The strong religious tendency which so often distinguishes his work makes one instinctively ask to what Church does the artist belong. He replies that he belongs to none, but was brought up a Catholic, and his wife a Protestant, and the differences which in later life severed each from their early teaching caused them to meet on common ground. But the intense Christian feeling of these drawings is beyond cavil or dispute: they again and again bring home to the heart the vital truths of the Faith with irresistible force, and the artist ever expresses the Christianity, not perhaps of the theologian, but of the honest and kindly man of the world. Praise has been bestowed upon his work by several German papers--qualified praise. The _Leipziger Volkszeitung_ has declared that Raemaekers’ cartoons show unimpeachable art and great power of execution, but that they all lack one thing. They have no wit, no spirit. Which is true--in a sense. They do lack wit--German wit; they do lack spirit--German spirit. And what German wit and German spirit may be one can comprehend by a study of Raemaekers’ cartoons. * * * * * The cartoons by Louis Raemaekers properly need no introduction, since they explain themselves in every line. But it might be usefully pointed out that, so far, our Fleet has saved us from actual sight of Germany’s war methods. What shells and bombs we know have arrived from the blue, lacking the personality of the despatchers. Raemaekers lives on the other side of an electrified wire within a very short distance of the slaughter-houses at work. He has dealt with people still bloody, sweating, and dusty from their flight. He knows, or he knows friends who know men and women dead or dishonoured, or in present peril of murder or rape. He understands, as well as all his countrymen, that Belgium is being vivisected on Holland’s doorstep, that Holland may take warning. He is more than any resident in Great Britain _of_ that tragedy. His evidence then is as unimpeachable as his art. Raemaekers also realises in his presentments what we do not--that the German foulness in war is an integral part of the German philosophy of life, and when the armies give themselves up to their reasoned abominations, it is no more than Germany going joyously to the realisation of the depraved dreams which have been instilled into its mind in peace. He does not lose his temper over the fact. His line cuts as deeply as possible because he knows not only the visible act, but the life-tendency which made the act inevitable. We do not. We still keep the idea that certain things “are not done.” Our geographical position prevents us feeling the pressure that keeps the neutral nations quiet and useful to Germany. Our caricaturists only see the outside of things. So it happens that we who would be most affected by defeat are the least affected now in our own minds. * * * * *