ART.
In ordinary times the caricaturist, unless he be a revolutionary, has usually to dip his pen in the small beer of personal political controversy, except when he rises to allegory about a big vague event like a meeting of the Triple Alliance, when he draws three stout ladies with different kinds of hat clasping one another's hands. War has tested the soul of caricaturists as well as the soul of obscurer people, for to rise to the heights of this terrible argument demands a high pressure of ideas, and corresponding power of expression that reaches to epic satire. With the neutral this was the more necessary, for he had to convince as well as to impress his public. Many of the aoutest ideas about the war have come from American cartoons, where the contrast between Germany's hideous deeds and high-souled oratory was most clearly apprehended. But only one artist has succeeded in giving a noble permanence to the feelings of astonishment and horror with which the world beheld the terrible bursting of walls and the tiger-spring of Germany on the freedom, honour, and security of life, the treasures of the centuries, and all that European civilization had built up so painfully through the ages. Doubtless these feelings were felt more keenly by Holland than by any other nation, but the sights and stories of the long train of Belgian misery that flocked over their borders, while it fired Dutch compassion and indignation, was also too terrible a reminder of what to a small nation the withstanding of Germany meant not to silence the outcry of all but the strongest souls. The staff of the Amsterdam paper Telegrctaf, the editor of which is now suffering for his temerity in a Dutch prison, and especially Mr. Louis Raomaekers, made that outcry resound through the world. The event produced the man in Louis Raemaekers, a landscape painter and caricaturist whose work was not hitherto known outside of his own country. A collection of his originals is on view at the Fine Art Society's Galleries, 148 Now Bond Street. The selection contains many of his best cartoons, and shows the extraordinary range and sincerity of the artist. Some of the drawings, naturally enough, are no more than good pictorial journalism ; but the effect of the whole is of a remarkably clear, brilliantly equipped talent moving at a whito-heat of indignation, but jealously controlling his message within the limitations of his art. The influence of Forain is discernible, but Mr. Raemaekers's style is too flexible and varied to be called derivative. It responds warmly to his. imagination, and weakens sur-
prisingly where there is no incentive of anger or tenderness behind it. The terrible German butcher with bloodstained hands and axe who is saying "Indeed, I am the most humane fellow in the world" has been given life because the artist really imagined him like that. The figure of Uncle Sam beside him is an old model from the caricaturist's stock. Mr. Raemaekers has not been interested enough to Imagine him.
The most imaginative work in the Exhibition is the cartoon Prom East to West, from West to East, .1 dance with thee (No. 100). It will surely be the epitaph of the German
Army—of Germany as we know her so horribly to-day. Germania in her ball dress is dancing with Death ; the joy of the beginning is indicated in the dress and the well.
nourished form, as well as the end in the face turning haggard, the weary shoulders, the dragging foot. The idea of Germany running back and forward from frontier to frontier always in the presence of death was touched on in the early part of the war in some clever verse by a Scotswoman published in the Times :— " Dance since ye're dancing, William; Dance till ye swoon ; Dance till ye ye doid, William ; We'll play the tune."
But the idea of the Kaiser is smaller. Raema,ekers shows us a nation dancing to its doom. Another famous cartoon (No. 71a) has the same queer visualizing of a subject by which he makes you believe that it is so. The Kaiser is seen sitting up in bed with strange eyes staring before him : "I had such a beautiful dream : I dreamt the whole thing was not true." It is not caricature, except in the sense of giving the Kaiser ordinary decent instincts. He is like an actor with his make-up off facing the dry light of morning. A commoner artist with the same idea would have given a lurid effect with lights and shadows. Raemaekers knows that the horror is its ordinariness. One feels that some day it must be so : some day even the Kaiser will wake- remember—and understand. But when the artist desires to shock you with horrors, they are there in penetrating forms. Thus one cartoon shows a Belgian interior with two dead men and a mother beside her murdered child laughing insanely. Outside are more dead and a smoking village. The text is "The Kultur has passed here." Another (No. 16) shows part of a railway train speeding through the night. Everything is shuttered up, but from the seams and under the doors thick blood is falling. The train is labelled "Liege to Aix-la-Chapelle." Another headed The Yser (No. 30) is a prospect of a muddy waste of waters spotted with groups of dead German soldiers drifting down to the Bea "We are on our way to Calais." The Devil is shown telephoning to Potsdam to congratulate them on the first use of liquid fire : "Hello, Potsdam! Did you thank your dear old God for this new success ? " (No. 110). The blasphemous side of the German deeds shines like an unholy light through many of his pictures.
It's Fattening Work (No. 25), showing Death, very stout, with a Prussian belt, and motto "Gott Mit Uns," is one of Mr. Raemaekers's best designs. Another terrible one (No. 150) is the Kaiser with the figures of War and Hunger in a big landscape. War and Hunger are saying : "Now you must accompany us to the end." The Kaiser says : "Yes—to the end." Some of the cartoons are a satire on war as war and on civilization. A horrible figure of Death (No. 151) drinks a cup of blood : "To your health, Civilization ! "
It is a little difficult for ass to assess coldly in these days the place of such cartoons. It would be superhuman to do so. But we feel that the fire of life is in them, and that through the preserving quality of their art many of them will carry down to posterity the verdict of the contemporary world on the great world-crime. J. B. [One word by way ef postscript. We most sincerely hope that these soul-shaking cartoons will be reproduced here in book form and widely circulated. If they are, they will, we are certain, deeply move the British people. They give expression to that neva indignatio which silently, but none the less surely, is possessing the soul of the nation.---En. Spectator.]
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