Raemaekers

There are many ways of fighting, and the Germans, in their forty-four
years of planning to conquer the world, thought of them all. The only
forces they neglected were the mighty forces of fairness, justice,
innocence, pity, purity, friendship, love, and other similar spiritual
forces that Americans have been taught to look upon as the greatest of
all.

There is a force called Rumor which sometimes speaks the truth, but
which usually lies, that is a great power for evil and rarely for good.
The Germans used this with the Italian troops in Italy, sending into
their lines, by dropping them from airplanes and in other ways, all
sorts of rumors about Austria and Italy, about the coming collapse of
the Allies, about what great friends the Russians and Germans had
become when the Russians realized that it was foolish and wrong to
fight,--until the Italian soldiers lost the spirit which had carried
them over the Alps and very near to the conquest of Austria, and were
then easily defeated in the next powerful Austrian attack.

German agents spread stories through the papers of the United States to
help Germany in the eyes and minds of the American people. They bought
leading papers in Paris and one in New York to use in misleading people
as to Germany's actions and aims. They printed lies for their own
people to make them believe the war was forced on Germany, and that
they were fighting against the whole world, for their lives and for
liberty. They published cartoons in German papers in great numbers to
carry, even to those who could not read, the ideas about the war and
about her enemies that German rulers wished the people to believe.

The German leaders, in all lines, realize the power of advertising, and
they tried to fill men's eyes and ears with false statements of the
German cause. Not long ago almost any kind of advertisement was allowed
in the papers published in the United States. Pictures of a man
perfectly bald were printed side by side with others of a man with
flowing locks, all the result of a few applications of Dr. Quack's
Wonderful Hair Restorer, or some other equally good. Letters were
published, bought and paid for, often from prominent people, declaring
that two bottles (or more) of some patent medicine had made them over
from hopeless invalids to vigorous, joyous manhood or womanhood.
Falsehoods, or at least misleading statements, were given about
foodstuffs, either on the packages or in advertisements about them.

But the United States government soon put a stop to this
misrepresentation and compelled advertisers and food manufacturers not
only to stop lying, but even to print the truth; and the manufacture
and sale of things injurious to the public health were controlled. The
American people want honesty, frankness, and fair dealing in all
things.

The Germans seem to be a different kind of people in every way. It is
to be hoped that sometime they will cease to act as manufacturers of
patent medicines and adulterated foods were accustomed to act; but as
long as Germany is after material gain, as these manufacturers were
after money, it is very likely that she will seek to get it by deceit
and lying, until the governments of the earth oblige her to be honest,
or quit business.

It is said that it takes a long time to catch a lie. It depends,
however, upon how many get after it and how swift and powerful they
are. German lies have been counted upon as a considerable part of her
fighting forces. She has spent millions of dollars and used thousands
of men in this service. Is it not strange that one little, almost
insignificant looking Dutchman, hardly heard of before the war, has
been able almost alone to defeat the money and the men used by Germany
to hoodwink the world? But this Dutchman, Louis Raemaekers, working for
the Amsterdam Telegraf, had for years seen through German ideas and
aims. He says, "Germany has never made any secret of her ideas or her
intentions, She has always been frank, as selfish people often are. I
have seen through the German idea for more than twenty years. A
generation ago, I saw, as every one who cared to see did, what it was
leading us to; in fact, Germany told us."

And he adds about the German people: "There is only one way to reach
the modern German. Beat him over the head. He understands nothing else.
The world must go on beating him over the head until he cries 'Enough';
or the world can never live with him."

Knowing Germany, and that German victory meant the loss of all that is
really worth while in this world, the loss of liberty, and the
destruction of any government that is what Lincoln said all governments
should be, "of the people, for the people, and by the people"--Louis
Raemaekers fought Germany with his pen and his brush, and fought her so
well that the German government offered a large reward for him dead or
alive, and a leading German writer said he had done more harm to the
Prussian cause than an armed division of Allied troops.

The Cologne Gazette, in a furious article dealing with Raemaekers,
declared that after the war Germany would settle accounts with Holland
and would demand payment with interest for the damage done Germany by
his cartoons.

Taken from "Raemaekers' Cartoon History of the War," by
permission of The Century Company.]

Some of the Dutch people feared Germany so greatly that they succeeded
in bringing Raemaekers to trial for having violated the neutrality of
Holland. German influence was strong in Holland, and Raemaekers was
hated by many of his own people; but the better sense of the Dutch
triumphed, and he was acquitted.

One of his first cartoons represented Germany in the form of the
Kaiser, wearing a German uniform and spiked helmet, with a foot upon
the body of Luxemburg and a knee upon the prostrate form of Belgium,
whom he was choking to death. He holds an uplifted sword in his hand
and is saying, "This is how I deal with the small fry."

Another shows with almost sickening force the heart-breaking suffering
of Belgian mothers, as contrasted with the cruelty and hard-heartedness
of the Huns. A Belgian woman is kneeling beside a pile of dead from her
village, with an expression of almost insane suffering upon her face. A
German officer is passing, with one hand thrust into his coat front and
a cigar in his mouth. He stops to say, "Ah! was your boy among the
twelve this morning? Then you'll find him among this lot."

A third shows a German looting a house and carrying away everything
that he thinks is of value to him. The furniture is smashed and a woman
and child lie dead on the floor. The Hun is saying, "It's all right. If
I had not done it some one else might."

A fourth shows a line of hostages standing in front of a wall to be
shot for an offense that the German officer in command claims some one
in the village committed. Those taken as hostages are innocent of wrong
doing. The cartoon shows the ends of the barrels of the German muskets
pointed at the hearts of the hostages and a German officer with his
sword raised and his lips parted to give the order to fire. It shows
but four of the hostages: an old man, probably the mayor of the town; a
white-haired priest; a well-to-do man, and his son, about fourteen
years of age. The boy is asking, "Father, what have we done?"--the cry
that went up to their Heavenly Father from thousands of martyrs in
Belgium.

It is no wonder that the German rulers fear this Dutch artist more than
they do a division of soldiers. His fighting against the Huns and their
atrocities and against the German nature and teaching that made these
atrocities possible will continue in every nation of the earth, as long
as printing presses furnish pictures and people look at them.

His pen or pencil wrote a language that all could read, and they spoke
the truth so that it turned all who read it against the modern Hun.

When he visited England, one of the leading papers declared that he was
a genius, probably the only genius produced by the war; and that long
after the most exciting and interesting articles in newspapers and
magazines were forgotten, and the great number of books on the war had
been lost or stowed away in dusty garrets, his cartoons would live and
stir the indignation of men yet unborn; and that Louis Raemaekers had
nailed the Kaiser to a cross of immortal infamy.

France has honored him as one of the great heroes of the war, and has
given him the Legion of Honor.

George Creel says, "He is a voice, a sword, a flame. His cartoons are
the tears of women, the battle shout of indomitable defenders, the
indignation of humanity, the sob of civilization. They will go down in
history."

One of the wonderful painters of old Japan put so much of himself, of
his soul and heart, into every stroke of his brush that it was said,
"If a swift and keen sword should cut through his brush at work, it
would bleed."

Through the pen and brush of Louis Raemaekers has pulsed the heart
blood of suffering Belgium and horrified humanity; and for this reason,
his cartoons are inspired and move the hearts and minds of all men to
despise and condemn those who could commit such inhuman deeds.

Next: The God In Man
Previous: What One American Did

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Raemaekers