Part 6

Certain publications in neutral countries, notably in America, have given room in their pages during the course of the war to little sketches--obviously part of the German system of propaganda--designed to show that the Allied estimate of German barbarities is at the very least a huge exaggeration, and is possibly altogether fabricated. The term “undue sentimentality” is frequently used; travelers in the occupied territories are represented as seeing the inhabitants quite contented under German rule and surprised at the mention of atrocities. Their conquerors are quite good people, necessarily subjecting them to strict discipline, but in no way unjust. There _may_ have been atrocities somewhere, at some time, but these travellers cannot get any reliable accounts of them.

Many of the papers that publish this sort of thing are probably quite ignorant of its source; others, of course, do so with full knowledge of the merits of the case and of the reason for its publication. Evidence collected on oath from sufferers is ignored, and so cleverly are these little sketches done that one is inclined to believe the German is not so black as he has been painted.

But not one of these sketches ever ventures near the subject of the _Lusitania_, the _Arabic_, the Scarborough bombardment, or Louvain--or any other of those horrors that are established beyond question in the minds of men. And wherever these German efforts at lulling the world’s conscience by sophistries appear, there should this cartoon appear also, as a corrective. Throughout half the world these murdered children lie under earth and water, and to forget them in the day when Germany fears to add more to their number would be to share this modern Herod’s infamy.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_“My Beloved People”_

The old emperor of Austria was said to have very vague ideas about the present war. According to one fairly well authenticated story, he sometimes fancied himself in 1866, and hoped that his troops were killing a great many of those infernal Prussians. But Ferdinand of Bulgaria is no imbecile. He is not a very able man, though certain journalists have extolled his talents; he is merely cunning and ambitious. His subjects do not love him. He is very extravagant, and preferred, even before the war, to spend some eight months of the year in other countries, where the opportunities for amusement are greater than at Sofia. He is also a great stickler for etiquette, which his subjects despise, and his court is a queer mixture of complicated ceremony and bohemian license.

The Bulgarians have always disliked him, and his policy in involving them in a war with Russia is not likely to stimulate their loyalty. We cannot wonder that he feels safer in a neutral country, such as Switzerland. Bulgaria is a classic land of political assassination; every year several unpopular politicians are “removed,” and no one thinks much about it. Ferdinand’s chances of dying in his bed are not favorable, unless he decides to say good-bye to his “beloved people.” In that case, he may find distraction at Monte Carlo, which knows him well; and the sturdy peasants of Bulgaria, who have many good qualities, will be well rid of a knave.

W. R. INGE, _Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral_.

_On Their Way to Verdun_

Some time ago Louis Raemaekers drew a cartoon entitled “On Their Way to Calais,” representing German corpses floating toward the sea. It will be remembered that the Belgians let water into their dykes and so flooded great tracts of the northern country. The inundation was one of the obstacles--added to the determination of the Allies-which balked the second great ambition of the Kaiser. If he failed in winning Paris, he thought that at least he might win Calais.

The present picture portrays another of the German failures. The road to Verdun is blocked not only by the gallant resistance of the French, but by the heaps of German slain, amounting, we are told, to at least five hundred thousand men. In six months the enemy gained only a mile or so of country, and though the furious attacks continue, there is no reason for thinking they will be more successful than those which have broken down in the past.

Why the Germans elected to make their desperate assault on Verdun is another matter. Probably many motives entered into the decision. The German higher staff clearly underrated the fighting value of the French. After the much-advertised determination to smash the Russians on the Eastern frontier, and perhaps to press forward and capture Petrograd, it seemed necessary to gain some triumph in order to satisfy the wishes of Berlin and impress the Allies with the invincible character of the Teuton hosts. Supposing the enemy succeeded in taking Verdun, it would at all events be a spectacular victory, even though the military advantages might not be great. If the attack failed, at all events it might succeed in one of its objects--to destroy the French morale. Therefore the Crown Prince, whose susceptibilities were also to be considered, was set to work to destroy the French salient, and he has sacrificed division after division to accomplish his purpose.

The Crown Prince has not obtained much distinction in the present war, and if the object was to crown him with laurels of victory, the result has been disastrous. To lose as many as five hundred thousand men, when the question of man-power is becoming serious for the Central Empires, is a reckless policy which could only be justified, if justified at all, by a colossal success. As we know, in six months’ fighting the positions remained very much the same--attack and counter-attack, loss and gain, masses of Germans driven up to slaughter and the French still holding the much-coveted positions. Both east and west of the Meuse the story has been the same.

Mr. Raemaekers’ picture remains as true to the facts as ever it was. “On Their Way to Verdun” is a history of enormous massacre and little triumph for the Germans, to whom Verdun appeared originally an easy prey.

