Part 35

EASTER, 1915

Ever since with the beginning of Christendom a new soul entered the body of exhausted Europe, it is true to say that we have not only had a certain idea but been haunted by it, as by a ghost. It is the idea crystallized in legends like those of St. Christopher and St. Martin. But it is equally apparent in the most modern ethics and eloquence, as, for instance, when a French atheist orator urged the reconsideration of a criminal case by pointing at the pictured Crucifixion which hangs in a French Law Court and saying: "Voila la chose jugee." It is the idea when that oppressing the lowest we may actually be oppressing the highest, and that not even impersonally, but personally. We may be, as it were, the victims of a divine masquerade; and discover that the greatest of kings can travel incognito.

Such a picture, therefore, as the cartoonist has drawn here can be found in all ages of Christian history as a comment on contemporary oppression. But while the central figure remains always the same, the types of the tyrant and the mocker hold our temporary attention; for they are sketched from life and with a living exactitude. Upon one of them especially it would be easy to say a great deal: the grinning Prussian youth with the spectacles and the monkey face, who is using a Prussian helmet instead of the crown of thorns.

Such a scientific gutter-snipe is the real and visible fruit of organized German education; he is a much truer type than any gory and hairy Hun. In the face of that young atheist there is everything that can come from the congestion of the pagan with the parvenu; all the knowingness that is the cessation of knowledge; and that something which always accompanies real atheism--arrested development.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

"And they bowed the knee before Him."]

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PAN GERMANICUS AS PEACE MAKER

Imagine the feelings of the hindlegs of a stage elephant on being told that the performance is to be a continuous one and you will have some inkling of the dismay of the Kaiser and his henchman, concealed in the plumage of the War Eagle and the Dove of Peace respectively. The one bird is as useless as the other in bringing the war to the end desired in Berlin. The stage eagle is daily losing its plumage, and is rapidly becoming but a moulty apology for the king of birds. As for the dove, it has been used so often, with constantly changing olive branch in its beak, that it now makes its appearance shamefacedly and absolutely without heart.

Imperial eagle mask with half-mad military quasi-deity inside and dove of peace, on the German model, with calculating miscalculating statesman, you rang the curtain up, you cannot ring it down, either to the music of the Hymn of Hate or the Te Deum for peace--the eagle can no longer look boldly straight into the sun, looking for his place in it; the dove has taken permanent quarters in the German ark as it whirls round and round in the whirlpool of impotent effort, ever drawing nearer to the final crash. When the Dove of Peace does come, it will be a real bird of good omen, not a German reserve officer masquerading as one.

ALFRED STEAD.

THE DOVE: "They say they do not want peace, as they have time enough."

THE EAGLE: "Alas! That is just what we haven't got."]

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GOTT MIT UNS

This picture is a perfectly accurate symbolic study of the German Empire. Therefore, naturally, it is one of the most dreadful that were ever drawn. In all the gruesome "Dances of Death" in which the fifteenth century took so grim a pleasure, no artist ever conceived the horrible idea of a fat skeleton. But we have not only conceived the thought, we have seen the thing--"a terror in the sunshine." We know that chest, puffed up with a wind of pride, and that stomach heavy with slaughter and rich living; and above them the Death's Head. We have seen it. We have felt its foul breath. Its name is Prussia.

Look at a portrait of Frederick the Great, the "onlie true begetter" of this abortion. It oddly suggests what Raemaekers has set down here: the face a skull, the staring eyes those of a lost soul. But the skeleton has grown fat since Frederick's day--fat on the blood and plunder of nations. Only there is no living flesh on its bones, nothing of humanity about it.

"Can these dry bones live?" was the question asked of the prophet. It might have been asked of Frederick: "Can this nation live, created of your foul witchcraft, without honour, without charity, without human brotherhood or fellowship, without all that which is the flesh and blood of mankind?" The answer must have been that it could live, though with a life coming from below and essentially infernal. It could live--for a time. It could even have great power because its time was short.

But now it has waxed fat--and kicked. And its end is near.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

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OUR LADY OF ANTWERP

"Here I and sorrows sit. This is my throne, bid Kings come worship it." Such seems to be an appropriate legend for Raemaekers' beautiful triptych which he has entitled "Our Lady of Antwerp." Full of compassion and sympathy for all the sufferings of her people, she sits with the Cathedral outlined behind her, her heart pierced with many agonies. On the left is one of the many widows who have lost their all in this war. On the right is a soldier stricken to death, who has done his utmost service for his country and brings the record of his gallantry to the feet of Our Lady of Antwerp.

Antwerp, as we know, was at the height of its prosperity in the sixteenth century. We have been told that no fewer than five hundred ships used to enter her port in the course of a day, while more than two thousand could be seen lying in her harbour at one time. Her people numbered as many as one million, her fairs attracted merchants from all parts of Europe, and at least five hundred million guilders were put into circulation every year. We know what followed. Its very prosperity proved a bait to the conqueror. In 1576 the city was captured by the Spaniards, who pillaged it for three days. Nine years later the Duke of Parma conquered it, and about the time when Queen Elizabeth was resisting the might of Spain Antwerp's glory had departed and its trade was ruined. At the close of the Napoleonic wars the city was handed over to the Belgians.

A place of many memories, whose geographical position was well calculated to arouse the cupidity of the Germans, was bound to be gallantly defended by the little nation to which it now belonged. Whether earlier help by the British might or might not have altered the course of history we cannot tell. Perhaps it was not soon enough realized how important it was to keep the Hun invader from the sacred soil. At all events we do not look back on the British Expedition in aid of Antwerp in 1914 with any satisfaction, because the assistance rendered was either not ample enough or else it was belated, or both. So that Our Lady of Antwerp has still to bewail the ruthless tyranny of Berlin, though perhaps she looks forward to the time when, once more in possession of her own cities, Belgium may enter upon a new course of prosperity. We are pledged to restore Belgium, doubly and trebly pledged, by the words of the Prime Minister, and justice will not be done until the great act of liberation is accomplished.

W. L. COURTNEY.

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DEPORTATION