It is a fine touch, or a fortunate accident, in this sketch of Raemaekers' that it depicts the officer who has made the mistake as exhibiting the spruceness of a Prussian, and the officer who has found out the mistake as having the comparatively battered look of an old Turk. The moustaches of the Young Turk are modelled on the Kaiser's, spikes pointing to heaven like spires; while those of his justly incensed superior officer hang loose like those of a human being. The difference is in any case symbolic; for the sort of instinctive and instantaneous self-laudation satirized in this cartoon is much more one of the vices of the new Germany than of the antiquated Islam. That spirit is not easy to define; and it is easy to confuse it with much more pardonable things. Every people can be jingo and vainglorious; it is the mark of this spirit that the instinct to be so acts before any other instinct can act, even those of surprise or anger. Every people emphasizes and exaggerates its victories more than its defeats. But this spirit emphasizes its defeats as victories. Every national calamity has its consolations; and a nation naturally turns to them as soon as it reasonably can. But it is the stamp of this spirit that it always thinks of the consolation _before_ it even thinks of the calamity. It abounds throughout the whole press of the German Empire. But it is most shortly shown in this figure of the young officer, who makes a hero of himself before he has even fully realized that he has made a fool of himself. G. K. CHESTERTON. [Illustration: GALLIPOLI TURKISH GENERAL: "What are you firing at? The British evacuated the place twenty-four hours ago!" "Sorry, sir--but what a glorious victory!] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BEGINNING OF THE EXPIATION It is sometimes an unpleasant necessity to insult a man, in order to make him understand that he is being insulted. Indeed, most strenuous and successful appeals to an oppressed populace have involved something of this paradox. We talk of the demagogue flattering the mob; but the most successful demagogue generally abuses it. The men of the crowd rise in revolt, not when they are addressed as "Citizens!" but when they are addressed as "Slaves!" If this be true even of men daily disturbed by material discomfort and discontent, it is much truer of those cases, not uncommon in history, in which the slave has been soothed with all the external pomp and luxury of a lord. So prophets have denounced the wanton in a palace or the puppet on a throne; and so the Dutch caricaturist denounces the gilded captivity of the Austrian Monarchy, of which the golden trappings are golden chains.