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Title: America in the War
Author: Raemaekers, Louis
Language: English
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AMERICA
IN THE WAR
AMERICA
IN THE WAR
BY
LOUIS RAEMAEKERS
EACH CARTOON FACED WITH A PAGE
OF COMMENT BY A DISTINGUISHED
AMERICAN, THE TEXT FORMING AN
ANTHOLOGY OF PATRIOTIC OPINION
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, October, 1918_
_List of Cartoons_
PAGE
THE STARS AND STRIPES IN THE SERVICE
OF HUMANITY 2
“WHEN I WAS A CHILD, IT WAS YOU WHO
SAVED ME” _Hon. Myron T. Herrick_ 4
THE HUN: “KEEP NEUTRAL” _Robert Underwood Johnson_ 6
PEACE PLOTS REVEALED IN AMERICA AND
FRANCE _John Jay Chapman_ 8
BELGIUM, 1918 _Ralph Adams Cram_ 10
“WE WILL NOT WEAR CONVICTS’ STRIPES,
WEAR THEM YOURSELVES” _Poultney Bigelow_ 12
THE FINAL ARGUMENT _Charles Hanson Towne_ 14
THE END OF THE HINDENBURG LINE _Meredith Nicholson_ 16
“SOMETHING’S WRONG. SHE DOESN’T
SEEM TO INSPIRE CONFIDENCE” _Robert Grant_ 18
ANGELS OF THE WAR ZONE _Gertrude Atherton_ 20
AS THOU SOWEST, SO SHALT THOU REAP _Hon. A. S. Burleson_ 22
“DON’T STOP, OLD CHAP, KEEP IT UP!” _John Philip Sousa_ 24
“SO WE ARE ONLY A DOLLAR-MAKING
PEOPLE, ARE WE?” _John Kendrick Bangs_ 26
“NO, THANKS, I KNOW THESE PRINCES OF
YOURS TOO WELL” _Herbert Adams Gibbons_ 28
SPEEDING UP 30
TOWARD THE VALLEY OF DECISION _Rev. Stephen S. Wise,
Ph.D., LL.D._ 32
WAKE UP, AMERICA! _Mary E. Wilkins Freeman_ 34
“THERE ARE PLENTY OF LAMP-POSTS!” _Hudson Maxim_ 36
“WE DON’T SEEM TO INSPIRE ENOUGH
CONFIDENCE” _Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge_ 38
GERMAN SUBMARINES FIRE ON OPEN BOATS _Alice Brown_ 40
NOT THIS TIME! 42
THE PRESIDENT TO THE WORKERS 44
“WELL DONE, FELLOWS! KEEP THE HOME
FIRES BURNING!” _Hon. Lindley M. Garrison_ 46
A BIT OF THE HINDENBURG LINE _David Bispham_ 48
THE RATS IN OUR HOME TRENCHES _E. S. Martin_ 50
SEEING STARS _Booth Tarkington_ 52
THE TWO GIANTS _Hon. James W. Gerard_ 54
“WILL THEY LAST, FATHER?” _George W. Cable_ 56
“THE UGLY TALONS OF THE SINISTER
POWER” _John Burroughs_ 58
RESTITUTION AND REPARATION _Ellis Parker Butler_ 60
THE ONLY POSSIBLE POSITION FOR
TRAITORS _H. C. Chatfield-Taylor_ 62
“DO YOU MEAN TO MAKE A REAL WAR?” 64
JUSTICE! _Basil Lanneau
Gildersleeve_ 66
ANOTHER PEACE PROPOSAL _Henry Dwight Sedgwick_ 68
THE FINE AMERICAN SPIRIT _G. E. Woodberry_ 70
POISONING THE WELL OF PUBLIC OPINION 72
THE ENEMY WITHIN _William Roscoe Thayer_ 74
COUNT VON BERNSTORFF: “NOBLESSE
OBLIGE” _George Trumbull Ladd_ 76
PETER THE HERMIT _Ida M. Tarbell_ 78
THE GERM-MAN _Albert Bigelow Paine_ 80
“A TID-BIT FOR ‘THE SICK MAN’” _Hon. George W. Wickersham_ 82
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES 84
HELPING HINDENBURG HOME 86
A BAD PROPHET 88
AT THE HOLLAND FRONTIER _Hon. William Jennings
Bryan_ 90
A REHEARSAL 92
THE PATH OF KULTUR _Edwin Markham_ 94
TO THE VICTOR! _Geraldine Farrar_ 96
THE EYES OF THE ARMY _Thomas Mott Osborne_ 98
“IS IT NOTHING TO YOU, ALL YE WHO
PASS BY?” _Rachel Crothers_ 100
THE RAINBOW DIVISION LEAVES FOR
FRANCE _Hon. Frederic Courtland
Penfield_ 102
RUSSIA REBORN _Edward Alsworth Ross_ 104
HIGHER THAN A SOUR APPLE TREE _Samuel Hopkins Adams_ 106
“WHAT A MEAN TRICK TO TURN ON THAT
STRONG LIGHT!” 108
CHRISTMAS, 1917 _Henry Mills Alden_ 110
HELPING UNCLE SAM TO GET UP SPEED 112
THE WIND OF DEMOCRACY 114
“THIS ONE FOR THE BABIES!” _Rev. Lyman Abbott_ 116
A SCENE ON THE SOMME 118
HOLLWEG AS ROBESPIERRE _J. G. Phelps Stokes_ 120
PRESIDENT WILSON’S DECLARATION _John Luther Long_ 122
“DON’T STAND IN OUR WAY TO VICTORY!” _George Haven Putnam_ 124
“GERMAN SOLDIERS CUT THE THROAT OF
AN AMERICAN SENTRY” _Cleveland Moffett_ 126
BANG! 128
“I MUST BREAK IN HERE BEFORE THAT
COMES DOWN” _Palmer Cox_ 130
BRING HER IN! _Charles Edward Russell_ 132
GERMANY’S “PEACE” WITH RUSSIA _Arthur Train_ 134
THE BETTER FIGHTER 136
THE DUNGEON OF AUTOCRACY _Hon. Maurice Francis
Egan_ 138
“HURRAH FOR PEACE, LADS!” _S. Stanwood Menken_ 140
ECCE HOMO! _Robert W. Chambers_ 142
“WE MUST SO DESTROY FRANCE THAT SHE
CAN NEVER RESIST US” _Rev. Hugh Black_ 144
THE JAPANESE MOUSE 146
“UEBER ALLES” AND UNDERNEATH 148
EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY 150
THE SECOND ELECTION 152
THE MAD SHEPHERD _Alice Hegan Rice_ 154
“SINK WITHOUT A TRACE” _Oliver Herford_ 156
CHANGING THE GUARD _Agnes Repplier_ 158
THE PENITENT ARTIST 160
PEACE ANGELS OF DOUBTFUL PURITY 162
THE BLACK FLAG 164
THE ANNEXATION OF AMERICA _Rear Admiral Robert E.
Peary_ 166
“WELCOME, MATE; YOU’RE JUST IN TIME!” 168
THE EDITOR 170
GERMAN INTRIGUES IN MEXICO _Albert Bushnell Hart_ 172
GERMAN “MILITARIST” SOCIALISM _William English Walling_ 174
THE OLD HAMMER AND THE NEW 176
THE SPIRIT OF WASHINGTON 178
THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS _William Dean Howells_ 180
IN THE RING TO STAY _Harvey O’Higgins_ 182
“WE ATTACKED THE ‘FORTRESS OF LONDON’” 184
NOT A BAD START! _Hon. Thomas R. Marshall_ 186
AN ECHO OF THE LUXBERG CASE 188
GERMAN CHIVALRY TO WOUNDED OFFICERS _Hamilton Holt_ 190
SOCIALISM IN GERMANY _John Spargo_ 192
THE SPIRIT OF GERMAN SCIENCE _J. Mark Baldwin_ 194
HUMANITY AND HER GERMAN LOVERS 196
THE STRIKERS _Carrie Chapman Catt_ 198
1776-1917 _William Allen White_ 200
“NOW, HINDENBURG, BRING ON THE REST
OF MY PEOPLE” _Hon. David Jayne Hill_ 202
THE MASTER OF THE HOUNDS 204
PROCESSIONAL _Cale Young Rice_ 206
AMERICA
IN THE WAR
_The Stars and Stripes in the Service of Humanity_
“We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the
sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the
rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been as
secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can make them.”
_From President Wilson’s Message to Congress, April 2, 1917._
[Illustration]
“_When I was a Child, It was You who Saved Me_”
Whether it is that an invigorating climate has given our Anglo-Saxon
blood a piquant Gallic flavor or because Europe sent us for ancestors
only those light-hearted and adventurous souls with a spirit akin to
that we admire in the French people, true it is that Americans have
always had an especial liking for France and the French. They were our
first allies as they are the latest. From Lafayette and Rochambeau
to Joffre and Viviani, a host of Frenchmen have won the affectionate
regard of Americans and are numbered with our national heroes.
But our relation to the French has a deeper foundation than admiration
for a courageous and accomplished race which for centuries has
made generous contribution to the sum of the world’s knowledge and
achievement. The French were early settlers on this continent; LaSalle
and Champlain were the forerunners of a host of French explorers and
settlers whose descendants are today taking active and honorable part
in the life of community and nation.
Before the war one of the foremost French statesmen said to me, with
a certain note of sadness, that in the course of two thousand years
of advancing civilization his countrymen had lost something of their
initiative: that he believed it would not now, for instance, be
possible to build up in France vast industrial organizations like those
which are so effectual in establishing the commercial prestige of the
United States.
If that were true before the war, it can scarcely be credited now.
France has never failed to provide effective military organization for
the protection of western civilization against the repeated attacks of
her enemies from the east. She defeated the forces of Mohammedanism
and saved Christianity. Time and again through the Middle Ages she
beat back the invading Huns and kept them from overrunning Europe. The
victory at the Marne which definitely stopped their latest irruption is
only the latest and greatest of many such victories by which France has
laid mankind under lasting obligation. And the industrial organization
which supplies the armies of France with the products of farm and
factory, and even produces a surplus for her allies, including the
United States, is additional proof that the genius of the French race
is neither decadent nor limited, but as broad as all human activity and
as ardent today as when Joan of Arc inspired kings and peasants alike
with her mystic fervor.
With their French allies Americans can work in most cordial
understanding and sympathy. That subtle spirit of unselfish dedication
to country which has won for the French the admiration of the world
consecrates the alliance of the peoples who are giving their sons
in common sacrifice to save liberty to the world. Out of the heat
and turmoil of war bonds are being forged between the Allied nations
which time and circumstance can never sever. On that alliance the hope
of civilization depends; from it may come, in God’s good time, some
great forward step in the march of progress which began at a manger in
Bethlehem.
MYRON T. HERRICK.
_Cleveland, Ohio,
March, 1918._
[Illustration]
_The Hun: “Keep Neutral”_
Every great event is an occasion for the moral education of the world.
Froude, in his essay “On the Science of History,” says that the value
of history is that it sounds across the centuries the eternal note
of right and wrong. Along with the unbelievable calamities that have
come in the train of the war that in August, 1914, was shamelessly,
dishonorably and with malice aforethought precipitated by the Kaiser
and his fellow highwaymen, there stands out one colossal good: it
has made the world increasingly ethical. The flaunting by the German
military party of all that we associate with fair play, chivalry,
democracy, humanity, even Christianity itself, has aroused the Allied
peoples to the fact that the foundation principles of happiness are at
stake.
’Tis for the holiness of life
The Spirit calls us to the Cross.
The brutality of the Teutons--Austrians and Germans alike--their
willingness, in order to win, to throw away everything we think
admirable in conduct, created a reaction in America by arousing us
from our laissez-faire attitude to the conviction that there can be no
neutrality between right and wrong. The opportunity should not be lost
to enforce this lesson upon the young, who should be taught to hate the
devilish spirit by which the Teutons are obsessed. In due time, when
their defeat is accomplished, a reaction will set in among themselves.
The cost is appalling, but I believe that nations, like men, can
“rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.”
Meantime, with what pride we realize that--as eventually even German
historians will admit--our own part in the war is on a higher plane of
disinterestedness than we have ever reached before, a level of altruism
that has rarely, if ever, been attained by any other nation!
ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.
_February 22, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Peace Plots Revealed in America and France_
Mr. Rathom, Editor of the “Providence Journal,” whose exposure of von
Bernstorff’s plots seemed to show a gift of necromancy, states that
his information came to him through men and women (often Bohemians
and Slavs) “who not only took grave risks in the work--for they were
braving German vengeance--but gave up their time and in many cases
their own funds, without a dollar of compensation from the ‘Journal’
or anyone else, in order to give us the facts which would prove to the
American people the manner in which they were being tricked and fooled.”
If this cartoon of Mr. Raemaekers shall serve to make the native
American take seriously a situation which is serious in the extreme,
it will not have been made in vain. Whenever an American hears
or overhears any one in any station of life uttering treasonous
language, he should report the matter and give the name of the culprit
immediately to the Secret Service,--not content himself with repeating
the words at the club as a good story.
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN.
[Illustration]
_Belgium, 1918_
You, who on the tree of shame show forth again the Sacrifice of
Calvary: you for whom scourge and thongs and the mockery of dull beasts
are the circumstance of martyrdom: you who freely offered yourself that
man might be saved, “yet so as by fire”:--Belgium! in the depth of your
agony and the long torment of a red martyrdom, remember that the Cross
of your own Passion endures only until the Resurrection that comes
after the third day.
God, in mercy Incarnate, as Man suffered the shameful death of the
Cross that the world might be saved from the penalty of its sins. The
Tree of Scorn is raised up on Calvary, becoming the instrument of shame
and of death, yet “the leaves of that Tree shall be for the healing of
the Nations.”
Nails and spear, scourge and thongs, crumble and fall away; the obscene
mockers “that watched Him there,” and watch you, O Belgium, go hence
to that place prepared for them by Eternal Justice, but with the sun
of Easter morning, behold a great wonder! The Cross, that was a dead
engine of death, is transformed by Divine miracle. It lives, it throws
out branches and leaves; it is now the Tree of Mercy, “and the leaves
of that Tree shall be for the healing of the Nations.”
RALPH ADAMS CRAM.
[Illustration]
“_We will not Wear Convicts’ Stripes, Wear Them Yourselves_”
[Mr. Raemaekers refers in this cartoon to the insulting proposal of
the German Government, just before the entrance of the United States
into the war, that American ships at the rate of one a week would be
permitted to pass the submarine “blockade” if they were painted in
stripes in a specified manner.]
When Attila laid Rheims in ashes, cut the throats of his hostages,
tortured his prisoners, and thus earned fame as the Scourge of God,
he found priests and professors to justify his acts and to predict
the speedy Hunnification of the world. Attila is to-day popular in
Prussia--mothers have their babes called Etzel and when William II
sends forth his armies he bids them be worthy of their illustrious
namesake.
Attila was the first of the great Junkers. His army was largely German
and he held court in the centre of Thuringia. He is the hero of
Germanic song and legend; and his spirit animates the _Hymn of Hate_,
the murder of Edith Cavell, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and above
all the hired criminals who have been operating in America in the
disguise of patriotic citizens.
POULTNEY BIGELOW.
_Malden-on-Hudson.
Washington’s Birthday, 1918._
[Illustration]
_The Final Argument_
In the now happily distant days of August, 1914, the people of the
United States found themselves facing an opaque wall of neutrality.
