Part 34

The human jackal is one of the most squalid and sordid creatures and features of war. We saw him in Dublin the other day emerging from his slum den to loot Sackville Street. Every battlefield feeds its carrion beasts and birds.

This picture of Belgium and its jackals is doubtless only too true. Mr. Raemakers and the Dutch have better means of knowing than we. The jackal, says the same naturalist, belongs to the Canidae, the "dog tribe." The scientific name of the true dog is Canis familiaris, "the household dog." The jackal is Canis aureus, the "gold dog." The epithet describes no doubt his colour. The human Canis aureus perhaps deserves his title on not less obvious grounds.

"The continent of Europe," the naturalist goes on, "is free from the jackal." It was supposed till yesterday to be free from the lion and tiger.

But in the prehistoric times of the cave man, geologists say, there was both in England and Europe the great "sabre-tooth" tiger. Kipling, who knows everything about beasts, knows him and puts him into his "Story of Ung": "The sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair."

To-day the cave tiger has come back and with him the cave jackal. There is a terrible beauty about the tiger. The jackal is a mean and hideous brute. But both are out of date. Did not Monsieur Capus say the other day that Europe "cannot allow a return of the cave epoch?"

HERBERT WARREN.

JACKALS (Flemish Pro-Germans): "What he leaves of Belgium will be enough for us."]

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A LETTER FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES

In this cartoon Raemaekers has contrived to indicate powerfully what is after all the dominant and peculiar note of the German people. No European nation has ever taken war--as people say so "seriously," that is, with so much concentration of attention and elaborate preparation, as has the German Empire. No people has ever had it so thoroughly drilled into its collective mind as have the German subjects of that Empire that war is not only, as all Christian people have always believed, an expedient lawful and necessary upon occasion, but a thing highly desirable in itself, nay, the principal function of a "superior" race and the main end of its being.

And yet after all the actual German is never, like the Frenchman, a natural and instinctive warrior--any more than he is, like the Englishman, a natural and instinctive adventurer. The whole business of Prussian militarism, with the half-witted philosophy by which it is justified, has to be imposed upon him from without by his masters. He fights just as he works, just as he tortures, violates, and murders, because he is told to do so by persons in a superior position, holding themselves stiffly, dressed in uniform, and able to hit him in the face with a whip.

Long before the war the absurd Koepenick incident gave us a glimpse of this astonishing docility on its farcical side. Its tragic side is well illustrated by the droves of helpless and inarticulate barbarians driven into the shambles daily (as at Verdun) for the sole purpose of covering up the blunders of their very "efficient" superiors. One could pity the wretches if there were not so considerable a leaven of wickedness in their stupidity.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

"We have gained a good bit, our cemeteries now extend as far as the sea."]

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HIS MASTER'S VOICE

The manipulation of the Press is one of the weapons which Bismarck taught German Imperialism to use. Like others it has been developed by his successors into an instrument which the master himself would hardly have recognized. It is one of the most potent means of that "peaceful penetration" of all other countries which was nothing but a preparation for war. And it has been used in the war with a purposefulness of aim and a versatility of method that betoken long and systematic study. It is a ubiquitous influence and the most subtle of all. Yet the Press is held in greater contempt by official and other ruling circles in Germany than in any other country. They despise the tool, while tacitly acknowledging its utility by unsparing use.

This curious state of things is the fault of the Press. What has rendered it such a pliant tool in the hands of German Imperialism is either credulity or venality; and both are contemptible qualities. Credulity is probably the more prevalent, at least in this country, where shoals of newspapers, blinded by their own prejudices, were the dupes of German duplicity. But there has been venality, too, both crude and subtle. The case of the "Vlaamsche Sten," here satirized by Raemaekers, is exceptional. So crude and gross a method of influencing the Press as bribing the proprietor of a newspaper (probably with the aid of threats) to hand it over with its staff and goodwill could hardly be practised where any independence survived. It was not practised with success even in conquered Flanders, for the staff, to their eternal credit, refused to listen to the new master's voice. But there are journalists who, less intelligent than the terrier, faithfully accept the voice from the Pickelhaube and wag their little tails when they hear it. To them is offered the parable which shows their relation to their master.

A. SHADWELL.

The Vlaamsche Stem (Flemish Voice), a Flemish paper, was bought by the Germans, whereupon the whole staff resigned, as it no longer represented its title.]

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HUN GENEROSITY

The All-Highest, so we are told, loves a joke at another's expense, a trait in his character essentially barbaric. Raemaekers reproduces the twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of Hapsburg. The roar of anguish from the prostrate octogenarian provokes, as we see, not pity but a grim smile. Italy's monarch, we may imagine, is muttering to himself:--

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

The bribe, wrenched from another, was, of course, indignantly rejected, but one wonders what the secret feelings of the Hapsburgs may be toward the Hohenzollerns. We know that the Turk cherishes no love for the Hun who has beguiled him, but we cannot gauge as yet the real strength or weakness of the bond between the Huns on the one hand and the Austrians and Hungarians on the other. Raemaekers has portrayed Franz Josef flat on his back. In the language of the ring he is "down and out." Possibly it may have been so from the beginning. At any rate, in this country, there is an amiable disposition to regard Franz Josef as a victim rather than an accomplice, a weakling writhing beneath the jack-boot of Prussia, impotent to hold his own. It may not be so. Time alone will reveal the truth.

But this much is reasonably certain. When peace is declared, the sincere friendship which once existed between ourselves and the Dual Monarchy may be reestablished, but many years must pass before we forgive or forget the Huns. They are boasting to-day that as a nation they are self-sufficing and self-supporting. Amen! Most of us desire nothing better than to leave them alone till they have mended their manners and purged themselves of a colossal and unendurable conceit. I cannot envisage Huns playing tennis at Wimbledon, or English girls studying music at Leipzig. The grass in the streets of Homburg will not, for many years, be trodden out by English feet; the harpies of hotel keepers throughout the Happy Fatherland will prey, it may be presumed, upon their fellow Huns. Then they will fall to "strafing" each other instead of England. And then, as now, their mouthings will provoke inextinguishable laughter.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

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