Part 9

The people that perpetrated and applauded this act denies civilization, and one may fairly argue that the national conscience, not only of her fighting forces, but of those behind them, will soon reach a pitch where disintegration must follow. The evolution of morals alone must break them, for human nature cannot suffer this reaction.

Meantime we wait in vain for the Allies’ Note informing Germany of our intention with respect to her shipping. Did she know that we designed an eye for an eye, a ton for a ton, she might yet hesitate upon a course that promised to deplete her merchant marine after the war in the ratio of her destruction. The point is equally vital to the weak maritime neutrals, who see their merchant fleets dwindle and their protests ignored by a nation that respects nothing on earth but force.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_Pounding Austria_

“I wonder how long my dear friend and ally will be able to stand this?”

So “Wilhelm” is made to remark, as he peers over from behind his parapet, safely guarded with barbed wire, and sees the aged Francis Joseph receiving blow after blow, on the one side from the Italians, on the other from the Rumanians. The caricature, it must be admitted, is not quite up-to-date in one respect, for Wilhelm has certainly done his best, and so far only too successfully, to tear off the smaller of these foes. But it is more than up-to-date in another, for the ancient “Dual Monarch” has already succumbed to his years and his enemies. And for reasons best known to himself, “Wilhelm” has run away from his funeral, and thinks he will consult his delicate health and his no less delicate dignity, by sending the Crown Prince instead, that young man being no longer wanted imperatively or imperially on the French front. How young Wilhelm will get on with young Carl remains to be seen. The experience may have dangers of its own. Mr. Raemaekers might look out for a further opportunity in this new situation.

HERBERT WARREN.

_Durchhalten--“Hold Out”_

The Roman Emperor Tiberius, that gloomy tyrant, is said to have remarked that governing the Roman people was like holding a wolf by the ears. Here the position is reversed. The patient, obedient, and faithful German people, for such, however infatuated, we must allow it has been, is represented as by no means like a wolf, but more like the traditional opposite, a sheep. But even the sheep may turn if driven beyond measure. Meanwhile, this caricature may help to bring home to it the true position.

The Kaiser, stout, with all his heavy, comfortable clothes, his military cloak, his helmet, and boots and spurs, one of which he digs into his beast of burden, rides comfortably on the back of “German Michael,” the common soldier, and cheerfully bids him “hold out” and struggle up the toilsome hill of victory, with its shifting, clogging soil.

The desperate agony and pain of the poor victim, the drops of sweat falling from his brow, his eyes starting from his head, are well depicted, and also the complacency of the emperor, blended with senile vanity and self-glorification. His aspiration not long ago was to be the “Young Man of the Sea.” Here he is depicted as the “Old Man” of that element.

HERBERT WARREN.

_The Satyr of the Sea_

It is always difficult, after a series of catastrophic events, to go back to one’s mental outlook of the time before they happened. But if the civilized world could recapture its pre-war view, I believe it would realize the most startling of all the results of Armageddon to be that we now take Germany’s outrages on neutrals for granted. At first the bulk of us simply could not believe the tale of the horrors inflicted on non-combatant men, women, and children of innocent and neutral Belgium. But Germany had at any rate made Belgium a belligerent, before beginning them. Now that similar horrors should fall on men, women, and children of Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and America, surprises no more: it has become a mere matter of course.

It is the business of the prophet, the seer, and the poet to awaken the world when it is worshipping false gods, when from fear, or self-interest, or sheer bewilderment, it fails to see the things that are in their naked horror and their awful shame. But prophet, seer, and poet can speak only through the printed word, and in the maze and mass of conflicting appeals the words of truth are lost and ineffective. But if the ear be deaf and the mind numb, the eyes of all retain their childlike curiosity. It is Raemaekers’ secret that he can present his own clear vision of the truth in figures that pierce instantly to the conscience of the dullest. To kill a child at all for a political purpose, is the sin of Herod. To kill the children of those with whom you have no nominal quarrel, stipulates just that negation of soul which we call beastly. The truth about Tirpitz, and all that that accursed name stands for, is personified in the loathsome Satyr of the Sea portrayed in this cartoon.

ARTHUR POLLEN.

_War Council with Ferdinand and Enver Pasha_

Raemaekers is not merely a clever draftsman and a keen observer, but also a deep and careful student of modern history and diplomacy. He knows the by-paths, the _coulisses_, and the intrigues of the diplomatic world, which are eternally going on behind the almost impenetrable curtain with which the chancelleries of Europe seek to veil their proceedings.

