Dr. Kuyper to Germany
OF benevolent neutrality we have all heard; and of the existence of the malevolent kind, too, we are quite frequently reminded. The Allied countries failed to perceive the benevolence of the Vatican’s utterance that the violation of Belgium “happened in the time of my predecessor,” and so apparently called for no comment from the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Since that interview the inaction of the Vatican, which had till then been almost complete, and has since been troubled by one or two tentative mentions of olive branches and no more, has appeared in more than a dubious light to the Allied nations. In France, where the opening of the war brought about something like a religious revival, the Pope’s inaction and the Pope’s speech caused a cold Gulf Stream of suspicion and disappointment to flow steadily Romeward. The spectacle of a Protestant premier of a two thirds Protestant country favoring a mission to the Vatican is one which would in any case have troubled Protestants, and in this case does not even please Roman Catholics. Then who does it please? Raemaekers knows.
Alas for the days when we associated screens with “little French milliners”; what a Lady Teazle have we here! And what a school of something worse than scandal holds its classes in the seminaries of war-politics! Dr. Kuyper, “the snowy-breasted pearl” of the drawing, is, perhaps, guilty of hoping a thing he does not avow; of working for it; but at least even Raemaekers, a stern critic, admits that without being a villain (we know the mark Raemaekers sets on the brow of his villains) he may be still quite pleased with himself. But the two behind the screen are furtive, are anxious, are unable to enjoy even an act that should further their plans; they are pleased, but their pleasure is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of a thought which turns ever more eagerly to the future, and turns back ever more anxiously to the present.
The Kaiser’s Diplomacy
THE true story of what happened in Montenegro, when the Austrians reported that the country had submitted to superior force and accepted the domination of the Central Powers, and that it was abandoning the hopeless task of resisting their united strength, will perhaps be revealed in the future. At present it is unknown. Probably it will turn out to have been a great personal disappointment to the Kaiser and another instance where his diplomacy failed. It would have been a triumph to induce Montenegro to submit peaceably, and to have King Nicholas accept the position of a client king at Berlin. But the resistance of Montenegro was not wholly overcome. The king and the people who had fought for freedom with success against all the forces of Turkey and afterward of Austria during so many years could not submit to being deluded by the blandishments of Hadji Wilhelm.
Here the artist shows Nicholas with his bag packed for the journey to France, and labelled “Lyon,” turning away from the Kaiser, who looks toward him with seductive entreaty, and presses his hands in a gesture of petition. He is making a last attempt to induce the king to submit to fate and to himself; to come to Berlin, and to be received with royal honors and enrolled alongside the many princely families of Germany.