But we are an emotional people; and the rape of Belgium had hit us
emotionally. Though we were asked not to applaud the pictures of Allied
soldiers that flashed across the screen in every motion-picture theatre
of the country, we did clap our hands; and, what is more, we valiantly
hissed the Kaiser when he strutted before our view. Let the American
people ever rejoice that in those first tragic days they had eyes of
the heart. Oh, those months of shame for us who felt that the cause
of England and France and Belgium was the cause of the United States
of America! They have passed now, thank God; and the man of vision
who first brought home to us what Belgium’s sorrow meant, was Louis
Raemaekers. Each line he drew was a full platoon of soldiers advancing
toward Berlin. His vivid, ironic pencil was a gun thrust at Prussian
autocracy. His art opened the door in that opaque wall I have spoken
of; and it was a garden that we looked upon--though a garden filled
only with red flowers: the poppies of everlasting sleep; crimson blooms
that spoke of the blood so nobly shed in the name of national honor;
fiery blossoms that burst upon our gaze through the smoke of German
guns; dark passion-flowers that breathed pain, but never despair. The
sad garden of Belgium--this it was that one man of genius revealed to
us, in all its pity and sorrow. And America looked, and wept, and sent
messengers into that place of desolation. For never for an instant had
we been neutral, never had we really dreamed of standing by and letting
this agony go on. Had we done so, the years to be would have held only
grief for us. We could not have lifted up our heads in the world of
nations if we had not seized our splendid opportunity.
Who has ever doubted the integrity of the American people? As one man
we rose when war was at last declared, and as one man we will fight, in
the name of Democracy, in the name of Humanity, until the Prussian yoke
is lifted from the Belgium we love and reverence. A task lies before us
of unbelievable magnitude. But we shall not falter, we shall not fail;
for if we fail, life itself must crumble in ashes on the hearthstone of
the world. With a triumphant Kaiser, existence would be unbearable. The
pacifists lay all the emphasis on mere living. They forget that most of
us do not wish to live on a Prussian-ruled earth. Surely it is not much
to die for a principle that is higher than the stars.
Louis Raemaekers, you have opened a door on life. You have brought news
to thousands who had not heard and seen. And great is your reward.
CHARLES HANSON TOWNE.
[Illustration]
_The End of the Hindenburg Line_
The Hindenburg line is a menace to every courthouse in America. In
my recent journeys through the West I have never seen a courthouse
tower printed against the sky without relating it to the great world
conflict. We are fighting for all that is embodied and expressed and
safeguarded in these citadels of democracy. A little while ago I looked
with reverence at a log hut preserved at Decatur, Illinois, the first
courthouse of the county. In that little room Abraham Lincoln appeared
as attorney for pioneer citizens who understood perfectly the promise
of American democracy. The laws invoked to preserve their rights were a
crystallization of the thought and the hope of liberty-loving peoples,
and no settler in wilderness or prairie, no matter how humble, but felt
himself a partner in the benefits of American institutions and the
great tradition of English law. Every American courthouse is founded
upon Magna Charta. If we are indebted for anything in our democracy
to the Teutonic-Turkish combination I am unaware of it. Dull of wit
indeed, the Hohenzollern BEAST, to think his mailed fist could ever
splinter the door of one of these American courthouses! The price our
forefathers paid for their liberty was too great for any yielding to
a devil gone mad and attempting to bestride the world. During the
Civil War Lincoln once remarked to Seward, speaking of Weems’ “Life
of Washington” which he had read before the fireplace in his father’s
cabin in Spencer County, Indiana, “It occurred to me that it must have
been something pretty fine those men were fighting for.” It was; and it
is for that same fine thing that America has again drawn the sword.
MEREDITH NICHOLSON.
[Illustration]
“_Something’s Wrong. She Doesn’t Seem to Inspire Confidence_”
It is Germany’s “Kultur,” her spiritual code, that is responsible for
America’s entrance into the war; her gruesome sacrifice to Moloch of
all which distinguishes humanity from the brute and the savage. It is
her philosophy which has made us her horrified but resolute foe.
The fruits of her spirit stand forth alike in her speech and acts.
“Kultur is a spiritual organization of the world, which does not
exclude bloody savagery. It raises the daemoniac to sublimity. It is
above morality, reason, science,” so wrote a Teutonic expounder in the
first year of the war. “We have become a nation of wrath; we think
only of the war. We execute God Almighty’s will, and the edicts of
His justice we will fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon
the ungodly. God calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should
thereby fall to ruins,” so wrote one of Germany’s poets. “Whoever
cannot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom of his heart
the sinking of the _Lusitania_, whoever cannot conquer his sense of
the gigantic cruelty to unnumbered perfectly innocent victims--and
give himself up to honest delight at this victorious exploit of
German defensive power--him we judge to be no true German,” so wrote
one of her pastors. And for hideous, ruthless deeds which violate
every sanctity and deify falsehood we need but cite her slaughter of
children and the aged, her poisoning of wells, her shooting of nurses,
her sinking of hospital ships, her brutal deportations and all the
revolting sinuosities of her spy system.
It is this catalogue of crimes committed in the name of moral
superiority that has incensed the American people. It is to combat
“Kultur” which Germany extols as the quintessence of civilization, this
gospel which constitutes military might the only inviolable law, that
we have pledged our precious sons, our abundant resources, our supreme,
indefatigable energies. If Prussian arrogance be not rebuked, Christian
civilization fails. Hence the growing and embattled sentiment that a
world in ruins yet free for man would be preferable to the sway of
Satanic Teuton efficiency.
ROBERT GRANT.
[Illustration]
_Angels of the War Zone_
I have sometimes wondered if it is really possible to hate a country
for which one has such unbounded contempt and disgust as one has for
Germany. It is quite possible to fear without hate; one would not
hate a rattlesnake or a shark, even at close quarters. On the other
hand it is conceivable that you might hate a fearsome but still noble
beast like the lion, if you were camping on the desert and he sat
persistently in front of your tent, alternately licking his chops and
shaking your soul with his loud anticipatory roars.
Usually we do fear what we hate. But the Germans have overshot the
mark. They have been so dully and unchangeably brutal, that many of us
have come to feel for them the same mental condition of loathing we
should feel for an obscene, flat-headed giant running amok, while doing
our best to hit him in a vulnerable spot. Even if they reached these
shores and went automatically about disciplining the natives I feel
sure we should continue to despise them and to find them ridiculous.
It is possible that if they had won the war in three months we should
feel differently. Then we might have hated them for devastating France,
but she it would have been who received our contempt. Her course in
history would have been run; she would have been as degenerate as the
Germans so fondly hoped. We might have hated Germany for subjugating so
vast and potential a country as Russia, but we should have respected
her might, the magnificence of her great army. We should have hated her
roundly, and the hate would have done us all good, for it would have
been a great emotion provoked by a great cause.
But Germany as a fighting machine is a failure. She has been defeated
where she has been compelled to depend upon force of arms alone. Her
only striking successes have been won by hitting below the belt,
cowardly underhand methods, sneaking propaganda, millions expended upon
buying human tools, and furnishing them with other millions necessary
to work wholesale destruction, and sacrifice the helpless proletariat.
In the Death House at Sing Sing the robust murderers have no
sympathy for the poisoner, refuse to admit him to that last tragic
companionship. So it is with Germany. She is the poisoner, the
Medici, among nations. From strangling her enemy with gas to bombing
unfortified towns, torpedoing passenger ships and firing on the life
boats, or sinking hospital ships, often carrying her own wounded
to ease and plenty, she has merely shown herself the super-snake,
supercharged with venom, not the lion, who proudly stands in the open
spaces and challenges his enemy to battle. The bewildered expression on
the faces of these German clods in the act of being rescued by British
women nurses, while a home torpedo burrows in the vitals of the ship,
is a fair portent of the minds of the German people after the war when
they learn that they have been fooled, and martyred, and crushed,
not by the enemy but by their own unregenerate rulers in Berlin. If
they annihilate that caste and set up a Republic they may win back
the respect of the world. Otherwise not. We sometimes forgive those
we hate, but only a miracle forces a man to respect where he has both
instinctively and thinkingly despised.
GERTRUDE ATHERTON.
[Illustration]
_As Thou Sowest, so Shalt Thou Reap_
Creeping behind a mask--stooping, cringing and cowardly--the planter
of sedition sows his seed in the dark. The masks behind which he hides
are numerous and of great variety. No sooner is his identity disclosed
than he assumes another disguise. Behind “Freedom of Speech,” “Liberty
of the Press,” “Conscientious Objector,” and “Pacifism” he hides. He
makes his masks similitudes of virtue. Whispered rumors, distortion of
truth, appeals to fear, and appeals to prejudice are mixed with even
the grosser seeds he sows. When other disguises are torn away he may
fashion a mask of spurious patriotism. Most dangerous of all traitors
is he who keeps just within the law of trespass while scattering afar
his seed of sedition throughout the Land of Liberty.
A. S. BURLESON,
_Postmaster-General of the United States_.
[Illustration]
“_Don’t Stop, Old Chap, Keep It Up!_”
“Cheer up, Willie, the worst is yet to come. Don’t view me with alarm
and suspicion. Don’t avert your eyes from my smile. It may be sardonic,
but I cannot control my facial expression. I must look as I think. I am
not like you, Wilhelm, looking God and thinking devil. Oh, but you are
a cute one, friend of mine! I love you for a thousand things you have
done, but don’t fool yourself, friend of my heart,--I beg pardon, I
forgot, I have no heart. In that and some other aspects, Willie, we are
as alike as two peas in a pod. Willie, we are so close in our method
of working that I am going to give you permission to call me ‘_Du_’
hereafter.
“How in the world could or can you, for all these years, make the
German people believe that the firm name of their Empire is ‘Me and
God.’ You and I know that God withdrew His Name, His Goodness, His
Honor and His Capital from the firm when you signed up as Emperor.
God is a one-price God. God never adulterates His goods; God never
advertises one quality and sells another. Since you have been Kaiser,
Wilhelm, a multitude of firm names could be exhibited on the sign
board; none of them, I imagine would rate high with Bradstreet, but
they would be truthful. ‘Me and Ambition,’ ‘Me and Power,’ ‘Me and
Ruin’ are a few I would suggest. Of course, your people would have
shunned you just as a mother shuns a house with a Board of Health
sign on it, had you given the real name of the firm. You are the most
worried looking potentate I have ever met, Wilhelm. Yes, Wilhelm,
there will be Hell to pay when your people awake to the fact that you
have no partnership with God, but are simply a vassal of mine. I’d be
scared out of my wits if I were in your place. While you are thinking
of the horrible mess you have made of your manifold opportunities be
good enough to note a deadly parallel. Once I was a prince, a prince
in a vast and beautiful Empire where all was tranquillity, peace,
holiness and bliss. I was called Lucifer, Son of the Morning--I had an
all-absorbing ambition to rule or ruin. I revolted and seduced some
restless spirits to ally themselves with me, fellows like your von
Tirpitz. I rebelled against the King and Kingdom of Heaven. The King
of Heaven still reigns and the Kingdom of Heaven still retains all
its tranquillity and beauty. After the row was over I found myself
in Chaos. From there I was rushed to Pandemonium, and it is needless
to tell you that I am now in Hell--and it lives up to its name. Note
the deadly parallel, Wilhelm, and while you are getting it into your
noddle, I will whistle the music of our national Hymn of Hate so you
can memorize it. Try it on your piano. The words are--
“‘Strafe Hope. Strafe Manhood. Strafe Womanhood. Strafe Everything
But
ME.’”
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.
[Illustration]
“_So We Are Only a Dollar-making People, are We?_”
It has for many years been a favorite gibe of thousands of foreigners,
living for the most part upon inherited wealth, and taking the
customary snobbish attitude of the consumer toward the producer, that
Americans are “only a dollar-making people,” as Mr. Raemaekers has it
in his forceful cartoon. Barring the word “only” perhaps the indictment
is true--I hope it is. One of the fondest of my many fond wishes for my
fellow-Americans is that they may all become successful dollar-makers,
since he who makes his own dollars is able always to maintain his
independence, to look his creditors large and small squarely in the
eye, and live by grace of his own powers, and not by favor of potentate
or patron.
There is nothing disgraceful about a dollar, and it may be said on its
behalf that it differs from the Sovereign Incarnate of the Germans in
that it is redeemable always at par, being worth the full one-hundred
cents that it calls for; in that it rings true; in that whether it be
of gold, of silver, or of paper, that which it promises it fulfills,
and has never yet been known to dishonor itself. It may occasionally
be seen in bad company, but it never falls below the level of its evil
associations, and is genuine to the core. Loose thinkers sometimes
speak of the “tainted dollar,” but there is no such thing. If any taint
lingers near it is not in the dollar itself, but in the holder. So
excellent, indeed, and so immune to the effects of evil association is
the character of the dollar, intrinsically, that any one of Uncle Sam’s
many billions could pass from the pocket of a Burglar into that of a
Bishop, and be worthy of its latter estate.
I have yet to meet an American who confounds this true and honest
servant of his well-being with his God, but, alas, I have met countless
Germans who call it our American King, and themselves bow ignobly down
to a Lord and Master whose assumption of a divine relationship has made
of his life a prolonged blasphemy; a King whose deeds of savagery are a
complete negation of his hypocritical pretensions to the possession of
lofty ideals; whose ring is the ring of a brazen counterfeit, and whose
word has been so dishonored by himself that it has become the synonym
for worthlessness throughout the world.
If Kings or Masters of any sort must be endured who would not rather
abase himself before the American Dollar, true and honest to the core,
than debase himself by bending the knee to a Kaiser who by his infamies
has made an Attila appear to be an Angel of Peace, a Bill Sykes a
Gentleman, and the word of an Ananias a Bond of Faith?
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
[Illustration]
“_No, Thanks, I Know These Princes of Yours Too Well._”
On November 5, 1916, Poland was “restored” by Germany and
Austria-Hungary to her old place as an independent member of the
family of nations. High hopes were aroused in the hearts of the
Poles. They had suffered for over a hundred years, and in this war of
liberation, which was to form the Society of Nations, the Austro-German
proclamation was the first recognition of their aspirations. The
Entente Powers had committed the serious blunder of refusing to
encourage the Poles for fear of offending Czarist Russia. But very soon
the Poles realized that the Central Empires were playing them false.
The “independence” was for to-morrow and not for to-day, and even for
to-morrow it was contingent upon “being good.”
At the beginning of 1917, which was the year of national rebirth,
hatred of Russia and resentment against the policy of expediency of
France and Great Britain, as well as the necessity to accept the
_de facto_ Austro-German occupation, influenced most of the Poles
to trust--in defiance of history and experience,--the good faith of
Germany and Austria-Hungary. At the beginning of 1918, they had learned
the lesson Raemaekers’ pencil eloquently depicts--not to put their
trust in German princes. At Brest-Litovsk, “independent” Poland was
refused a place in the peace negotiations. Answering President Wilson
and Premier Lloyd George, Chancellor von Hertling impudently asserted
that the future status of Poland concerned only her conquerors.
The cartoon, drawn to illustrate the scepticism of the Poles, should
drive home a truth to the Americans. We must realize that camouflage
is not confined to military operations. Its use to deceive armies is
not so dangerous as its use to deceive the nations behind armies. From
bitter experience the Poles are learning that behind the prince put
forward as ruler is hidden German militarism and German imperialism.
This form of political camouflage is as dangerous for the United States
as for Poland. Peace proposals may come to us--they will come to us--in
plausible and appealing form. They will have the appearance of fairness
and justice. What is behind them? What inspires them?
Our mission in this war is sanctified by its goal. To attain that goal
we have consented to make sacrifices unprecedented in the history
of our nation. From a purely military standpoint, no camouflage can
possibly obscure the path to the goal, and the method of reaching the
goal. The German armies, as yet unconquered, stand in front of us,
defending the loot of German imperialism, won by German militarism. We
must dispossess these armies of their loot, and punish them for having
looted. But--alas!--diplomacy is at work in 1918 to attempt to save by
wile what cannot indefinitely continue to be held by force. Every means
of diplomatic camouflage will be used by our enemies. Our inspiration,
our determination to pursue the struggle to the bitter end, will be
kept alive only if we see, through various forms of camouflage, the
spiked helmet hidden behind them. To make peace with Germany _wearing
the spiked helmet_ would mean to consecrate the success of her
imperialistic policy.
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS.
[Illustration]
_Speeding Up_
_Uncle Sam: “I think I had better speed up and build a ship or two!”_
April 8. Keel laid.
