The Commemorative Medal in the Service of Germany. By G.
F. Hill. (Longmans and Co. 6d. net.)—The Keeper of the Department of Coins at the British Museum gives an instructive account, with illustrations, of some of the hundreds of medals struck in Germany to commemorate certain phases of the war. The Lusitania ' medal is notorious, but it is only one of a class. Of two Tirpitz medals Mr. Hifi says :— " The German Neptune, who shakes his fist and shouts his curses at the British ships as they sink in the offing, betrays by his attitude nothing but impotent and childish rage ; the conch through which, on another medal, he blows defiance at the shores of England, is so modelled as to suggest a paper bag, which will eventually be burst with due effect ; and Professor Sturm, with masterly ineptitude, has chosen the words : ' Our orders are to sink the ship and save the crew,' as a motto for a strange scene in which a boat containing the crew of a sinking ship is coming alongside a submarine, on the forepart of which are two gigantic rate, larger in scale than any human being."
The unconscious humour of medals like these compensates for the feebleness of the art, but the satiric medals of the Lusitania ' type have no redeeming feature, and testify only to the horribly depraved taste of the artists and their patrons. It has been reserved for Germany to debase the medallist's art as it has never been debased before, and it is impossible in this case to blame the Government and not the people.
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