Everyone knows, of course, that it was not merely affection or esteem that has ranged Ferdinand of Bulgaria and Enver Pasha upon the side of the Central Empires. In the case of the first, greed had not a little to do with the final decision to which he came. He was not unwilling to be persuaded by the blandishments of his “dear brother the Kaiser,” always provided it was made worth his while at the time as well as _in futuro_. In the case of the second, ambition played its part, backed up by years of “ground baiting” of the kind in which German diplomacy excels.

It has been left to the pencil of this great artist and satirist to bring home to the mind of the man-in-the-street a knowledge of the actual situation that has been created, and of the methods by which it was brought about. In this cartoon we have the Kaiser in shop-walker attitude, an oily smile upon his lips, bending forward and washing his hands with invisible soap, while he exclaims, “I hope you have been well served and are satisfied.” His dupes are shown bound hand and foot, with an expression of their doubts as to the ultimate genuineness and benefit of the bargain which they have struck shown upon the face of the one and the back of the other. Bound hand and foot they stand in the presence of this “artful dodger” among crowned heads, and in that of the decrepit Franz Joseph, in whose figure the artist has succeeded in so cleverly conveying an idea of the unstable and effete nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The “dear friends and allies” show neither the feeling of comfort nor confidence about which their imperial taskmaster speaks and inquires so glibly.

Bound thus to the wheels of the car of Germany’s destiny, they begin evidently to question the wisdom of their choice. Already Ferdinand’s doubts must have commenced to take definite shape, for the luck of “the great game” has begun to run against him at Monastir, and “crushed and destroyed” Serbia is once more in fighting trim and eager to expel the invader.

CLIVE HOLLAND.

_The Burial of Private Walker_

On September 9, 1914, Joseph Walker enlisted for the duration of the war; on January 11, 1916, the sea bore his dead body to the dyke at West Capelle. Usually a body washed ashore in this neighborhood is buried at the foot of the dunes, without coffin, without ceremony. But not this time. This afternoon, at 1 P.M., while the northwest wind whistled over Walcheren, the English soldier was buried in the churchyard of West Capelle. Behind the walls of the tower where we sought protection from the gale the burial service was read.

First the vice-consul in the name of England spread the British flag over him who for England had sacrificed his young life. Four men of West Capelle carried the coffin outside and placed it at the foot of the tower, that old gray giant, which has witnessed so much world’s woe, here opposite the sea. The Reverend Mr. Fraser, the English clergyman at Kortryk, himself an exile, said we were gathered to pay the last homage to a Briton who had died for his country. It was a simple, but touching ceremony.

“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live.... He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down.” Thus spoke the voice of the minister and the wind carried his words, and the wind played with the flag of England, the flag that flies over all seas, in Flanders, in France, in the Balkans, in Egypt, as the symbol of threatened freedom--the flag whose folds here covered a fallen warrior. Deeply were we moved when the clergyman in his prayer asked for a “message of comfort to his home.”

Who, tell me, oh silent field, Who lies buried here? Here?

Yes, who is Walker, No. 16092, Private Joseph Walker, Bedfordshire regiment? Who, in loving thoughts, thinks of him with hope even now when we, strangers to them, stand near to him in death? Where is his home? We know it not, but in our inmost hearts we pray for a “message of comfort and consolation” for his people.

And in the roaring storm we went our way. There was he carried, the soldier come to rest, and the flag fluttered in the wind and wrapped itself round that son of England. Then the coffin sank into the ground and the hearts of us, the departing witnesses, were sore. Earth fell on it, and the preacher said: “Earth to earth, dust to dust.”--_From the Amsterdam_ “Telegraaf,” _January, 1916_.

_The Supreme Effort_

“The Religion of Valor”--that new creed for which Germany now claims to be fighting--will call for many martyrs behind the fighting lines, and we may suppose that the middle classes of the fatherland as little like the sacrifices demanded from them as any other members of the community, whose savings are the result of their own energy and enterprise. That Germany is subscribing to her loans with generosity and self-denial we have no reason to doubt; but since there is no free press, the nation as a whole remains under delusion as to the value of its securities. The dust, however, cannot be in every eye much longer, and before another spring is spent, Germany’s people will know that she is powerless to keep her paper promises.

For the one hope that a victorious trade war would instantly break out upon the arrival of peace is destined to be disappointed.

As Mr. Kitson recently and very effectively showed, economic power is the basis of political power, the root from which all national power, which can be interpreted into force, must spring. “Trade warfare is therefore a struggle for economic power, for the control of men and of all factors of wealth production.”

The British Empire seems to be grasping this fact for the first time in her national history; and though we have far to go, and the panacea of free trade will doubtless be vended again after the war--by those who, before it, knew so well that Germany would never fight--a growing conviction is none the less apparent that only by a direct and strenuous offensive shall we win the war after the war.

