Part 8

The Latin Sisters! Note carefully the expression of France as contrasted with that of Italy. France, violated by the Hun, exhibits grim determination made sacrosanct by suffering. Italy's face glows with enthusiasm. One can conceive of the one fighting on to avenge her martyrs, steadfast to the inevitable end when Right triumphs over Might. One can conceive of the other drawing her sword because of the blood tie which links them together in a bond that craft and specious lies have tried in vain to sunder. What do they stand for, these two noble sisters? Everything which can be included in the word--ART. Everything which has built up, stone upon stone, the stately temple of Civilization, everything which has served to humanize mankind and to differentiate him from the beasts of Prussia.

Looking at these two sisters, one wonders that there are still to be found in England mothers who allow their children to be taught German. One hazards the conjecture that it might well be imparted to exceptionally wicked children, if there be any, because none can question that the Teutonic tongue will be spoken almost exclusively in the nethermost deeps of Hades until, and probably after, the Day of Judgment.

For my sins I studied German in Germany, and I rejoice to think that I have forgotten nearly every word of that raucous and obscene language. Had I a child to educate, and the choice between German and Choctaw were forced upon me, I should not select German. French, Italian, and Spanish, cognate tongues, easy to learn, delightful to speak, hold out sweet allurements to English children. Do not these suffice? If any mother who happens to read these lines is considering the propriety of teaching German to a daughter, let her weigh well the responsibility which she is deliberately assuming. To master any foreign language, it is necessary to talk much and often with the natives. Do Englishwomen wish to talk with any Huns after this war? What will be the feeling of an English mother whose daughter marries a Hun any time within the next twenty years? And such a mother will know that she planted the seed which ripened into catastrophe when she permitted her child to acquire the language of our detestable and detested enemies.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

MISUNDERSTOOD

It need not necessarily be supposed that the directors of German destiny, who are not devoid of intelligence, took the ravings of Bernhardi over-seriously. He had his special uses no doubt before the day. But on the morrow of the day, when questions of responsibility came to be raised, he became one of many inconvenient witnesses; and there has scarcely been a better joke among the grim humours of this catastrophe than the mission of this Redhot-Gospeller of the New Unchivalry of War to explain to "those idiotic Yankees" that he was really an ardent pacifist. The most just, the most brilliant, the most bitter pamphlet of invective could surely not say so much as this reeking cleaver, those bloody hands, that fatuous leer and gesture, this rigid victim. Bernhardism was not a mere windy theory. It was exactly practised on the Belgian people.

And this spare, dignified figure of Uncle Sam, contemptuously incredulous, is, I make bold to say, a more representative symbol of the American people than one which our impatience sometimes tempts us now to draw. Most Americans now regret, as Pope Benedict must regret, that the first most cruel rape of Belgium was allowed to pass without formal protest in the name of civilization. But that occasion gone, none other, not the _Lusitania_ even, showed so clear an opportunity. A people's sentiments are not necessarily expressed by the action of its Government, which moves always in fetters. Nor has President Wilson's task been as simple as his critics on this or the other side of the Atlantic profess to believe.

JOSEPH THORP.

PROSPERITY REIGNS IN FLANDERS

Wherever Prussia rules she has only one method of ruling--that of terror. Wherever she finds civilization and the wealth which civilization creates, she can do nothing but despoil. She is as incapable of persuasion as of creation. No people forced to endure her rule have ever been won to prefer it as the Alsatians came to prefer the rule of France or as many Indians have come to prefer the rule of England. In Belgium she has been especially herself in this respect.

A wise policy would have dictated such a careful respect for private rights and such a deference to native traditions as might conceivably have weakened the determination of the Belgians to resist to the death those who had violated their national independence. But Prussia is incapable of such a policy. In any territory which she occupies, whether temporarily or permanently, her only method is terror and her only aim loot. She did indeed send some of her tame Socialists to Brussels to embark on the hopeless enterprise of persuading the Belgian Socialists that honour and patriotism were _ideologies bourgeoises_ and that the "economic interests" of Belgium would be best promoted by a submission. These pedantic barbarians got the answer which they deserved; but on their pettifogging thesis Raemaekers' cartoon is perhaps the best commentary.

