Part 8

May it be exacted to the full--from the rightful debtors!

"What have you done?" You have at all events put the rope round the necks of your murderers, and the whole world's hands are at the other end of it.

JOHN OXENHAM.

"Father, what have we done?"]

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KING ALBERT'S ANSWER TO THE POPE

The war has been singularly barren of heroic figures, perhaps because the magnitude of the events has called forth such a multitude of individually heroic acts that no one can be placed before the rest; yet, when this greatest phase of history comes to be written down with historic perspective, one figure--that of King Albert of Belgium--will stand as that of a twentieth-century Bayard, a great knight without fear and without reproach.

Action on such far-flung lines as those of the European conflict has called for no great leaders in the sense in which that phrase has applied to previous wars; no Napoleon has arisen, though William Hohenzollern has aspired to Napoleonic dignity; war has become more mechanical, more a matter of mathematics--and the barbarians of Germany have made it more horrible. But, as if to accentuate German brutality and crime, this figure of King Albert stands emblematic of the virtues in which civilization is rooted; to the broken word of Germany it opposes untarnished honour; to the treacherous spirit of Germany it opposes inviolable truth; to the relentless selfishness of Germany it opposes the vicarious sacrifice of self, of a whole country and nation for the sake of a principle. And, in later days, men will remember how this truly great king held steadfastly to the little portion of his kingdom that the invasion left him; how he remained to inspirit his men by noble example, stubbornly rejecting peace without honour, and holding, when all else was wrecked, to the remnants of that army which saved Europe in the gateway of Liege. Amid violation, desecration, and destruction, Albert of Belgium has won imperishable fame.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

"With him who broke his word, devastated my country, burned my villages, destroyed my towns, desecrated my churches, and murdered my people, I will not make peace before he is expelled from my country and punished for his crimes."]

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THE GAS FIEND

There is an order of minds that intuitively distrusts Science, detracts from the force of her achievements, and contends that devotion to machinery ends by making men machines. Many who argue thus have fastened on Germany's new war inventions as proof that Science makes for materialism and opposes the higher values of humanity and culture.

This is special pleading, for against the destructive forces discovered and liberated by German chemists in this war, one has only to consider the vast amelioration of human life for which modern science has to be thanked. Because art has been created to evil purpose, shall we condemn pictures or statues? Because the Germans have employed gas poisons in warfare, are we to condemn the incalculable gifts of organic chemistry?

Look at the eye of Louis Raemaekers' snake. That is the answer. It is the force behind this application of it that has brought German Science to shame. A precious branch of human knowledge has been prostituted by lust of blood and greed of gain until Science, in common with all learning, comes simply to be regarded by the masters of Germany as one more weapon in the armoury, one more power to help win "The Day." Every culture is treated in their alembic for the same purpose.

We may picture the series of experiments that went to perfection of their poison gas; we may see their Higher Command watching the death of guinea-pig, rabbit, and ape with increasing excitement and enthusiasm as the hideous effects of their discovery became apparent. Be sure an iron cross quickly hung over the iron heart that conceived and developed this filthy arm; for does it not offer the essence--quintessence of all "frightfulness?" Does it not challenge every human nerve-centre by its horror? Does it not, once proclaimed, by anticipation awake those very emotions of dread and dismay that make the stroke more fatal when it falls?

These people pictured their snake paralyzing the enemy into frozen impotence; the floundering Prussian psychology that cuts blocks with a razor and regards German mind as the measure of all mind, anticipated that poison gas would appeal to British and French as it has appealed to them. But it was not so. Their foresight gave them an initial success in the field; it slew a handful of men with additions of unspeakable agony--and rekindled the execration and contempt of Civilization.

As an arm, poison gas cannot be considered conspicuously successful, since it is easily encountered; but for the Allies it had some value, since it weighted appreciably the scale against Germany in neutral minds and added to the universal loathing astir at the heart of the world. Only fear now holds any kingdom neutral: there is not an impartial nation left on earth.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

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THE GERMAN TANGO

A blond woman, wearing the Imperial crown and with her hair braided in pigtails like a German backfisch, is whirling in the tango with a skeleton partner. Her face is livid with terror and fatigue, her limbs are drooping, but she is held by inexorable bony claws. On the feet of the skeleton are dancing pumps, a touch which adds to the grimness. This ghoulish dance does not lack its element of ghastly ceremonial.

The Dance of Death has long been the theme of the moralist in art, from Orcagna's fresco on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa to Holbein's great woodcuts and our own Rowlandson. In Germany especially have these macabre imaginings flourished. The phantasmagoria of decay has haunted German art, as it haunted Poe, from Duerer to Boecklin. But the mediaeval Dance of Death was stately allegory, showing the pageant of life brooded over by the shadow of mortality. In M. Raemaekers' cartoon there is no dignity, no lofty resignation. He shows Death summoned in a mad caprice and kept as companion till the revel becomes a whirling horror.

It is the profoundest symbol of the war. In a hot fit of racial pride Death has been welcomed as an ally. And the dance on which Germany enters is no stately minuet with something of tragic dignity in it. It is a common modern vulgar shuffle, a thing of ugly gestures and violent motions, the true sport of degenerates. Once begun there is no halting. From East to West and from West to East the dancers move. There is no rest, for Death is a pitiless comrade. From such a partner, lightly and arrogantly summoned, there can be no parting. The traveller seeks a goal, but the dancers move blindly and aimlessly among the points of the compass. Death, when called to the dance, claims eternal possession.

JOHN BUCHAN.

"From East to West and West to East I dance with thee!"]

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THE ZEPPELIN TRIUMPH