Mr. Raemaekers’ powerful work gives form and colour to the menace which the Allies are averting from the liberty, the civilisation and the humanity of the future. He shows us our enemies as they appear to the unbiassed eyes of a neutral, and wherever his pictures are seen determination will be strengthened to tolerate no end of the war save the final overthrow of the Prussian military power. _Signed_ H. H. ASQUITH These pictures, with their haunting sense of beauty and their biting satire, might almost have been drawn by the finger of the Accusing Angel. As the spectator gazes on them the full weight of the horrible cruelty and senseless futility of war overwhelms the soul, and, sinking helplessly beneath it, he feels inclined to assume the same attitude of despair as is shown in “Christendom after Twenty Centuries.” “War is war,” the Germans preached and practised, and no matter how clement and correct may be the humanity of the Allies, we realise through these pictures what the human race has to face and endure once peace be broken. Is “Christendom after Twenty Centuries” to be even as Christianity was in the first century--an excuse for the perpetration of mad cruelties by degenerate Cæsars or Kaisers (spell it as you will) at their games? Cannot the higher and finer attributes of mankind be developed and strengthened without this apparently needless waste of agony and life? Is human nature only to be redeemed through the Cross, and must Calvary bear again and again its heavy load of human anguish? One cannot escape from this inner questioning as one gazes on Raemaekers’ cartoons. FRANCIS STOPFORD [Illustration: CHRISTENDOM AFTER TWENTY CENTURIES] Were I privileged to have a hand at the Peace Conference, my co-operation would take the part of deeds and I should only ask to hang the walls of the council chamber with life-size reproductions of Raemaekers in blood-red frames. For human memory is weak, and as mind of man cannot grasp the meaning of a million, so may it well fail to keep steadily before itself the measure of Belgium--the rape and murder, the pillage and plunder, the pretences under which perished women and priests and children, the brutal tyranny--the left hand that beckoned in friendly fashion, the right hand, hidden with the steel. We can very safely leave France to remember Northern France and Russia not to forget Poland; but let Belgium and Serbia be at the front of the British mind and conscience; let her lift her eyes to these scorching pictures when Germany fights with all her cunning for a peace that shall leave Prussia scotched, not killed. Already one reads despondent articles, that the English tradition, to forgive and forget, is going to wreck the peace; and students of psychology fear that within us lie ineradicable qualities that will save the situation for Germany at the end.