Belgium, 1918
YOU, who on the tree of shame show forth again the Sacrifice of Calvary: you for whom scourge and thongs and the mockery of dull beasts are the circumstance of martyrdom: you who freely offered yourself that man might be saved, “yet so as by fire”:—Belgium! in the depth of your agony and the long torment of a red martyrdom, remember that the Cross of your own Passion endures only until the Resurrection that comes after the third day.
God, in mercy Incarnate, as Man suffered the shameful death of the Cross that the world might be saved from the penalty of its sins. The Tree of Scorn is raised up on Calvary, becoming the instrument of shame and of death, yet “the leaves of that Tree shall be for the healing of the Nations.”
Nails and spear, scourge and thongs, crumble and fall away; the obscene mockers “that watched Him there,” and watch you, O Belgium, go hence to that place prepared for them by Eternal Justice, but with the sun of Easter morning, behold a great wonder! The Cross, that was a dead engine of death, is transformed by Divine miracle. It lives, it throws out branches and leaves; it is now the Tree of Mercy, “and the leaves of that Tree shall be for the healing of the Nations.”
RALPH ADAMS CRAM.
“We will not Wear Convicts’
Stripes, Wear Them Yourselves”
[Mr. Raemaekers refers in this cartoon to the insulting proposal of the German Government, just before the entrance of the United States into the war, that American ships at the rate of one a week would be permitted to pass the submarine “blockade” if they were painted in stripes in a specified manner.]
WHEN Attila laid Rheims in ashes, cut the throats of his hostages, tortured his prisoners, and thus earned fame as the Scourge of God, he found priests and professors to justify his acts and to predict the speedy Hunnification of the world. Attila is to-day popular in Prussia—mothers have their babes called Etzel and when William II sends forth his armies he bids them be worthy of their illustrious namesake.