i8 
L A N D & W" A T E R 
July 20, vji6 
Raemaekers' Cartoons 
An Edition de Luxe 
HYPOCRISY, according to the German mind, is 
the besetting sin of Britons inasmuch as they 
strive to clothe materiahsm in the ill-titting 
garments of faith and endeavour to conceal the 
grosser traits of human nature under a spiritual mantle 
which frequently performs its task ill. But to sustain 
this charge of hypocrisy they would have to prove that 
nakedness is comelier and more decent than raiment. 
Carlyle, with his strong German bias, pointed out many 
years ago that all clothes are hypocrisy — " lives the 
man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw ad- 
dressing a naked House of Lords !." He did not urge 
his readers because of his truth to adopt the absolute 
sincerity of the order of the bath. But the German 
of to-day glories in the unclothed exhibition of primitive 
passions, as if man began and ended in the beast, and a 
super orang-outang was the noblest manifestation of 
human might. Nietzche. when he wrote^about the father- 
land which he called " the land of culture " cried : 
" \'crily ye could wear no better masks, ye preseijt-day 
men. than your own faces ! Who could recogrtise you ! " 
And few indeed would have recognised the present-day 
men of the land of culture imder the masks of their own 
features, were it not for the great Dutch cartoonist, 
Raemaekers. Raemaekers knew them for he had lived 
among them and alongside of them and had their blood 
in his veins. He understood the height, depth and 
breadth of the abominations of which they were capable 
and in this volume* he has painted them as they arc 
for all time. 
" To have fidelity and for the sake of fidelity to risk 
honour and blood, even in evil and perilous courses " — 
this Nietzche declared to be the voice of Germany's 
Will to Power. We now know this to be true and may 
well conceive it to be a devil's voice. It has sunk the 
Continent into a sea of blood, and it has lured Germany 
well nigh to destruction, for never again, before this 
proved accusation, can she deny she is other than she is. 
The world knows her ; the mask of her own face no 
longer deceives. Not yet is it possible to mete out the 
[)unishment that such incidents as " The Hostages " 
(Plate 8); or " The Shield of Rosselaere " (Plate lo) 
demand, but it will come. Months have already passed 
since with prophetic touch Raemaekers made the terrible 
painting (Plate 99) entitled " To the End." Here War 
and Hunger each hold the Kaiser by the hand and lead 
him onward ; underneath is written : " War and 
Hunger ' Now you must accompany us to the end.' The 
Kaiser : ' Yes to my end ! ' " Hourly it draws nearer. 
This magnificent volume contains one hundred coloured 
cartoons which have been selected by Raemaekers him- 
self. It is produced by the Fine Arts Society, and too 
high praise cannot be bestowed on the way in which the 
work has been done, both colour and line being given w ith 
striking fidelity. Particularly is this noticeable in Plate i, 
" The Adoration of the Magi," which is esteemed by 
many critics as the most beautiful as well as the most 
satirical of all Raemakers' cartoons. The edition is 
limited to ''a thousand copies ; the photograph of the 
artist, included in it. bears his autograph. The originals 
arc already scattered far and wide, wherefore this stately 
tome, which is characterised throughout by a grave 
dignity befitting the terrible subjects with which it deals, 
has an historical, value ; it will pass into libraries as the 
record of the moral atmosphere which Germany created 
of her own accord in this war, and posterity will realise 
that " f rightfulness " was no rhetorical phrase but awful 
actuality, horrible fact. 
Mr. Perry Robinson, who contributes an appreciation 
to this volume, says with exact truth : " It is doubtful if 
any artist, any painter or poet, prose writer or cartoonist 
has ever exercised so great an influence on so large a 
number of his contemporaries as Raemaekers exercises 
to-day." This is more particularly true of these islands. 
Until we in this country looked on these cartoons we did 
not believe, we could not believe, that such horrors were 
• The Great War : a. Hundred Cartoons by Louis Raemaekers. 
