Be Careful! It's Loaded!
By Victor Gillam in "Judge."
One of those cartoons which are not to be forgotten in a day or a week or a month; one which stirs the blood and rouses the mind to a new patriotism even when seen years after the events which inspired it, is Victor Gillam's "Be Careful! It's Loaded!" which appeared a few weeks before the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and which we deem worthy of being ranked among the twenty-five or thirty great cartoons which the nineteenth century has produced. To realize to-day its full force and meaning one has to recall the peculiar tension under which the American people were laboring during the months of February, March, and April, 1898. The Maine had been destroyed in Havana Harbor, and although, now that anger has died down, we can no longer cling implacably to the belief, which was then everywhere expressed, that it was an act emanating from the Spanish Government, at the time it was too much for our overwrought nerves; the condition of Cuba was growing every day more deplorable, and everyone felt that the inevitable conflict was hourly at hand. In the picture American patriotism is symbolized by a huge cannon. A diminutive Spaniard has climbed to the top of a mast of a Spanish vessel and monkey-like is shaking his fist down the muzzle. Uncle Sam, standing by the gun and realizing the Spaniard's imminent peril calls out, excitedly, "Be Careful! It's Loaded!" a warning to which the latter seems little inclined to pay any attention. In its very simplicity this cartoon differs greatly from most of those of the school of Puck and Judge. There is none of that infinite variety of detail which makes an elaborate study necessary in order to arrive at a full comprehension of the meaning of a cartoon. "Be Careful! It's Loaded!" like the most striking English and French cartoons, may be understood at a glance.
Speaker Reed to McKinley—"You've got to bank the fire some way or other: I can't hold in this steam much longer."
Minneapolis "Tribune."
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