The "prosperity" of Belgium under Prussian rule has consisted in the systematic looting, in violation of international law, of the wealth accumulated by the free citizens of Belgium, for the advantage of their Prussian rulers; while to the mass of the people it has brought and, until it is forever destroyed, can bring nothing but that slavery which the Prussians have themselves accepted and which they would now impose upon the whole civilization of Europe.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

THE LAST HOHENZOLLERN

Behind him stands the embodiment of all that Prussian kultur and efficiency mean, wooden uninventiveness, clockwork accuracy of movement--without soul or inspiration. He himself is thin and scraggy--Raemaekers has intensified these characteristics, but even so the caricature of the reality is more accurate than unkind. Many months ago, this vacuous heir of the house of Hohenzollern set to work on the task of overcoming France, and the result ... may be found in bundles of four, going back to the incinerators beyond Aix, in the piled corpses before the French positions at and about Verdun; some of the results, the swag of the decadent burglar, went back in sacks from the chateaux that this despicable thing polluted and robbed as might any Sikes from Portland or Pentonville.

He is the embodiment, himself, of the last phase of Prussian kultur. Somewhere back in the history of Prussia its rulers had to invent and to create, and then kultur brought forth hard men; later, it became possible to copy, and then kultur brought forth mechanical perfection rather than creative perfection, systematized its theories of life and work, and brought into being a class of men just a little meaner, more rigid, more automaton-like, than the original class; having reduced life to one system, and that without soul or ideal, kultur brought forth types lacking more and more in originality. Here stands the culminating type; he will copy the good German Gott--he is incapable of originating anything--and will "do the same to France."

As far as lies in his power, he has done it; in the day of reckoning, Germany will judge how he has done it, and it is to be hoped that Germany will give him his just reward, for no punishment could be more fitting. The rest of the world already knows his vacuity, his utter uselessness, his criminal decadence. As his father was stripped of the Garter, so is he here shown stripped of the attributes to which, in earlier days, he made false claim. There remains a foolish knave posturing--and that is the real Crown Prince of Germany.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

PIRACY

In the summer of 1914 Germany stood before the world, a nation of immense, and to a great extent of most honourable, achievement. Her military greatness had never been in dispute. But in the previous twenty years she had developed an internal industry and an external commerce on a scale and with a rapidity entirely unprecedented. She had to build a navy such as no nation had ever constructed in so short a time. She seemed destined to progress in the immediate future as she had progressed in the immediate past.

What has the madness for world conquest done for her now? She has made enemies of all, and made all her enemies suffer. Like the strong blind man of history, she has seized the columns of civilization and brought the whole temple down. But has she not destroyed herself utterly amid the ruins? Her industry is paralyzed, her commerce gone. Her navy is dishonoured. Some force she still possesses at sea, but it is force to be expended on sea piracy alone. And it is not piracy that can save her. At most, in her extremity, it will do for her what a life belt does for a lone figure in a deserted ocean. It prolongs the agony that precedes inevitable extinction. It is the throw of the desperate gambler that Germany has made, when she flings this last vestige of her honour into the sea.

ARTHUR POLLEN.

WEEPING, SHE HATH WEPT

While a world of mourners is plaintively asking, "What has become of our brave dead, where are they? Alas! how dark is the world without them, how silent the home, how sad the heart"; whilst the mourner is groping like the blind woman for her lost treasure, the Belgian mother, and the Belgian widow, and the Belgian orphan are on their knees, praying, "Eternal rest give to them, O Lord; let a perpetual light shine upon them," the Christian plea that has echoed down the ages from the day of the Maccabees till now, exhorting us to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins. I would remind the broken-hearted mother beseeching me to tell her where can her brave boy be gone, adding, "His was such a lonely journey; did he find his way to God?" of the words of the poet, who finds his answer to her question in the flight of a sea bird sailing sunward from the winter snows:

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along the pathless coast, The desert and illimitable air, Lone, wandering but not lost:

He who from zone to zone Guides, through the boundless sky, thy certain flight, In the lone way which thou must tread alone Will lead thy steps aright.

The brave soldier, who in the discharge of high duty has been suddenly shot into eternity by the fire of the enemy, will surely, far more easily than the migrating bird, wing his flight to God, Who, let us pray, will not long withhold him the happy-making vision of Heaven. Pilgrims homeward-bound, as you readily understand, at different stages of their journey will picture Heaven to themselves differently, according as light or darkness, joy or sorrow encompass them. Some will picture Heaven as the Everlasting Holiday after the drudgery of school life, others as Eternal Happiness after a life of suffering and sorrow, others again as Home after exile, and some others as never-ending Rapture in the sight of God.

