The "Land & Water" edition of Raemaekers' cartoons, volume 1

The nations are being educated amain, let us hope. Germany has prided herself on her education, her learning, and on her Kultur. To-day she is beyond the calculation of all that foresight which has been her boast, and foible. Human nature, other than German, has not been on the national curriculum, and, as in other departments of study, what has not been reduced to rule and line is beyond the ken and apprehension. How stupendously wrong a Power which could count, and into a European War! on insurrection in India, the Cape, and other parts of the British Empire! and how naively did Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg disclose the Zeitgeist of German rulers when with passion he declared Britain to be going to war for “a scrap of paper”! A purpose to serve, a treaty becomes “a scrap”—in German courtly hands.

The artist depicts a scene, with masterly pencil, where von Bethmann-Hollweg himself is charged by the All-Highest to be schoolmaster. It is a grim department of the training. Think of the unseen as well as that shown. What you do see is the lordly, truculent Kaiser, raising that menacing finger again. In spacious chair, he sits defiant, aggressive, as a ferocious captain; and there opposite is the “great Chancellor,” bent, submissive, apprehensive, tablet and pencil ready to take down the very word of Kaiserly wisdom and will. What is it? The day’s fare for a week! reaching a climax of “No dinner” on Saturday, and “Hate” on Sunday! Educative! of course it will be.

Some day, not so far, even the German people will not regard the orders of the Army and Navy Staff, the cruel mercies of the Junkers, as a revelation of Heaven’s will. Three pounds of sugar for a family’s monthly supply will educate, even when the gospel of force has been preached for fifty years to a docile people. Many of us are in “a strait betwixt two” as we see how thousands of inoffensive old men, women, and children are made to suffer, are placed by the All-Highest in this Copper and Hate School. It is not this, that, and the other that causes this, but the Director of the School, who does not, while the miserable scholars do, know what it is to endure “No dinner,” not only on Saturdays, but many other days. And all to gratify the mad projectors imposing Kultur on an unwilling world!

W. M. J. WILLIAMS