4th day. Double bottom completed.
6th ” Frames and bulkheads erected and portion of shell plating
finished.
7th ” Stern-frame in place.
14th ” Boilers put on board.
21st ” Stern-post bored and stern-tube put in place.
22d ” Masts stepped and engine installation begun.
24th ” Funnel put in place.
26th ” Machinery all in and engines completely installed.
Finishing touches.
May 5 (27th day). Launched.
_The building of the “Tuckahoe,” April-May, 1918, at Camden._
[Illustration]
_Toward the Valley of Decision_
They shall go down to the Valley of Decision, multitudes of young
Americans from East and West, from North and South, some slow to have
gone into the war but none ever to go out until a Decision shall have
been reached.
Into the Valley of Decision,--for a Decision final and irrepealable
we are battling. Not a Decision as to the victor in the war, but
a Decision that shall give us victory over war, its defenders and
glorifiers! For the German Empire which wars made this war shall unmake.
We go down to the Valley of Death for a Decision whether the world
shall be ruled by Germany or by civilization, be subject to Prussianism
or master of its own fate and freedom.
And America knows the cost, which it refuses to count,--knows its sons
must be slain if liberty and justice are to live.
To the God of Justice, America lifts its heart in prayer, beseeching
not security for its beloved sons but vowing that the sun shall perish
out of the heavens ere we and our Allies surrender our liberty, the
freedom of the least of men, to the barbarism of force and the forces
of barbarism.
Out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death shall emerge the
Decision,--Never again. The war against war has brought freedom to
nations, and secured peace to them that seek public right as the law of
mankind.
STEPHEN S. WISE, PH.D., LL.D., _Rabbi of the Free
Synagogue, New York._
[Illustration]
_Wake Up, America!_
This was done to Canadians by the Huns
America wakes! The White Christ has called her;
She has seen the devils abroad in His world;
Evil vaunting himself has appalled her;
To the War-wind of Heaven her flag is unfurled!
America wakes--with his murder and lust
Let the Hun take the path he has carved into hell.
No longer blaspheming the Cross with his trust.
America wakes, the sick world shall be well.
America wakes--God’s last peace-lover,
God’s fighter to death, when her peace is assailed.
Shout, sing, fling out the flags, War is over;
When America battles, right has prevailed!
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN.
[Illustration]
_There are Plenty of Lamp-posts!_
There are creatures that to be hated need but to be seen.
The sight of the serpent awakens all the dead, old body-memories of
ancient ages, when that reptile was man’s ever-present, mortal enemy.
The domestic horse, made unafraid by a thousand generations, when he
smells his ancient enemy, the bear, will rear and plunge to break and
run for his life.
The face features a man’s character, his eyes window his soul. There
are faces that instantly beckon all our better nature and bind us in
loving thrall. There are other faces that repel us as the snake repels.
There are human tongues voiced with the serpent’s hiss. There are
persons about whom hangs an odor of the reptile that wakens all the
dead old memories of primal hate.
The poet is born the poet. Genius is an inheritance. Human character
is a summation of ancestral traits. So the traitor-spy is an atavic
embodiment of all that is reptilian in a line of ancestry back to the
serpent of Eden.
Though after-acquaintance may camouflage him to our eyes, still the
first sight, the first impression of the traitor-character has in it
the temper of aversion. One who has in him the heart and taste for
atrocious conduct, one who has in him the grass-lurking viper’s soul,
wears a warning in his face for the safety of others.
The true caricaturist--and Raemaekers is one--sees and accentuates what
God has placed in the face of the scoundrel, the traitor, the spy, for
our protection.
Great occasions are great opportunities for great genius. War exacts
the supreme from all men and all women. Only the superlative poet can
give the inevitable expression to master deeds on the stage of war,
and only the supreme artist can picture them with the due and true
inevitable expression, which is more aptly and more truly given in
caricature than in any other form, because in caricature that and only
that which is supremely characteristic is portrayed. Of all the artists
of this world war, none has, better than Raemaekers, given in clean and
lucid unit view, the true character of what he has pictured.
HUDSON MAXIM.
[Illustration]
“_We Don’t Seem to Inspire Enough Confidence_”
The one memorable contribution to art produced by the great war is to
be found in the cartoons of Louis Raemaekers. It is not necessary here
to analyze the qualities of his fine and powerful drawings as art.
They must be apparent to everyone who looks at them with considerate
eyes. But Raemaekers’ cartoons also have a high literary and historic
quality. I do not mean by this that they tell or suggest stories, which
are used generally as an attraction for very commonplace pictures,
but that they have that quality of enduring literature which awakens
the deepest feelings and points to the loftiest ideals which are as
enduring as the history of the race in its striving to reach the
heights of achievement. Hogarth was one of the few men in the history
of art who possessed these qualities, but great as Hogarth was,
Raemaekers has always been upon a higher level. Raemaekers has the
poetic imagination and we can feel in his work the
“prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.”
In his cartoons we find the appeal to all that is best in human nature,
to the finest impulses of man, to his deepest passions and his noblest
emotions.
All Raemaekers’ work is marvellously effective, but I take one single
example, not perhaps the most important--his treatment of the rulers
of Germany and Austria--in order to show his genius. By the power of
his cartoons Raemaekers has fixed in the public mind a truer and deeper
conception of the two emperors and the German crown prince than endless
pages of print could possibly produce. The brutality, the over-weening
arrogance, the hideous religious cant of the Emperor of Germany,
with the touch of lunacy upon him, will live forever in Raemaekers’
portraits. The feeble senility of the late Emperor of Austria--joined
as he frequently is with the Sultan and the King of Bulgaria, kindred
spirits--a senility marked by the drivelling insensibility of extreme
old age--those unlovely attributes are all there. As for the Crown
Prince, he is known through these cartoons to millions who have never
seen him and never will see him and will have only this image of him
graven in their minds. As depicted by Raemaekers, he has a figure and
face of low dissipation in which degeneracy and ferocity contend for
mastery. And yet all these figures harmonize with the rest of the
cartoons in teaching the one overpowering lesson as to the meaning of
German victory. The barbarism, the belief in might as against right,
the faith in brute force, the absence of human feeling,--these cry out
to us through the pencil of the great artist that a world in which
Germany should be dominant would be a world of slaves in which no free
man could wish to live.
HENRY CABOT LODGE.
[Illustration]
_German Submarines Fire on Open Boats_
Lord God made the earth and its wonders,
The sea and the land.
The rain of delight and the thunders
Fall alike from His hand,
To gladden His children,--and warn them
Who will not understand.
And the Lord God cried in His anger:
“Who has poisoned My sea?
Who has made it a desert of danger
For My ships sailing free?
I am God! and ye who have done it
Shall account unto Me.
“I have planted the wasteland of water
For My folk to find food;
And ye sow it with whirlwind and slaughter,
Ye Devil’s dark brood.
So now shall ye reap in full measure
The harvest of blood.”
ALICE BROWN
_Hill, N. H.
July 18, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Not This Time!_
RAEMAEKERS THE PROPHET
“For twenty years I have clearly foreseen Germany’s present attack on
the world. For twenty years I have been drawing and publishing the
same type of cartoons which have attracted so much notice since the
war. Seven years before the war I was already being called ‘_ein feind
Deutschland_’ by the German press. I cannot possibly express to you the
unhappiness which I felt at being absolutely certain of the impending
doom, and at the same time being incapable of making people foresee and
believe it. My friends used to call me ‘the man who can see ghosts even
in sunshine.’ Yet it was I, not they, who really knew the beasts as all
the world knows them today; I was born in the little town of Lemberg
near Roermond, at a distance of only a few miles from the German
frontier, and have known the beasts all my life, not only in my own
country, but also in theirs, which I have visited many times. I might
almost say that I have visited it every year of my life. In Holland we
have a saying that ‘even the best German has stolen a horse.’ I do not
believe that there is any German who is not a pan-German. All of them
suffer from this national and nation-wide megalomania.”
_--From a conversation with Raemaekers reported in Eric
Fisher Wood’s “Note-Book of an Intelligence Officer.”_
[Illustration]
_The President to the Workers:_
“_If you are with me, I am with you._”
“If we are true friends of freedom--our own or anybody else’s--we will
see that the power of this country, the productivity of this country,
is raised to its absolute maximum and that absolutely nobody is allowed
to stand in the way of it. When I say that nobody is allowed to stand
in the way, I don’t mean that they shall be prevented by the power of
the Government, but by the power of the American spirit. If we are to
do this great thing and show America to be what we believe her to be,
the greatest hope and energy of the world--then we must stand together
night and day until the job is finished.”
_From President Wilson’s speech before the American Federation of
Labor, November 12, 1917._
[Illustration]
“_Well Done, Fellows! Keep the Home Fires Burning!_”
This cartoon brings home to us the imperative necessity of putting
our own house in order and keeping it in order. If the world is to be
made safe for democracy, our own conspicuous example of democracy must
be made safe for those who dwell under its protection. If we cannot
conquer and control the enemy within our gates, we will be but impotent
instruments of conquest over him abroad. Both at home and abroad we
must rid ourselves of all hampering and distracting illusions and stare
the facts in the face. The facts are that we are at war,--the grim and
grimy business of killing or being killed.
The issues involved in this war have been appealed to the sword, and
he who lives by the sword must die by the sword. The time for doubt,
debate, discussion or diplomacy is past. The only thing left to do is
to fight,--fight for all that is in us,--fight as long as we can and as
hard as we can, and until there is no fight left in our enemies. Then
and not until then is it worth while to consider other aims,--so-called
war aims. The only real war aim now is victory. We must not let
anything distract us from that essential aim.
LINDLEY M. GARRISON.
[Illustration]
_A Bit of the Hindenburg Line_
THESE FELLOWS ARE HOT ON THE TRAIL. LET US FOLLOW SUIT.
WHEREVER YOU FIND A HUN YOU FIND AN ENEMY. GET HIM!
DAVID BISPHAM.
[Illustration]
_The Rats in Our Home Trenches_
Really, the great question of the war is: What kind of people are the
Germans?
Can they be reformed, or are they incurable?
All Germans are not alike. There are those who distinguish between
North and South Germans, and tell us that the Saxons, in particular,
have in them the making of excellent people. Doubtless all Prussians
are not alike; doubtless all Bavarians are not of the type of the
“Black Bavarians” whose exploits in the war have had unfavorable
mention. But what has come to be the image that “German” calls up in
the mind? It is an image of ruthlessness, of frightfulness, of poison
gas and traceless sinkings; of murder, pillage, spies and lies; of a
black and formidable ambition for mastery on any terms and at any cost;
of treachery; of a tireless industry that gets up early to fetch away
by work or wile whatever in the world is worth taking from any one who
has it! The current image of the German is an image of an enemy--a
savage enemy. Since 1914 German descent has been terribly prejudiced.
As to every man of German blood the observer asks himself: What manner
of man is this?
The Hohenzollerns did not invent the Germans. They found, acquired,
trained and used them. For centuries--a thousand years at least--the
Germans have had a known and demonstrated rating for brutality and
brutishness. They have been cruel in war and destructive and greedy in
pillage beyond most other nations that were their neighbors. When one
hears it said that the trouble with Germany is Germans, there comes to
mind abundant basis for that suggestion.
Yet the Germans are far too many and too useful to exterminate, and
even if that were possible, no nation but Germany could seriously
entertain the idea of exterminating a whole people.
So what do we come to?
To this: that Germany’s fate rests in the hands of the Germans. Their
qualities will determine their destiny. Along with their abilities
go enormous disabilities. They must do according to what is in them.
They must obey the demon that drives them until, out of the extreme of
suffering, they gain the courage to expel it. They must destroy, and
so invite destruction, until their racial propensity has wrought its
own correction. They must keep on accumulating enemies, exasperating
neutrals, alienating allies, until blind and wicked policies have
perfected their work.
What the German has most to fear is what is inside of him. By current
estimate the worst that can happen to Germans has happened already,
in that they are Germans. The world is not going to adjust itself
to their misfortune in this particular. It is they who will have to
adjust themselves to the world. They will not be able to make the world
an overgrown Germany in which the other peoples will have to live
under German direction. No. They will have to live in a world largely
populated and managed, as now, by folks who are not Germans and don’t
want to be, and whose primary concern for as long as is necessary will
be to keep Germans in their place.
E. S. MARTIN.
[Illustration]
_Seeing Stars_
_Canadian: “And you’ll soon see the Stars and Stripes.”
German: “Saw some already, sir.”_
This is the voice that he hears from Germany:
“We Germans are God’s chosen people, His special favorites, and God is
German Himself. God rules over us in the person of our Kaiser, whom He
has appointed for that purpose. We are better than all other peoples of
the earth; we are wiser and purer and nobler and more industrious and
more learned and stronger and cleverer and kinder and braver and more
spiritual and more warlike than all others.
“We are so much greater than they that whatever we do to advance our
own interests, at the cost of theirs, is right and praiseworthy.
If we kill a great many of them, those who survive will in the end
be improved, because they will work for us and learn something by
observing us. Any deceit is proper and morally correct if it benefits
us; and when we practise a policy of terror upon those who oppose us
it is really philanthropy and shows how gentle we are, because the
survivors learn through our cruelty that it is useless to oppose us,
therefore they the sooner submit their wills to ours. We can not do
wrong, no matter what we do, so long as all that we do is for our own
benefit. By our bright swords we will take possession of the earth
which ought to belong to us, because we are Germans. We believe in
the heaviest possible breeding of babies, that they may grow up and
be trained to carry liquid fire and poison against any opposition to
us. All the same, we are the only real peace-lovers in this malign
and prejudiced world, which, except for us and the Austrians and the
Bulgarians and the Turks, is composed exclusively of stupid ruffians
who were so jealous and envious of us that they forced this war upon
us, hoping to make some money out of us by annihilating us. We love
peace, and are fighting for our mere existence--that is, the right to
adjust our frontiers so that they will include the countries which we
have conquered by the sword. We must never AGAIN be threatened by those
rascals of Belgians!”
BOOTH TARKINGTON.
[Illustration]
_The Two Giants_
_Germany: “I destroy!”
America: “I create!”_
Uncle Sam has given the Germans three surprises.
It was believed in Germany:--
1st--That America would not break diplomatic relations;
2nd--That America would never fight;
3rd--That America could not fight.
Forced to it, in self-defense, we are now giving all our energies to
war, led by a President, whose vision meets the extent of the calamity
brought on the world by the selfish ambitions of material Germany.
American built ships will end the menace of the slinking U-boat.
And after the war the flags of the American Merchant Marine once more
will float on every sea.
JAMES W. GERARD.
_New York, July 12, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_Will They Last, Father?_”
The four greatest events in history; the advent of Christ, the
discovery of America, the Reformation, and the French Revolution, are
all we can compare with the days in which we are living--and dying.
In a cyclone of desolations surpassing the terrors of the insane, the
world, so far from recoiling, rolls forward into vast and irrevocable
changes that seemed but yesterday the remotest goals of laborious
evolution; rolling up the precipitous steep of custom in all the fury
with which we should look to see it roll down. And the unique wonder of
this fifth and last of these supreme events is that only it has sprung
primarily from an evil design and can attain its true end only by that
design’s everlasting overthrow.
So speaks the matchless hand of Raemaekers. The vastest murderer the
race has ever borne and, at his heels, his most remorseless waster of
blood together watch the glass of time, abhorring every upward plunge
of a maddened world and daily hounded by one implacable question, one
four-headed dog of hell: Will their treasury, will their sinking of
ships, will their delusion of their own people, last?
No. One or another will presently fail, and when one fails all fail and
the world, refined by fire, will be, shall be, saved.
GEORGE W. CABLE.
[Illustration]
“_The Ugly Talons of the Sinister Power_”
The attitude of scorn, of contempt and of defiance with which
Raemaekers in his cartoon, “America’s Choice,” represents Uncle Sam
as he confronts the treacherous Kaiser, bearing the olive branch in
his talons, well expresses the attitude of the United States towards
Germany at the time we entered the war, and this attitude will probably
continue for a generation or two after the war ends.
