse the cupidity of the Germans, was bound to be gallantly defended by the little nation to which it now belonged. Whether earlier help by the British might or might not have altered the course of history we cannot tell. Perhaps it was not soon enough realised how important it was to keep the Hun invader from the sacred soil. At all events we do not look back on the British Expedition in aid of Antwerp in 1914 with any satisfaction, because the assistance rendered was either not ample enough or else it was belated, or both. So that Our Lady of Antwerp has still to bewail the ruthless tyranny of Berlin, though perhaps she looks forward to the time when, once more in possession of her own cities, Belgium may enter upon a new course of prosperity. We are pledged to restore Belgium, doubly and trebly pledged, by the words of the Prime Minister, and justice will not be done until the great act of liberation is accomplished.

W. L. COURTNEY

Deportation

Nothing, when one analyses it, could be imagined more thoroughly characteristic of Prussia than the particular stroke of policy by which a large proportion of the male population of Belgium--as also in a somewhat lesser degree of Northern France--was separated from its family ties and hurried away into exile in Germany, there to be compelled to work for the profit of enemies.

It had all the marks of Prussianism.

Firstly, it was a violation of the civilised and Christian tradition of European arms. By the rules of such warfare the non-combatant was spared, wherever possible; not only his life but his property and liberty were secure so long as he did not abuse his position.

Secondly, it was an affront to decent human sentiment quite apart from technical rules; the man, guilty of no offence save that of belonging to a country which Prussia had invaded without justice and ravaged without mercy, was torn from his family, who were left to the mercy of their opponents. We all know what that mercy was like.

Thirdly, it was an insult to the human soul, for the unfortunate victims were not only to be exiled from their country, but to be driven by force and terror to serve against it.

Fourthly, and finally, like all the worst Prussian crimes, it was a stupid blunder. Prussia has paid already a very high price for any advantage she may have gained from the mutinous and unwilling labour of these men, and for the swelling of her official return for the edification of her own people and of neutrals by the inclusion of “prisoners of war” of this description. To-day, when she knows not where to turn for men, she is obliged to keep a huge garrison tied up in Belgium to guard her line of retreat. And when the retreat itself comes, the price will rise even higher, and the nemesis will be both just and terrible.

CECIL CHESTERTON

Belgian workmen were forcibly deported to Germany.]

The Envoy to Her Majesty

A certain number of Raemaekers’ cartoons concern the politics and the people of his own country in such a way that comment on them by one who is not fully conversant with the situation in Holland is an impertinence, but in this case the artist’s satire is patent to all. The contempt of the Queen at this bald rendering of Germany’s many veiled offers is fully apparent; every line of the figure is expressive of disdain, and the figure in the background appeals without result.

It is that figure in the background which has most interest, however; it is yet another expression of the truth that these cartoons have made so vividly evident, that Germany will stop short of nothing to gain her ends. This envoy is the German as we knew him before the war, deferent, somewhat waiter-ish, and at the same time suggestive of the German commercial traveller--the very worst kind of commercial traveller, for whom the word “business” covers such underhand dealings as accompanied the furtherance of German plans in all countries--a spy in disguise.

He says, in effect--“Yours is a very little country; in the day of our world-dominance it will be well that you should have our protection.” He wants the mouths of the Scheldt, and all that furtherance of German naval plans which dominance over Holland would give, and he offers all that Germany is prepared to offer to any ally or potential ally.

But the Queen has turned away.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN

“Madam, your soldiers will get splendid Prussian uniforms, and Your Majesty will have a place of honour in the retinue of the Kaiser.”]

The German Band

The German Band, as we know it in this country, has never been noted for harmonious music. Blatancy, stridency, false notes, and persistency after the coppers, have been its chief characteristics.

And the same things prevail when it is at home.

Never since the world began has there been such a campaign of barefaced humbug and lying as that organised by William, Hindenburg, Hollweg and Co. for the deceiving and fleecing of the much-tried countries temporarily under their sway.

But the money had to be got in by hook or by crook, and by hook and by crook and in every nefarious way they have milked their unfortunate peoples dry.

But there is another side to all this. In time, the veil of lies and false intelligence of victories in the North Sea, and at Verdun, and, indeed, wherever Germany has fought and failed, will be rent by the spear of Truth.

Then will come the _débâcle_. And then, unless every scrap of grit and backbone has been Prussianised out of the Teuton, the revulsion of feeling will sweep the oppressors out of existence; and Germany, released from the strangle-hold, may rise once more to take the place among the civilised nations of the world which, by her foul doings of the last two years, she has deliberately forfeited.

