Raemaekers' Cartoons Part 20

GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND!

In these sombre times one is grateful for a touch of humour, and it would perhaps be impossible to conceive in all created nature a spectacle so exquisitely ludicrous as the appearance of the Prussian in the guise of a Wronged Man. For, of course, it is the very foundation of the Prussian theory that there can be no such thing as a wronged man.

Might is right. That which physical force has determined and shall determine is the only possible test of justice. That was the diabolic but at least coherent philosophy upon which the Kingdom of Prussia was originally based and upon which the German Empire created by Prussia always reposed.

Nor was that philosophy--which among other things dictated this war--ever questioned, much less abandoned, by the Germans so long as it seemed probable to the world and certain to them that they were destined to win. Now that it has begun to penetrate even into their mind that they are probably going to lose, we find them suddenly blossoming out as pacifists and humanitarians.

Especially are they indignant at the "cruelty" of the blockade. It is not necessary to examine seriously a contention so obviously absurd. Any one acquainted with the history of war knows the blockade of an enemy's ports is a thing as old as war itself. Every one acquainted with the records of the last half-century knows that Prussia owes half her prestige to the reduction of Paris in 1871--effected solely by the starvation of its civilian inhabitants.

But the irony goes deeper than that. Look at the face of the Prussian in "Raemaekers' Cartoons" and you will understand why Germans in America, Holland, and other neutral countries are now talking pacifism and exuding humanitarian sentiment. You will understand why the German Chancellor says that in spite of the victorious march of Germany from victory to victory his tender heart cannot but plead for the dreadful sufferings of the unhappy, though criminal, Allies. Then you will laugh; which is good in days like these.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

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

"Now she prevents my sending goods by the Holland route!"]

THE PACIFICIST KAISER (THE CONFEDERATES)

From time to time of late the Kaiser has posed as the champion of peace.

His official spokesman, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, has announced the Imperial readiness to stay the war--on his master's own terms, which he disdains to define precisely.

The Emperor and his advisers are involved in a tangle of miscalculations which infest the conduct of the war alike in the field of battle and the council-chamber. But no wild imaginings could encourage a solid hope that the Chancellor's peaceful professions would be taken seriously by anybody save his own satellites. Loudly the compliant Minister vaunted in the Reichstag his country's military successes, but he could point to no signs either of any faltering in military preparations on the part of the Allies, or of their willingness to entertain humiliating conditions of peace.

Even in Germany clear visions acknowledge that Time is fighting valiantly on the side of Germany's foes, and that peace can only come when the Central Powers beg for it on their knees.

It is improbable that the Kaiser and his Chancellor now harbour many real illusions about the future, although they may well be anxious to disguise even to themselves the ultimate issues at stake in the war.

Their home and foreign policy seems to be conceived in the desperate spirit of the gambler. They appear to be recklessly speculating on the chances of a pacificist role conciliating the sympathy of neutrals. They count on the odds that they may convert the public opinion of non-combatant nations to the erroneous belief that Germany is the conqueror, and that further resistance to her is futile. But so far the game has miscarried. The recent German professions of zeal for peace fell in neutral countries on deaf or impatient ears. The braggart bulletins of the German Press Bureau have been valued at their true worth. Neutral critics have found in Bethmann-Hollweg's cry for peace mere wasted breath

The Chancellor and his master are perilously near losing among neutrals the last shreds of reputation for political sagacity.

SIDNEY LEE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CONFEDERATES

"Did they believe that peace story in the Reichstag, Bethmann?"

"Yes, but the Allies didn't."]

DINANT

During the joint expedition to Peking, all the other contingents were horrified at the cruelty of the German troops. I have heard how on one occasion a number of Chinese women were watching a German regiment at drill, when suddenly the commanding officer ordered his men to open fire upon them. When remonstrated with, he replied that terrorism was humane in the end, because it made the enemy desire peace. For some reason, these atrocities were not very widely known in England; and no one dreamed that such infernal crimes would ever be perpetrated in European war. But such are indeed the calculated methods of Germany; and her officers began to order them as soon as her troops crossed the Belgian frontier. The German military authorities advise that terrorism should be used sparingly when there is danger of reprisals. Accordingly, though many abominable things have been done to civilians in France and Russia, and to ourselves when opportunity offered, the worst atrocities were committed in Belgium, because Belgium is a small country, which had dispensed with universal military service in reliance on the international guarantee of her security. These events of the first month of the war are in danger of being forgotten, now that Germany is contending on equal terms against the great nations of Europe. But they must not be forgotten. We are fighting against a nation which thinks it good policy to ma.s.sacre non-combatants, provided only that the sons and brothers of the victims are not in a position to retaliate.