“The Intolerable Thing,” which President Wilson so aptly named the
irresponsible German Government, can never disguise itself so that
we will not detect the terrible menacing claws with which Raemaekers
portrays the Kaiser. It will continue to be an Intolerable Thing until
the horrors of this war are forgotten.
The German philosophers brazenly justify their nation’s course in this
aggressive war with all its attendant horrors, by an appeal to the
Darwinian doctrines of the struggle for existence, and the consequent
survival of the fittest, which play such a prominent part in biological
evolution.
Germany must be taught the lesson that while man is the product of
evolution like all other creatures, yet in his case new factors come
into play--he is a part of the animal kingdom, but is a new kind of
animal, and new factors, not operative in the orders below him, have
played leading rôles in his development. These factors are his reason,
which gives him a sense of the true and the false, and his conscience,
which gives him a sense of right and wrong. These faculties subordinate
the rule of might to the rule of right, and they have resulted in the
establishment of conduct for individuals, for communities, and for
organized governments that do not exist in the lower animal orders, and
only in a limited sense in the lower human orders.
Amid a national rejoicing, a waving of flags and ringing of bells, such
as are evoked by a great national festival, the Germans celebrated
the _Lusitania_ murders--the entire nation suddenly slumping into a
barbarism worse than that of their ancestral Huns. The Hun was again
triumphant, gloating over his unspeakable crimes, his plunders and
piracies, his orgies of crime and lust--a spectacle to make the Genius
of Humanity veil her face and weep tears of blood.
It is a comfort to know that the Allies have killed or rendered
harmless several million of these modern barbarians, and that many of
their carcases have gone to enrich the soil of France and Belgium. In
this way a dead Hun may help to undo some of the evil which a living
Hun has wrought. If two or three of their bodies could be planted in
every shell hole which their guns have made in France and Belgium,
though the inoffensive soil might sicken, yet in the course of years
the poison of the Hun would disappear, rendered innocuous by the
beneficient alchemy of Nature.
JOHN BURROUGHS.
_Tryon, N. C.
February 12, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Restitution and Reparation_
It is with good reason the Prussian covers the thick bone of his
head with a helmet, for into it ideas of right and justice can only
be battered with a club. The tough, club-resisting helmet is the
arch-symbol of Prussianism. From its earliest days Prussia has taught
its neighbors the Prussian theory of right and justice by means of
a club. When the Prussian wishes to educate his neighbors to an
appreciation of Prussian ethics he puts on his helmet, picks up a club
and slugs the neighbor on the head.
The Prussian theory of right and justice is this: “What is mine is
mine. What is yours is also mine if I want it.”
This idea is deep buried beneath the thick bone of the Prussian head.
He holds it with stolid stupidity and deep, prehistoric crudity, like a
pig or an idiot. He cannot understand that there are any rights higher
than Prussian greed. “If I want it, it is mine because I want it.” It
is the logic of the primitive human animal, the cave-man.
Cornered and accused of his thefts he clings to his loot like the pig
that has stolen a carrot. When asked to disgorge he is shocked by the
suggestion. “But they are mine! I wanted them, so they are mine!” he
says. Right and Justice answer, “They are not yours; you stole them.”
“Maybe so!” says the Prussian. “But just the same they are mine--I
stole them a long time ago.”
The logic of the Prussian fills ten thousand volumes. It is written in
hundred-line paragraphs and six-inch words. It can be condensed into
two short words--piggish greed: piggish because it knows neither right
or justice, greed because it is greed.
ELLIS PARKER BUTLER.
[Illustration]
_The Only Possible Position for Traitors_
While the submarine controversy was at its height, a Hun high in
authority in his nefarious land said that it was impossible for the
United States to enter the war, because there were a half million
German reservists in our country. “That is true,” replied the American
to whom this contemptuous remark was addressed; “but there are also a
half million lamp-posts.”
Since the German reservists have failed to fulfil the expectations
of the Fatherland, the lamp-posts of the United States are as yet
unadorned with their lifeless bodies. But history has shown that while
Americans are an easy-going race, when once their anger is aroused
there is no withholding it; therefore let the traitors in our midst
take warning from the cartoon upon the opposite page.
One may pardon a murderer who kills in a moment of passion, one may
even revere a military spy who penetrates an enemy’s lines to gather
information needful for victory; but for the skulking traitor who
whispers sedition within the land which harbors him and seeks to hamper
the efforts of its government by a stealthy means, no punishment seems
too severe, since of all crimes his is the most despicable.
It is not to the half million German reservists alone that Mr.
Raemaekers’ warning is addressed; for, inconceivable though it be,
there are native-born traitors aplenty to shame the land which gave
them birth. For these, the only position which will seem possible
to Uncle Sam, when once his anger, ever slow to rise, bursts forth
in righteous indignation, will be the one which Mr. Raemaekers has
depicted. Let these traitors remember that there is an abundance of
lamp-posts in the land as well as a goodly supply of hempen rope.
H. C. CHATFIELD-TAYLOR.
[Illustration]
“_Do You Mean to Make a Real War?_”
“Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide
whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether
right as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shall
determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one
response possible for us: Force, force to the utmost, force without
stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make
right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the
dust.”
--_From President Wilson’s Message on the First Anniversary
of the Declaration of War, April 6, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Justice!_
The woman figure called Justice in Raemaekers’ cartoon has a Greek
name. She is Themis, consort of Zeus, Themis, who sits by his side on
the judgment seat. The scales are the scales of Ægina, in her day a
great money centre, whose talent was the standard of value then, as the
American dollar is to-day. Ægina was the mother of Æacus, one of the
three great judges of the lower world, and be it remembered, it was
Æacus that administered justice. Ægina is called by one of the greatest
Greek poets the place where Themis is worshipped more than anywhere
else on earth, and he tells us further that there was much weighing in
Ægina, the Merchant State. Heavy weights there were in either scale.
Much care was needful in the weighing, no little balancing doubtless.
So there were many in our Ægina who felt the draw of kindred, of
friendship, of fellowship. But this is the Day, the Day of Decision,
the Day of Lord Æacus. After the knife edge of the balance comes the
knife edge of the guillotine.
BASIL LANNEAU GILDERSLEEVE.
[Illustration]
_Another Peace Proposal_
The artist has depicted a spectacled Old Gentleman wearing a triple
crown and a pontifical mantle, who is offering a proposal of peace to a
heroic young woman, torn, bleeding, thorn-crowned, but dauntless, who
spurns it with scorn. The spectacled Old Gentleman is the Pope; the
heroic young woman is, I take it, outraged Justice.
Since Justice is our cause, we must try to be just. The Pope is not
lying on a bed of roses. He is in a position of the utmost difficulty.
He has faithful adherents on both sides, he dislikes war, and finds
his perplexities, great enough in time of peace, now magnified an
hundred-fold. He is not a hero; he is old, he is a lover of ease,
and would dearly like to wear a King’s crown and hear multitudes in
St. Peter’s cry out “Papa-Rè, Papa-Rè.” Let us be just. The first
Pope (according to Roman Catholic reckoning), received the grace of a
great opportunity to be true to his Master, but he denied Him thrice.
Why should we be surprised to find Benedict XV denying his Master?
Fate has held out her hand to him, as she held it out to St. Peter,
and offered him his opportunity to be greatly true. In the old happy
days when all the world cried “hosanna” to Justice, the Pope also had
professed himself a disciple of Justice. But now Justice has been
taken by bloody-minded men to be crucified, and the Pope has stayed
afar off. Many witnesses have remarked, “This man also was a professed
disciple of Justice.” And now the Pope denies it vehemently. He has
put forward a series of humiliating proposals that Justice--heroic,
bleeding Justice--should hold out her hand to the murderers of Belgium
and confer, as if there had been _equal error_ on both sides, upon the
crafty schemes of peace by which Germany hopes to dominate the world.
Poor Old Gentleman! Timidity, love of ease, fear of Austria, and
fantastic ambition, have induced him to deny his Master. The cock will
crow, and he will weep bitterly. Poor, pitiable Old Gentleman.
HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK.
[Illustration]
_The Fine American Spirit_
Who are these, watching from ancestral doors
The instant passing of our youth to France?
Henceforth, a chapter of the world’s romance
Their eyes have seen; it fills their native shores
With an undying moment; now it pours
On silent breasts, o’erawed, the voice, the glance,
The last, fond gleam of each loved countenance,
And the heart trembles, while the spirit soars.
The generations draw immortal breath
That breathe a nation’s soul. From sire to son
The glory of the fathers entereth
The children’s hearts, and maketh all as one:
Bright, at time’s touch, breaks out the holy flame,
And to all lands doth freedom’s blood proclaim.
G. E. WOODBERRY.
[Illustration]
_Poisoning the Well of Public Opinion_
Aliens in this country must assist in maintaining the liberty they
enjoy, or we shall know the reason why.
“Ninety-five per cent. of the people of the United States would die as
willingly for their beliefs as the men of 1776. It is for the other 5
per cent. to show not the slightest manifestation of disloyalty.
“Our message to them will be delivered through the criminal courts all
over the land. And may God have mercy on them, for they need expect
none from an outraged people and an avenging government.”
--_Speech of Attorney-General Gregory in New York, November, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Enemy Within_
Not even the prodigious Cruelty of the Germans in this Atrocious War
has shocked the moral sense of mankind as much as has their Deceit.
We are horror-stricken by the reports of their premeditated cruelties
which link the Germans with the beasts--the wolf, and tiger, and boa
constrictor, and vulture. The beast does these things because he has
never risen to a higher plane than that of the beast. But Deceit is the
attribute of Man; of one who dwells above the standards of the brute
creation, who has had the moral sense developed in him, who has known
the compulsions of conscience, who has acknowledged the obligations of
duty, and has recognized himself as being a striver after the Ultimate
Good. Through some flaw in the German’s nature all these qualities
in him changed, turned bad, and he hailed Evil as his guide and
inspiration. Whatever of good there was in him he uses to promote his
wicked designs. Had he not been human he could never have understood
how to make his perverted nature work successfully to deceive his
fellow-men. The snake and panther do not deceive us, we know their ways
and guard against them. But the moral pervert can deceive, because he
hides his purpose and his method behind the mask of a counterfeited
virtue.
Lying is the commonest form of Deceit. The German Emperor practised
it for twenty-five years, when he proclaimed to the world his ardent
desire for peace; and it was natural for him to lie when, on making
war, he declared that the sword was forced into his hands. Then the
German nation, fed so long on falsehood, accepted this. Another
common form of German Deceit has been to accuse their enemies of
the very enormities which they themselves invented and carried out.
Diplomatic chicane is a commonplace tool which the Germans employed,
only clumsily. But we cannot measure the full extent of German Deceit
unless we follow it in its varied propaganda among foreign peoples, in
its spies, its instigators to violence, its corrupters of the press.
It poisons food and wells; it sets fires to burn crops or forests; it
hires ruffians to burn factories or blow them up, to hide bombs in
ships; it incites sabotage and strikes.
So universally do Germans take to Deceit, that it has evidently become
their national trait. The soul of Germany is a lost soul, which
worships Satan as its master and welcomes Evil as its Good.
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER.
[Illustration]
_Count von Bernstorff: “Noblesse Oblige”_
Behold this group of sinister and menacing forms surrounding the
nation as typified in the person of its President. For four years past
they have been coming, one by one, out of the darkness. We can now
only too well recognize them and the dangers with which they threaten
us. In front, there is arrogant, boastful, jealous and unscrupulous
Hate, with its policy of “might before right,” and its doctrine of
“frightfulness,” conscienceless and cruel, in its murder of the
innocent, its arson, its robbery, its slavery of the weak, and its
outrages of womanhood. Crouching, while it tramples on our flag, is
Treachery, ready to use pistol and dagger, to burn bridges, to place
bombs, to blow up ships, to hide and sneak and cringe, if only it
can deliver its blow more surely and safely. And back of both, is
hypocritical and lying Diplomacy, with its protestations of innocence
and friendliness,--studiedly polite in manner, but really black at
heart.
Behind, all engaged in tying the nation’s hands, lest it might strike
promptly and forcefully, is Pacifism, cowardly and self-seeking,
more anxious to avoid temporary suffering than to preserve the honor
and safety of the nation; and Divided Allegiance, traitorous to both
causes which it vainly endeavors to harmonize; and Intrigue, working
in secrecy to part friends, and stir up strife between those whose
interests are common, or even identical.
But out of the darkness comes also the call to the nation: “America!
awake. Open your blinded eyes. Banish partisanship. Abjure political
jealousies. Leave it to the men who know. Make your hearts stout. Grasp
the sword firmly. Listen to no compromises, until the nation is proved
worthy of its birthright, civilization is rescued, and the world made
safe for Democracy.”
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
[Illustration]
_Peter the Hermit_
“_Dieu le Veult!_”
The Prussian outdoes the world in his single-minded devotion to
physical things. He believes and frankly declares that mercy and honor
weaken human power, that if you consider them you must eventually
fall before the strong who disregard them. Germany’s attempt to prove
the soundness of the Prussian thesis has gradually loosened the moral
consciousness of the world. It has gathered to defend the things of
the spirit in what is as truly a crusade as that which Peter the
Hermit led, a crusade to preserve the sanctity of contract, the few
laws between nations that men have worked out, the right of the weak
to their chance. Germany, disbelieving in the strength that love of
mercy and of honor give men, cannot counter-attack in kind. Every day
develops more clearly that the weak place in the Prussian armor is its
indifference to moral considerations.
IDA M. TARBELL.
[Illustration]
_The Germ-Man_
The stout gentleman on the opposite page wears a pleased look, as if he
were enjoying his occupation. That is natural, for he is a scientist
engaged in a very pretty process--the propagation of lockjaw, typhus
and other malignant germ cultures with which he expects to speed up the
annihilation of his enemies. How does he propose to accomplish this?
I will tell you: he is going to introduce those young and vigorous
colonies of germs into those little packages marked with a cross which
you see lying on the table before him. Those are Red Cross bandages,
and they will presently be binding the wounds of our soldiers, and the
lockjaw and typhus hordes in them will awake, and rally in a silent
loathsome attack that will lay torture and death upon thousands which
the noisy, mis-aimed guns have failed to destroy. The germ-man is
assured that his atomic missiles will not be mis-aimed. His government
has efficiently arranged for those packages to go to the hospitals of
Roumania and Belgium and France. That is why he smiles--that is why he
has that roguish look.
In the germ-man’s smile is incarnated “Deutschland über Alles” and
its correlative, “The end justifies the means.” We in America have
produced exponents--criminal exponents--of a similar psychology, and
we have generally (when we could catch them) hung or electrocuted or
imprisoned for life these moral perverts, in order to make the world a
safer and cleaner place to live in. Only a little while ago the State
of New York electrocuted a man who, having set up his individual “Ueber
Alles and General Justification” court, had proceeded cheerfully to
introduce malignant germs and other deadly things into the foods and
medicines of his wife’s parents, who stood between himself and fortune.
Here we have an exact parallel. Those defenceless old people were doing
him no wrong. They in fact admired and trusted him, just as Rumania
and Belgium and America only a little while ago admired and trusted
Germany. They stood in his way, however, and from the “Ueber Alles”
standpoint any means for their removal was warranted.
Secret assassination is an ancient art. It has been practised in
every age and in every nation and its votaries have been hunted down
and exterminated by decent people. To-day, for the first time in the
history of the world, we have the spectacle of stealthy death for the
defenceless adopted as a government policy. For the decency and safety
of mankind the allied nations have highly resolved that the government
which promotes such a policy must “perish from the earth.”
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE.
