Purchasers of “Kultur in Cartoons” may be interested to know that this present work is a companion volume to “Raemaekers’ Cartoons,” issued in 1916. “Raemaekers’ Cartoons” includes many of the artist’s earlier work, dealing particularly with the Belgian inferno. The two volumes are alike in size and form, and together constitute a thoroughly representative collection of Raemaekers’ drawings.
The Century Co.
Foreword
BY
J. Murray Allison
A year has passed since the first volume of Raemaekers’ work (“Raemaekers’ Cartoons,” Century Co.), was published in the United States.
At that time Raemaekers was practically unknown in this country, just as he was unknown in England and France until January, 1916, when his work was first exhibited in the British Capital.
The story of Raemaekers’ reception in London and Paris has been written in the introduction to “Raemaekers’ Cartoons.”
When his cartoons began to reach America toward the end of 1916 this country was neutral. It is with peculiar satisfaction, therefore, that I base this brief foreword upon press extracts published prior to America’s participation in the war.
If it were possible to discover to-day an individual who was entirely ignorant as to the causes and conduct of the war, he would, after an inspection of a hundred or more of these cartoons, probably utter his conviction somewhat as follows: “I do not believe that these drawings have the slightest relation to the truth; I do not believe that it is possible for such things to happen in the twentieth century.” He would be quite justified, in his ignorance of what has happened in Europe, in expressing such an opinion, just as any of us, with the possible exception of the disciples of Bernhardi himself, would have been justified in expressing a similar view in July, 1914.
What is the view of all informed people to-day? “To Raemaekers the war is not a topic, or a subject for charity. It is a vivid heartrending reality,” says the New York “Evening Post,” “and you come away from the rooms where his cartoons now hang so aware of what war is that mental neutrality is for you a horror. If you have slackened in your determination to find out, these cartoons are a slap in the face. Raemaekers drives home a universal point that concerns not merely Germans, but every country where royal decrees have supreme power. Shall one man ever be given the power to seek his ends, using the people as his pawns? We cannot look at the cartoons and remain in ignorance of exactly what is the basis of truth on which they are built.”