Humanity and Her German
Lovers
IT is not possible to judge Louis Raemaekers as an artist. 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 into history. They are history. To take them, to turn page after page, is to know the European War, to see it face to face, as a child sees, and not through a glass darkly.
It is one of the great works of the world which he has done. Perhaps genius was only dormant, waiting for the cry of general catastrophe to bring it forth into vivid, terrific life. And yet—for who shall say that all things in heaven and earth are understood?—it may be that those same voices that called through the orchard of Domremy called to the cartoonist in the office of the Amsterdam “Telegraaf,” that into his simple soul, recommended to God by its love of flowers, there fell a tear from on high.
George Creel in “The Century Magazine,” June, 1917.