Part 10

"You would make me believe that I shall have my cub given back to me, but I know I shall have to fight for it."]

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AHASUERUS II.

The legend of the Wandering Jew obsessed the imagination of the Middle Age. The tale, which an Armenian bishop first told at the Abbey of St. Albans, concerned a doorkeeper in the house of Pontius Pilate--or, as some say, a shoemaker in Jerusalem--who insulted Christ on His way to Calvary. He was told by Our Lord, "I will rest, but thou shalt go on till the Last Day." Christendom saw the strange figure in many places--at Hamburg and Leipsic and Lubeck, at Moscow and Madrid, even at far Bagdad. Goodwives in the little mediaeval cities, hastening homeward against the rising storm, saw a bent figure posting through the snow, with haggard face and burning eyes, carrying his load of penal immortality, and seeking in vain for "easeful death." There is a profound metaphysic in such popular fancies. Good and evil are alike eternal. Arthur and Charlemagne and Ogier the Dane are only sleeping and will yet return to save their peoples; and the Wandering Jew staggers blindly through the ages, seeking the rest which he denied to his Lord.

In George Meredith's "Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History" there is a famous passage on Napoleon. France, disillusioned at last,

"Perceives him fast to a harsher Tyrant bound; Self-ridden, self-hunted, captive of his aim; Material gradeur's ape, the Infernal's hound."

That is the penalty of mortal presumption. The Superman who would shatter the homely decencies of mankind and set his foot on the world's neck is himself bound captive. He is the slave of the djinn whom he has called from the unclean deeps. There can be no end to his quest. Weariness does not bring peace, for the whips of the Furies are in his own heart.

The Wandering Jew of the Middle Age was a figure sympathetically conceived. He had still to pay the price in his tortured body, but his soul was at rest, for he had repented his folly. Raemaekers in his cartoon follows the conception of Gustave Dore rather than that of the old fabulists. The modern Ahasuerus has no surety of an eventual peace. We have seen the German War Lord flitting hungrily from Lorraine to Poland, from Flanders to Nish, watching the failure of his troops before Nancy and Ypres, inditing grandiose proclamations to Europe, prophesying a peace which never comes. He is a figure worthy of Greek tragedy. The [Greek: hubris] which defied the gods has put him outside the homely consolations of mankind. He has devoted his people to the Dance of Death, and himself, like some new Orestes, can find no solace though he seek it wearily in the four corners of the world.

JOHN BUCHAN.

"Once I drove the Christ out of my door, now I am doomed to walk from the Northern Seas to the Southern, from the Western shores to the Eastern mountains, asking for Peace, and none will give it to me."--From the Legend of the "Wandering Jew"]

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OUR CANDID FRIEND

The position of Holland and Denmark is one of excruciating anxiety to the citizens of those countries. They know that the Allies are fighting the battle of their own political existence, but they are so hypnotized with well-founded terror of the implacable tyrant on their flank that they are not only bound to neutrality, but are afraid to express their sympathies too plainly. Dutch editors have been admonished and punished under pressure from Berlin; the brilliant artist of these cartoons is in danger on his native soil. A leading German newspaper has lately announced that "we will make Holland pay with interest for these insults after the war." A German victory would inevitably be followed in a few years by the disappearance from the map of this gallant and interesting little nation, our plucky rival in time past, our honoured friend to-day. No nation has established a stronger claim to maintain its independence, whether we consider the heroic and successful struggles of the Dutch for religious and political liberty, their triumphs in discovery, colonization, and naval warfare, their unique contributions to art, or the manly and vigorous character of their people. It is needless to say that we have no designs upon any Dutch colony!

THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.

GERMANY, TO HOLLAND: "I shall have to swallow you up, if only to prevent those English taking your colonies."]

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PEACE AND INTERVENTION

Here is pictured a grim fact that the Peace cranks would do well to see plainly. The surgeon who is operating on a cancer case cannot allow himself to be satisfied with merely the removal of the visible growth which is causing such present agony to the patient. He must cut and cut deep, must go beyond even the visible roots of the disease, slice down into the clear, firm flesh to make sure and doubly sure that he has cut away the last fragment of the tainted tissues. Only by doing so can he reasonably hope to prevent a recurrence of the disease and the necessity of another operation in the years to come. And so only by carrying on this war until the last and least possibility of the taint of militarism remaining in the German system is removed can the Allies be satisfied that their task is complete. Modern surgery has through anaesthetics taken away from a patient the physical pain of most operations, but modern War affords no relief during its operation. That, however, can be held as no excuse for refusing to "use the knife." What would be said of the surgeon who, because an operation--a life-saving operation--was causing at the time even the utmost agony, stayed his hand, patched up the wound, was content only to stop the momentary pain, and to leave firm-rooted a disease which in all human probability would some time later break out again in all its virulence? What would be said of such a surgeon is only in lesser degree what would be said by posterity of the Allies if they consented or were persuaded to apply the bandage and healing herbs of Peace to the disease of Militarism, to make a surface cure and leave the living tentacles of the disease to grow again deep and strong. But here at least the doctors do not disagree. Once and for all the Ally surgeons mean to make an end to Militarism. The sooner the Peace cranks and Germany realize that the sooner the operation will be over.

BOYD CABLE.

"For the sake of the world's future we must first use the knife."]

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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

If you wish to see the position of Holland look at the map of Europe as it was before August 4, 1914, and the map of Europe as it is to-day.

In 1914 Holland lay overshadowed by the vast upper jaw-bone of a monster--Prussia--a jaw-bone reaching from the Dollart to Aix-la-Chapelle.

In August and September, 1914, Prussia, by the seizure of Belgium, developed a lower jaw-bone reaching from Aix-la-Chapelle to Cassandria on the West Schelde. To-day Holland lies gripped between these two formidable mandibles that are ready and waiting to close and crush her. For years and years Prussia has been waiting to devour Holland. Why? For the simple reason that Holland is rich in the one essential thing that Prussia lacks--coast-line.

Look again at the map and see how Holland and Belgium together absolutely wall Prussia in from the sea. Belgium has been taken on by Prussia; if we do not tear that lower jaw from Prussia, Holland will be lost, and the sea-power of England threatened with destruction.

The ruffian with the automatic pistol waiting behind the tree requires the life as well as the basket of the little figure advancing toward him.

He has been in ambush for forty years.