[Illustration]
“_A Tid-Bit for ‘The Sick Man’_”
The nearness to America of the European theatre of war so greatly fills
our minds with the contest there raging that we give but little thought
to the progress of events in the far countries tributary to the Tigris
River. For a time, the heroic resistance of General Townsend to the
Turkish forces which surrounded him aided by the natural obstacles of
river and climate, claimed a share of our interest, and later, the
splendid and successful work achieved by the new British army under
General Maude, awakened renewed interest in a campaign designed to
split Islam into two parts: one, acknowledging the domination of the
Turk and his German masters; the other, a new Caliphat of Bagdad,
Arabian, rather than Turkish, looking to the ideals of justice and
freedom, rather than to the rule of the sword; finding its inspiration
in the tradition of the enlightened and humane Haroun-al-Raschid,
rather than the warring, bloody conquerors and Muhammed and Sulìman.
Still later, the northward progress of British arms extended over the
greater part of Palestine, and the capture of Jerusalem brought the
sacred places of Israel and of Christianity within the control of
Christendom after five centuries of Turkish occupation.
These campaigns are only second in importance to the progress of the
German invasion of France; for if the British successes in Arabia and
Palestine shall be maintained, and the Islamites of Egypt, Arabia and
Mesopotamia shall look in the future to the Caliph of Bagdad, not to
the Sultan of Turkey, as their spiritual head, the great German scheme
of aggression in the Near East will have been defeated.
The subtle Teuton suggestion to the Turk of a Pan-Turanian league,
was but a scheme for the promotion of a closer Turkish organization
under German control, as Raemaekers’ cartoon, “A Tid-Bit for the Sick
Man,” so cleverly intimates. The Turks should have said to themselves,
“Beware of the Greeks--the Prussians--and the gifts they bring.” A
German gift is like the shirt of Nessus,--it will consume utterly those
who accept it.
Not alone on the shores of the Mediterranean, but on the Persian
Gulf, on the Baltic, on the English Channel, in the Caribbean, on the
Pacific,--there is no limit to the schemes of expansion of German
control to which that nation in its mad lust of power has given itself.
Never since the dawn of recorded history has an issue been made so
plain. Aut Cæsar aut nullus. The world must choose between Germany,
the highly developed, hyperorganized, scientific state, proceeding on
the openly avowed theory that might alone makes right, and that no
principle of ethics, morality or religion must be allowed to affect
or deter a course which scientific militarism determines to be best
calculated to attain a pre-determined end, and the other nations, who
believe in God and in His justice, who conceive that it doth not profit
a nation to gain the whole world at the cost of its soul.
Once this issue is manifest to the world, the result cannot be in doubt.
GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM.
[Illustration]
_Plain Language from Truthful James_
_The Mexican-Japanese Plot_
“For ways that are dark
And tricks that are vain--”
[Illustration]
_Helping Hindenburg Home_
“We regret being unable on this occasion to follow the counsels of our
masters, the French, but the American flag has been forced to retire.
This is unendurable, and none of our soldiers would understand their
not being asked to do whatever is necessary to reëstablish a situation
which is humiliating to us and unacceptable to our country’s honor. We
are going to counter-attack.”
This was a message sent by an American general in command of American
forces south of the Marne on Monday afternoon after the Germans had
succeeded in forcing the Americans back towards Conde-en-Brie.
The French commander had informed the American general that the early
German success could not have any great effect on the fate of the
battle; that it was understood perfectly that after hard fighting the
Americans had slowly retired, and that it was not expected that they
immediately launch a counter-attack. He added that a counter-attack
could be postponed without risk, and it might be better to give the
American troops an hour’s rest.
Immediately after the American general sent the above message, which
is quoted by the correspondent of the “Matin,” the Americans launched
their counter-attack and the lost ground was soon recovered, with an
additional half mile taken from the Germans for good measure.
_The New York Times, July 18, 1918._
[Illustration]
_A Bad Prophet_
_The All-Highest: “Only a sham war with Uncle Sam? Oh, Hollweg, you are
a bad prophet!”_
One of the delusions the German Government and its General Staff have
been laboring under for many years is that the United States could not
create an army that was worth consideration as a foe. That Government
and its General Staff are tasting the quality of our troops in the
field, and the flavor is bitter on their tongues. One hundred and
twenty-six years ago there was fought a battle in France (at Valmy,
within the zone of war today) on the date that France first called
herself a republic. Kellermann won that battle against the Prussians
and Austrians with levies of new troops from the lower and middle
classes of France, who “found that they could face cannon balls, pull
triggers, and cross bayonets without having been drilled into military
machines, and without being officered by scions of noble houses.” They
had, it seems, the same spirit we like to think animates our army,
which the Germans abroad and some critics at home denied our men: “they
awoke to the consciousness of instinctive soldiership.”
_The Army and Navy Journal._
[Illustration]
_At the Holland Frontier_
WHETHER THE WAR BE LONG OR SHORT, THE QUICKEST ROAD TO PEACE IS THE
ROAD STRAIGHT AHEAD OF US, WITH NO DIVISION AMONG THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.
[Illustration]
_A Rehearsal_
“_When I say, Down with Wilson! you all cheer!_”
[Illustration]
_The Path of Kultur_
Here ran a road for lovers once,
With maples in the moon;
And under a bridge a water went
Weaving a dreamy rune.
And high upon the sycamores,
The nightingales all night
Besieged the dark with melody,
Disturbed the boughs with flight.
And here in coverts of tall grass
Looked up a friendly spring,
Glad to behold a face bent down,
Or feel a fleeting wing.
But now the lovers come no more;
The road is rutted and marred
By wheels and shrieking shells: the trees
Are shattered, chopt and charred.
New graves are billowing now: the field
Like windy water heaves:
The nightingales are gone: the spring
Is choked with bloody leaves.
And here at noon a vulture swoops
On obscene errands bound:
And here at night remembering ghosts
Go by without a sound.
EDWIN MARKHAM.
[Illustration]
_To the Victor!_
_France crowns with laurel the dead American aviator._
Tho’ the American mother mourns across the seas for her hero son, who
has touched the skies in France, the foster mother lays her laurel of
glory on the bier of Youth, whose brave spirit in passing welds an
eternal bond of sympathy and union to the end.
GERALDINE FARRAR.
_June 23, 1918._
[Illustration]
_The Eyes of the Army_
The great poet of Victoria’s reign, in his wondrous vision of the
future,
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nation’s airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm;
Till the war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.
Dealing not with the shadowy future but with the actual present the
great Artist of the Great War sees aerial navigation, not in terms of
commerce nor of battle engines, but as the “Eyes of the Army”; the
sense without which the terrestrial movements of war, both by land and
sea, tend to become mere blind and purposeless blundering. With one
graceful figure in a finely balanced design the artist tells the story.
Future generations will be grateful to the Prussians for one thing--and
one thing only. From war--that “noble art of murdering,” as Thackeray
called it, they have stripped the last vestiges of romantic glamor.
They have not hesitated to press the premises of militarism to their
logical conclusion,--with results that have staggered humanity.
In one field only has it been possible for something of the old
knightly chivalry to linger. Romance, driven from earth, has taken
wings; and the world, sated with horrors of trench and shambles,
thrills with eager wonder at the new science of the sky; at the
individual skill and daring of its pilots and their wonderful service
to their fighting brethren on earth.
But even as we read of these things come tales of Zeppelin raids over
defenseless cities and the deliberate dropping of bombs upon hospitals.
Civilized warfare! it is a contradiction in terms. It may be
necessary,--it has proved to be necessary, for civilized men to fight
the barbarians in order to uphold and preserve the great principle
of individual liberty; but war must come to an end among civilized
peoples; and to that end there must be a closer and closer union of
such as care for law and order, believe that the weak have rights which
must be protected, and are willing to base their governments on the
firm and enduring foundations of LIBERTY, EQUALITY and FRATERNITY.
THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE.
_July 19, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_Is It Nothing to You, All Ye Who Pass By?_”
All we need to remember hour by hour is that we are living through the
greatest crisis in the history of the world; that the greatest number
of people are concerned in it ever concerned in one thing before; and
that the most important epoch concerning humanity since the birth of
Christ is now at hand; that humanity is about to fall to a lower plane
of living or rise to a higher one than it has ever reached; that we can
only do our little share toward that rising by stiffening ourselves
to a long endurance. We have proven our mere ability to give valuable
service. What we must prove now is our patience and steadfastness,
without which brilliancy is worthless. We must strike a pace which we
can hold, both mentally and physically and plod on together. We must
and we will be ready, for our own sake, for our country’s sake and for
the sake of what the world was created for.
RACHEL CROTHERS.
[Illustration]
_The Rainbow Division Leaves for France_
As the rainbow is heaven’s token of faith, so have we faith in these
modern knights journeying to beloved France to give battle to invading
barbarians.
Ponder a moment over these men of the Rainbow Division, lads with minds
clean as their hearts are true, and compare them with the blood-craving
hordes reared in a school having no other aim than to kill their fellow
beings. One is Man in the superlative, and for the other there is no
name sufficiently abhorrent.
When an American soldier enters Hun territory we know how scrupulously
the laws of humanity will be respected: he will at least be knightly
and merciful.
And the four years’ record of German savagery is so well known that it
must forever befoul the pages of history.
Lack of opportunity in the library has prevented a thorough exploration
of the unspeakable atrocities of the early Huns who under Attila
ravaged a great part of Europe. But sufficiently have I read to be
convinced that the Huns and Vandals and Goths of early history,
compared with the Hohenzollern-inspired fiends, were scarcely more than
bungling altruists. We know it to be fact that German soldiers murdered
priests and raped nuns in Belgium, violated practically every young
woman in the Aisne and Champagne, razed defenseless towns and hamlets
in these French Departments, murdered old people and children and
mutilated youths everywhere, delighted in destroying hospital ships and
treated Red Cross signs as targets for their guns, inoculated French
prisoners as a means of furthering the Berlin plan to diminish the
French race, and in cold blood murdered scores of women and children on
the _Lusitania_.
These are awful indictments, with not one excusable on the ground of
military need or expediency. Given trial at the bar of civilization
their perpetrators must forever be judged as outside the pale of
humanity and hereafter can have no standing in lands where the
principles of Christianity and humanity have a meaning. With my own
eyes I have seen scores of proofs of German “frightfulness”; with me
it is not hearsay. And remember that it was none other than Goethe who
wrote that “the Prussian was born a brute, and civilization will make
him ferocious.”
Positive is it that the United States and her Allies will crush the
conscienceless militarism of Germany, and ever of good omen is the
Rainbow, telling of improving skies and perfect conditions for the
morrow.
FREDERIC COURTLAND PENFIELD, _American Ambassador
to Austria-Hungary_, 1913-1917.
[Illustration]
_Russia Reborn_
In a hundred years no people has been so tortured and abused by rulers
of its own blood and faith as the Russians. The free peoples have
nothing in their experience by which they can imagine the greed and
cruelty of which the subjects of the Romanoffs have been the victims.
No adequate picture of the diabolical old régime can be painted till
scholars have had time to explore its archives and expose the dark
forces that operated it.
Let no one look for Freed Russia to be shining and beautiful. From the
gloomy caverns in which they have mouldered the Russian people stagger
out upon the sunlit heights of freedom weak, bent, half blind. Few of
the older will ever conquer the dense ignorance in which they were kept
by autocracy. Few of the characters twisted and deformed by oppression
will ever become quite straight. In the behavior of this people there
will be exhibited folly, fanaticism and brutality that will make the
peoples born free uneasy as to the new sister.
Whatever happens, doubt not that the Russians are gifted and
great-hearted. Their excesses have proclaimed how much they were
held back and brutalized by the Tsars. It will take long for them to
rid themselves of the traces of their servitude and misery. Even the
children born in the new era will catch from their parents some of the
evil heritage. Only the grandchildren of the common people of today
will come into the full birthright of the free and prove the worth that
is in the Russian race.
EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS.
[Illustration]
_Higher Than a Sour Apple Tree_
Other wars end with those who made them. It is the will of the German
Emperor that _his_ war should pass on like a blight from generation to
generation upon those whose fathers dared to stand against the ravager.
To this end he has not only slaughtered and enslaved the defenders; he
has sought to destroy the very fruitfulness of the land whereby their
descendants must live.
To me the deliberate, coldly reckoned murder of the invaded countries’
trees and vines so that the children of the slain and enslaved and
their children’s children may draw no sustenance from the kindly
earth--that seems the most perverse, the most detestable, the most
typical of all the crimes of Kaiserism.
The sterilization of Mother Earth! It took the mind of a Wilhelm to
conceive it. And for that offence against generations unborn he shall
hang, higher than was ever ruler before him, gibbeted in the righteous
hatred of an outraged posterity.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS.
[Illustration]
“_What a Mean Trick to Turn on That Strong Light!_”
“Peace must be framed on so equitable a basis that the nations would
not wish to disturb it. It must be guaranteed by destruction of
Prussian military power, so that the confidence of the German people
shall be put in the equity of their cause and not in the might of their
armies.... Europe is again drenched with the blood of its bravest and
its best, but do not forget the great succession of hallowed causes.
They are the stations of the cross on the road to the emancipation
of mankind. I again appeal to the people of this country and beyond
that they should continue to fight for the great goal of international
rights and international justice, so that never again shall brute force
sit on the throne of justice nor barbaric strength wield the sceptre
over liberty.”
_From the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd-George’s Glasgow speech
on war aims, June 29, 1917._
[Illustration]
_Christmas, 1917_
On the day of the Nativity, the Infant Brother of Humanity was born and
was laid in a manger, there being no room for his human mother at the
inn. But wherever he lay--there, through the mystery of his kinship,
was the shining Gateway of Heaven. That translucent Light, from the
moment of its appearance, intensified, as by opposite polarity, the
baleful lights from all unholy fires in human breasts. Herod was
first aroused to the Slaughter of the Innocents, and he has had his
successors in every age during the growth of Christendom.
As the Light of the World has expanded these nineteen centuries,
shining in the hearts of men, ever awakening new ideas of Truth,
Justice, and Mercy, against every fresh gleam, promising wider horizons
of human Love and Sympathy, have been arrayed the brutish hosts,
with Hatred and Murder in their hardened hearts. For the present
generation has been reserved the vision of the very Armageddon of
this Conflict, in which the world is divided against itself. The
Powers precipitating it inaugurated it and have in its whole course
attended it with every conceivable form of atrocity and outrage against
noncombatants--innocent men, women, and children. But that Heavenly
Light which shone in the stable at Bethlehem can never be put out!
HENRY MILLS ALDEN.
[Illustration]
_Helping Uncle Sam to Get Up Speed_
“The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral.
They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and
conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their
own behalf. When they found that they could not do that, then agents
diligently spread sedition among us and sought to draw our own citizens
from their allegiance....
“They have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion
they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of
their masters; declare this a foreign war which can touch America
with no danger to either her lands or her institutions ... and seek
to undermine the Government with false professions of loyalty to its
principles.
“But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in
every accent.... The facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere
are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are
accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; and the great
fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a people’s war,
a war for freedom and justice and self-government among all the nations
of the world.”
_From President Wilson’s Flag Day Address, June 14, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Wind of Democracy_
“Without doubt, the majority of the German nation is still monarchist.
The different peoples of Germany still hold to their princes, more or
less, according to the individual character of the sovereigns. But
that confidence in the supreme chief of the Empire is still entirely
intact is an affirmation which, after three years of war, cannot be
maintained.... Confidence in the direction of the Empire has begun to
disappear among the German people.... They begin to ask themselves how
it happens that nearly all the world is in arms against us, and who is
responsible for it.”
_Reply of Prince von Hohenlohe to the clerical deputy, Spahn,
in the Reichstag._
[Illustration]
“_This One for the Babies_”
Germany, in her war against Civilization, has disregarded not
only International Law and the ordinary laws of humanity, but has
ruthlessly set aside the four great laws of the social order which
all civilized nations recognize as having a divine sanction. “Thou
shalt not bear false witness.” She has broken her treaties and lied
openly, frequently, brazenly. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” She has
permitted, if she has not given official sanction to rape committed
upon a scale never before known in the history of the civilized world.
