Part 5

The recent descent of so many of her citizens from the people now warring in Europe has of necessity prevented America from looking on events in Europe with a single eye. But the predominant American type and the predominant American frame of mind are still typified by the lithe and sinuous figure of the New England pioneer. It is his tradition to mind his own business, but it is also his business to see that none of the old monarchies make free with his rights or with his people. And he stands for a race that has been cradled in wars with savages. No one knows better the methods of the Apache and the Mohawk, and when women and children fall into such pitiless hands as these, it goes against the grain with Uncle Sam to keep his hands off them, even if the women and children are not his own. He would like to be indifferent if he could. He would prefer to smoke his cigar, and pass along, and believe those who tell him that it is none of his affair. But when he does look--and he cannot help looking--he sees a figure of such heavy bestiality that his gorge rises. He must keep his hands clenched in his pockets lest he soils them in striking down the blood-stained gnome before him.

Can he restrain himself for good? That angry glint in his eye would make one doubt it. Here, surely, the artist sees with a truer vision than the politician. And if Uncle Sam's anger does once get the better of him, if doubts and hesitations are ever thrust on one side, if he takes his stand where his record and his sympathies must make him wish to be, then let it be noted that this base butcher stands dazed and paralyzed by the threat.

ARTHUR POLLEN.

AD FINEM

Ay--to your end!--to your end amid the execrations of a ravaged world! Through all the ages one other only has equalled you in the betrayal of his trust. May your sin come home to you before you go, as did his! May his despair be yours! It is most desperately to be regretted that no personal suffering on your part, in this life at all events, can ever adequately requite you for the desolations you have wrought.

Outrage on outrage thunders to the sky The tale of thy stupendous infamy,-- Thy slaughterings,--thy treacheries,--thy thefts,-- Thy broken pacts,--thy honour in the mire,-- Thy poor humanity cast off to sate thy pride;-- 'Twere better thou hadst never lived,--or died Ere come to this.

I heard a great Voice pealing through the heavens, A Voice that dwarfed earth's thunders to a moan:--

Woe! Woe! Woe, to him by whom this came! His house shall unto him be desolate And, to the end of time, his name shall be A by-word and reproach in all the lands He repined.... And his own shall curse him For the ruin that he brought. Who without reason draws the sword-- By sword shall perish! The Lord hath said ... _So be it, Lord!_

JOHN OXENHAM.

"U'S"

It is the essence of great cartooning to see things simply, and to command the technical resources that shall show the things, so simply seen, in an infinite variety of aspects. No series of Raemaekers' drawing better exemplifies his quality in both these respects than those which deal with Germany's sea crimes.

In the cartoon before us the immediate message is of the simplest. The Kaiser counts the head of British merchantmen sunk. Von Tirpitz counts the cost. But note the subtlety of the personation and environment. The Kaiser has those terrible haunted eyes that have marked the seer's presentment of him from quite an early stage of the war. There can be no ultimate escape from the dreadful vision that has set the seal of despair on this fine and handsome visage. He is shown, not as a sea monster, but as some rabid, evasive, impatient thing, dashing from point to point--as from policy to policy--with the angry swish that tells the unspoken anger failure everywhere compels. For the victories do not bring surrender, nor does frightfulness inspire terror. The merchant ships still put to sea--and the U boats pay the penalty.

The futility of this campaign of murder is typified by making Von Tirpitz, its inventor, an addle-headed seahorse, the nursery comedian of the sea. Stupid and ridiculous bewilderment stares from his foolish eyes. Another submarine has failed to find a safe victim in a trading ship, but has been hoisted with its own sea petard. The impotence of the thing!

This conference of the Admirals of the Atlantic, held in the sombre depths, is a biting satire, in its mingled comedy and tragedy, on the effort to win command of the sea from its bottom.

ARTHUR POLLEN.

MATER DOLOROSA

You thought to grasp the world; but you shall keep Its crown of curses nailed upon your brow. You that have fouled the purple, broke your vow, And sowed the wind of death, the whirlwind you shall reap.

Shout to your tribal god to bless the blood Of this red vintage on the poisoned earth; Clash cymbals to him, leap and shout in mirth; Call on his name to stay the coming, cleansing flood.

We are no hounds of heaven, nor ravening band Of earthly wolves to tear your kingdom down. We stand for human reason; at our frown The coward sword shall fall from your accursed hand.

We do not speak of vengeance; there shall run No little children's blood beneath our heel. No pregnant woman suffers from our steel; But Justice we shall do, as sure as set of sun.