Let us banish inter-tariffs, as Germany did, and unite the nation in a closer economic understanding; and let us not leave our frontiers open to the legions of German and Austrian bagmen, who only await peace to swarm over them.

It depends largely upon us whether the gentleman in the picture will get his money back.

The grand total of the fatherland’s indebtedness, were war to go on until last April, has been calculated in Germany to represent £4,500,000,000, which would demand in annual interest a sum near £800,000,000.

One does not desire to be vindictive, but let no man forget the barefaced villainy and devilish brutality with which the Central Nations prosecuted war. It is not for us to forward the peaceful penetration of such a people through the length and breadth of our empire if we desire to preserve that empire as an entity.

Let Germany redeem her pledges if she can; it will be no part of our post-war activities to assist her task.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

“_Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Dass ist der Vater mit seinem Kind_” (_Erlkönig_)

Not only the father and his sick child ride storm-foundered and lost through night, with the phantom king steadily gaining upon both: the frantic, over-driven brute they ride should also be conscious of approaching doom. But is it?

We may take their steed to be the nation of the royal fugitives, and wonder when Germany--a kingdom whose native qualities had won such ample recognition among her elder sisters on the road to civilization--will awaken into consciousness of her accursed load and perceive that the Hohenzollerns ride only to death. They started on their gallop when Bismarck fell, and now the end is in sight.

Great must be the subjugation before a practical people can reach this pass, or still fail to perceive, if on a material basis only, where the legend of world-power and world-trade has brought them. As sleepwalkers they pursued their dream and have not yet awakened to see where now they stand. Still they believe the issue undetermined; still is it hidden from them that their might is broken, that roughly half their foreign trade, which lay with the Allies, has vanished. Only ignorance and the tradition of servility postpone inevitable revolution.

Of Germany’s evil-genius and arch-enemy, now far advanced on the road that leads to his destruction, an illuminating picture has just been flashed to us. One who was long a publicist in the capitals of Europe has spoken of “Things I remember,” and he quotes a German author--a woman--who spoke thus of the “War Lord” before the war. None is a more shrewd and subtle student of character than a woman, when she holds an object worthy of her study.

“I can assure you that he extirpates, as of fell purpose, every independent character, root and branch. Think of the number of poor devils in prison for the crime of _lèse majesté_, not one instance of which he has ever pardoned; while there is not a case of a man having killed his opponent in a duel, however disgraceful might have been its cause, whom he has not pardoned, or at least remitted the sentence. Never has a monarch encouraged Byzantine servility to such a degree as this man. No sunbeam but it must radiate from him; no incense but it must fill his nostrils.”

May Germany use her waking hour to be rid forever of this archaic incubus; and if, at the end, she still cries for the domination of Prussia, then it is to be hoped that, when they have won the war, the Allies will save her from her own blindness and themselves perform the act of liberation.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_The Voices of the Guns_

One may characterize the figures in this cartoon as not altogether imaginary. In the villages behind the lines of the Somme, and in the tumbled country north of Verdun, there must be many such little homes as that in which the old man is pictured, homes befouled and desecrated by the presence of these hard-faced men who look on contemptuously while the old man listens. He and his kind know the voices of the guns, for they have heard them before. What memories of ’70 and his own fighting days must come to him and to all his kind as they wait the coming of the guns that shall drive out this scourge of France--this vileness that for nearly half a century has poisoned the life of all Europe, and on France especially has set an abiding mark? What hopes must be his for the day when Prussianism shall be no more than a vague name, and the sons of those sons of his who fight to-day shall work content in the knowledge that their fathers have freed them from this Damoclean threat?

How these people in the conquered territories have endured, how they have waited and hoped, even when there seemed no ground for hope, in the darkest of the days, we shall perhaps know when peace comes again. Yet even then we in Britain can never know all, for there is given to us a shield that France has never known--our shield, and in a measure our danger. For no man in Britain sits and listens for the guns that shall free his house and his land, and in that fact is possible lack of comprehension and consequent great danger; as once it has been, so it may be again.

Yet it may be that, when the stories of these old men behind the enemy lines are told, they will waken the whole of the world, not only to the need for destruction of such a thing as the militarism of Prussia, but to the knowledge that only the strong man armed may keep his house. Had _all_ realized this in time----

Meanwhile, as this third year of the war ends, the guns that speak freedom come nearer.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN

_The Death’s-Head Hussar_

In Greek mythology Nemesis personified the moral law which chastises arrogance and wanton excess by the inexorable consequences of their own wrong-doing. So none who had offended could escape her.