W. L. COURTNEY.

_Bethmann-Hollweg’s Peace Song_

One felt interested in the “Campaign for Honorable Peace,” until it was learned that the propagandists designed to proceed on Herr Bethmann-Hollweg’s formula. But the map to which the German Chancellor referred has already altered since he offered it as a basis for negotiation, and before the German speakers have stumped the Fatherland it may happen that still deeper modifications will appear on the existent lines. The “honorable peace” at present in the minds of Prince Wedel and his committee bears a suspicious resemblance to a very respectable victory for Germany, and it is only the continued, carefully fostered ignorance of that country that can make the forthcoming campaign less ridiculous to the German man-in-the-street than it appears to ourselves. The Kaiser’s sham door is still stuffed with high explosives, and Herr Bethmann-Hollweg’s tears will help to water no olive branch.

Consider the only possible conditions of peace that do not involve a treasonable attitude of mind in England and the Allies, and then observe Germany’s attitude to those conditions.

We may reduce the vital points to three, with M. Gustave Hervé; and in taking his terms, be it remembered that we speak with the lips of a great man and a great pacifist.

He recognizes the awful need to destroy the domination of the Central Powers and crush German militarism for the sake of his own ideals; and, that done, dreams of the only possible peace and sees it based on a triple foundation. The first and obvious need is that which the Union of Democratic Control and those who think in its terms seem unable to perceive as the most vital: a defeated Germany. Germany is the obstacle that militates against any sort of future safety for great or small States. It follows, therefore, that until we can impose our peace ideal upon her, no Allied peace worthy the name is possible; and since our terms must be profoundly distasteful to Germany and her first accomplice, it is vain to present them until her power to decline them has been destroyed.

Only from a vanquished Germany may the remaining vital conditions of peace follow. With her defeat she must be called upon to scrap the fatal poisons that led to her insanity, and take her daily food no more from the hands of war lords, hireling professors, and publicists. She must be cleansed, freed of her seven devils, and taught that the only sovereign power human progress can henceforth recognize is the sovereignty of a people’s will. For the fighting kingdoms know now at this bitter cost one eternal truth: that not nations, but their rulers will wars and make them.

If ideals of internationalism falter before this condition, and M. Hervé’s peace will increase the enthusiasm of nationality, his far-reaching view sees greater hopes beyond. For his third stipulation allows no subject peoples. He would have Europe found a practical and living system of justice upon these ruins--a system sprung of honor and honesty, and based on international physical strength.

From such a system federation must sooner or later spring, and the peace ideals of nationalist and internationalist alike grow from dreams into realities.

The victory that can win such terms will in truth be “a victory of industry, commerce, the arts, and humanity.”

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_A German “Victory”_

Although this manifestation of the German spirit is new, and belongs to this war only, yet the spirit itself is as old as Prussian power. That spirit was evident in 1813, in the Napoleonic wars; it was evident in the campaign of Sadowa, and again in the Franco-German war of 1870, when the murder of women and children was proved to be the Prussian form of retaliation for perfectly legitimate acts of war. This cartoon, which first appeared after one of the earlier Zeppelin raids on England, gives another result of the Prussian belief in terrorism as an aid to war; the result is new, but the policy behind it is old.

Because that policy is old, and is a deep-rooted principle of Prussianism, any talk of “peace terms” is futile, and the “honorable peace” of which German deputies talk in their gatherings is an impossibility. There can be no terms for the nation that does these things, no bargaining with it, and the world that has wakened to the real nature of the thing which has attacked civilization will take care that the thing itself has no power to impose “terms” in the day when peace returns.

It is worth noting that Germany alone among the nations has built Zeppelins, and worthy of note, too, that these machines have served no useful military purpose in the decisive actions of the war. Along the battle fronts they do not appear, for they are too fragile to be risked in purely military work. In the great naval battle of Jutland they served no useful purpose, and the war has proved them instruments of murder, safe only in darkness and undefended areas. And in saying that Germany alone has built them in fleets, one says that Germany alone has pinned faith to terrorism and a policy of murder, which is steadily winning its just reward.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

_“Waiting”_

Imperial utterances are, or were till lately, treated with great respect in Germany. What the “all-highest” says must surely be true. But a modern oracle, if he wishes to keep his credit, should avoid prediction. He may falsify the past and misread the present with impunity; but he will be wise to leave the future alone. The Kaiser has been imprudent. He began by telling his troops to walk over the “contemptible little British army,” the finest and most experienced professional soldiers in the world; next he informed them that they would all be at home again “at the fall of the leaf,” in 1914; then he hazarded the statement that Russia was done for, and the Allies generally at the end of their resources; and lastly the carefully prepared thrust, which, he declared, was to give France the _coup de grâce_, has missed its aim.

