“Can these dry bones live?” was the question asked of the prophet. It might have been asked of Frederick: “Can this nation live, created of your foul witchcraft, without honour, without charity, without human brotherhood or fellowship, without all that which is the flesh and blood of mankind?” The answer must have been that it could live, though with a life coming from below and essentially infernal. It could live—for a time. It could even have great power because its time was short.
But now it has waxed fat—and kicked. And its end is near.
CECIL CHESTERTON
IT’S FATTENING WORK
Idyllic Neutrality
In the picture opposite the best elements of the great cartoonist’s genius have full scope. One has the biting satire, the humour and the extraordinary gift of representing facial expressions with an economy of line reminding one of some of the best work of the late Phil May, that prince of humorous British caricaturists.
Raemaekers does not spare even his own countrymen when he discovers a situation inimical to the welfare of the Allied cause, or one which involves an obvious absurdity.
Here we have such a situation. In the early days of the War of far greater frequency than at present, thanks to the ever tightening “strangle hold” of the British Fleet. There can be no doubt that for many months Holland (greatly to her material gain) turned herself into a conduit pipe for the supply of contraband of War to the Central Empires and more especially to Germany. Daily there were scenes such as that depicted, though possibly veiled with some thin veneer either of legality or subterfuge.
Dutch peasants (as well as the agents of the rich merchants and the resident German smugglers) of all ages and grades flocked to the frontier figuratively if not literally to drop their bags of contraband over the slenderly marked line which divides Holland from Germany.