Or short, or long, the pathway of your feet, Stamped on the faces of the innocent dead, Must lead where tyrant's road hath ever led. Alone, O perjured soul, your Justice you shall meet.

No sacrifice the balance of her scale Can win; no gift of blood and iron can weigh Against this one mad mother's agony: In her demented cry a myriad women wail.

The equinox of outraged earth shall blaze And flash its levin on your infamous might. Man cries to fellow-man; light leaps to light, Till foundered, naked, spent, you vanish from our gaze.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

"GOTT STRAFE ITALIEN!"

When Italy, still straining at the leash which held her, helpless, to the strange and unnatural Triplice, began to show signs of awakening consciousness, Germany's efforts to lull her back to the unhappy position of silent partner in the world-crime were characteristic of her methods. Forthwith Italy was loaded with compliments. The country was overrun with "diplomats," which is another name in Germany for spies. Bribery of the most brazen sort was attempted. The newspapers recalled in chorus that Italy was the land of art and chivalry, of song and heroism, of fabled story and manly effort, of honour and loyalty. Hark to the _Hamburger Fremdenblatt_ of February 21, 1915:

"The suggestion is made that Italy favours the Allies. Preposterous! Even though the palsied hand of England--filled with robber gold--be held out to her, Italy's vows, Italy's sense of obligation, Italy's _word once given_, can never be broken. Such a nation of noblemen could have no dealings with hucksters."

Germany is, indeed, a fine judge of a nation's "word once given" and a nation's "vows," which its Chancellor unblushingly declared to be mere scraps of paper. Now let us see what the _Hamburger Nachrichten_ had to say about Italy immediately after her secession from the Triple Alliance: "_Nachrichten_, June 1, 1915. That Italy should have joined hands with the other noble gentlemen, our enemies, is but natural. It would, of course, be absurd--where all are brigands--were the classical name of brigandage not included in the number.... We do not propose to soil our clean steel with the blood of such filthy Italian scum. With our cudgels we shall smash them into pulp."

_"Gott strafe Italien"_ indeed! Bombs on St. Mark's in Venice, on the Square of Verona, on world treasures unreplaceable. The poisoned breath of Germany carries its venom into the land of sunshine and song, whose best day's work in history has been to wrest itself free from the grip of the false friend.

RALPH D. BLUMENFELD.

SERBIA

Serbia has suffered the fate of Belgium. Germany and Austria, with Bulgaria's aid, have plunged another little country "in blood and destruction." Another "bleeding piece of earth" bears witness to the recrudescence of the ancient barbarism of the Huns. Serbia's wounds,

"Like dumb mouths, Do ope their ruby lips,"

to beg for vengeance on "these butchers." Turkey, whom the artist portrays as a hound lapping up the victim's blood, is fated to share the punishment for the crime. But the prime instigator is the German Emperor, whose Chancellor, with bitter irony, claims for his master the title of protector of the small nationalities of Europe. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg can on occasion affect the mincing accents of the wolf when that beast seeks to lull the cries of the lamb in its clutches. The German method of waging war has rendered "dreadful objects so familiar" that the essential brutality of the enemy's activities runs a risk of escaping at times the strenuous denunciation which Justice demands. But the searching pencil of Mr. Raemaekers brings home to every seeing eye the true and unvarying character of Teutonic "frightfulness." All instincts of humanity are cynically defied on the specious ground of military necessity. Mr. Raemaekers is at one with Milton in repudiating the worthless plea:

"So spake the fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds."

SIR SIDNEY LEE.

JUST A MOMENT--I'M COMING

Here is a drawing that ought to be circulated broadcast throughout Australia and New Zealand, that ought to hold a place of honour on the walls of their public chambers; should hang in gilded frames in the houses of the rich; be pinned to the rough walls of frame-house and bark humpy in every corner of "The Outback." It should thrill the heart of every man, woman, and child Down Under with pride and thankfulness and satisfaction, should even bring soothing balm to the wounds of those who in the loss of their nearest and dearest have paid the highest and the deepest price for the flaming glory of the Anzacs in Gallipoli.

Here in the artist's pencil is a monument to those heroes greater than pinnacles of marble, of beaten brass and carven stone; a monument that has travelled over the world, has spoken to posterity more clearly, more convincingly, and more rememberingly than ever written or word-of-mouth speech could do. It is to the everlasting honour of the people of the Anzacs that they refrained from echoing the idle tales which ran whispering in England that the Dardanelles campaign was a cruel blunder, that the blood of the Anzacs' bravest and best had been uselessly spilt, that their splendid young lives had been an empty sacrifice to the demons of Incompetence and Inefficiency. To those in Australia who in their hearts may feel that shreds of truth were woven in the rumours--that the Anzacs were spent on a forlorn hope, were wasted on a task foredoomed to failure--let this simple drawing bring the comfort of the truth.

