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.
It has been well said that no man living amidst these surging seas of blood and tears has come nearer to the rôle of Peacemaker than Raemaekers. The Peace which he works for is not a matter of arrangement between diplomatists and politicians: it is the peace which the intelligence and the soul of the Western world shall insist on in the years to be. God grant it be not long delayed, but it can only come when the enemy is entirely overthrown and the victory is overwhelming and complete.
Empire House, FRANCIS STOPFORD, Kingsway, London. Editor, _Land and Water_. February, 1916.
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AN APPRECIATION FROM THE PRIME MINISTER Downing Street, Whitehall, S. W.
Mr. Raemaekers' powerful work gives form and colour to the menace which the Allies are averting from the liberty, the civilization, 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.
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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 realize 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?