W. R. INGE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DINANT--I SEE FATHER.]

"HESPERIA" (WOUNDED FIRST)

Sailors of all nationality except German have from time immemorial looked upon themselves as the guardians and protectors of land folk at sea.

That is why every sailor in the world, outside the doggeries of Hamburg, felt his calling spat upon and his personal pride injured by the sinking of the _Lusitania_--by a sailor.

It seemed that nothing could be worse than that, and then came the sinking of the _Hesperia_, a s.h.i.+p filled with wounded soldiers and Hospital nurses.

Raemaekers brings the fact home to us in this cartoon, not the fact of the English nurses' heroism, which goes without saying, but of German low-down common infamy. The fact has become so commonplace, so accustomed, so everyday that pictures of burning cathedrals, murdered children, and terrified women no longer move us as they did, but this artist, whose command of language seems as infinite and varied as the crimes of the criminals whom G.o.d sent him to scourge, has always some stroke in reserve, something to add to what he has said, if need be. In the case of this picture it is the medicine bottle, gla.s.s, and spoon flying off the shelf, flung to the floor by the bursting charge of Tri-nitro-toluine that adds the last touch as distinctive as the artist's signature.

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Another kind of heroism--the sinking of the Hospital s.h.i.+p _Hesperia_ (Wounded First)]

GALLIPOLI

It is a fine touch, or a fortunate accident, in this sketch of Raemaekers' that it depicts the officer who has made the mistake as exhibiting the spruceness of a Prussian, and the officer who has found out the mistake as having the comparatively battered look of an old Turk. The moustaches of the Young Turk are modelled on the Kaiser's, spikes pointing to heaven like spires; while those of his justly incensed superior officer hang loose like those of a human being. The difference is in any case symbolic; for the sort of instinctive and instantaneous self-laudation satirized in this cartoon is much more one of the vices of the new Germany than of the antiquated Islam. That spirit is not easy to define; and it is easy to confuse it with much more pardonable things. Every people can be jingo and vainglorious; it is the mark of this spirit that the instinct to be so acts before any other instinct can act, even those of surprise or anger. Every people emphasizes and exaggerates its victories more than its defeats. But this spirit emphasizes its defeats as victories. Every national calamity has its consolations; and a nation naturally turns to them as soon as it reasonably can. But it is the stamp of this spirit that it always thinks of the consolation _before_ it even thinks of the calamity. It abounds throughout the whole press of the German Empire. But it is most shortly shown in this figure of the young officer, who makes a hero of himself before he has even fully realized that he has made a fool of himself.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GALLIPOLI

TURKISH GENERAL: "What are you firing at? The British evacuated the place twenty-four hours ago!"

"Sorry, sir--but what a glorious victory!]

THE BEGINNING OF THE EXPIATION

It is sometimes an unpleasant necessity to insult a man, in order to make him understand that he is being insulted. Indeed, most strenuous and successful appeals to an oppressed populace have involved something of this paradox. We talk of the demagogue flattering the mob; but the most successful demagogue generally abuses it. The men of the crowd rise in revolt, not when they are addressed as "Citizens!" but when they are addressed as "Slaves!"

If this be true even of men daily disturbed by material discomfort and discontent, it is much truer of those cases, not uncommon in history, in which the slave has been soothed with all the external pomp and luxury of a lord. So prophets have denounced the wanton in a palace or the puppet on a throne; and so the Dutch caricaturist denounces the gilded captivity of the Austrian Monarchy, of which the golden trappings are golden chains.

But for such a purpose a caricaturist is better than a prophet, and comic pictures better than poetical phrases. It is very vital and wholesome, even for his own sake, to insult the Austrian. He ought to be insulted because he is so much more respectable than the Prussian, who ought not to be insulted, but only kicked. If Austria feels no shame in letting the Holy Roman Empire become the petty province of an Unholy Barbarian Empire, if such high historic symbols no longer affect her, we can only tell her, in as ugly a picture as possible, that she is a lackey carrying luggage.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BEGINNING OF THE EXPIATION]

THE s.h.i.+RKERS