“Thou shalt not steal.” She robbed her neighbor’s hills of their coal
and iron, her neighbor’s fields of their standing crops, her neighbor’s
banks of their money, her neighbor’s houses of their pictures,
statuary and books, and what she could not carry away she has in mere
wantonness destroyed. “Thou shalt not kill.” She has murdered thousands
of defenceless men, women, children, and little babes, and has done
this not in a sudden and feverish rage, but as part of a deliberately
conceived and carefully executed policy. One must multiply Raemaekers’
picture by the thousand in order to get its full significance.
LYMAN ABBOTT.
[Illustration]
_A Scene on the Somme_
“Infinitely interesting is our contact with the American troops. They
have occupied the sector immediately beside ours. We have seen them at
work, and could form an idea, and it should be told and retold that
they are marvelous. The Americans are soldiers by nature, and their
officers have the desire to learn with an enthusiasm and an idealistic
ardor very remarkable. There is the same spirit among the privates.
They ask questions with a touching good-will, setting aside all conceit
or prejudice. Naturally they have the faults of all new troops. They
show themselves too much and expose themselves imprudently, letting
themselves be carried away by their ardor, not knowing when to spare
themselves or to seek shelter or when to risk everything for an end.
This experience will be quickly learned.
“As for bravery, activity, and discipline, they are marvelous. They
absolutely astonished us on a morning of attack. The cannonading,
suddenly becoming furious, had just thrown me out of my bunk. No doubt
about it, it was a Verdun attack. Taking time to seize my revolver,
put on my helmet, and gather up several documents, I descended to
the streets. When I arrived there they were already filing by with
rapid, easy, decided steps, marching in perfect order in silence with
admirable resolution, and above all with striking discipline, to their
fighting positions. It was fine. You can have no idea how cheering it
was to my Poilus.”
--_From a letter of a French officer published in the Paris “Temps.”_
[Illustration]
_Hollweg as Robespierre_
_The Kaiser: “He has managed to fool the German Socialists. Why should
he not fool the Russian Socialists?”_
Few things have been more disheartening in the course of the War than
the way in which the Teutonic foes of liberty have used so many friends
of liberty in Russia as unwitting instruments to undermine and destroy
the resistance of the Russian people to the German armies.
Vast territories, amounting to nearly half a million square miles
in area, have thus been abandoned to German domination, practically
without a struggle; and over fifty million people in the abandoned
regions have seen their prospects of freedom vanish.
The German armies thus released from the eastern front and poured into
northern France, have enormously increased the difficulties of the
Armies of Liberty, battling in France and Belgium to save the world for
Democracy.
J. G. PHELPS STOKES.
[Illustration]
_President Wilson’s Declaration_
Raemaekers is, here, having the President say:
“When Germany is defeated, and peace can be discussed, we shall pay
the full price of peace,--namely, justice for all the nations.”
We know what justice will be for the nations spoiled. But what will
be justice for the spoiler? We know what this latter would be to an
individual; and a nation is only a greater individual, capable of
greater mischief, subject to greater punishment.
An individual, who, with progressive malice, had broken all the laws
of his country, society and God, from simple lying, through perjury,
robbery, piracy, up to wholesale murder, would be destroyed--for the
good of his fellowmen and as a warning to others. If he should escape
the noose the quieter but no less inevitable force of public morality
would destroy him. Neither man nor nation has ever long lived by force,
flaunting his crimes in the face of the world, committing, threatening
yet others. Nor will Germany. She is now, I believe, in the way of
destruction, either by the public executioner, or, more likely, by the
slower, but not less certain, process of isolation and decay.
She has unmasked herself and we now see the hideous, distorted face of
her. How can so monstrous a Thing have friends after this? Who will
trade with her? Who will ever again accept a promise of hers? Who but
must be ashamed of her name and her language? Anathema she will be to
all peoples--the outcast of nations--living for and upon herself, where
her life-doctrine of force must inevitably turn to her own destruction.
This has been the fate of every world-conqueror and his nation. And,
surely, none of them all has so richly deserved it as this intolerable
Germany. Ask History! And, yet, to the individual, there is always left
repentance and restoration--even though he, himself, must be destroyed.
So, if this besotted Germany had but the courage and virtue to lay down
her arms and retire behind her own borders, she could have the peace
she pretends to wish for in twenty-four hours--for so little and simple
and right a thing as that!
I think, indeed, that the nations she has so wantonly spoiled would
permit her to go without further punishment at their hands, leaving
that to the very God she has so vilely exploited as her partner in her
monstrous crimes. I think they would accept back the goods which she
has stolen, damaged as they are, beyond redemption, glad to be rid of
her and her debasing contact. But she is mad. Germany is quite mad. She
would laugh, like a blood-smeared, amuck-running lunatic at any such
proposition. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The
madness is accomplished. I believe that it will be for the peace of the
world that the rest shall be.
JOHN LUTHER LONG.
[Illustration]
“_Don’t Stand in Our Way to Victory_”
All wars bring their full measure of miseries and misfortunes, and this
world war, initiated by Germany for the purpose of imposing a military
domination upon Europe and America, and conducted with methods which
combine the barbaric standards of the Huns and Mongols with the skilled
mechanism of the twentieth century, has brought upon the world miseries
that can hardly be estimated or described. There are some offsets,
however, even in a contest like the present, which is a fight for the
preservation of civilization against the onslaughts of scientific
barbarism. No nation can take up arms for the defense of its rights and
liberties and for the fulfilment of its obligations without bringing
into the souls of the people some development of national and patriotic
spirit.
The soldiers in the trenches and the citizens working at home are
fighting and working for a common cause.
They come in this manner to have realization of what they owe to each
other, to their country and to their consciences.
We may feel assured that through the sacrifices that are being made
today in our country, of lives, of labor and of wealth, there will be
developed from a people which had in its prosperity been growing rich
and lazy-minded and forgetful of national morality, the soul of America.
Louis Raemaekers has done more than any one man to bring into
expression the spirit of fierce indignation and horror that has come
not only upon the people of Belgium and of northeastern France, who
have been directly exposed to the brutal despotism of the Prussians,
but upon all of those who are fighting to rescue the people of these
imprisoned devastated provinces, and upon the whole civilized world.
Raemaekers has been able with the powerful genius of his pencil to give
expression in cartoons that belong to the history of art and of the
world, to this protest of civilization.
He is a poet as well as an artist.
His weird and sombre conceptions gave evidence of a powerful
imagination. His work has been compared to that of Gilray, but the
caricatures which in 1805 amused English men and frightened English
children were merely clever pieces of drawing.
The wonderful designs of Raemaekers set forth the devilishness of
the policies and the actions of the Prussians as incisively and as
conclusively as if he had been sitting as judge in the court of final
appeal.
These grim pictures constitute indictments of great criminals. It is
impossible to tell how far they may as yet have penetrated Germany,
but sooner or later these irrefutable judgments of criminal acts will
be brought home to the consciousness not only of Prussia, and of the
leaders who are directly responsible for the murders and the other
horrors, but of the whole people of Germany who, poisoned by the fumes
of prussic acid from Berlin, have been willing to give their strength
and their force to the attempt to impose Prussian tyranny upon the
peoples of the world.
GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM.
_February 1, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_German Soldiers Cut the Throat of an American Sentry_”
A LAYMAN’S PRAYER FOR AMERICAN SOLDIERS
Our Father which art in Heaven, bless and inspire our armies in the
field, our ships upon the sea. Watch over the sons of America fighting
for Liberty. Strengthen and hearten them in the hour of pain and peril.
Grant them victory, we beseech Thee, and lead them safely home. Make us
who love them do our part loyally. Keep us united in our will to bring
upon earth a reign of right and freedom. _Amen._
CLEVELAND MOFFETT.
[Illustration]
_Bang!_
“_Dog-gone it, Hindenburg, don’t make your strategic moves when I am
standing directly behind you!_”
On one occasion, when Hindenburg reported having “carried out his
retreat according to plan,” the Kaiser, encamped at the rear, received
a very discomfiting bump. Evidently, the “plan” was no less an
inspiration of the moment than many others the Germans have announced,
in order to put a good face upon their reverses.
[Illustration]
“_I Must Break in Here Before That Comes Down_”
The small speck that at first seemed a dull mist hanging over the
Western Hemisphere caused little else than sarcastic flings at our
own Republic, and had it been possible to awaken pity in the breast
of the Arch Demon, striving to spread his wings over the whole world,
some sympathy might have fallen to us, for the weak mind we showed
in presuming we could do anything to check the Imperial army in its
brutal course. But happily great oaks from little acorns grow, from
stationary mists dark clouds may rise, from low uncertain rumblings
the ear-splitting thunder clap may spring, and make man and beast seek
cover. So, by the Grace of God, things have developed, and the mist
that was a banquet joke, is transformed, and spread into a veritable
storm, and its direction is across the wide ocean; it is an on-rusher
that awakens a craven fear; and it well may. It is no autumn cloud,
whose fleecy skirts the sun has painted with gold; but something
equalling the harbinger of death, that the soothsayers saw driving over
Rome when Cæsar’s end was nigh; on which could be seen “Fierce fiery
warriors in ranks, and squadrons and in right form of war”; and from
which blood is drizzling, not only to fall over France, or Flanders,
but perhaps to darken the sky, and crimson the soil, even at that nest
of iniquity, Potsdam.
PALMER COX.
[Illustration]
_Bring Her In!_
Yea, bring her in--the scarlet sign of shame!
Of shuddering horror to all times and lands!
Bring her, though late, to justice. Those, her hands,
With children’s blood thick-crusted, are the same
That stealing through night’s peaceful curtains came
To throttle blameless Belgium; from the brands
Of sacked and burning churches those dark bands
Befoul her garments, noisome as her name.
“Guilty of more than murder!” Not alone
Of broken hearts, drained eyes and myriad graves
Shall men make up the sum of her dread score,
But of faiths blasted, world hopes overthrown.
Then judgment write in tears of her bowed slaves,
“Earth sickens of her--Let her be no more!”
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL.
[Illustration]
_Germany’s “Peace” with Russia_
Count Hertling asks resentfully: “Who dares to suggest that I am not
on the side of justice?” Count Hertling is undoubtedly sincere. Until
this war began the world had almost forgotten the record for duplicity
and inhumanity of the military tyrants of Prussia,--the treachery and
barbarity of the race of which he and they are the offspring. They are
running true to type, but for the time we had forgotten what the type
was; yet it was known well enough to Julius Cæsar and to the others
who ruled the Roman world. For him the Germans were “that treacherous
race which is bred up from the cradle to war and rapine,” who “practise
the base deception which first asks for peace and then openly begins
war,” who are “outside the pale of negotiations”--yet Cæsar had not
heard of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk! History is repeating itself
after two thousand years, yet two thousand years ago it was then only
repeating itself. The Prussian has always been the same. His instincts
are today as they were when he roamed the swamp lands, naked and with
a stone club in his fist, pig-eyed and bull-necked, like the mastodon
of his native forests. Raemaekers has done well to symbolize him in his
treatment of helpless Russia, as a hairy prehistoric beast crushing
out the life of a bleeding nation beneath his ponderous feet. Count
Hertling says he is on the side of justice. He is--of German justice,
the justice of which the butchered civilians and outraged girls of
Belgium, the crucified Canadians, the murdered Edith Cavell, and the
martyred babies and their mothers of the _Lusitania_, are examples. It
is the justice of the mammoth and the cave-man, the sabre-toothed tiger
and the woolly rhinoceros,--all of whom would agree that Count Hertling
in his dealings with Russia was actuated by the only recognized
Prussian ideal--the right of the strongest brute to ravish and destroy.
ARTHUR TRAIN.
[Illustration]
_The Better Fighter_
CANADA’S PART IN THE WAR
“Bound by no constitution, bound by no law, equity or obligation,
Canada has decided as a nation to make war. We have levied an army;
we have sent the greatest army to England that has ever crossed the
Atlantic, to take part in the battles of England. We have placed
ourselves in opposition to great world powers. We are now training and
equipping an army greater than the combined forces of Wellington and
Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.”
_Speech of Sir Clifford Sifton at Montreal._
[Illustration]
_The Dungeon of Autocracy_
There is a part of Germany that longs for freedom; but that is not the
Prussian part. The soul of Germany is not entirely killed by her mortal
sins of money and land-lust; and Raemaekers here paints the remorseful
soul, crowned with the blurred cross. Germany turns her back to the
sky; she prefers to look at the dark ground of her dungeon rather than
to face that light. She is chained by her own will, and yet her inmost
soul revolts.
Let us not imagine that there are two Germanys. Before the war the
Social Democrat was the official hater of the despotism of the
Hohenzollerns. The war came, he ceased to be a Social Democrat when
he became a Prussian. Before the war, the Centrum defended the rights
of conscience against the Hegelian dogma of the absolute supremacy of
the State. The Kaiser rushed from Norway, war was declared, and the
recalcitrant Centrum,--the creature of the indomitable Windhorst, whom
even Bismarck could not terrify,--becomes subservient! The Emperor does
not say, “The State is I.” He says,--“Germany over all, and the German
God must rule.”
Germany has chained herself. For more than ten years, I have lived
geographically in Germany,--for Denmark, though one of the freest
nations of the world, is a few miles from Berlin,--and I have seen the
Old Germany growing into the New, materialized Germany. Bismarck helped
this process with blood and iron. The New Germany has a soul, but she
has chained it to avarice and pride and power.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN,
_American Minister to Denmark_.
_May 28, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_Hurrah for Peace, Lads!_”
Early in the war the great writers and poets of the Allied nations
joined in combating, with all the inspiration of the cause of liberty,
the campaigns launched in varied guise by seditionists here and abroad.
In this effort literature has made a worthy contribution to the battle
for civilization. It remained, however, for the art and genius of
Raemaekers to rout the propagandists of the enemy by delineating the
great basic truths of war as waged by the Huns. It has been his work,
more than that of any other person, to delineate the righteousness of
the Allied cause.
His portraiture is a protest, an indictment, and an inspiration. He
destroys the foe’s misrepresentation and exposes his mendacity while
constructively informing the mind and awakening the imagination. He
enables us to grasp all the details of sorrow, of devotion, together
with all the splendor of modern battle behind his story. He horrifies
us with the brutality of uncivilized warfare, and at the same time
arouses within us the determination to right the wrongs of an outraged
world. His very shock is a stimulus, for in telling us of the horror
of war, Raemaekers makes us understand that to stop it forever by
victory is the only thing worthy of thinking and feeling human beings.
By speaking the universal language which art alone possesses, he has
made the war clear to those who cannot read. Because of this genius
for arousing our emotions, he is the premier recruiting agent of the
armies of civilization for and behind the battle-line. He is truly a
mainspring of our armed forces.
S. STANWOOD MENKEN,
_President of the National Security League_.
_January, 1918._
[Illustration]
_Ecce Homo!_
An’ Thou art God, and be not one
With the god of the hun--Behold Thy Son!
Only belov’d begotten Son
And see with Thine eyes what the hun hath done.
See how His tender temples bleed!
How they have mocked Him in their scorn--
Thrust in his hands a withered reed
To hail Him King--Thine only born--
And crowned His shrinking brow with thorn!
Where must He pass--Lord Christ--Thy Son?
Calvary looms in the West again:--
We thought the sad world lost and won
When He died on the Cross for the sins of men.
Must He die again? And where? And when?
Where, in their hell, the heathen rage,
The hun’s imperial priest appears
Smeared with the blood of youth and age
Dragging his god that nods and leers
Dripping with murdered children’s tears.
God of the bright, swift sword, how long?
Moloch rides with the swinish hun:--
The boche is boasting with shout and song
That Thou and his bestial god are one,--
Thou and Moloch and Christ, Thy Son!
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
_New York, April 30, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_We Must so Destroy France That She can Never Again Resist Us_”
Heine, when he warned the world that the real God of Germany was Thor
and that when the Christian veneer wore off the old pagan god would
with his hammer break in pieces the Gothic Cathedrals, especially
warned France, whom above all the Beast hated. The warning has been
justified by history. Before the war I have heard Germans speak
gloatingly of what they did to France in 1870, and of what they
meant to do next time. The phrase “bleed France white” had become a
commonplace of German speech.
