The Entry Into Constantinople
NOWHERE has the caricaturist proved more effectively his command of caustic satire.
It is characteristic of the Kaiser and his family to claim Christian sanction for all his sinister schemes.
None of the many goals which the Kaiser confidently set out to win in this war has he yet secured. The triumphal progress through the capital city of Constantinople loomed large in his early programme. His vaulting ambition still seeks the hegemony of the Mahomedan world no less than of the Christian world.
The Kaiser habitually appeals to religious authority. He garbles Scripture to serve his turn. Nothing that the world regards as sacred is safe from his profanation. His miscalculations are so colossal, his hopes are so tangled, that the blasphemous dream which the artist depicts may well have visited the imperial couch. The pious Mahomedan might possibly find some specious compensation for submission to the Prussian yoke were the Kaiser to enter the Turkish capital at the head of his barbarian hordes flaunting in triumph the banner of the crescent, while Christ rode on an ass at the imperial side, in bonds and wearing the crown of thorns. It is a revolting piece of pictorial imagery, but it is a legitimate interpretation of the imperial megalomania, which enlists blasphemy in the service of the imperial propaganda.
Come Away, My Dear!
ONLY historic interest now attaches to the activities of German diplomacy which sought, by misplaced flattery, to prevent Italy from joining the Powers of the Entente in the Great War. Prince von Bülow for many months employed all his wiles to distract Italy from the pursuit of a hostile policy. He had some good cards in his hand, and, after the manner of all German diplomatists, he overestimated their strength, while he underrated the skill and enthusiasm of the players against him. The influences of German finance worked on his side, but characteristically he ignored the spiritual forces of the Italian national sentiment, on which bribes and blandishments could make no impression. Italy’s traditional hatred of Austria was only speciously held in check by the conventions of the old Triple Alliance. The perils which Austria invited by engaging in the present war were bound to set ancient memories fully aflame. It is a mangled unity of which Italy can boast so long as the Italian peoples of the Trentino and Dalmatia live under Austrian sway.