NEW PEACE OFFERS

The present policy of Germany is a curious mixture of underhand diplomacy and boastful threats. If she desires to impress the neutral States, she vaunts the great conquests that she has been able to accomplish. She points out, especially to Roumania and to Greece, how terrible is her vengeance on States which defy her, such as Belgium and Serbia, while vague promises are given to her Near-Eastern Allies--Bulgaria and Turkey--that they will have large additions to their territory as a reward for compliance with the dictates of Berlin.

But, on the other hand, it is very clear that, as part and parcel of this vigorous offensive, Germany is already in more quarters than one suggesting that she is quite open to offers of peace. As every one knows, Von Bulow in Switzerland is the head and controlling agent of a great movement in the direction of peace; while lately we have heard of offers made to Belgium that if she will acknowledge a commercial dependence on the Central Empires her territory will be restored to her.

Similar movements are going on in America, because throughout Germany still seeks to pose as a nation which was attacked and had to defend herself, and is therefore quite ready to listen if any reasonable offers come from her enemies to bring the war to a close.

The unhappy German Imperial Chancellor has to play his part in this sorry comedy with such skill as he can manage. To his German countrymen he has to proclaim that the war has been one brilliant progress from the start to the present time. This must be done in order to allay the apprehensions of Berlin and to propitiate the ever-increasing demand for more plentiful supplies of food. Secretly he has to work quite as hard to secure for the Central Empires such a conclusion of hostilities as will leave them masters of Europe. And, without doubt, he has to put up with a good many indignities in the process. "The worst of it is, I must always deny having been there." Kicked out by the Allies, he has to pretend that no advances were ever made. Perhaps, however, such a task is not uncongenial to the man who began by a.s.serting that solemnly ratified treaties were only "sc.r.a.ps of paper."

W. L. COURTNEY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW PEACE OFFERS

VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG "The worst of it is, I must always deny having been there."]

THE SHIELDS OF ROSSELAERE

The climax of meanness and selfishness would seem to be reached when an armed man shelters himself behind the unarmed; yet it is not the climax, for here the artist depicts a body of German troops sheltering themselves behind women, calculating that the Belgians will not fire on their own countrywomen and unarmed friends, and that so the attack may safely gain an advantage.

There is a studied contrast between the calm, orderly march of the troops with shouldered arms and the huddled, disorderly progress to which the townspeople are compelled. These are not marching; they are going to their death. Several of the women have their hands raised in frantic anguish, their eyes are like the eyes of insanity, and one at least has her mouth open to emit a shriek of terror. Two of the men are in even worse condition; they are collapsing, one forward, one backward, with outstretched hands as if grasping at help. The rest march on, courageously or stolidly. Some seem hardly to understand, some understand and accept their fate with calm resignation.

One old woman walks quietly with bowed head submissive. In the front walks a priest, his hand raised in the gesture of blessing his flock.

The heroism of the Catholic priesthood both in France and in Belgium forms one of the most honourable features of the Great War, and stands in striking contrast with the calculating diplomatic policy of the Papacy. There is always the same tendency in the "chief priests" of every race and period to be tempted to sacrifice moral considerations to expediency, and to prefer the empty fabric of an imposing Church establishment to the people who make the Church. But the clergy of Belgium are there to prove what the Church can do for mankind. This cartoon would be incomplete and would deserve condemnation as inartistic if it were not redeemed by the priest and the old woman.

WILLIAM MITCh.e.l.l RAMSAY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHIELDS OF ROSSELAERE

At Rosselaere the German troops forced the Belgian townsfolk to march in front of them]

THE OBSTINACY OF NICHOLAS

The venerable quip that what is firmness in ourselves is obstinacy in our opponents is ill.u.s.trated with a ludicrous explicitness in the whole tenor of German official utterance since the failure of the great drives. The obtuseness of the Allies is so abysmal (it is again and again complained in the Reichstag and through Wolff) that they are unable to see that Germany is the permanently triumphant victor. Whereas for Germany, whose cause even the neutrals judge to be lost, to hold out at the cost of untold blood and treasure is merely the manifestation of heaven-conferred German steadfastness. The Army into whose obstinate corporate head it is hardest to drive the idea of German military all-powerfulness is the Russian, of which retreating units, actually armed with staves against a superbly equipped (but innocent and wantonly attacked) foe, were so stupid as to forget how to be broken and demoralized.

And this long, imperturbable, _verdamte_ Nicholas, who was declared on the highest German authority (and what higher?) to be annihilated twice, having turned a smashing tactical defeat into strategical victory, bobs up serenely in another and most inconvenient place. Absurd; particularly when "what I tell you three times is true." ... Neonapoleon didn't remember Moscow. But he will.

JOSEPH THORP.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Why, I've killed you twice, and you dare to come back again."]