The artist has seen deeper and further than most. The Turkish armies held from pouring on Russia and Serbia, from thumping down the scales of neutrality in Greece and Roumania perhaps, from massing their troops with the Central Powers; the Kaiser chained on the East and West for the critical months when men and munitions were desperately lacking to the Allies, when the extra weight of the Turks might have freed the Kaiser's power of fierce attack on East and West this is what we already know, what the artist here tells the wide world of the part played by the heroes of the Dardanelles. In face of this, who dare hint they suffered and died in vain?

BOYD CABLE.

THE HOLY WAR

Surely the artist when he drew this was endowed with the wisdom of the seer, the vision of the prophet. For it was drawn before the days in which I write, before the Russian giant had proved his greatness on the body of the Turk, before the bludgeon-strokes in the Caucasus, the heart-thrust of Erzerum, the torrent of pursuit of the broken Turks to Mush and Trebizond.

We know--and I am grateful for the chance to voice our gratitude to him--the greatness of our Russian Ally. We remember the early days when the Kaiser's hosts were pouring in over France, and the Russian thrust into Galicia drew some of the overwhelming weight from the Western Front. We realize now the nobility of self-sacrifice that flung an army within reach of the jaws of destruction, that risked its annihilation to draw upon itself some of the sword-strokes that threatened to pierce to the heart of the West. Our national and natural instinct of admiration for a hard fighter, and still greater admiration for the apex of good sportmanship, for the friend or foe who can "take a licking," who is a "good loser," went out even more strongly to Russia in the dark days when, faced by an overwhelming weight of metal, she was forced and hammered and battered back, losing battle-line after battle-line, stronghold after stronghold, city after city; losing everything except heart and dogged punishment-enduring courage.

And how great the Russian truly is will surely be known presently to the Turk and to the masquerading false "Prophet of Allah."

"No one is great save Allah," says William, and even as the Turk spoke more truly than he knew in calling the Russian great, even as he was bitterly to realize the greatness, so in the fullness of time must William come to realize how great is the Allah of the Moslem, the Christian God Whom he has blasphemed, and in Whose name he and his people have perpetrated so many crimes and abominations.

BOYD CABLE.

GOTT MIT UNS

When we consider the public utterances of the German clergy, we can very easily substitute for their symbol of Christian faith this malignant, grotesque, and inhuman monster of Louis Raemaekers. Indeed, our inclination is to thrust the green demon himself into the pulpit of the Fatherland; for his wrinkled skull could hatch and his evil mouth utter no more diabolic sentiments than those recorded and applauded from Lutheran Leipsic, or from the University and the chief Protestant pulpit in Berlin.

Such sermons are a part of that national _debacle_ of reasoning faculty which is the price intellectual Germany has paid for the surrender of her soul to Prussia.

An example or two may be cited from the outrageous mass.

Professor Rheinhold Seeby, who teaches theology at Berlin University, has described his nation's achievements in Belgium and Serbia as a work of charity, since Germany punishes other States for their good and out of love. Pastor Philippi, also of Berlin, has said that, as God allowed His only Son to be crucified, that His scheme of redemption might be accomplished, so Germany, God with her, must crucify humanity in order that its ultimate salvation may be secured; and the Teutonic nation has been chosen to perform this task, because Germany alone is pure and, therefore, a fitting instrument for the Divine Hand. Satan, who has returned to earth in the shape of England, must be utterly destroyed, while the immoral friends and allies of Satan are called to share his fate. Thus evil will be swept off the earth and the German Empire henceforth stand supreme protector of the new kingdom of righteousness. Pastor Zoebel has ordered no compromise with hell; directed his flock to be pleased at the sufferings of the enemy; and bade them rejoice when thousands of the non-elect are sent to the bottom of the sea.

Yes, we will give the green devil his robe and bands until Germany is in her strait-jacket; after which experience, her conceptions of a Supreme Being and her own relation thereto may become modified.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

THE WIDOWS OF BELGIUM

This deeply pathetic picture evokes the memory of many sad and patient faces which we have seen during the last eighteen months. It is the women, after all--wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters--who have the heaviest load to bear in war-time.

The courage and heroism which they have shown are an honour to human nature. The world is richer for it; and the sacrifices which they have bravely faced and nobly borne may have a greater effect in convincing mankind of the wickedness and folly of aggressive militarism than all the eloquence of peace advocates.

