But Raemaekers has introduced another touch more Roman than Greek, and reminding us perhaps of Tacitus rather than of Homer.
Who was Caligula, and what does his name mean? "Little Jack-boots," in his childhood the spoiled child of the camp, as a man, and Cæsar, the first of the thoroughly mad, as well as bad, Emperors of Rome, the first to claim divine honours in his lifetime, to pose as an artist and an architect, an orator and a littérateur, to have executions carried out under his own eyes, and while he was at meals; who made himself a God, and his horse a Consul.
Minerva blacking the boots of Caligula—it is a clever combination!
But there is an even worse use of Pallas, which War and the German War-lords have made. They have found a new Pallas of their own, not the supernal Goddess of Heavenly Wisdom and Moderation, but her infernal counterfeit, sung of by a famous English poet in prophetic lines that come back to us to-day with new force.
Who loves not Knowledge, who shall rail
Against her beauty, may she mix
With men and prosper, who shall fix
Her pillars? let her work prevail——
Yes, but how do the lines continue?
What is she cut from love and faith
But some wild Pallas from the brain
Of Demons, fiery hot to burst
All barriers in her onward race
For power? Let her know her place,
She is the second, not the first.
Knowledge is power, but, unrestrained by conscience, a very awful power.
This is the Pallas whom the "Demons," from whose brain she has sprung, are using for their demoniac purposes. She too might have her portrait painted—and they. Perhaps Raemaekers will paint them both before he has done.
HERBERT WARNER.