Kultur in Cartoons: With accompanying notes by well-known English writersRaemaekers, Louis
History
Kultur in Cartoons: With accompanying notes by well-known English writers
Raemaekers, Louis
World War, 1914-1918 -- Caricatures and cartoons
In the hideous record of what took place at Wittenberg, the fact which
to me, personally, stands out in grotesque salience is the cowardice of
the Hun doctors, who lied, incontinent, from the ravages of the
pestilence which their negligence had provoked. In England, before the
war, Hun doctors were exalted above our own. That we owe much to their
indefatigable patience and research cannot be denied. To belittle their
achievements, especially in bacteriology, would be fatuous. And it would
be as fatuous to indict the courage of the many because we hold
indisputable evidence of the cowardice of the few. Nevertheless, the
facts of Wittenberg remain, an indelible stain upon the Herren
Professoren, and Raemaekers, in this cartoon, indicates unerringly the
cause which brought about so ignominious a retreat.
They had turned their faces from that ineffable Face which looks down in
sorrow and pity upon the sufferings of Mankind.
However we may regard that Face, whether as a precious symbol of the
Love which redeemed the world or as a Real and Divine Presence, this
much is certain. What It stands for in the history of civilization
cannot be ignored. It sustained the early martyrs and countless myriads
since during bitter hours of suffering and torment; It has illumined all
battlefields; It shines most steadfastly in storm and stress; It loses
its incomparable splendor only in the sunshine of a too smug prosperity.
The doctors of Wittenberg may have glimpsed It, and glimpsing It reviled
It! Even to them that Face, divested by them of divine attributes, must
possess a material significance, inasmuch as none can escape sorrow and
pain. The cartoonist portrays the “All-Highest” hiding behind the
colossal image of Culture, the culture which has sprung to life at his
touch, the machine which has mastered its monarch, the machine which
defies God!
Cowering behind that machine, aghast at the power he is unable to
control, we may leave the “All-Highest,” who boasts that he is God’s
vice-regent upon earth.
Culture at Wittenberg!
Culture bolting from Wittenberg!
Perhaps Raemaekers will give us a cartoon showing the back of Culture.
We behold her in this cartoon crowned: we should like to see her
uncrowned.
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.
[Illustration]
_The “Civilians”_
Here, with a vengeance, is majesty shorn of its externals. Although in
this cartoon we get Raemaekers in lighter vein, yet the irony and force
of the artist are as fully expressed as in those grimmer studies from
which he who runs may read the fate of Belgium, of Serbia, and of the
many non-combatants who have found death at sea through Germany’s mad
dream of conquest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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