JOHN OXENHAM

“Was blazen die Trompeten Moneten heraus?”]

A Fact

To understand the true inwardness of this cartoon, the reader must be familiar with the writings of General von Hartmann, one of the chief evangelists of German methods of warfare. The following gem is extracted from an article by von Hartmann, published in 1877, on “Military Necessities and Humanity”:--

“The warrior has need of passion. It must not, indeed, as the result of opposition, be regarded as a necessary evil; nor condemned as a regrettable consequence of physical contact; nor must we seek to restrain and curb it as a savage and brutal force; for in causing a powerful and exclusive concentration of individual energies it becomes an indispensable agent of the consummation of conflict. Every warlike exploit is before all things of a personal nature; it puts before all else the affirmation of the individual character, and it demands, in its agent, a release from the oppressive rule of the moderating laws of everyday life.... _Violence_ and _passion_ are the two levers essential to any warlike action, and, we say it advisedly, of all _military greatness_.”

FRANCIS STOPFORD

This brutalism by Major Tille of the German Army on a small boy of Maastricht was vouched for by an eye-witness.]

The Free Sea

It is when Germany’s absence of morals is most blatant that her presence of mind comes to the rescue. It is a strange and wonderful mind that she reveals--a weird combination of childishness without its innocence, of wickedness without its cunning. Yet somehow the German mental process is sometimes convincing. It is really one of the wonders of the world that it should be so. When a country that stole Silesia, Poland, Schleswig, Alsace-Loraine, Belgium and Serbia solemnly assures a shocked and startled world that its life-long object is to protect the freedom of small nationalities; when a Government, that kills peaceful passengers by the hundred and torpedoes neutral trading ships, says it does so in the cause of the freedom of the seas; when a frenzied Emperor, foiled in the effort to conquer Europe by a surprise attack, vows that his only purpose is self-defence, one would think that such talk could deceive nobody--not even the speaker. A child’s lie embarrasses but does not mislead its elders. Why, then, does the German lie mislead? Or is it that the bully only seems to be believed?

The feebler spirits of Holland would rather believe anything than be forced into the turmoil of war. Germany, as a protector of the weak, the champion of the small, they are willing to accept--rather than meet Germany in arms. Nay, they--the descendants of the greatest seamen, and to-day dependent on the sea for more than half the country’s wealth--would prefer Germany’s guarantee of sea freedom than run the risk of her land atrocities.

Raemaekers is the _enfant terrible_ of political argument. The German contention is childish, the Dutch credulity is childish, and he meets them with a child’s demonstration of what the truth would be. Three great outlets of the sea are blocked by three brutal figures. We have only to look at them to realise that here are dangerous playmates.

ARTHUR POLLEN

Germany’s idea of what it would make of it for Holland.]

Belgian Refugee to His Dutch Brother

In this cartoon Raemaekers endeavours to bring home to his compatriots one lesson of the War. That as human nature now is--and especially German in-human nature--the only guarantee, not necessarily of peace but of life, for the smaller nations on the borders of the German Empire is the provision of a force sufficient to give pause to wanton aggression.

A large and more efficient Army might not have saved Belgium. It would, however, possibly have diverted the German advance to another quarter. It would undoubtedly have gained much valuable time for the Allies in their fight for the cause of freedom and the preservation of small nations.

Of the importance of a large and efficient Army to Holland at the present juncture there can be no question. Germany in retreat may invade the territory of the gallant little nation of free people, whose history is a glorious and eloquent plea for their continued existence as a separate nation, unless they are prepared to offer effective resistance. Often the dying throes of a wild beast involve an unexpectedly wide area in destruction. And if Germany wins, Holland may make up its mind to becoming an appendage of the Hunnish Empire.

That this is realised by the more thoughtful and prescient Dutch no one who knows them doubts; but the wave of prosperity in war time which Holland has experienced may serve to dull the apprehension of the less suspicious and far-sighted of her people.

With the case of the Belgian refugees before their eyes one may hope that the lesson may strike home. Indeed, we cannot believe that the wrongs of Belgium will be readily forgotten.

The central figure of the cartoon is not less eloquent because the despair that is written upon the face is less emotional than that of the girl and woman, or even the little boy. But it grips. Wisdom, too often, alas! is purchased only with the bitter coin of experience.

CLIVE HOLLAND

“I, too, always voted against any increase of my Army.”]

