The Satyr of the Sea
IT is always difficult, after a series of catastrophic events, to go back to one’s mental outlook of the time before they happened. But if the civilized world could recapture its pre-war view, I believe it would realize the most startling of all the results of Armageddon to be that we now take Germany’s outrages on neutrals for granted. At first the bulk of us simply could not believe the tale of the horrors inflicted on non-combatant men, women, and children of innocent and neutral Belgium. But Germany had at any rate made Belgium a belligerent, before beginning them. Now that similar horrors should fall on men, women, and children of Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and America, surprises no more: it has become a mere matter of course.
It is the business of the prophet, the seer, and the poet to awaken the world when it is worshipping false gods, when from fear, or self-interest, or sheer bewilderment, it fails to see the things that are in their naked horror and their awful shame. But prophet, seer, and poet can speak only through the printed word, and in the maze and mass of conflicting appeals the words of truth are lost and ineffective. But if the ear be deaf and the mind numb, the eyes of all retain their childlike curiosity. It is Raemaekers’ secret that he can present his own clear vision of the truth in figures that pierce instantly to the conscience of the dullest. To kill a child at all for a political purpose, is the sin of Herod. To kill the children of those with whom you have no nominal quarrel, stipulates just that negation of soul which we call beastly. The truth about Tirpitz, and all that that accursed name stands for, is personified in the loathsome Satyr of the Sea portrayed in this cartoon.
War Council with Ferdinand and Enver Pasha
RAEMAEKERS is not merely a clever draftsman and a keen observer, but also a deep and careful student of modern history and diplomacy. He knows the by-paths, the coulisses, and the intrigues of the diplomatic world, which are eternally going on behind the almost impenetrable curtain with which the chancelleries of Europe seek to veil their proceedings.
Everyone knows, of course, that it was not merely affection or esteem that has ranged Ferdinand of Bulgaria and Enver Pasha upon the side of the Central Empires. In the case of the first, greed had not a little to do with the final decision to which he came. He was not unwilling to be persuaded by the blandishments of his “dear brother the Kaiser,” always provided it was made worth his while at the time as well as in futuro. In the case of the second, ambition played its part, backed up by years of “ground baiting” of the kind in which German diplomacy excels.
It has been left to the pencil of this great artist and satirist to bring home to the mind of the man-in-the-street a knowledge of the actual situation that has been created, and of the methods by which it was brought about. In this cartoon we have the Kaiser in shop-walker attitude, an oily smile upon his lips, bending forward and washing his hands with invisible soap, while he exclaims, “I hope you have been well served and are satisfied.” His dupes are shown bound hand and foot, with an expression of their doubts as to the ultimate genuineness and benefit of the bargain which they have struck shown upon the face of the one and the back of the other. Bound hand and foot they stand in the presence of this “artful dodger” among crowned heads, and in that of the decrepit Franz Joseph, in whose figure the artist has succeeded in so cleverly conveying an idea of the unstable and effete nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.