This hatred is rather mysterious. England fought France many times
during five hundred years, but whenever peace was declared Paris would
be full of Englishmen to celebrate, to shake hands and be friends.
There never was this ferocious hate, and France has always been
generous and chivalrous and human. Germany hates Great Britain and
America with her head, but she hates France with her soul.
It must be that the modern Hun feels that there is something in his
hated enemy which he does not possess and never can possess. And
because the rest of the world loves France, he hates her all the more,
with a cold and cruel and scientific hatred, as our artist depicts it
in his terrible cartoon.
Perhaps some light is thrown on the problem by a typical piece of
Gallic wit. A French writer commenting on the wanton destruction of the
Cathedral of Rheims declared it to be the greatest single calamity to
art that was conceivable, and then added that there could be another
greater calamity--to allow the Germans to restore it! It adds fuel to
the flame to know that the only great period of German literature--the
period of Heine himself--was when it was under the complete influence
and inspiration of France.
In a true sense the whole civilized world is fighting for France, to
decide whether it is to lose all that France stands for, or whether the
future is to be dominated by the ugly bestial force, without conscience
and without heart, which Germany represents. The world knows that if
it is a case of alternatives, civilization can do without Germany, but
would be eternally poor without _la belle France._
HUGH BLACK.
[Illustration]
_The Japanese Mouse_
“_Can the Japanese mouse free the Russian bear from the German
netting?_”
“Japan must act on the broad principle that she is the guardian of
peace in the Far East, and I am sure that to fulfil her duty she will
utilize every resource at her disposal. Her part, instead of attempting
the impossible, will be to stand on safe and reasonable ground. Through
her control of the Southern Manchuria Railroad she is in a position
to cut off communication between Harbin and Vladivostok now afforded
by the trans-Siberian line. Harbin is the military, economic, and
political base of Russia in the Far East. That means that the Russian
possessions in East Siberia would be protected by Japan from German
domination or aggression. Let me say, however, that any suggestion that
Japan intends to seize these Russian possessions is monstrous. Japan
would offer protection and assistance, but that is all.”
--_Dr. T. Iyenaga, in the New York “Tribune.”_
[Illustration]
_“Ueber Alles” and Underneath_
[Illustration]
_Expostulation and Reply_
“We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a
guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by
such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people
themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in
accepting.”
--_From President Wilson’s Reply to the Pope, August 27, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Second Election_
_Bernstorff: “We have defeated Wilson!”_
_Wilson: “Wait a moment!”_
[Illustration]
_The Mad Shepherd_
THE GERMAN SUBSTITUTE FOR THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM
The Kaiser’s our shepherd, we shall not rest.
He maketh us to desecrate green pastures; he forceth us to kill in
still waters.
He claimeth our soul, he leadeth us in the paths of frightfulness for
his name’s sake.
Yea, though he plunge us into the valley of death, we must call him not
evil, for he is our master, his rod and his staff they drive us.
Surely horror and evil shall follow us all the days of our life till we
flee from his rule forever.
ALICE HEGAN RICE.
_March 16, 1918._
[Illustration]
“_Sink Without a Trace_”
To his dark minions undersea
Flashed the Imperial decree:
Sink Everything!
Spare naught! Sink everything that floats:
Merchantmen, liners, fishing boats;
Sink ships on Mercy’s errand sped,
Dye Christ’s red cross a deeper red:
Sink Everything!
Sink honor, faith, forbearance, ruth;
Sink virtue, chivalry, and truth,
Sink Everything!
Sink everything that men hold dear,
That devils hate, that cowards fear,
All that lifts Man above the ape,
That marks him cast in God’s own shape:
Sink Everything!
OLIVER HERFORD.
[Illustration]
_Changing the Guard_
With the entrance of the United States into the Great War, we Americans
laid aside forever our spiritual isolation. We accepted our share of
responsibility for the assaulted civilization of the world, and our
share of danger at the hands of its great assailant. A free people,
we willingly chose the path of uttermost pain, and we chose it for
the sake of our nation’s honor, our nation’s ultimate safety, and the
salvation of our nation’s soul.
When Germany denied us the waterways of the world, she struck hard at
our commerce, at our just rights, and at our decent pride. What were
the Hohenzollerns to us that we should have taken our orders from the
Kaiser, tied up our ships in harbor at his behest, and, cowering by our
own firesides, have waited for his permission to carry our flag across
the sea? Was it for this that our forefathers had bought our freedom
with their lives? Had we revolted when we were colonists, weak, poor,
and without resources, from the tyranny of Great Britain (a stupid
but never a brutal tyranny), only to bow the strength of our manhood
before Germany’s shameful threats? Had we preached the sacredness of
human rights for over a hundred years, only to acquiesce in Germany’s
campaign of murder; and, by consenting to her crimes, become a partner
of her guilt? We had suffered cruel injury at her hands. Were we also
to lose our souls through ignoble submission to wrong-doing?
Our answer was given when President Wilson asked Congress to declare
a state of war. We had then, and we have now, no choice but to fight
for our liberty, or to lose it. Our ships had been sunk, our seamen
drowned. Treacherous officials had plotted to embroil us with friendly
nations. Treacherous hands had fired our factories and murdered our
citizens. The careless lie or the insolent taunt which were Germany’s
alternate answers to our remonstrances, and which she seemed to think
would keep us quiet until she had leisure to turn her arms upon us, are
silenced now. We are upholding the safety and decency of the world,
which has been as deeply degraded by vandalism as when Attila swept
his hordes across the ravaged face of Europe. Our young soldiers are
changing guard with the war-worn veterans of France and Great Britain.
Valiant and gay, they face the oppressor. “He that loveth his life
shall lose it”; and these men stand ready to lay down their lives for
all they hold sacred and dear. Faithful to their country, faithful to
their allies, faithful to the freedom in which they were reared, they
strike their blow in the great name of America, and for the peace of
God.
AGNES REPPLIER.
[Illustration]
_The Penitent Artist_
“_I will never make drawings against the Yellow Peril again!_”
The Kaiser has a good many things in his past to live down, but he
certainly never foresaw that some day his inept activities as an artist
would stand across his path. Raemaekers, who was not likely to forget
anything that Wilhelm had done in this particular line, shows him
on his knees to Japan (and incidentally to Mexico), as the infamous
Zimmermann note to the German minister at Mexico City revealed him,
full of remorse for those drawings he once made against the Yellow
Peril. And what is Japan’s reply? The expression which Raemaekers has
caught certainly agrees very well with the following statement of
Count Terauchi, Japanese Prime Minister: “Nothing is more repugnant to
our sense of honor and to the lasting welfare of this country than to
betray our friends and allies in time of trial and to become a party to
a combination directed against the United States, to whom we are bound
not only by the sentiments of true friendship but also by material
interests of vast and far-reaching importance.”
[Illustration]
_Peace Angels of Doubtful Purity_
_William: “Go, my doves; your charms may prove more fatal than my
armies.”_
[Illustration]
_The Black Flag_
_Germany Sinks British Hospital Ships_
The British Admiralty issued a statement on April 23 [1917],
announcing the sinking of the two hospital steamships _Donegal_ and
_Lanfranc_ without warning by submarines; nineteen British and fifteen
wounded German officers were drowned. In their statement the British
authorities denied the German charge that hospital ships were employed
to transport troops and military supplies.... Germany was notified
that, if her course was persisted in, reprisals would follow, yet the
British hospital ship _Asturias_ was torpedoed without warning on the
night of March 20. The ship was steaming with all navigation lights
burning and the proper Red Cross signs brilliantly illuminated.... On
the night of March 30-31 the hospital ship _Gloucester Castle_ met with
a similar fate. On this occasion the Berlin official wireless message
again published a notification that she was torpedoed by a U-boat, thus
removing any possible doubt in the matter.
--_The New York Times Current History._
[Illustration]
_The Annexation of America_
“_I think, All Highest, we had better not insist upon the annexation of
America._”
In the inscription “Ten Million Men Between 21 and 30” on the Statue
of Liberty, Raemaekers has as usual gone to the heart of things. Ten
million trained citizen soldiers!!! What an insurance of peace and
security against attack or insult. Universal Citizen Military Education
and Training.
From the beginning the first article in our International Creed has
been the Monroe Doctrine--America for Americans. If the result of the
present war shall be to add two additional items to that creed, namely,
Universal Military Education and Training, and the United States, the
First Air Power in the world, it will be worth all that it costs, and
this great nation can go on in peace and security to work out the
mighty destiny awaiting it.
Raemaekers’ placing “All Highest” and his aide upon the conning tower
of a submarine, suggests another most vital matter at this present time.
The submarine has held the world’s spotlight for the last two years.
Its deadly efficiency is universally conceded. That deadly efficiency
is the direct result of Admiral von Tirpitz’s unyielding insistence on
a centralized, independent, untrammeled Department for the submarine.
_We must adopt the same methods if we expect to attain equally deadly
efficiency in the air._
But the possibilities of the aeroplane are greater than those of the
submarine. The aeroplane is capable of offensive in the air against
aeroplanes or dirigibles, on the surface of the sea against ships, and
under the sea against submarines. The offensive capabilities of the
submarine can and soon will be restricted to under-surface activities.
Again, the submarine is limited to the oceans. The aeroplane is limited
by nothing. It can go wherever there is air, and that means everywhere.
In other words, the aeroplane is the master of the submarine.
If we today had a thousand swift, heavily armed seaplanes continuously
patrolling the water within a radius of three hundred miles of Sandy
Hook (from Portland, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia), we should have our
five Atlantic sea gateways well guarded, and could feel secure against
any further serious damage from these pests.
Thus equipped, submarine raids upon our coast would be an
impossibility; and even the imagination of a Raemaekers would not
dare to conceive of a hostile submarine within sight of the Statue of
Liberty.
PEARY.
[Illustration]
“_Welcome, Mate; You’re Just in Time!_”
“I am in the happy position of being, I think, the first British
Minister of the Crown who, speaking on behalf of the people of this
country, can salute the American Nation as comrades in arms. I am glad;
I am proud. I am glad not merely because of the stupendous resources
which this great nation will bring to the succor of the alliance, but
I rejoice as a democrat that the advent of the United States into this
war gives the final stamp and seal to the character of the conflict as
a struggle against military autocracy throughout the world.”
--_From the Speech of the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd-George at
the American Club in London, April 12, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Editor:_
“_Use always the American flag and commit as much high treason as you
like._”
“Woe to the German-American, so-called, who, in this sacred war for a
cause as high as any for which ever people took up arms, does not feel
a solemn urge, does not show an eager determination to be in the very
fore-front of the struggle; does not prove a patriotic jealousy, in
thought, in action and in speech to rival and to outdo his native-born
fellow citizen in devotion and in willing sacrifice for the country
of his choice and adoption and sworn allegiance, and of their common
affection and pride. As Washington led Americans of British blood to
fight against Great Britain, as Lincoln called upon Americans of the
North to fight their very brothers of the South, so Americans of German
descent are now summoned to join in our country’s righteous struggle
against a people of their own blood, which, under the evil spell of a
dreadful obsession, and, Heaven knows! through no fault of ours, has
made itself the enemy of peace and right and freedom throughout the
world.”
--_From Otto H. Kahn’s “Right Above Race.”_
[Illustration]
_German Intrigues in Mexico_
Many things in the present war have aroused and enraged the people
of the United States against Germany. The defilement of Belgium,
the ravage of Serbia, the assassination of Armenia, all crimes
against human nature in which we Americans share. Besides that, some
revelations apply especially to us,--grievances, injuries and outrages,
things that seem so far removed from the secret thoughts of decent and
self-respecting nations that we hesitated to believe them. We must
believe them now for we know at last that Germany has for not less
than twenty years been working against the influence and good name of
the United States. It was not for nothing that one of our best-known
public men, when he visited Germany as far back as 1911, said that it
was a country where he felt that “every man, woman and child looked
upon him with hatred,” because he was conspicuous in this country which
had become rich and powerful and prosperous by the road of democracy
instead of by the German path of militarism.
Every day reveals some new evidence that the German mole was working
in South America, in Central America, in almost every American state
and city, to prepare the minds of those who were to take part in the
infamous conspiracy. Before the war broke out in Europe, Germans were
trying to organize an active cohort within our boundary. The effort to
arouse Mexico against us while we were still neutral, is no worse than
other German diplomacy such as the “spurlos versenkt” radiograms of the
scoundrel Luxburg, directed against the Argentine; but the appeal to
Mexico to “reconquer” Texas and the Southwest was worse than a crime,
it was a blunder, especially resented by the people of that part of the
country. Nothing but an absolute breach with Germany has made possible
the revelation of the cynical violation of diplomatic privileges by
German and Austrian officials in this country from titled Ambassadors
down through consuls-general and consuls-particular and military aides
and secretaries and clerks and hangers-on and spies and jackals, all
uniting to stab the land which gave them hospitality. Whatever else may
happen, a hundred years will not efface from the minds of the people of
the United States the belief that “Germany cannot be a Gentleman.”
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART.
[Illustration]
_German “Militarist” Socialism_
Does not the cartoonist Raemaekers fail in this cartoon? The artist
Raemaekers is inspired--here as always. But does the cartoonist succeed
this time in burning the right idea, his idea, into the reader’s brain?
Here is the real Kaiser and here are real German workingmen. It is they
who are carrying the burden of Kaiserism. All this is convincing. But
do not other workingmen in other countries carry burdens?
The failure is only at first glance. Raemaekers is not concerned to
reproduce the conventional cartoon of workingmen carrying a burden of
other classes on their shoulders. The point lies not in the burden,
but in the nature of the burden, the contrast, so perfectly portrayed,
between the character of the Kaiser and the characters of his proud
and willing slaves. The Kaiser, crafty and contemptuous, but neither
so ignorant nor so stupid as to be wholly unconscious of the foolish
and contemptible position he occupies! The workingmen evidently once
strong, intelligent and enthusiastic, though now blinded and crippled,
are utterly unconscious of what they are doing. Carrying the heavy
burden of Kaiserism seems no more to them than their day’s work.
You see Raemaekers _knows_ both Kaiser and workingmen, and so will have
nothing to do with the conventional portraits of either. The Kaiser is
neither a beast nor a fool--however foolish his position may be. The
workingmen are neither labor heroes ready to revolt, nor conscious and
beaten serfs.
So much for the picture--at second glance. It leads to an endless
chain of reflections. But the first and most obvious is on the sort
of burden these men are carrying. Here is an accepted ruler who is
allowed to monopolize the _force_ of the nation, as the cartoon clearly
indicates. This of itself gives him an absolute and unlimited power
over his workers. The only possible alternative use of that force is
to make slaves of the workers of other nations. The German workingmen,
it is suggested, lend themselves blindly to this work of enslavement
also--naturally, for it is no different for their Kaiser to rule by
force and lies over non-Germans than to rule by force and lies over
Germans. The face of the Kaiser shows a subconscious realization
of these lies. The workers show utter unconsciousness. The rule of
autocracy over themselves and the extension of that autocracy over
others by means of their blood is to them as much a part of nature as
the motions of sun and moon or the rise and fall of the tides!
Indeed, the workingmen are clearly proud of their burden and his
successes and undoubtedly feel that any people is blest to be brought
under his benign rule. And here is the moral of the tale. It is the
Kaiser’s successes that have so utterly blinded his serfs. Then there
is one remedy and only one. We need hardly say what that remedy is.
WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING.
[Illustration]
_The Old Hammer and the New_
_President Wilson elected for a second term._
[Illustration]
_The Spirit of Washington_
_President Wilson’s answer to Hertling._
“Woodrow Wilson is in no sense a herald. The revolution of betrayed
idealism has been in progress for more than a century, and in the
last decade particularly there has been steady assault upon evil and
outworn institutions. These passionate gropings of the spirit in the
direction of ideals professed and not practised have merely lacked
great leadership and authoritative expression. This is what Woodrow
Wilson gives. He comes as a leader, as a nucleating force, as a clear,
rallying cry to the almost mystic passions that are peculiarly the
dominant note of the day. He fits the need of the bloodless revolution
as skin fits the hand, bringing purpose and courage to the struggle
for nobler fulfilment of the hopes and aspirations that thrilled those
who first sought refuge in the New World from the oppressions of the
Old--the struggle for real democracy.”