London ; Fine Arts Society. £10 los. 
possible at this stage of the world's progress. Our eyes 
were opened and since the cartoons were first shown in 
London, a new attit::de towards the war has been ap- 
parent in every class of life throughout these islands. 
For this revelation of (iermany's methods of warfare 
Raemaekers has placed the civilised world under a load 
of gratitude. As Mr. Robinson has well phrased it : 
'' His terrible arraignment is not the arraignment of an 
individual, bcHigerent or otherwise. . . . It is the 
\oice of eternal Right denoimring the eternal wrong ; 
of Truth accusing falsehood ; of Humanity, torn and 
bleeding, protesting against inhumanity and barbarism 
and brute \iolence. It is by \ irtue of this that Rae- 
maekers' drawings find their instantaneous response in 
the heart and conscience of every one who sees them. 
It is this that will make them \i\e indefinitely." 
The Spirit of the War 
We may not like the subjects, deeming them too horrible 
for expression ; we may criticise the art itself, but never 
can we escape from the truth that in order to uhdcrstand 
the war, the \ cry spirit of the war, and to comprehend 
all for which the Allies are fighting— liberty of life and 
action, freedom from brutal dominance, "the right of 
each nation and individual to its own separate existence 
—-one must study these cartoons. In the last Plate 
we are shown : " The Assured Future "—France, in the 
guise of a woman, strangling in her strong hands, the 
German eagle, 'l^iis was originally published in the 
Amsterdam Telcgraaf just a year ago, on I-'rance's Day, 
ic)i5. It was a bold prediction then ; it was absolute 
truth on France's Day, iyi6. l-Vance at Verdun and on 
the Somme, clutches the (ierman eagle strongly by the 
throat and slowly chokes the life out of it, and Britain, 
Russia and the other Allies help in the great work. 
To each of these cartoons Mr. E. Ciarnett has added a 
brief descriptive note, which as a rule is compiled from 
the literature of the war. One omission we regret ; 
that the date on which each was originally drawn or 
published is not given. It would often add point. For 
instance, Plate 95 — " The Sacrifice," the Madonna hold- 
ing in her arms the Sacred Babe, while round her press 
the mothers of Christendom, with their infant sons in 
their arms, whom they, too, ha\e been called on to sur- 
render " for the sake of mankind " gains a new poignancy 
if one realises that .this cartoon was originally drawn 
to appear in the Christmastide issue of this journal. 
It touched the thought of the hour in a manner no words 
could do ; it solaced many Christian mothers who on 
that sad Christmas Day were mourning the loss of 
sons. Raemaekers has been decried as a journalist, yet 
it may be said it is as a journalist he often attains the 
greatest height of his success, in that he uses his gifts to 
memorialise the thought of tlie day, or, as in this case, to 
soothe the grief of the hour. This high service to hiunanity 
is surely compatible with the noblest art. 
The appreciation of Mr. Perry Robinson concludes 
with a brief biography of the artist. Louis Raemaekers 
was born on Ajjril 6th, 1869 at Roermond in Holland ; 
his father Josephus Raemaekers was an editor and 
publisher, and mainly responsible for the restoration of 
the beautiful old church of that place ; his mother, nee 
Michcls, was a (ierman by birth. Raemaekers studied 
art in Amsterdam and Brussels. He married on July lotli, 
1902 Johanna Petronella \an Mansvelt, and they 
have three children, two girls and a boy. His home is in 
Haarlem, but he has for some little time past been 
settled in a home in England. 
Mr. Robinson tells the story how at Waals, in 
Limburg he and Raemaekers were told as a casual 
bit of gossip by the Dutch sentry on Holland's side of 
the barbed wire that marked the frontier (the seiitry 
being ignorant of their personalities) that the German 
on the other side of the wire had told him only that morning 
if he could induce the Amsterdam cartoonist, Raemaekers, 
to step across the frontier it would be worth 12,000 
marks to him. This story has been frequently repeated ; 
its authentic occurrence is here vouched for. 
