On the faces of the smugglers one sees the grin of satisfaction and the smug recognition of the truth of the ancient saw, “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.” They are all doing their little bit—though strictly neutral, of course—to keep the Huns alive, to provide the means of killing the soldiers of the Allies, and—at the same time are adding to that “nest egg” which is so dear to the Dutch heart.
At the frontier line are two soldiers. The Dutch guard with a stolid appearance in his back, and with a look of detachment and bland unconsciousness of what is going on behind it, discoverable even on the small portion of his face that is visible. On the other side of the frontier stands the Hun guard smiling sardonically at the Dutch ideas of neutrality, and the eagerness with which the people of the land he covets, and hoped to take, play his game.
CLIVE HOLLAND
IDYLLIC NEUTRALITY
A daily smuggling scene on the Dutch Belgian frontier.
Alcoholism
In this cartoon the Dutch artist pays a high compliment to the British working man. The hideous figure of Alcoholism dressed in rags, with large bony hands at the end of her thin bony arms, with the glaring eyes, the distorted face and the dishevelled hair of a raging mad woman, approaches the workman, offering bottles of whisky which he has struck from her hand. Two of them lie smashed on the ground, the third is falling. The workman’s choice is made voluntarily. He will be neither the slave of drink, on the one hand, nor the slave of prohibitory law on the other. He will judge for himself, and his decision is expressed in this cartoon. He knows the nature of Alcoholism which assails him, and he looks at her with anger and contempt as he points to the answer which he has expressed in the bottles falling or broken.
It contains also the answer which this artist of a foreign and neutral country makes to the charges of drunkenness that were a year ago hurled against the British workman. He was said to be endangering the country by his self-indulgence. While there are exceptions, unfortunately, to the picture that Raemaekers here shows us, there need be no hesitation in believing that the workman’s attitude, as the artist sees it, is the attitude of the overwhelming majority. It is not often that a higher compliment has been paid to the workman than in this cartoon. It is the ideal truth; and the more widely it is seen and appreciated, the more it will make the ideal into the actual truth. It does not enter into the artist’s purpose to show the serious loss caused by the alcoholism of even a small minority, but this point of view must not be forgotten in real life.
Copies of this cartoon should be widely spread through the country.