It is impolite to treat an emperor in this way; he is not used to it and does not like it. It is the business of his subjects to see that his reign is a blaze of triumph. A breakdown after so many years of rehearsals! It is really too bad; there must have been gross mismanagement somewhere.

W. R. INGE, _Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral_.

_The Kaiser as a Diplomatist_

To many people, and especially to all Germans, the attitude of the South African Boers in the Great War has been one of its most surprising features. It was not a surprise to Raemaekers, and here, in this cartoon, he states his reason, as the plain homely figure of the old President Kruger expresses it to General Christian de Wet, who took the wrong side. Kruger does not forget how the Kaiser led him on by telegrams and secret messages of sympathy, and after all, when the war broke out in South Africa, this same Kaiser made no attempt to implement his promises. Some time later all the world learned the facts from the Kaiser’s own lips, when he boasted of having been the friend of the British and of having helped them during the South African War, by communicating to General Roberts a strategic plan for crushing the Dutch. There is certainly no reason to suppose that Roberts or Kitchener made any use of the Kaiser’s plan, because they won the victory. If they had used the plan, the result would have been different.

In this cartoon the Kaiser is the ingenious diplomatist once more. Though he deceived the Dutch formerly, he is now trying to induce them to join him against Britain; and he did succeed in perverting the judgment of de Wet. But the solid, homely sense of the Dutch came to the right conclusion. The man who has once deliberately deceived a people is not likely to succeed in deceiving them a second time.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

_Hun Hypocrisy_

When the history of this war is written with a sense of detachment which only time can give--written, moreover, by an impartial neutral, with the insight and intelligence of a Motley or a Hume--it will be interesting and instructive to read the chapters which deal with the conviction obsessing an entire nation that England for some mysterious purposes of her own brought about hostilities, and that Germany, very reluctantly, was forced to draw the sword in defense of the fatherland. No reasonable man can doubt that this conviction is sincere upon the part of a large majority of our enemies. From first-hand evidence it is equally indisputable that the few, the Court Party, for example, and certain writers, have frankly admitted the Teuton aims and ambitions, crystallized into the famous phrase--“Weltmacht oder Niedergang.” The amazing thing--perhaps the most amazing fact of the war--is the moral Atlantic which heaves between the few who know and the many who do not. And the bridging of this illimitable ocean, the future enlightenment of at least sixty million persons, must be, for the moment, the problem which is perplexing and tormenting the minds of the Great General Staff.

Sooner or later--sooner, possibly, than we think--the truth must out. What will happen then? Conjecture is simply paralyzed at the issues involved. Briefly, it comes to this: these sixty millions have been humbugged to an extent unparalleled in history. During three years they have been gorged with lies, swallowed always with avidity and with increasing appetite. The credulity of the ignorant may be taken for granted; in this case it is the credulity of the wise, the so-called intellectuals of Germany, which clamors to Heaven for explanation. Are these schoolmasters, publicists, theologians, and scientists hypocrites? That is the question which our cartoonist puts to us here. That is the question which the impartial historian will be called upon to answer.

Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, have answered that question already. We believe firmly that the informed Huns deliberately befooled their uninformed fellow-countrymen. The few were honest and sincere in the Jesuitical faith that the end, world dominion, justified the means. They scrapped ruthlessly all principles which stood between themselves and an insensate ambition. Had they won through to Paris and London, a nation drunk with victory would have acclaimed their policy. But they have not won through, and the reckoning has to be met.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

_The Prussian Guard_

The German army has fought in this war with the Allies in front of it and behind it the German press.

Never has a war been accompanied by such ink-shed and such wholesale massacre of truth. The Allies have done their bit in this direction, but their bit has been as a mole-hill to Everest compared with the work of the Central Powers.

The fighting men resent it. They don’t like to be told that their foe is a fool, even if they are getting the better of him. When they are getting the worse the statement is a more peculiarly exasperating insult.

They don’t like to be told that their victories are defeats, but they like even less to be told that their defeats are victories. In the one case they feel that the press men are fools, in the other they feel that the press men have made fools of them.

There is a whole lot of common sense in human nature, even in German human nature, and an army hit in its common sense receives a blow.

This is why, perhaps, Hindenburg has been issuing reports lately approaching the truth.

There is a lot of common sense in the old Marshal.

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

_Greek Treachery_

Raemaekers is a keen prophetic politician as well as satirist, and not seldom his pencil has pointed to future events as yet unanticipated by our “sufficient for the day” diplomacy.

