Raemaekers' Cartoons Part 15

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON CONCRETE FOUNDATIONS BIG BERTHA: "What a charming view over Flus.h.i.+ng harbour! May I build a villa here?"]

PALLAS ATHENE

"Has it come to this?" Well may the G.o.ddess ask this question. Times are indeed changed since the heroic days. Germany has still her great Greek scholars, one or two of them among the greatest living, men who know, and can feel, the spirit, as well as the letter, of the old Cla.s.sics. Do they remember to-day what the relation of the G.o.ddess of Wisdom was to the G.o.d of War, in Homer, when, to use the Latin names which are perhaps more familiar, to the general reader than the Greek, Mars "indulged in lawless rage," and Jove sent Juno and Minerva to check his "frightfulness?"

"Go! and the great Minerva be thine aid; To tame the monster-G.o.d Minerva knows, And oft afflicts his brutal breast with woes."

and how the hero Diomede, with Minerva's aid, wounded the divine bully and sent him bellowing and whimpering back, only to hear from his father the just rebuke:

"To me, perfidious! this lamenting strain?

Of lawless force shall lawless Mars complain?

Of all the G.o.ds who tread the spangled skies, Thou most unjust, most odious in our eyes!

Inhuman discord is thy dear delight, The waste of slaughter, and the rage of fight!"

It is most true. Such has ever been War for War's sake, and when the Germans themselves are wounded and beaten, they complain like Mars of old of "lawless force."

But Raemaekers has introduced another touch more Roman than Greek, and reminding us perhaps of Tacitus rather than of Homer.

Who was Caligula, and what does his name mean? "Little Jack-boots," in his childhood the spoiled child of the camp, as a man, and Caesar, the first of the thoroughly mad, as well as bad, Emperors of Rome, the first to claim divine honours in his lifetime, to pose as an artist and an architect, an orator and a _litterateur_, to have executions carried out under his own eyes, and while he was at meals; who made himself a G.o.d, and his horse a Consul.

Minerva blacking the boots of Caligula--it is a clever combination!

But there is an even worse use of Pallas, which War and the German War-lords have made. They have found a new Pallas of their own, not the supernal G.o.ddess of Heavenly Wisdom and Moderation, but her infernal counterfeit, sung of by a famous English poet in prophetic lines that come back to us to-day with new force.

Who loves not Knowledge, who shall rail Against her beauty, may she mix With men and prosper, who shall fix Her pillars? let her work prevail----

Yes, but how do the lines continue?

What is she cut from love and faith But some wild Pallas from the brain

Of Demons, fiery hot to burst All barriers in her onward race For power? Let her know her place, She is the second, not the first.

Knowledge is power, but, unrestrained by conscience, a very awful power.

This is the Pallas whom the "Demons," from whose brain she has sprung, are using for their demoniac purposes. She too might have her portrait painted--and they. Perhaps Raemaekers will paint them both before he has done.

HERBERT WARNER.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALLAS ATHENE "Has it come to this?"]

THE WONDERS OF CULTURE

Of all forms of "Kultur" or "frightfulness" that which materializes in the "the terror which flieth by night" is to the intelligent mind at one and the same time the most insensate and d.a.m.nable. It fails to accomplish, either in Paris or in London, the subjugation by terror of the people for which Germans seem to hope. It is only in German imagination that it accomplishes "material and satisfactory damage to forts, camps, a.r.s.enals, and fortified towns." In reality it inflicts misery and death upon a mere handful of people (horrible as that may be) and destroys chiefly the homes of the poor. It serves no military end, and the damage done is out of all proportion to the expenditure of energy and material used to accomplish it.

The fine cartoon which Raemaekers has drawn to bring home to the imagination what this form of "Kultur" stands for makes it easy for us in London to sympathize with our brothers and sisters in Paris. We have as yet been spared daylight raids in the Metropolitan area, and so we needed this cartoon to enable us to realize fully what "Kultur" by indiscriminate Zeppelin bombs means.

Who cannot see the cruel drama played out in that Paris street? The artist has a.s.sembled for us in a few living figures all the actors. The dead woman; the orphaned child, as yet scarcely realizing her loss; the bereaved workman, calling down the vengeance of Heaven upon the murderers from the air; the stern faces of the _sergents de ville_, evidently feeling keenly their impotence to protect; and in the background other _sergents_, the lines of whose bent backs convey in a marvellous manner and with a touch of real genius the impression of tender solicitude for the injured they are tending. And faintly indicated, further still in the background, the crowd that differs little, whether it be French or English, in its deeper emotions.

