“NOW’S our chance; he’s asleep.” Mr. Raemaekers is, it must be remembered, a Dutchman, and a certain percentage of his “picture sermons” is addressed especially to the “congregation of faithful Dutch people” and meant first and foremost to be understood, and taken to heart, by them. This is one. A German officer, whose spurs act as a sort of cloven hoof and betray his real character, is posing as a Dutch pastor, or Predikant. He wears the preacher’s gown and the white bands of his sacred office, and holds before his face an elaborate and ingenious mask, representing the fat and foolish face, the snowy whiskers and innocent “goggles” of a pastor, surmounted by his professional tall hat, which it will be noticed is only the front half of the “cylinder.” The contrast of the real face behind the mask, with its grin of low cunning, is very clever.
Armed with this disguise, he has crept up to a Dutch fisherman, a Vollendammer or some one of this sort, in his fur cap, and broad-beamed breeches, peacefully sleeping on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, and, like Hamlet’s treacherous stepfather, “stealing upon his secure hour” pours into his ear from a phial the “leperous distilment” of falsehood, which, if it is not to take his life, is to poison his mind and whole being.
For the Dutch, doubtless, there is some special allusion, and perhaps the mask may suggest a portrait. But for all men everywhere the meaning is patent enough. Poison gas and poisoned wells are not the only poisoned weapons the German has used against the Allies—including our Dutch compatriots in Southwest Africa—or against neutrals the world over. The moral air we breathe, the wells of truth—he has sought to poison these also, and has not hesitated to enlist either the Catholic priest or the Lutheran pastor in his sinister service.
The Organization of Victory by Imposture
THE professorial pedant who directs the internal administration of the Prussian autocracy has created a system which justly rouses the admiration of all who study the methods of cleverness and ingenuity. The last ounce of food is weighed out, the last egg is counted and distributed, and the last pfennig is taken from the safe of the private individual for the use of the State and replaced by the paper of War Loans. It is an astonishing triumph of economy and skill, but to Raemaekers it is all imposture. Such achievements of mere cleverness mean nothing to him; he knows that this is not the truth of the world, for he cannot hear in it any trace of the harmony and the divine music of the universe; and here he points the real fact that lies under and behind this whole pretentious sham. The very ham which lies on the table is merely wood, painted to look like a ham, while the safe is labelled in Dutch with the words: “All is gold that glitters in here.” The wisdom of experience struck out the proverb “All is not gold that glitters,” but the official direction of the German Empire will have it that everything that glitters in the German bureau is gold. The future will reveal whether that proverb or the new professorial dictum is correct. The Dutch artist has no doubt about it.
The official who is now putting on his coat is going to button it over a great cushion of imposture, which will give him the appearance of good feeding and good condition of body. He has arranged his wares to deceive the people and to make them think that they have everything, when they have only the barest minimum. What more should they require? Everything that is needed is at their disposal, whether it be food or wood. What more could they want? The world wants a good deal more, but the docile German is content—up to a certain point.