But to-day, when " frightfulness" is the creed of the enemy, and warfare with atrocities is his gospel, very many amongst us, weary with the long-drawn battle, sick with its ever-recurring horrors, and broken by its ghastly revelations, will lift up their eyes to a land beyond the stars.

FATHER BERNARD VAUGHAN.

MILITARY NECESSITY

It may be asserted that the plea of "Frightfulness" will not be recognized a "military necessity" when Germany is judged, and that this enemy of civilization, even as the enemy of society, will be held responsible for its crimes, though they stand as far above the imagination as beyond the power of a common felon. Bill Sikes may justly claim "military necessity" for his thefts and murders, if Germany can do so for hers.

Under Article No. 46 of the Regulations of The Hague, we learn that "Family honour and rights, individual life and private property must be respected," and, under Article No. 47, "all pillage is expressly forbidden." But while it was a political necessity to subscribe to that fundamental formula of civilization, Germany's heart recognized no real need to do so, and secretly, in cold blood, at the inspiration of her educated and well-born rulers, she plotted the details of a campaign of murder, rape, arson, and pillage, which demanded the breaking of her oath as its preliminary. Well might her Chancellor laugh at "the scrap of paper," which stood between Germany and Belgium, when he reflected on the long list of sacred assurances his perjured country had already planned to break.

No viler series of events, in Northern France alone, can be cited than those extracted from the note-books of captured and fallen Germans. Such blood-stained pages must be a tithe of those that returned to Germany, but they furnish a full story of what the rank and file accomplished at the instigation and example of their officers. Space precludes quotation; but one may refer the reader to "Germany's Violations of the Laws of War,"[A] published under the auspices of the French Foreign Office. It is a book that should be on the tables at the Peace Conference.

We cannot hang an army for these unspeakable offences, or treat those who burn a village of living beings as we would treat one who made a bonfire of his fellow-man; nor can we condemn to penal servitude a whole nation for bestial outrages on humanity, ordered by its Higher Command and executed by its troops; but at least we may hope soon to find the offending Empire under police supervision of Europe, with a ticket-of-leave, whose conditions shall be as strict as an outraged earth knows how to draw them.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

[Footnote A: English translation. Heinemann.]

LIBERTE! LIBERTE, CHERIE!

There have been many surprises in this war. The evil surprises, patiently, scientifically, diabolically matured in the dark for the upsetting and downcasting of a too-trusting world by the enemy of mankind, whose "Teuton-faith" will surely forever outrival that "Punic-faith" which has hitherto been the by-word for perfidious treachery. The heartening surprises of gallant little Belgium and Serbia; the renascence of Russia; the wonderful upleap to the needs of the times by Great, and still more by Greater Britain; and, not least, the bracing of the loins of our closest Allies just across the water.

In the very beginning, when the Huns tore up that scrap of paper which represented their honour and their right to a place among decent dwellers on the earth, and came sweeping like a dirty flood over Belgium and Northern France, the overpowering remembrance of 1870 still lay heavy on our sorely-tried neighbours. They had not yet quite found themselves. The Huns had a mighty reputation for invincibility. It seemed impossible to stand against them. There were waverings, even crumplings. There were said to be treacheries in high places.

The black flood swept on. Von Kluck was heading for Paris, and seemed likely to get there. Then suddenly, miraculously as it seemed, his course was diverted. He was tossed aside and flung back.

And it is good to recall the reason he himself is said to have given for his failure.

"At Mons the British taught the French how to die."

That is a great saying and worthy of preservation for all time. Whether Von Kluck said it or not does not matter. It represents and immortalizes a mighty fact.

France was bending under the terrible impact. Britain stood and died. France braced her loins and they have been splendidly braced ever since.

The Huns were found to be resistible, vulnerable, breakable. The old verve and elan came back with all the old fire, and along with these, new depths of grim courage and tenacity, and, we are told, of spirituality, which may be the making of a new France greater than the world has ever known.

And that we shall welcome. France, Belgium, Serbia, Russia have suffered in ways we but faintly comprehend on this side of the water. When the Great Settling Day conies, this new higher spirit of France will, it is to be devoutly hoped, make for restraint in the universal craving for vengeance, and prove a weighty factor in the righteous re-adjustment of things and the proper fitting together of the jig-saw map of Europe.

JOHN OXENHAM.

