THERE remain yet a few people who state that, in beginning this world war, Germany did not anticipate such slaughter as she has had to compass; but these are the people who have not studied the apostle of war whom Raemaekers portrays as presenting this bouquet of babies’ heads. This cartoon was first published in August, 1915, and was commemorative of the results of one year of war. It gained in significance during the second year, for to Belgium must be added Serbia, scene of unspeakable crimes against the civilian populace, and Armenia, of which the full horrors will never be told, since none of the victims remain to tell them.
In these later days, when the whole world can see that Germany is fighting a losing fight, one might admire the grim way in which the victors are made to pay for every step of the path they have yet to tread; if their hands were clean one might call magnificent the dogged courage of the fighting men who resist our own. But the list of slaughtered women and children is too long, the violation of the laws of humanity is too complete. This grinning barbarian with his bouquet is the German that the world will remember, not those exceptions to his kind who, by humanity in the presence of wounded enemies, have made themselves noteworthy—merely by their rarity.
In the last phase of the war, that in which approaching defeat is plainly evident, the German fights well—and so does a rat when it is cornered. Raemaekers’ symbol of the bouquet is not less to be kept in mind, nor would there be any hope of justice in the settlement if the victors, in generosity to a beaten foe, should forget it.
The Stranded Submarine
THE circumstances of the incident depicted in this cartoon are well known. A British submarine was stranded, helpless, on the Danish coast. Its men were lined up—as men once lined up on the Birkenhead—and stood at attention while German guns poured shell on them and their craft. Further, this happened in Danish territorial waters, where, by all the laws of humanity, and by the law of nations as well, the crew of the submarine were entitled to consider themselves immune. Had there been any respect for international law on the part of their aggressors, they would have been immune.
Now, if one observes the faces of the two German naval officers in the cartoon, it is easy to understand why such outrages as this have come about. Raemaekers knows his German, and, whether he is portraying officer or man, emperor or soldier, he takes care in each case to bring out the fact that the man represented belongs to a nation that has either lost, or has not yet found, a soul. These two who stand above the guns are two of the world’s materialists, men who understand only that the end must be accomplished, no matter what the means may be.
From their soulless philosophy has arisen not only incidents like these, but the manufacture of a German God, such as the speeches of the Kaiser describe. There has arisen, too, the denial of Western Christianity altogether in a certain patronage of Islam, designed to placate Turkish opinion, a patronage that is inconsistent even with the worship of the German God. It is all means to the one end, world domination. Germany has set out to gain the whole world, and has lost what soul she had. Striving to set herself above the law, she has merely placed herself outside the law, and for this her punishment is at hand.