February 21, 191 8 
Land & Water 
German War Medals : By Hilaire Belloc 
THERE has been published by Messrs. Longmans, 
Green and Co. a notice of the Ccmmemcrative 
Medals struck in Germany during the course of 
the war. It is written by Mr. G. F. Hill, the 
Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals 
in the British Museum. It is amply illustrated by photo- 
graphs of the casts exhibited in the Victoria and Albert 
Museum in South Kensington. It costs sixpence and is, for 
the quiet student of history, the best sixpenn'orth.I have ever 
come across. 
Nothing is more difficult than to draw attention to the bad. 
When it is positively comic one can stir the reader to attention. 
So one can when it is in some way morally abominable. But 
mere badness in art, mere evidence of incapacity, is a very 
difficult thing to emphasise and to present. Turning over 
these few pages (there are 32 of them) and considering by what 
a vast distance the graphic power of the German has declined 
in modem times, I have wondered whether it was possible so 
to put the thing in print that I could translate my emotions 
to my reader. Perhaps I shall fail, but there is a parallel 
that will help me. Read these two passages consecutively : 
" When she dbcovered he would not return 
She ceased to hope for him, and went about 
Her household business showing no concern, 
Although she felt acutely." 
Having read this, peruse the following : 
But thou, not poppy nor mandragora 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world. 
Can woo thy soul again to that sweet sleep - 
Which thou owedst yesterday. 
Both these passages are in heroic unrhjined English iamWc 
pentameters. The first is exceedingly bad ; the second is 
exceedingly good. If you were told that the writer of the 
second had, after some changes in his morals and way of 
living, come to be capable of writing the first you would 
righUy decide that he had become degraded. 
Now modern Germany, inspired by Prussia, has declined 
just as far in the matter of plastic art from the oldest and 
highest German standards as the distance between the first 
and second of these quotations. Even under the tremendous 
■stress of this war it can only produce this amazing collection 
of medals. That is the xeal interest of the pamphlet ; that is 
the real lesson it conveys. 
Why is it ? Something of the sort was to be expected, 
perhaps, by anyone who had seen the building and sculpture 
of modem Germany — that is of the Germai^ which grew 
more and more degraded in the last fifty years. There is a 
contrast of the same sort between the Old Palace in Berlin 
of society permits it to acclaim the sinking of a passenger 
ship and the murder of women, children, and neutral civilians, 
without warning as an act of war, the acclamation will take 
many forms, and evil though its motive is might take the 
form of fine art. The excesses of the French Revolution 
were undoubtedly immoral and even grossly immoral ; but 
they produced a great deal of magnificent rhetoric and a few 
bits of really good verse. What is remarkable in these 
German efforts is not the perversion of their motive — we 
are all familiar with that, and we all expect it — it is their 
inability to create anything above, the very lowest level 
which, one imagines, plastic art could touch. One feels that 
the modern German might have the noblest motives and yet 
be equally inept. This famous Lusitania medal* was, of 
course, intended by Gotz, its author, for nothing more than 
propaganda. It was an error to say, as many said, that it 
was an official commemoration. But I do not see what 
The Sinking of the Lusitania. 
and the Reichstag or the Alley of Victory — the last of which 
is much worse than the old Westminster Aquarium. There 
is a still more startling contrast between the early nineteenth 
century centre of Munich and the modern quarters of that 
town. One could give innumerable instances. 
Why is it ? Without trying to answer this question I will 
digress for a moment upon the term of all this. Things 
cannot go on getting worse indefinitely. A lower stage of 
national art than that which these medals show has never been 
reached and cannot, I think, be reached. 
I have read, especially in the English Press, many denuncia- 
tions of the immorality of those who could issue a medal to 
commemorate the sinking of the Lusitania. I hav? never quite 
agreed with these criticisms. If the religion or philosophy 
The German Crown Prince. 
On the reverse is " Young Siegfried " attacking a chimera-like 
monster with four heads. — Bear for Russia, Unicorn for EnglcUid, 
Lion for Belgium, and Cock for France. 
difference that makes. It ought to be impossible for any 
white man making a medal at all to model as badly as that, 
or, at any rate, for his friends, to allow him to issue such im- 
possibly bad material. And the curious thing is that this 
debased standard is found throughout the whole series, even 
where the subject lends itself to reasonable treatment. 
For instance, there is a medal to commemorate the martial 
ability of the Crown Prince, who is compared to Hercules. 
That, of course, is purely conventional. It is exceedingly 
unlikely that any Royalty of the modem sort should have 
the highly specialised capacity required of a great General ; 
and the weak profile of the young man (accurately given but 
rather more startling than life) would at once put an end 
to any such claim. None the less, there is nothing unusual 
or absurd in these conventions. 
There is one exception to all this. It is the medal (the 
loth of this series) which commemorates the German advance 
on Paris, struck in the first days of the war when foreign 
conquest was admittedly the German aim. It bears the 
legend " To Paris, IQ14," upon the one side, with a naked 
figure upon a horse holding what I think is a torch in the 
left hand ; upon the other side is the face of the ablest of the 
German Generals, Von Kluck. It is not a good piece of work, 
but it is normal and tolerable. 
Mr. Hill suggests that this medal may have been with- 
drawn. It is obviously inconvenient, politically, that it 
should remain in circulation after the Mame. He tells us 
that it has, at any rate, proved difficult to obtain in neutral 
countries. That is a pity, for it is much the least disgraceful 
of the series. Its author is a certain A. Lowental ; and perhaps 
the German authorities (who carefully collect all foreign 
criticism, and before whose eyes this humble notice will pass) 
will give him orders for further work during such interval 
as may remain between the present time and the moment 
when German medals upon the war will no longer appear. 
Upon the evidence of this pamphlet, at least, this A. Lowental 
would seem to be the only man capable of reaching in the art 
of the medallist the level reached in, say, English prose, by 
the sober announcements of our Post Office. 
There are those who think that bad art is a proof of national 
greatness. They may increase their admiration of Pmssia 
by studying her medals. 
• Replicas of the Lusitania medal can be obtained from the 
Souvenir Medal Committee, 32 Duke Street, Manchester Square, 
the proceeds being given to St. Dunstan's Hostel for the BImd. 