The “Falaba”

Amongst my most treasured possessions is a photograph taken on board the lost _Invincible_ after the battle of the Falkland Islands was over. Three-quarters of a mile away _Inflexible_ is silhouetted against the evening sky, and between the two ships lies the flotsam of the _Gneisenau_, with 200 or more German sailors clinging to wreckage or swimming for their lives. A few steam pinnaces and cutters are picking up these poor drowning fellows as fast as they can. The fighting navy, having conquered its foe, is engaged upon the task, always dear to it, of saving life. It is an added pleasure to befriend those who have fought gallantly.

I do not know whether Raemaekers has ever seen this photograph, but this drawing shows the drowning people, the wreckage, exactly reproduced. But here the only boat has itself been smashed by a shot, so that the last hope of safety of those in the water has been taken from them. And the ship that sinks is not a fighting ship, and the poor souls struggling for their lives are not fighting men. Can these men in the foreground be the sailors of a fighting navy?

For the officer of this submarine is not content to warn the _Falaba_ and give its people a chance to save themselves before sinking her. He has, indeed, warned her, but, with a refinement of cruelty, has torpedoed the ship while the women and children were being hastily got off; and, not content with this, has fired on and sunk the boats in which his terrified victims hoped to escape.

There is here no artistic exaggeration. The picture is horrible just because it is photographically accurate.

It is a hideous negation of all that the word “navy” has stood for in every country that has ever possessed one. In nothing does Raemaekers show his Dutch blood more than in his savage anger at this gruesome perversion of the sea tradition. For the Dutch have a great naval history and know the meaning of a seaman’s honour.

The true sailor is great in his bravery because he is still greater in his chivalry. What will history say of these debauched brutes who revel in their hangman’s task?

ARTHUR POLLEN

The “Katwyk”

In this one picture is the whole story of German submarine war, which heeds the presence of neither women nor children, but strikes swiftly, secretly, and without giving its victim the opportunity of defence. Not that in war it is demanded that the opponent should be given chance of a fight on equal terms; for in sea war the whole object of a naval commander is to concentrate an overwhelming superiority of fire on his enemy, and to destroy.

It remained for Germany, however, to apply this doctrine of destruction to mercantile craft and to neutral shipping, and to conduct war on the principle that war justifies _any_ means, any barbarity, even the indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatants. This assassin striking from behind has called the British blockade barbarous; but that blockade at least gives the nation against whom it is exercised a choice between evils, so much so in fact that all nations recognise it, and for ages have recognised it, as part of the procedure of war--no accusation of barbarity was made against Germany in 1871 for the starvation of the civilian population of Paris. But this sea-murder is a different thing, a thing that does not advance the end of the war, and a sign of a claim on the part of its authors that civilisation cannot allow. It is as if they questioned: “Since we have a certain power of destruction, shall we not use it as pleases us?”

And the answer? There were, after the sinking of the _Lusitania_, rows of bodies of women and children laid out for identification; there were many other instances, almost equally tragic, and the answers that they afford are eloquent enough. May they be well remembered in the day of settlement.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN

(A Dutch ship of this name was torpedoed by the Germans.)]

Arcades Ambo

Looking at this cartoon one can understand why Raemaekers is not _persona grata_ in the Happy Fatherland. With half a dozen touches he has changed Satan from the magnificent Prince of Evil whom Gustave Doré portrayed into a--Hun. Henceforth we shall envisage Satan as a Hun, talking the obscene tongue--now almost the universal language in Hades--and hailed by right-thinking Huns as the All Highest War Lord. Willy senior must be jealous.

With the learned Professor, the cartoonist not only produces a composite portrait of all the _Herren Professoren_, but also drives home the point of his amazing pencil into what is perhaps the most instructive lesson of this monstrous war--the perversion to evil uses of powers originally designed, nourished, and expanded to benefit mankind. When the _Furor Teutonicus_ has finally expended itself, we do not envy the feelings of the illustrious chemists who perfected poison gas and liquid fire! Will they, when their hour comes, find it easy to obey the poet’s injunction, and, wrapping the mantle of their past about them, “lie down to pleasant dreams”?

We are assured that these professors have not exhausted their powers of frightfulness. It may be so. This is certain: Such frightfulness will ultimately exhaust them. With this reflection, we may leave them, grist to be ground by the mills of God.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

THE PROFESSOR: “I have discovered a new mixture which will blind them in half an hour.”

SATAN: “You are in very truth my master.”]

Neuve Chapelle

Nothing could be more thoroughly characteristic of the Prussian mind than its utter misunderstanding of England. It exhibits all the characteristics which we are accustomed to associate with “German Thought,” and especially the combination of enormous industry in the accumulation of facts with an utter inability to appreciate such facts as cannot be catalogued and an amazing stupidity in passing judgment even upon the facts which are recognised.