International cartoons of the war

by Unknown

The artistic value of the cartoons issued in all countries—and in some cases it is very great—is a matter for future discussion. It is of no present importance. What is of some actual value is a comparison between the cartoons of the various countries, for they show with unfailing accuracy the trend of public opinion. From the human point of view this comparison is invaluable to the student of humanity in the present upheaval. From the cheap postcard to the twopenny broadsheet, from the most commonplace poster to the finest lithograph, each has its place. To collect these things is not only very interesting, but most enlightening; the national spirit and the national moods of each country are unmistakably portrayed, and the crudest production takes rank with the best as a human document.

III.

THE GOOD cause has always produced the good cartoonist—witness the Napoleonic wars, when England rejoiced in Gillray and Rowlandson, while France had no topical draughtsman of any outstanding merit. So far as one can tell, this is very much the case with the present war. At any rate, the good cause has produced its good men, and, judging by what one can manage to see of German caricature, they have no mind of any large calibre at work on cartoons. This is, perhaps, because the greater part of the German drawings I have seen are intended to rouse hatred, scorn, and anger. Clever they certainly are, but too many of them are spiritually debased. The best are those directed against England, which are dedicated to hatred, a passion greater than scorn or anger, and consequently more elevating in its effects. Otherwise the German cartoonist has not distinguished himself, in the sense that the war has not raised him above himself.

This can certainly not be said of France, where a crowd of new men have appeared, and where the well-known draughtsmen of pre-war days have been roused to unprecedented excellence by their emotions. At least one of them, M. Forain, has made history with his pencil. There came a time, when the first excitement had died away, when the victory of the Marne had for months been followed by stagnation—stagnation in victory, progress in casualties—a time when no news ever came, when Paris was left in a kind of twilight of suspense and endurance, when the economic pinch began to be acutely felt, when bereaved wives and mothers were told in the morning that their loved ones "were gloriously dead for their country," and read at night that "there is nothing to report on the front; the night was calm." And for just a moment the human need and sorrow of the individual cried louder than the pride of country. "It's very long, this war!" "What I want to know is, how much more do they expect us to endure?" "Could defeat be worse than war?" and even the sinister "if we win," were phrases that crept into conversation. It was hardly to be wondered at. France had expended so much energy on her magnificent effort in August, '14, when her very babies bore themselves proudly and with self-control, that she was bound to feel the reaction.

It did not last long, and it was Forain who swept it away by a dose of strong tonic. He drew two French privates in a trench, snow and hail and shrapnel raining round them, in conditions as bad as the most anxious mother's nightmare could have pictured them. And one says: "If only they hold out!" The other, with a look of great surprise, enquires: "Who?" "Those civilians!" In a week that drawing was historic, and civilian France, with a blush and a laugh, had pulled herself together. M. Forain does not care to have his drawings reproduced, or this famous cartoon would have been included in this book.

Nor, unfortunately, will M. Jean Véber have his cartoons reproduced till after the war, which deprives us of that Napoleon of his, standing on his own tomb and crying "Vive l'Angleterre," which created such a stir on both sides of the Channel. "La Brûte est Lâchée," by the same artist, is one of the most impressive drawings France has produced since the war. Published so early as September, '14, it represents the Prussian monster, madness and fury in his face, starting out like an unleashed animal on his career of destruction.

This print was the first to indicate the enormous boom in war-drawings which has characterized Paris. Published at 5 francs, it was within a few months unobtainable under 500. Collectors took the hint, and the drawings of Forain, Steinlen, and other well-known artists were eagerly sought after, and rose to very high premiums. The character of the prints changed; with the exception of M. Véber's series, the greater part of the drawings published outside magazines and newspapers had been cheap, ranging from threepence to two francs each, and including some publications of deliberately naïve construction and crude colours, others which achieved without deliberation a startling likeness to the old broadsheets with their childlike simplicity. Postcards and prints fairly flooded Paris in the first few months of the war, but since the collector appeared on the scene in his dozens the cheaper publications have been displaced by more ambitious works that range up to a hundred francs each, and have crowded out the smaller artist, the smaller print-seller, and the smaller collector.

This variety of output has been increased by the publication of many illustrated war-papers in Paris, such as Le Mot, l'Europe Anti-Prussienne, l'Anti-Boche, A la Baïonnette, war editions of already established papers, and a crop of crude halfpenny papers, printed after the Epinal manner, and greatly used by children and the very low classes. A coloured history of the war, of extraordinary naïveté, issued in penny sheets, was intended for use in schools, but achieved an additional success in hospitals, where the thin sheet was easily held and folded, and the incidents depicted roused the liveliest interest among the wounded.

In the whole of this output it is difficult to find any sign of wavering in the national spirit of France. Once the civilians had decided to hold out, there could be no other stumbling-block. Naturally, in such a range of drawings, there are many that drop into brutality on the one hand, vulgarity on the other; but the overwhelming majority breathe a spirit of calm, determined endurance, with a ready laugh for hardships, a sly dig at politicians, and no little irony at the expense of their own weaknesses and foibles. Very often, so often as to set the key for the whole, the note is heroic, sometimes grimly so. There is none of the splenetic fury of the German drawings about the majority of the French ones; the Germans are ridiculed and hated, it is true, but the spirit is more steady and less spiteful—it rests on an emotion which for forty-five years has been a religion to the Frenchman.

The English cartoons are as different as possible from both the French and the German. We have no separately published prints, our postcards have been few, vulgar, and negligible; our cartoonists are really only offered the pages of newspapers and magazines in which to exert their influence over us. And there cannot be two questions as to that influence—it is the influence of good humour. The French mistake it sometimes for indifference, but the English know better. The Germans say they mistake it for frivolity, but they so foam at the mouth about it that one suspects them of glimpsing the spirit behind the smile. The grim note of Steinlen and Forain is almost wholly wanting from English cartoons. The Kaiser, who is a devil in France, is merely making an unholy fool of himself in England; the Crown-Prince, a mass of vice in Paris, is "an awful silly blighter" in London. Will Dyson, the young artist of whom Australia has such reason to be proud, is our grimmest product, and even he lets the Prussian off more easily than do the French artists. Because, after all, don't you know, we're going to thrash the brutes, but there's no need to make a fuss about it, hang it all. Let us have our pipe and our grin, and let us keep to those till the end. For the Lord's sake don't let us have any heroics—those are for doing, not for showing. That is the attitude which one finds over and over again in English drawings; not contempt of danger, so much as a serene determination to grin at it and have no fuss.