[Illustration: PEACE AND INTERVENTION--GERMAN MILITARISM ON THE OPERATING-TABLE
"For the sake of the world's future we must first use the knife."]
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If you wish to see the position of Holland look at the map of Europe as it was before August 4, 1914, and the map of Europe as it is to-day.
In 1914 Holland lay overshadowed by the vast upper jaw-bone of a monster--Prussia--a jaw-bone reaching from the Dollart to Aix-la-Chapelle.
In August and September, 1914, Prussia, by the seizure of Belgium, developed a lower jaw-bone reaching from Aix-la-Chapelle to Cassandria on the West Schelde. To-day Holland lies gripped between these two formidable mandibles that are ready and waiting to close and crush her. For years and years Prussia has been waiting to devour Holland. Why? For the simple reason that Holland is rich in the one essential thing that Prussia lacks--coast-line.
Look again at the map and see how Holland and Belgium together absolutely wall Prussia in from the sea. Belgium has been taken on by Prussia; if we do not tear that lower jaw from Prussia, Holland will be lost, and the sea-power of England threatened with destruction.
The ruffian with the automatic pistol waiting behind the tree requires the life as well as the basket of the little figure advancing toward him.
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When Raemaekers pictures Von Tirpitz to us, he does so with savage scorn. He is not the hard-bitten pirate of story--but a senile, crapulous, lachrymose imbecile; an object of derision. He fits more with one of Jacob's tales of longshore soakers, than with the tragedies that have made him infamous. But when he draws Von Tirpitz's victims, the touch is one of almost harrowing tenderness. The Hun is a master of many modes of killing, but however torn, or twisted, or tortured he leaves the murdered, Raemaekers can make the dreadful spectacle bearable by the piercing dignity with which he portrays the dead. In none of these cartoons is his _sæva indignatio_ rendered with more sheer beauty of design, or with a craftsmanship more exquisite, than in this monument to the sea-mined prey. The symbolism is perfect, and of the essence of the design. The dead sink slowly to their resting-place, but the merciful twilight of the sea veils from us the glazed horror of the eyes that no piety can now close. Even the dumb, senseless fish shoots from the scene in mute and terrified protest, while from these poor corpses there rise surfaceward the silver bubbles of their expiring breath. One seems to see crying human souls prisoned in these spheres. And it is, indeed, such sins as these that cry to Heaven for vengeance. Blood-guiltiness must rest upon the heads of those that do them, upon the heads of their children--aye, and of their children's children too. This exquisite and tender drawing is something more than the record of inexpiable crime. It is a prophecy. And the prophecy is a curse.