One would have thought, however, that the tergiversation of the King of Greece had made it sufficiently clear no good thing could come out of his country while he continued to rule it.

Yet justice must be done to him. To Serbia, indeed, he proved false, borrowing the “scrap of paper” doctrine from his masters; but to the Allies he has preserved an unchanging front, and the logical action of those Powers who affirmed his throne should long ago have been to remove him from it, when he proceeded to abuse the constitution and deprive Venizelos of the power the nation had put into that minister’s hands. Hesitancy and delay have divided a Greece that was united when Venizelos fell, and the sleepless activity of Germany bears the present fruits--so poisonous for us. It passes the wit of the man-in-the-street to understand what secret influence permitted the deadlock; but it seems hard to believe that difficulties connected with Greece’s future have not arisen in the councils of the Allies. Soon the hand that is willing to wound, but afraid to strike, may be powerless to do so, for the situation develops very swiftly and the attitude of the French Admiral du Fournet has left no doubt of the Allied determination.

As we write, after needless bloodshed, Greece gives way, the fighting is at an end and her batteries of mountain guns are about to be surrendered. We are told, also, that the refusal of the Government was not inspired by the King, but by the military, who have formed a secret league with the reservists.

The exasperating problem of Greece has delayed progress very seriously and, indeed, may be seen to have modified the whole course of the war in the Balkans; for had we enjoyed her confidence and insisted on the recognition of Venizelos from the first, the country must long since have become an ally. With her aid, instead of the withdrawal from Gallipoli, there might have been recorded a triumphant campaign with radical results.

But to cry over spilt milk is no business of the present. Concerning the modern Greek it may be written that “unstable as water, he shall not excel”; but we can yet hope that with our adequate recognition and support of the only Greek who counts, his power will triumph and his great spirit fortify a feeble people. His marvellous patience has been worthy of our utmost admiration, and those who would withhold absolute support from him at this critical juncture are certainly not the friends of Greece. That a country of such majestic tradition--a nation that has played her paramount part in the philosophy and art of the world--should be extinguished in this conflagration would not be the least of the tragedies our eyes may yet see; but the danger still exists, unless a sterner and more comprehensive attitude be taken to save Greece from herself and the ruler who is still permitted to occupy her throne.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_The World’s Judgment Seat_

The former German Chancellor was well known to be neither a Pan-German nor a lover of war. He did his best to propitiate the war party by the truculence of his harangues against England; but Reventlow and his friends were notoriously dissatisfied with him. He probably belongs to a large class of moderate-minded Germans who were brought over to the war party by appeals to their fears. The militarists dinned into their ears the ominous facts that Russia was reorganizing and increasing her army, and planning strategic railways; that France was doing the same; that everything pointed to a concerted attack upon Germany, say in 1917. “It is absolutely necessary,” they said, “to strike now, before our enemies are ready.”

This large class probably included the emperor, and without its concurrence the war could hardly have been launched. It is natural for such men to protest that they had no aggressive designs, and that they only wished to protect themselves against attack. It may be true, as far as they are concerned; but it is not true of the soldiers who frightened them for their own ends. Behind the Chancellor, in this picture, hides a ruffian in uniform.

It is also true that Germany has conducted the war in such a manner that that nation is really fighting with a rope round its neck. The moderate party would now welcome peace. But on what terms? These have been divulged; but the Allies do not seem to have thought them worth serious consideration. As long as the military caste is the director of German policy it does not seem likely that any statesmanlike proposal will come from Berlin. Meanwhile, Justice holds the scales and waits in vain for some offer to make reparation for outrages unparalleled in civilized warfare.

W. R. INGE.

_The Kaiser’s Cry for Peace_

A drowning man catches at straws. The Kaiser, when the rising waters threaten to overwhelm his bark, looks for salvation to the dove.

At fairly regular intervals through the length of the war the German Chancellor, speaking in his master’s name, has announced to an unsympathetic world--to the western as well as to the eastern hemisphere--that Germany is ready, nay is longing, for peace--for peace on her own terms. None can doubt the sincerity of the declaration. Her powerful preparations have yielded her, in the field and on the sea, successes of a kind, but they are successes which decide nothing. Her reiterated pleas for peace acknowledge that only the voluntary withdrawal of her foes from the fray can assure her a final triumph. The Kaiser and his friends profess from time to time that they are weary of war’s brutalities and are eager to enjoy its spoils unmolested. The fatuous cry rings very hollow in the ears of the Allies and neutral peoples alike, and humanity outside Germany and her impotent kinsfolk in America marvel at the Kaiser’s and his Chancellor’s waste of breath.