CLIVE HOLLAND.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WONDERS OF CULTURE]

"FOLK WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND THEM"

How often have I been asked by sorrow-stricken mothers and wives: "Why does not Providence intervene either to stop this war, or at least to check its cruelties and horrors?" If for many amongst us not yet bereaved this European ma.s.sacre is a puzzle, it should not cause us dismay or surprise, if the widow or son-bereaved mother lifts up her hands exclaiming: "Why did not G.o.d save him? Why did He let him be shot down by those Huns?"

Truth to tell, G.o.d has, so to speak, tied up His own hands in setting ours free. When He placed the human race upon the surface of this planet He dowered them with freedom, giving to each man self-determining force, by the exercise of which he was to become better than a man or worse than a beast. Good and evil, like wheat and c.o.c.kle, grow together, in the same field. The winnowing is at harvest-time, not before. Meanwhile, we ourselves have lived to see the fairest portions of this fair creation of G.o.d changed from a garden into a desert--pillaged, ravaged, and brought to utter ruin by shot and sh.e.l.l, sword and fire. When I have said this, I have but uttered a foreword to the hideous story, spoken the prologue only of the "frightful" tragedy. We are all familiar with at least some of the revolting facts and details with which the German soldiery has been found charged and convicted by Commissions appointed to investigate the crimes and atrocities adduced against them. The verdicts of French, Belgian, and English tribunals are unanimous. They all agree that Germany has been caught redhanded in her work of dyeing the map of Europe red with innocent blood.

When you bend your eyes to the pathetic cartoon standing opposite this letterpress, is there not brought home to you in a way, touching even to tears, the "frightful" consequences of the misuse of human powers, more especially of the attribute of freedom? If Germany had chosen to use, instead of brute force, moral force, what a great, grand, and glorious mission might have been hers to-day. If, instead of trying the impossible task of dominating the whole world with her iron hand upon its throat and her iron heel upon its foot, she had been satisfied with the portion of the map already belonging to her, and had not by processes of bureaucratic tyranny driven away millions of her subjects who preferred liberty to slavery, America to Germany, by this date she might have consolidated an Empire second in the world to none but one.

Alas! in her over-reaching arrogance she has, on the contrary, set out to de-Christianize, de-civilize, and even de-humanize the race for which Christ lived and died.

Our high mission it is to try to save her from herself. Already I can read written in letters of blood carved into the gravestone of her corrupted greatness,

"Ill-weaved ambition, How much art thou shrunk!"

BERNARD VAUGHAN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LES BEAUTES DE LA GUERRE

Folk who do not understand them.]

ON THE WAY TO CALAIS

They are coming, like a tempest, in their endless ranks of gray, While the world throws up a cloud of dust upon their awful way; They're the glorious cannon fodder of the mighty Fatherland, Born to make the kingdoms tremble and the nations understand.

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! the cannon fodder come Along their way to Calais, (G.o.d help the hearth and home) They'll do his will who taught them, on the earth and on the waves, Till land and sea are festering with their unnumbered graves.

The garrison and barrack and the fortress give them vent; They sweep, a herd of winter wolves, upon the flying scent; For all their deeds of horror they are told that death atones, And their master's harvest cannot spring till he has sowed their bones.

Into beasts of prey he's turned them; when they show their teeth and growl.

The lash is buried in their cheeks; they're slaughtered if they howl; To their b.l.o.o.d.y Lord of Battles must they only bend the knee, For hard as steel and fierce as h.e.l.l should cannon fodder be.

Scourge and curses are their portion, pain and hunger without end, Till they hail the yell of shrapnel as the welcome of a friend; They drink and burn and rape and laugh to hear the women cry, And do the devil's work to-day, but on the morrow die.

Drift! Drift! Drift! the cannon fodder go Upon their way to Calais, (G.o.d feed the carrion crow.) They've done his will who taught them that the Germans shall be slaves, Till land and sea are festering with their unnumbered graves.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE YSER. "We are on our way to Calais."]