Now, if one observes the faces of the two German naval officers in the cartoon, it is easy to understand why such outrages as this have come about. Raemaekers knows his German, and, whether he is portraying officer or man, emperor or soldier, he takes care in each case to bring out the fact that the man represented belongs to a nation that has either lost, or has not yet found, a soul. These two who stand above the guns are two of the world’s materialists, men who understand only that the end must be accomplished, no matter what the means may be.
From their soulless philosophy has arisen not only incidents like these, but the manufacture of a German God, such as the speeches of the Kaiser describe. There has arisen, too, the denial of Western Christianity altogether in a certain patronage of Islam, designed to placate Turkish opinion, a patronage that is inconsistent even with the worship of the German God. It is all means to the one end, world domination. Germany has set out to gain the whole world, and has lost what soul she had. Striving to set herself above the law, she has merely placed herself outside the law, and for this her punishment is at hand.
Certain publications in neutral countries, notably in America, have given room in their pages during the course of the war to little sketches--obviously part of the German system of propaganda--designed to show that the Allied estimate of German barbarities is at the very least a huge exaggeration, and is possibly altogether fabricated. The term “undue sentimentality” is frequently used; travelers in the occupied territories are represented as seeing the inhabitants quite contented under German rule and surprised at the mention of atrocities. Their conquerors are quite good people, necessarily subjecting them to strict discipline, but in no way unjust. There _may_ have been atrocities somewhere, at some time, but these travellers cannot get any reliable accounts of them.
Many of the papers that publish this sort of thing are probably quite ignorant of its source; others, of course, do so with full knowledge of the merits of the case and of the reason for its publication. Evidence collected on oath from sufferers is ignored, and so cleverly are these little sketches done that one is inclined to believe the German is not so black as he has been painted.