THE ORDER OF MERIT

Turkey had no illusions from the beginning on the subject of the war. If the choice had been left to the nation she would not have become Germany's catspaw. Unfortunately for Turkey, she has had no choice. For years upon years the Sultan Abdul Hamid was Turkey. Opposition to his will meant death for his opponent. Thus Turkey became inarticulate. Her voice was struck dumb. The revolution was looked upon hopefully as the dawn of a new era. Abdul Hamid was dethroned; his brother, a puppet, was exalted, anointed, and enthroned. Power pa.s.sed from the Crown, not, as expected, to the people and its representatives, but into the hands of a youthful adventurer, in German pay, who has led his country from one folly to another.

Turkey did not want to fight, but she had no choice, and so she was dragged in by the heels. She has lost much besides her independence. The crafty German has drained her of supplies while giving naught in return.

The German's policy is to strive throughout for a weak Turkey. The weaker Turkey can be made, the better will it be for Germany, which hopes still, no matter what may happen elsewhere, so to manipulate things as to dominate the Ottoman Empire after the war.

Turkey is still a rich country, in spite of her enormous sacrifices in the past decade. She has been exploited from end to end by the German adventurer, who will continue the process of bleeding so long as there is safety in the method; but Turkey is beginning to ask herself, as does the figure of the fat Pasha in the cartoon: "And is this all the compensation I get?" An Iron Cross does not pay for the loss of half a million good soldiers. Yet that is the exact measure of Turkey's reward.

RALPH D. BLUMENFELD.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ORDER OF MERIT

TURKEY: "And is this all the compensation I get?"]

THE MARSHES OF PINSK

In what are we most like our kinsmen the Germans, and in what most unlike? I was convicted of Teutonism when first, in Germany, I ate "brod und b.u.t.ter," and found the words p.r.o.nounced in an English way, slurred.

But if we are like the Germans in the names of simple and childish things, we grow more unlike them, we draw farther apart from them, as we grow up. We love war less and less, as they love it more. We love our word of honour more and more as they, for the love of war, love their word less.

There is no nation in the world more unlike us; because there is no war so perfect, so conscious, so complete as the German. And being thus all-predominant, German war is the greatest of outrages on life and death. We English have a singular degree of respect for the dead. It has no doubt expressed itself in some slight follies and vulgarities, such as certain funeral customs, not long gone by; but such respect is a national virtue and emotion. No nation loving war harbours that virtue.

And in nothing do the kinsmen with whom we have much language in common differ from us more than in the policy that brought this Prussian host to c.u.mber the stagnant waters of the Marshes of Pinsk.

The love of war has cast them there, displayed, profaned, in the "cold obstruction" of their dissolution. Corruption is not sensible corruption when it is a secret in earth where no eye, no hand, no breathing can be aware of it. There is no offence in the grave. But the lover of war, the Power that loved war so much as to break its oath for the love of war, and for the love of war to strike aside the hand of the peace-maker, Arbitration, that Power has chosen thus to expose and to betray the mult.i.tude of the dead.

ALICE MEYNELL.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MARSHES OF PINSK, NOVEMBER, 1915.

The Kaiser said last spring: "When the leaves fall you'll have peace."

They have!]

G.o.d WITH US

Three _apaches_ sit crouched in shelter waiting the moment to strike.

One is old and _gaga_, his ancient fingers splayed on the ground to support him and his face puckered with the petulance of age. One is a soft shapeless figure--clearly with small heart for the business, for he squats there as limp as a sack. One is the true stage conspirator with a long pendulous nose and narrow eyes. His knife is in his teeth, and he would clearly like to keep it there, for he has no stomach for a fight.

He will only strike if he can get in a secret blow. The leader of the gang has the furtive air of the criminal, his chin sunk on his breast, and his cap slouched over his brows. His right hand holds a stiletto, his pockets bulge with weapons or plunder, his left hand is raised with the air of a priest encouraging his flock. And his words are the words of religion--"G.o.d with us." At the sign the motley crew will get to work.

It is wholesome to strip the wrappings from grandiose things. Public crimes are no less crimes because they are committed to the sound of trumpets, and the chicanery of crowned intriguers is morally the same as the tricks of hedge bandits. It is privilege of genius to get down to fundamentals. Behind the stately speech of international _pourparlers_ and the rhetoric of national appeals burn the old l.u.s.t and greed and rapine. A stab in the dark is still a stab in the dark though courts and councils are the miscreants. A war of aggression is not less brigandage because the armies march to proud songs and summon the Almighty to their aid.

Raemaekers has done much to clear the eyes of humanity. The monarch of _Felix Austria_, with the mantle of the Holy Roman Empire still dragging from his shoulders, is no more than a puzzled, broken old man, crowded in this bad business beside the Grand Turk, against whom his fathers defended Europe. The preposterous Ferdinand, shorn of his bombast, is only a chicken-hearted a.s.sa.s.sin. The leader of the band, the All Highest himself, when stripped of his white cloak and silver helmet, shows the slouch and the furtive ferocity of the street-corner bravo. And the cry "G.o.d with us," which once rallied Crusades, has become on such lips the signal of the _apache_.

JOHN BUCHAN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: G.o.d WITH US

"At the command 'Gott mit uns' you will go for them."]