--_From George Creel’s “Wilson and the Issues.”_
[Illustration]
_The Massacre of the Innocents_
[The following lines are dated July, 1916. “As it stands,” writes
Mr. Howells, “the poem ignores the glorious retrieval of our former
sufferance. It might better now be called A Shame Lived Down.”--ED.]
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
What was it kept you so long, brave German submersible?
We have been very anxious lest matters had not gone well
With you and the precious cargo of your country’s drugs and dyes.
But here you are at last, and the sight is good for our eyes,
Glad to welcome you up and out of the caves of the sea,
And ready for sale or barter, whatever your will may be.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SUBMERSIBLE
Oh, do not be impatient, good friends of this neutral land,
That we have been so tardy in reaching your eager strand.
We were stopped by a curious chance just off the Irish coast,
Where the mightiest wreck ever was lay crowded with a host
Of the dead that went down with her; and some prayed us to bring them
here
That they might be at home with their brothers and sisters dear.
We Germans have tender hearts, and it grieved us sore to say
We were not a passenger ship, and to most we must answer nay,
But if from among their hundreds they could somehow a half-score
choose
We thought we could manage to bring them, and we would not refuse.
They chose, and the women and children that are greeting you here are
those
Ghosts of the women and children that the rest of the hundred chose.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
What guff are you giving us, Captain? We are able to tell, we hope,
A dozen ghosts, when we see them, apart from a periscope.
Come, come, get down to business! For time is money, you know.
And you must make up in both to us for having been so slow.
Better tell this story of yours to the submarines, for we
Know there was no such wreck, and none of your spookery.
THE GHOSTS OF THE _Lusitania_ WOMEN AND CHILDREN
Oh, kind kin of our murderers, take us back when you sail away;
Our own kin have forgotten us. O, Captain, do not stay!
But hasten, Captain, hasten! The wreck that lies under the sea
Shall be ever the home for us this land can never be.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
_July, 1916._
[Illustration]
_In the Ring to Stay_
It is Ambassador Gerard’s opinion that when the German government
issued its final insult to the United States, all the Kaiser’s advisers
were convinced that no provocation would make the American people
fight. President Wilson, they argued, had just been re-elected on a
peace platform. They counted, it was evident, upon the influence of
the millions of German-Americans to frustrate hostilities, and Herr
Zimmermann of the Foreign Office openly threatened the revolt of
500,000 German reservists in America if the United States dared “to
do anything against Germany.” The Western States were reported to be
indifferent to the technicalities of the submarine dispute. The East
was described as interested in the submarine sinkings only because they
interfered with the traffic in munitions and the profits therefrom. The
whole country was supposedly averse to war, unwilling to enter into
European entanglements, and devoted solely to peaceful industry and
money-grubbing.
Yet within a year afterwards, America had accepted conscription
and raised an armed force of two million men. It had contributed
billions of dollars to the war through government loans that were
more popularly subscribed than even the German or the English loans.
Government control had been accepted without question in every sort of
private activity. Food regulations, fuel regulations, the regulation
of industry, shipping, labor and transportation, voluntary censorship
of the press, military censorship of the cables and the telegraph and
the mails, prohibition of distilling, the enforcement of price-fixing,
the curtailment of profits and the levying of confiscatory taxes had
all been submitted to without a murmur. It had come to be a byword in
Washington that “the people could not be asked to do enough”; that the
fund of patriotism was so great it was difficult to find channels for
it; that no war in the history of the nation had ever been supported so
unanimously.
What explanation is there for the miracle of that change? Washington
believes that it is chiefly due to one man. It believes that President
Wilson, by his patient efforts to maintain peace, convinced the whole
nation of the impossibility of avoiding war before he gave voice to
that conviction. It realizes that, even then, a great mass of the
people were loyal but unenthusiastic, until he outlined the country’s
war aims in his famous messages, and at once lifted the conflict to
a higher level of purpose and gathered to his fervent support every
sentiment and hope of democracy in the land.
Washington is now convinced that the war can have but one issue. There
is no question of the outcome. The leaders of the nation are aware that
the United States is “in the ring to stay.” As the Secretary of War has
said: “The American people were slow to rouse to this war. They will be
as slow to cool. They wished peace. They still wish it. But they have
learned that there is but one way to obtain peace, and they propose to
obtain it that way. They know what they are fighting for, and they will
fight till they achieve it.”
HARVEY O’HIGGINS.
[Illustration]
“_We Attacked the ‘Fortress of London’_”
[Illustration]
_Not a Bad Start!_
Can a Republic fight a successful war? Can a people with a century and
a quarter of free thought, free speech and free press change suddenly
from words to deeds? Can custom and tradition yield gracefully to
necessity? Is the heart and brain of the Republic so impressed with
the magnitude and importance of this war as to induce it to forget the
things which are past and to press forward to the things which are
needful?
The Imperial German Staff thought not. It imagined that a people, whose
daily sport was carping criticism of their public officials, whose army
was hardly as large as a policeman’s squad, whose sentiments were all
for peace and arbitration, whose ordnance was archaic and whose only
gas-bombs were perfervid oratory could never right-about-face and set
themselves to engage in the horrific warfare desolating the fields of
Europe.
The mistake in this German opinion sprang from a misconception of what
liberty really means and of the things for which freedom really stands.
Its assumption was that there could be no courage with kindliness nor
strength with flexibility. To the slow-going mind of the methodical
German his mistaken view is beginning to appear. His first jolt came
when the traditions of a century and a quarter with reference to
military service were, without riot, tumult or disorder, set aside and
10,000,000 young men of America, without murmur, submitted themselves
to conscription. He was further prodded when he learned that, as each
successive liberty loan was presented to the people of America it was
promptly taken, and what is more important, taken by larger and larger
numbers of citizens.
No wonder Uncle Sam and the world think it no bad start that we
have made. Like all reforms, it has been accompanied by lapses, by
weaknesses, by mistakes of judgment, but through it all there has run
the golden thread of a cohesive, coherent and indomitable American
public opinion that this country, having set itself to the task of
assisting the Allies in forever freeing the world from the menace of
German military power, will never turn back in the breaking of a single
furrow until the blood-guiltiness of the German race shall be put
underneath the sod and the world shall be planted with the asphodels of
a permanent peace.
Uncle Sam still smiles confidently, knowing full well that every day
is rectifying mistakes and that every day is adding to the bull-dog
tenacity of a people, who are willing to defend to the uttermost the
principles for which they stand against invasion from without and
sedition from within.
THOS. R. MARSHALL,
_Vice-President of the United States_.
[Illustration]
_An Echo of the Luxberg Case_
The Junkers: “These Lansing disclosures are bad. We don’t know how to
counteract them because we don’t know how much more evidence he has
got.”
[Illustration]
_German Chivalry to Wounded Officers_
They do these things differently in France. While in France in May and
June, I saw many squads of German prisoners working at the railroad
stations, on the roads and in the factories. Of the several thousands
I saw, not one looked underfed, ill clothed or abused. While their
barracks did not have steam heat, electricity and all the comforts of
home, the board and lodging they received compared favorably with that
of the average French soldiers, and the franc a day thrown in as wages
could all go for extras if desired. I was told that they all preferred
to be prisoners in France rather than to return to the “freedom” of
Germany while the war lasts.
Once I obtained permission to question a gang of Prussians working in
France on an American road under a British guard. This is what they
said to me: “We believe America intends to conquer France. Certainly
you will never leave this country after having spent so much money on
docks and wharves and warehouses and railroads.”
Evidently the common German mind cannot conceive of a people going to
another’s territory and spending money there unless with some sinister,
ulterior, selfish, political motive behind it.
As Irving Cobb says, we must extract the mania from Germania.
HAMILTON HOLT.
[Illustration]
_Socialism in Germany_
It is one of the tragedies of history that the great Social Democracy
of Germany, in which liberal thinkers of all lands reposed so much
faith, proved, when the testing time came, to be utterly devoid of
intellectual and moral integrity, a base betrayer of international
Socialist ideals and a subservient tool of Prussian autocracy.
The great majority of the German Socialists, led by such men as
Scheidemann, Sudekum, David and Legien, upheld the Imperial German
Government and thus became the accomplices of the assassins of Potsdam.
These so-called “Socialists” even stooped so low as to attempt to bribe
the Socialists of other countries in the interests of the Kaiser and
his cowardly crew. In Italy and in Russia in particular, and in other
countries less effectively, they used their Socialist connections to
assist the military schemes of Germany, notwithstanding the fact that
these were designed to destroy every essential Socialist principle.
Herr David, perhaps the ablest of the leaders of the Majority
Socialists, declared in the Reichstag that “The German armies must
continue to fight vigorously _whilst the German Socialists encourage
and stimulate pacifism among Germany’s enemies_.” The whole policy of
the Majority Socialists has been based upon that sinister principle.
The small and uninfluential but heroic minority, led by Karl
Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and George Ledebour alone have exemplified
the ideals of Socialism. They deserve our lasting honor as fully as the
others deserve our lasting contempt.
Socialism is not dead in Germany: only the great political party of
Socialism is shattered. In the hearts of the brave men and women of the
Minority Socialists the sacred flame still burns. In that lies the only
hope for German Socialism.
History will record this bitter judgment of the German Social
Democracy: It was an active partner in the crimes of the Hohenzollern
dynasty against civilization; it infamously betrayed the Russian
Revolution and prostituted itself to the most malefic despotism of a
thousand years.
JOHN SPARGO.
[Illustration]
_The Spirit of German Science_
The moral revulsion of the world against the Germans is justified by
their use of science.
It is not a question of the excellence, amount, or character of
science--all subjects of legitimate debate--but of the use the Germans
make of science. While science has been used in war at all times and
has been a formidable arm in the hands of those who have known how
to use it, still the limits of its use have been fixed with more or
less rigor. Even before the conventions of The Hague were formulated,
there was the general recognition of the natural distinction between
civilized and barbarous warfare. The savage’s poisoned arrow has been
the symbol of what, though scientific, was barbarous. The murder of the
wounded soldier or of the disarmed prisoner has always been condemned
as the crime of the _apache_, not the method of the gentleman. Pity for
the innocent--women, children, even the animals--and merciful treatment
of the helpless--the drowning, the famished--seem to mark man, even in
the profession of intentional killing of his fellow-man, as moved by a
certain sentiment, a certain sense of human superiority to the brute
which takes blood simply from the love of it.
Even against the legitimate foe there are certain means of offense
so base--the use of poison in wells, the diffusion of microbes of
disease--or so treacherous--the dynamite-loaded cigar--that the
chivalrous man redresses himself at the thought of them with a shudder
of mingled moral contempt and physical nausea.
This has been the use made of science by the Germans. They have
abolished the distinction between the knight and the brute, between the
man and the snake, between pure science and foul practice. This damns
the German race.
Our grandchildren will say to their grandchildren: “You murdered
people in open boats, you bombarded audiences kneeling in churches,
you torpedoed hospital ships in plain ocean, you sent young girls into
immoral slavery, you tortured prisoners, you poisoned the wells used
by civilian populations, you did a hundred treacherous things that our
fathers and mothers shuddered to recall. _You Germans did it._”
To future generations this will damn the German race. No theory of the
super-man, of the chosen state, of the alliance with God will ever
gloss it over.
Their science may have honored the Germans, but the Germans have
dishonored science.
German science has always had the credit of making happy application
and practical use of abstract laws and formulas, chemical, physical,
biological. In applying science in war, however, it has disallowed
the moral laws which underlie all sound science and healthy life.
Here German “applied science” will remain, let us hope, for all time
unrivalled.
J. MARK BALDWIN.
[Illustration]
_Humanity and Her German Lovers_
It is not possible to judge Louis Raemaekers as an artist. He is a
voice, a sword, a flame. His cartoons are the tears of women, the
battle-shout of indomitable defenders, the indignation of humanity, the
sob of civilization. They will go down into history. They are history.
To take them, to turn page after page, is to _know_ the European War,
to see it face to face, as a child sees, and not through a glass darkly.
It is one of the great works of the world which he has done. Perhaps
genius was only dormant, waiting for the cry of general catastrophe to
bring it forth into vivid, terrific life. And yet--for who shall say
that all things in heaven and earth are understood?--it may be that
those same voices that called through the orchard of Domremy called to
the cartoonist in the office of the Amsterdam “Telegraaf,” that into
his simple soul, recommended to God by its love of flowers, there fell
a tear from on high.
_George Creel in “The Century Magazine,” June, 1917._
[Illustration]
_The Strikers_
_Striker to Agitator: “You speak very well, but when I see these
fellows I’m ashamed I ever listened to you.”_
Raemaekers’ cartoons will prove an immortal comment on the great world
war. He makes the world see that war does not create atrocities but
that war itself is the supremest of all atrocities. When the names of
battles have been forgotten the name of Raemaekers will be spoken with
gratitude and reverence by coming generations.
CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT.
[Illustration]
_1776-1917_
Men, nations, and movements are symbolized by their moments of
crisis. The long, tedious, humdrum years of life never get into
picture, never fire human imagination; even though those years are the
necessary foundations upon which great events rise. So America for
nearly a century and a half has been symbolized--at least in European
eyes--by that great moment when she rose in the world and asserted
her independent status “among the nations of the earth.” The men of
’76 have stood for American valor, American military skill, American
statesmanship. Now has come a time when “a decent respect for the
nations of mankind requires” that Americans shall again stand for their
portrait in history. This time we are standing among the civilized
nations not for independence, but for interdependence! Where once we
stood for a nation consecrated to freedom, now we stand for a community
of nations consecrated to justice. Perhaps when the new portraits are
painted in this great hour of crisis all the nations of the world will
appear in history with new faces. The soldier of the revolution of ’76;
the red-capped liberty girl of France, the conventional John Bull, the
German war lord--all will “suffer a sea-change into something rich and
strange.” And the old portraits that glimpsed the old truth about the
old world shall in the new world have but an archaic interest!
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE.
[Illustration]
“_Now, Hindenburg, Bring on the Rest of My People_”
All of us who love the Old Germany we knew, who have dear friends
there, and who have rejoiced in the happiness honest industrialism
and widespread commerce were bringing to a great people before this
terrible slaughter began feel a deep pang of sorrow as we look upon
Raemaekers’ terrible picture of what the war has brought to Germania.
The dreadful pity of it is that Germania should have brought this upon
herself by appealing to the Sword when the Temple of Peace stood open
and all her present enemies were pleading that there should be no
shedding of blood.
DAVID JAYNE HILL.
[Illustration]
_The Master of the Hounds_
“_Remember, Michaelis, every dog has his day!_”
[Illustration]
_Processional_
Not for a flaunted flag, O God,
Not for affronted power,
Not for a scurrile hope of gain,
Not for the pride of an hour,
Not for vengeance, hot in the heart,
Now have we swung to war!
Not for a weak mistrust lest peace
Is a shame strong men abhor.
Not for glory--for oh, to kill
Should be a sacred wrath:
Not for these! but to war on war
And sweep it from earth’s path!
Patient has been our creed, till now,
Patient, too, our hope,
Patient for long our loathful deed,
For the just in doubt must grope.
But with a foe at last arrayed
Against the whole world’s right,
You, O soul of the universe,
Your very self must fight.
You yourself; so but one prayer
Need we to lift--but one,
That by our battle shall all war
Be utterly undone.
CALE YOUNG RICE.
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes:
Due to space constraints some lines of the poem ‘THE CAPTAIN OF THE
SUBMERSIBLE’ on page 180 have been split.
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Small capitals have been capitalised.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
An exception is ‘Raemaekers’ for ‘Raemakers’ on page 174.
Punctuation has been retained as published.
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