We must not forget that the war has made about six German widows for every one in our country. With these we have no quarrel; we know that family affection is strong in Germany, and we are sorry for them. They, like our own suffering women, are the victims of a barbarous ideal of national glory, and a worse than barbarous perversion of patriotism, which in our opponents has become a kind of moral insanity.

These pictures will remain long after the war-passion has subsided. They will do their part in preventing a recrudescence of it. Who that has ever clamoured for war can face the unspoken reproach in these pitiful eyes? Who can think unmoved of the happy romance of wedded love, so early and so sadly terminated?

THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.

THE HARVEST IS RIPE

The artist spreads before you a view such as you would have on the great wheat-growing plains of Hungary, or on the level plateau of Asiatic Turkey--the vast, unending, monotonous, undivided field of corn. In the background the view is interrupted by two villages from which great clouds of flame and smoke are rising--they are both on fire--and as you look closer at the harvest you see that, instead of wheat, it consists of endless regiments of marching soldiers.

"The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few": here is only one, but he is quite sufficient--"the reaper whose name is Death," a skeleton over whose bones the peasant's dress--a shirt and a pair of ragged trousers--hangs loose. The shirt-sleeves of the skeleton are turned well up, as if for more active exertion, as he grasps the two holds of the huge scythe with which he is sweeping down the harvest.

This is not war of the old type, with its opportunities for chivalry, its glories, and its pride of manly strength. The German development of war has made it into a mere exercise in killing, a business of slaughter. Which side can kill most, and itself outlast the other? When one reads the calculations by which careful statisticians demonstrate that in the first seventeen months of the war Germany alone lost over a million of men killed in battle, one feels that this cartoon is not exaggerated. It is the bare truth.

The ease with which the giant figure of Death mows down the harvest of tiny men corresponds, in fact, to the million of German dead, probably as many among the Russians, to which must be added the losses among the Austrians, the French, the British, the Belgians, Italians, Serbs, Turks, and Montenegrins. The appalling total is this vast harvest which covers the plain.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

"UNMASKED"

The "Yellow Book," it may be remembered, was the official publication of some of the details of atrocities committed by the Huns on the defenceless women and children of ravished Belgium. It told in cold and unimpassioned sentences, in plain and simple words more terrible than the most fervid outpourings of patriot or humanitarian, the tale of brutalities, of cold-blooded crimes, of murders and rape and mental and physical tortures beyond the capabilities or the imaginings of savages, possible only in their refinements of cruelty to the civilized apostles of Kultur. There are many men in the trenches of the Allies to-day who will say that the German soldier is a brave man, that he must be brave to advance to the slaughter of the massed attack, to hold to his trenches under the horrible punishment of heavy artillery fire.

As a nation we are always ready to admit and to admire physical courage, and if Germany had fought a "clean fight," had "played the game," starkly and straightly, against our fighting men, we could--and our fighting men especially could, and I believe would--have helped her to her feet and shaken hands honestly with her after she was beaten. But with such a brute beast as the unmasking of the "Yellow Book" has revealed Germany to be we can never feel friendship, admiration, or respect.

The German is a "dirty fighter," and to the British soldier that alone puts him beyond the pale. He has outraged all the rules and the instincts of chivalry. His bravery in battle is the bravery of a ravening wolf, of a blood-drunk savage animal. It is only left to the Allies to treat him as such, to thrash him by brute force, and then to clip his teeth and talons and by treaty and agreement amongst themselves to keep him chained and caged beyond the possibility of another outbreak.

BOYD CABLE.

THE GREAT SURPRISE

In the note to another picture I have remarked on the farcical hypocrisy of the German Emperor in presenting himself, as he so often does, as the High Priest of several different religions at the same time. They are nearly all of them religions with which he would have no sort of concern, even if his religious pose were as real as it is artificial.

Being in fact the ruler and representative of a country which alone among European countries builds with complete security upon the conviction that all Christianity is dead, he can only be, even in theory, the prince of an extreme Protestant State. Long before the War it was common for the best caricaturists of Europe, and even of Germany, to make particular fun of these preposterous temporary Papacies in which the Kaiser parades himself as if for a fancy-dress ball; and in the accompanying picture Mr. Raemaekers has returned more or less to this old pantomimic line of satire.

The cartoon recalls some of those more good-humoured, but perhaps equally contemptuous, sketches in which the draughtsmen of the French comic papers used to take a particular delight; which made a whole comic Bible out of the Kaiser's adventures during his visit to Palestine. Here he appears as Moses, and the Red Sea has been dried up to permit the passage of himself and his people.