June 7, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
19 
The Genius of Raemaekers 
By Theodore Roosevelt 
This fine appreciation oj the genius of Raemaekers icas 
specially written for the Century Edition of Raemaekers' 
Cartoons, published in New Yorli, by the distinguished 
ex-President of the United States. It appears in Europe 
, for the first tims to-day. Mr. Roosevelt, in the course cf 
it, defines the attitude which he has consistently maintained 
towards the war since the invasion of Belgium. He has 
seen clearly from the first that the defeat of Germany is 
essential if righteousness is to prosper among the nations. 
Sagamore Hill, April i6th, 191 7. 
THE cartoons of Louis Raemaekers constitute the 
most jjowerful of the honourable contributions made 
bv neutrals to 
the cause of 
civilisation in the World 
War. Of course it is the 
combatants themselves 
who have furnished, for 
good or evil, the heroes 
who, in history, will stand 
out lor evermore as 
towering figures of light 
or gloom against the lurid 
background of the war. 
The weak neutral nations 
lacked the power to do 
aught, and are free from 
blame. The one neutral 
sufficiently powerful to 
have played a great ])art 
- the United States — long 
failed to play that part ; 
but, thank Heaven, before 
it was too late for our 
nation to save its soul, 
we awoke to our duty 
and entered the war. In 
these neutral countries 
certain prominent persons 
did mean things, either 
through timidity or be- 
cause of greed and gain. 
Among those who, on 
the contrary, acted man- 
lully, Louis Raemaekers 
stands foremost m the 
influence he has exerted. 
Peculiar credit attaches 
to him, and, in con- 
sequence, to his country, 
Holland ; for Holland lay 
under the very shadow of 
Germany, and therefore 
for a Hollander to beai 
testimony against the 
iniquity of Germany 
showed a dauntless soul. 
He had no national 
feeling against the Ger- 
mans ; he was himself Ex-President 
halt German by blood. 
Doubtless, had the wrong been done by England and France, 
he would have assailed them with the same flaming sincerity of 
truth-telling that he has shown in dealing with Germany. He 
decided his course of conduct as regards nations just as he would 
have decided in the case of individual men. He judged them 
on their conduct in the crisis under consideration. This 
is the hne that we all ought to take. Exactly as we admire 
the Germany of Korner and Andreas Hofer in its struggle 
against the tyranny of Napoleon's France, so we should 
sternly condemn and act against the Prussianised Germany 
of the Hohenzollerns when it sins against humanity. 
Germany enticed Austria into beginning the war by en- 
couraging her to play the part of a bully toward little Sefbia. 
She began her own share of the war by the Belgian infamy, 
and she has piled infamy on infamy ever since. She brought 
Turkey into the war, and looked on with approval when her 
ally perpetrated on the Armenian and Syrian Christians 
cruelty worthy of Timur. She had practised with cold 
calculation every species of forbidden and abhorrent brutality, 
fiom the use of poison gas against soldiers to the 
use of conquered civilians as State slaves and the wholesale 
butchery of women and children. No civilised nation in 
any war for over a century has been guilly of a tithe of the 
barbarity which Germany has .practised as a matter of cold 
policy in this contest. Her offences against the United States, 
including the repeated murder of American women and 
children, have been of the grossest character ; and all upright 
far-sighted citizens of our country must rejoice that we have 
now declared that we shall take part in the war, both for 
the sake of our own honour and for the sake of the international 
justice and fair dealing among the nations of mankind. 
One of the chief of Mr. Raemaekers' services has been his 
steady refusal to fog the issue by denouncing war or militarism 
in terms that would condemn equally a war of ruthless 
conauest. such as that waged by Germany against l^elgium, 
and a war in defence of 
the fundamental rights of 
humanity, such as that 
waged by Belgium against 
Germany. Timid souls 
who lack the courage to 
stand up for the right, and 
utterly foolish souls who 
lack the vision to stand 
up for the right, and who 
yet feel ashamed not to 
go through the motions 
of doing so, find a ready 
and safe refuge in an 
empty denunciation of 
war. This is never ob- 
iected to by the wrong- 
doer. On the contrary, 
it is in his interest ; for 
to denounce war in terms 
that include those who 
war in defence of right is 
to show oneself the ally 
of those who do wrong. 
The Pacifists have been 
the most effective allies of 
the German Militarists, 
The whole professional 
Pacifist movement in the 
United States has been 
really a movement in the 
interest of the evil mili- 
tarism of Germany. 
Raemaekers possessed 
too virile a nature, too 
high a scorn of all that is 
base and evil, to be guilty 
of such short - comings. 
His soul flamed within 
him at the sight of the 
horrible evil wrought in 
Belgium by the German 
invasion. He was stirred 
to the depths by the 
knowledge seared into his 
soul that the worst mani- 
festations of wrong-doing 
were due, not to the 
sporadic excitement of 
private soldiers who cast the shackles of disciphne, but to the 
methodical, disciplined, coldly calculated, and ruthlessly ex- 
ecuted designs of the German military authorities. With extra- 
ordinary vigour he has portrayed phase after phase of the evil 
they have done, sketching with a burning intensity of 
sympathy the sufferings of the women and children. 
He has left a record which will last for many centuries, 
which, mayhap, will last as long as the written record of the 
crime it illustrates. He draws evil with the rugged strength 
of Hogarth and in the same spirit of vehement protest and 
anger. He draws sorrow and suffering with all Hogarth's 
depth of sympathy. His pictures should be studied every- 
where. Doubtless they would do most good in Germany ; 
but with the exception of Germany, the country that needs 
them most is our own 
(iermany wronged the helpless ; we beheld the wrong-doing 
and failed to take effective action against the wrong-doers. 
All Americans worthy to call themselves the spiritual heirs 
of the men who followed Washington and upheld the hands 
of Lincoln, give fervent thanks that at last we also ha\e 
joined the other free peoples of the world in the great war 
for righteousness. 
Stanley and Co. 
Roosevelt 
