Certain publications in neutral countries, notably in America, have given room in their pages during the course of the war to little sketches--obviously part of the German system of propaganda--designed to show that the Allied estimate of German barbarities is at the very least a huge exaggeration, and is possibly altogether fabricated. The term “undue sentimentality” is frequently used; travelers in the occupied territories are represented as seeing the inhabitants quite contented under German rule and surprised at the mention of atrocities. Their conquerors are quite good people, necessarily subjecting them to strict discipline, but in no way unjust. There _may_ have been atrocities somewhere, at some time, but these travellers cannot get any reliable accounts of them. Many of the papers that publish this sort of thing are probably quite ignorant of its source; others, of course, do so with full knowledge of the merits of the case and of the reason for its publication. Evidence collected on oath from sufferers is ignored, and so cleverly are these little sketches done that one is inclined to believe the German is not so black as he has been painted. But not one of these sketches ever ventures near the subject of the _Lusitania_, the _Arabic_, the Scarborough bombardment, or Louvain--or any other of those horrors that are established beyond question in the minds of men. And wherever these German efforts at lulling the world’s conscience by sophistries appear, there should this cartoon appear also, as a corrective. Throughout half the world these murdered children lie under earth and water, and to forget them in the day when Germany fears to add more to their number would be to share this modern Herod’s infamy. E. CHARLES VIVIAN. [Illustration] _“My Beloved People”_ The old emperor of Austria was said to have very vague ideas about the present war. According to one fairly well authenticated story, he sometimes fancied himself in 1866, and hoped that his troops were killing a great many of those infernal Prussians. But Ferdinand of Bulgaria is no imbecile. He is not a very able man, though certain journalists have extolled his talents; he is merely cunning and ambitious. His subjects do not love him. He is very extravagant, and preferred, even before the war, to spend some eight months of the year in other countries, where the opportunities for amusement are greater than at Sofia. He is also a great stickler for etiquette, which his subjects despise, and his court is a queer mixture of complicated ceremony and bohemian license.