The Death’s-Head Hussars are a perfect example of that boastful pride and transgression of the bounds of due proportion which it is the function of Nemesis to punish. By their name and their device they make a mock of the most solemn tragedy--of Death itself. Whether their emblem threatens death to others or signifies their own contempt for death it is a wanton and arrogant jest. The skull and cross-bones were the traditional device of pirates, and it well became those grim outlaws who declared a ruthless war against all mankind. There was no jest about it, but a dreadful seriousness, and their proper end was the yard-arm. But the Death’s-Head Hussars are what is called a “crack” regiment, one officered by rich, aristocratic, and elegant young men, who have not set themselves against the world, but are very much of it. Nor are they any braver or more formidable than other regiments. The Death’s-Head business is a silly and boastful affectation.

Here is the just sentence of chastising Nemesis. The last of the Death’s-Head Hussars, its imperial colonel, is being shot over the head of his skeleton charger on to the heaped ranks of dead soldiers which ring him round. He has his fill of skulls and cross-bones now. The Crown Prince of Germany has confessed it to the world.

A. SHADWELL.

_The “Franc-tireur” Excuse_

It is well sometimes, despite all that has happened since, to turn back to Belgium and remember the rape, rapine, and arson of 1914. There will be plenty of time to let bygones be bygones when might and right are found on the same side and Justice, who is using her sword just now, resumes her impartial scales; but until the Central Nations experience a defeat of magnitude sufficient to penetrate to the hearts and heads of their people, we may continue to keep in the forefront of our minds the story of Belgium under Germany’s heel.

That tale of brutal tyranny is not even yet told, for, short of selling the deported Belgians as slaves, Germany would seem still to be doing all that Hun and Vandal ever accomplished. But Raemaekers gives us a glimpse from the past, when conquest was still in progress and the German obsession of _franc-tireurs_ reached its height. How far they pretended this fear to excuse their own murder of the defenseless, or how far they really felt it, matters little; for it has been shown that the cry was deliberately excited--by fabrication and circulation through Germany of countless “fearful” falsehoods. Soldiery about to pass from the Fatherland to Belgium were inflamed, as with drink, by lies of the horrible treatment they must expect and endure from civil populations and non-combatants. They were warned by calculated propaganda at home that their eyes would be gouged out, their legs sawn off, their wounded men murdered, with fiendish details of suffering by the Belgians.

German valets of the type of Houston Chamberlain and Sven Hedin spread these stories; Pastor Conrad wrote a little book and sold it to the school children that they, too, might read about their fathers’ gouged-out eyes in Belgium.

The result was certain when German soldiers found themselves with a free hand among unarmed women and their little ones; for Germany in Belgium and Poland, and Austria in Serbia, have not been content to destroy the manhood of weak nations: they have striven to stamp out their virginity and their childhood also.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

_The Entry Into Constantinople_

Nowhere has the caricaturist proved more effectively his command of caustic satire.

It is characteristic of the Kaiser and his family to claim Christian sanction for all his sinister schemes.

None of the many goals which the Kaiser confidently set out to win in this war has he yet secured. The triumphal progress through the capital city of Constantinople loomed large in his early programme. His vaulting ambition still seeks the hegemony of the Mahomedan world no less than of the Christian world.

The Kaiser habitually appeals to religious authority. He garbles Scripture to serve his turn. Nothing that the world regards as sacred is safe from his profanation. His miscalculations are so colossal, his hopes are so tangled, that the blasphemous dream which the artist depicts may well have visited the imperial couch. The pious Mahomedan might possibly find some specious compensation for submission to the Prussian yoke were the Kaiser to enter the Turkish capital at the head of his barbarian hordes flaunting in triumph the banner of the crescent, while Christ rode on an ass at the imperial side, in bonds and wearing the crown of thorns. It is a revolting piece of pictorial imagery, but it is a legitimate interpretation of the imperial megalomania, which enlists blasphemy in the service of the imperial propaganda.

SIDNEY LEE.

_Come Away, My Dear!_

Only historic interest now attaches to the activities of German diplomacy which sought, by misplaced flattery, to prevent Italy from joining the Powers of the Entente in the Great War. Prince von Bülow for many months employed all his wiles to distract Italy from the pursuit of a hostile policy. He had some good cards in his hand, and, after the manner of all German diplomatists, he overestimated their strength, while he underrated the skill and enthusiasm of the players against him. The influences of German finance worked on his side, but characteristically he ignored the spiritual forces of the Italian national sentiment, on which bribes and blandishments could make no impression. Italy’s traditional hatred of Austria was only speciously held in check by the conventions of the old Triple Alliance. The perils which Austria invited by engaging in the present war were bound to set ancient memories fully aflame. It is a mangled unity of which Italy can boast so long as the Italian peoples of the Trentino and Dalmatia live under Austrian sway.