The elder Willie, obviously, does not like the set of his coat, after the glory of his many uniforms; the younger Willie, apparently, has finished his trying on, and from his expression the result is as much as he could expect, and no more. In both there is that suggestion of posturing, of playing to the gallery and being determined that the clothes shall be suited to the part, for which William Hohenzollern was noted before ever this war showed him as the most infamous ruler of modern time.
There is a certain bitter correctness in Raemaekers’ estimate of these exalted personages. Shorn of their uniforms, posturing before a mirror in a slightly Parisian (using the adjective in the pre-war, foppish sense) garb, they show as very little men—rather contemptible, in fact, as, of course, they are. For it is open to any man to dream of ruling the world, and of setting nations by the throat for the sake of an ambition that civilization cannot tolerate; it is open to any head of a government to set the machinery in motion which might gratify that ambition—but it is open only to a man, in the very best of that one syllable, to bring his ambition to fruition, and even then only by strict adherence to natural law. And these two, posturing as Raemaekers makes them posture here, have ignored law; they had the wit to dream, but not the brain to make reality of dream, nor the moral sense through which they might have made the world acknowledge the dream as worth while translating into actualities. Probably, if they were set in a St. Helena of to-day, they would fold their arms and try on cocked hats, as once they tried on uniforms. But though the clothes declare the man, they cannot make of him other than he is, and these two are mere posturers, whatever may be their attitudes.
Two Peals of Thunder
HERE the artist has depicted the Kaiser as a modern Ajax, not defying the lightning but afraid of it. The arch Hun sees the neutral Powers one by one abandoning their neutrality and entering the lists against him and his gospel of force and world-power for Germany. Italy, after slow progress and positive and seemingly disastrous set-backs, has emerged to the fullness of a success which has proved invaluable to her Allies as a whole. In Rumania’s dark hour there is yet a gleam of hope and the indications of a dawn which shall see her triumphant and reaping where she has sown, and ultimately honored among the nations for the part she has determined to play in the struggle for freedom and for international integrity. The reward of high courage and faith is often not at the moment, but is none the less certain for all that. Truly the keenest of all edges is upon the sword drawn in the cause of freedom. Rumania has drawn that sword, and it will not be sheathed until freedom from tyranny has been won, not alone for her but for the nations of Europe as a whole.
