Barbed Wire
Save for the spiked helmets, the gruesome figures in the foreground of this cartoon might have belonged in life to any one of the warring nationalities. It is a noteworthy fact, however, that not one of the nations at war has shown so little care for its dead as Germany, whose corpses lie and rot on every front on which they are engaged.
The world cannot blame Germany for the introduction of barbed wire as an accessory of war, though it is well known that German wire surpasses any other in sheer devilish ingenuity; not that it is more effective as an entanglement, but its barbs are longer, and are set more closely together, than in the wire used by other nationalities; it is, in short, more frightful, and thus is in keeping with the rest of the accessories of the German war machine.
But this in the cartoon is normal barbed wire, with its normal burden. One may question whether the All-Highest War Lord, who in the course of his many inspections of the various fronts must have seen sights like this, is ever troubled by the thought that these, his men, lie and hang thus for his pleasure, that their ghastly fate is a part of his glorious plan. He set out to remake the world, and here is one of the many results—broken corpses in the waste.
Part of the plan, broken corpses in the waste. By the waste and the corpses that he made shall men remember the author and framer of this greatest war.
E. CHARLES VIVIAN
BARBED WIRE