I--"A KNAVISH PIECE OF WORK"

There can be no defence of the spirit of hatred in which the Germans have, so fatally for their future, carried on this amazing mad war of theirs, in violation of all human instincts of self-respect and self-preservation, to say nothing of the obligations of religion and morality observed among mankind from the first dawnings of civilization. The knavery, the villainy, and the besotted bestiality of it can never be forgotten, and must never be forgiven, and Louis Raemaekers, gifted as he is with the rare dramatic genius that discriminates his Cartoons, has but discharged an obvious patriotic duty in publishing them to the world at large, as true and faithful witnesses to the unspeakable and inexpiable abominations wrought throughout Belgium and French Flanders by the Germans--which, already, in the course of Divine retribution, have involved their own country in material losses it will take from three to four generations to repair; and their once honoured name in contempt, and reprobation, and infamy, wherefrom it can never be redeemed.

Nevertheless, as an Englishman, I shrink from giving any emphasis there may be in my "hand and signature" to these righteously condemnatory and withering cartoons; and because, each one of them, as I turn to it, brings more and more crushingly home to me the transcending sin of England--of every individual Englishman with a vote for Members of Parliament--in not having prepared for this war; a sin that has implicated us in the destruction of the whole rising generation of the flower of our manhood; and, before this date, would have brought us under subjection to Germany but for the confidence placed by the rank and file of the British people and nation in Lord Kitchener of Khartum.

Now--face to face with enemies--from the Kaiser downward to his humblest subjects--animated by the highest, noblest ideals, but again perverted for a time--as in the case of their ancestors in the Middle Ages--by a secular epidemic of "Panmania," they are to be faced not with idle reproaches and revilings, still less with undignified taunts and gibes, but with close-drawn lips and clenched teeth, in the determination that, once having cast Satan out of them, he shall be bound down to keep the peace of Christendom--"for a thousand years."

GEORGE BIRDWOOD.

II--"SISYPHUS,--HIS STONE"

Sisyphus, as the story goes, was a King who widely extended the commerce, and largely increased the wealth, of Corinth, but by avaricious and fraudful ways; for the sin whereof he was sentenced after death to the unresting labour of rolling up a hill in Tartarus, a huge unhewn block of stone, which so soon as he gets it to the hill top, for all his efforts, rolls down again. In classical representation of the scene he is associated with Tantalus and Ixion; Tantalus, who, presuming too much on his relations with Zeus, was after death afflicted with an unquenchable thirst amidst flowing fountains and pellucid lakes--like the lakes of "The Thirst of the Antelope" in the marvellous mirages of Rajputana and Mesopotamia--that ever elude his anguished approaches; and with Ixion, the meanest and basest of cheats, and most demoniac of murderers, whose posthumous punishment was in being stretched, and broken, and bound, in the figure of the svastika, on a wheel which, self-moved--like the wheels of the vision of Ezekiel--whirls forevermore round and round the abyss of the nether world. The moral of these tortures is that we may well and most wisely leave vengeance to "the high Gods." They will repay!

GEORGE BIRDWOOD.

CONCRETE FOUNDATIONS

Nothing has damned the Germans more in the eyes of other nations, belligerent and neutral alike, and nothing will have a more subtle and lasting influence on future relations, than the revelation of stealthy preparation for conquest under a mask of innocent and friendly intercourse. The whole process of "peaceful penetration," pursued in a thousand ways with infernal ingenuity and relentless determination, is an exhibition of systematic treachery such as all the Macchiavellis have never conceived. Germany has revealed herself as a nation of spies and assassins. To take advantage of a neighbour's unsuspecting hospitality, to enter his house with an air of open friendship, in order to stab him in the back at a convenient moment, is an act of the basest treachery, denounced by all mankind in all ages. No one would be more shocked by it in private life than the Germans themselves. But when it is undertaken methodically on a national scale under the influence of _Deutschland ueber Alles_, the same conduct becomes ennobled in their eyes, they throw themselves into it with enthusiasm and lose all sense of honour. Such is the moral perversion worked by Kultur and the German theory of the State.

An inevitable consequence is that in future the movements and proceedings of Germans in other countries will be watched with intense suspicion, and if Governments do not prevent the sort of thing depicted by Mr. Raemaekers the people will see to it themselves. The cartoon is not, of course, intended to reflect personally on the owner of Krupp's works, who is said to be a gentle-minded and blameless lady. It is her misfortune to be associated by the chance of inheritance with the German war machine and one of the underhand methods by which it has pursued its aims.

A. SHADWELL.

PALLAS ATHENE