“NOW’S our chance; he’s asleep.” Mr. Raemaekers is, it must be remembered, a Dutchman, and a certain percentage of his “picture sermons” is addressed especially to the “congregation of faithful Dutch people” and meant first and foremost to be understood, and taken to heart, by them. This is one. A German officer, whose spurs act as a sort of cloven hoof and betray his real character, is posing as a Dutch pastor, or Predikant. He wears the preacher’s gown and the white bands of his sacred office, and holds before his face an elaborate and ingenious mask, representing the fat and foolish face, the snowy whiskers and innocent “goggles” of a pastor, surmounted by his professional tall hat, which it will be noticed is only the front half of the “cylinder.” The contrast of the real face behind the mask, with its grin of low cunning, is very clever.

Armed with this disguise, he has crept up to a Dutch fisherman, a Vollendammer or some one of this sort, in his fur cap, and broad-beamed breeches, peacefully sleeping on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, and, like Hamlet’s treacherous stepfather, “stealing upon his secure hour” pours into his ear from a phial the “leperous distilment” of falsehood, which, if it is not to take his life, is to poison his mind and whole being.

For the Dutch, doubtless, there is some special allusion, and perhaps the mask may suggest a portrait. But for all men everywhere the meaning is patent enough. Poison gas and poisoned wells are not the only poisoned weapons the German has used against the Allies—including our Dutch compatriots in Southwest Africa—or against neutrals the world over. The moral air we breathe, the wells of truth—he has sought to poison these also, and has not hesitated to enlist either the Catholic priest or the Lutheran pastor in his sinister service.

HERBERT WARREN.