----------------------------------------------------------------------- "HESPERIA" (WOUNDED FIRST) Sailors of all nationality except German have from time immemorial looked upon themselves as the guardians and protectors of land folk at sea. That is why every sailor in the world, outside the doggeries of Hamburg, felt his calling spat upon and his personal pride injured by the sinking of the _Lusitania_--by a sailor. It seemed that nothing could be worse than that, and then came the sinking of the _Hesperia_, a ship filled with wounded soldiers and Hospital nurses. Raemaekers brings the fact home to us in this cartoon, not the fact of the English nurses' heroism, which goes without saying, but of German low-down common infamy. The fact has become so commonplace, so accustomed, so everyday that pictures of burning cathedrals, murdered children, and terrified women no longer move us as they did, but this artist, whose command of language seems as infinite and varied as the crimes of the criminals whom God sent him to scourge, has always some stroke in reserve, something to add to what he has said, if need be. In the case of this picture it is the medicine bottle, glass, and spoon flying off the shelf, flung to the floor by the bursting charge of Tri-nitro-toluine that adds the last touch as distinctive as the artist's signature. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE. [Illustration: Another kind of heroism--the sinking of the Hospital Ship _Hesperia_ (Wounded First)] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- GALLIPOLI