The "Land & Water" edition of Raemaekers' cartoons, volume 1Raemaekers, Louis
History
The "Land & Water" edition of Raemaekers' cartoons, volume 1
Raemaekers, Louis
World War, 1914-1918 -- Caricatures and cartoons
There can be no doubting of the future. The Allied forces, who in
Raemaekers’ drawing stand for Liberty, are assuredly destined to wring
the neck of the Prussian eagle, which typifies the tyranny of brute
force.
“For freedom’s battle, once begun ...
Though baffled oft, is ever won.”
“There is only one master in this country,” the Kaiser has said of
Germany. “I am he, and I will not tolerate another.” He has also told
his people: “There is only one law--my law; the law which I myself
lay down.” It is supererogatory to dispute either of these imperial
pronouncements. The Future contents herself with the comment: “Out of
thine own mouth will I judge thee.”
The Kaiser and his counsellors have now translated words into deeds,
and every instrument of savagery has been since August, 1914, enlisted
by Tyranny in the attempt to overthrow Liberty. “A thousand years
ago,” the Kaiser once declared to his Army, “the Huns under their king
Attila made themselves a name which still lives in tradition.” The
Future replies to him that he and his fighting hordes will also live in
tradition. They will be remembered for their defiance of the conscience
of the world, which obeys no call but that of Liberty.
SIDNEY LEE
[Illustration: L’AVENIR]
Christ or Odin?
You cannot well conceive a science, whether it be mathematics,
or architecture, or philosophy, without its axioms, dogmas, or
first principles. Without them there is no basis on which to raise
the superstructure. So it is with the science of religion. Take
Christianity: if it is to be taught scientifically, it must start with
the most tremendous dogma, the Divinity of Christ. Either Christ was or
He was not what He claimed to be. If He was not, you must shout with
the Sanhedrim: “Crucify Him!” If He was, you must sing with the Church:
“Come, adore Him.” One thing is certain, you cannot be indifferent to
His claim or to Him; you must either hate Him and His creed, like the
Prussian warring Superman, or love Him and it, like England’s Crusading
Kings.
The cartoon before us is the finished picture which I can trace from
its first rough sketch in the hands of Kant, through its different
stages of development in the schools of Hegel, of Schopenhauer, of
Strauss, till it was ready for its final touches in the hands of
Nietzsche. In fancy I see it hung, on the line, in the Prussian
picture-gallery under the direction of War Lords, whose boasted aim
it is that the world shall be governed only by Prussian Kultur and
Prussian Religion.
The fatal mistake made by the Teutonic race in the past was, we are
told, the adoption of Roman culture and Roman religion. Germany once
submitted to an alien God and to an alien creed. She, the mistress
of the earth, the mightiest of the mighty, and the most Kultured of
the Kultured, had actually once worshipped “an uncultured peasant
Galilean,” and made profession of “His slave morality.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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