America in the War / Each cartoon faced with a page of comment by a distinguished American, the text forming an anthology of patriotic opinion

Chapter 53: Higher Than a Sour Apple Tree

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About This Book

A curated series of wartime political cartoons by the illustrator is presented alongside short essays, speeches, and comments from prominent American public figures, combining visual satire with patriotic commentary. The paired items argue against militarism and autocracy, depict enemy actions as moral threats, and urge national mobilization, justice, and international accountability. Organization alternates bold, satirical plates with reflective or polemical pages, offering a mosaic of themes—sacrifice, democracy, reparation, and the moral stakes of conflict—intended to sway public opinion and explain the case for engagement.

Higher Than a Sour Apple Tree

OTHER wars end with those who made them. It is the will of the German Emperor that his war should pass on like a blight from generation to generation upon those whose fathers dared to stand against the ravager. To this end he has not only slaughtered and enslaved the defenders; he has sought to destroy the very fruitfulness of the land whereby their descendants must live.

To me the deliberate, coldly reckoned murder of the invaded countries’ trees and vines so that the children of the slain and enslaved and their children’s children may draw no sustenance from the kindly earth—that seems the most perverse, the most detestable, the most typical of all the crimes of Kaiserism.

The sterilization of Mother Earth! It took the mind of a Wilhelm to conceive it. And for that offence against generations unborn he shall hang, higher than was ever ruler before him, gibbeted in the righteous hatred of an outraged posterity.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS.