RAEMAEKERS is never more pungent in his satire than when he deals with the efforts of Germany to penetrate the conscience and persuade the will of Holland. In the cartoon opposite we see the typical German propagandist—half-professor, half-merchant, and wholly the servile ambassador of his Government—exhibiting to the equally typical Dutch peasant the recommendations and persuasions of Germany. These are printed in Dutch for his behoof, and they declare that it can be proved by the testimony of the Ninety-Three Intellectuals that all men who are not enthusiastic about German Kultur and all who are rash enough to accuse German statesmen of breaking their word or behaving like barbarians are worthless persons of no character. He tells the Dutchman that “We Germans are fighting for the liberty of the sea, guaranteed as Prussian.” Another belt of propaganda offers advice gratis to smugglers, and urges the Dutch, in exchange for aniline dyes, to supply the German Government with tin, oil, fat, leather, india-rubber, and other such “peaceful” articles. The lowest line assures the Dutchman that the book called “J’Accuse”—which is phonetically spelt “Sjakkuus” that the Dutchman may have no doubt about it—is a vulgar production. The “Toekomst”—a virulently pro-German newspaper, subventioned from Berlin—is a genuine expression of Dutch feeling.

Thus the fat missionary in spectacles volubly attempts to seduce the grave and rather sardonic Dutch peasant, whose face is a triumph of non-committal. He holds him long in conversation, while from behind steal up the German soldiers and sailors waiting for the attention of the peasant to be wholly absorbed in the propaganda, suddenly to capture and to bind him, beyond all power of self-release. Here the satire of Raemaekers is directed against the intrigues of German diplomacy at The Hague, and the rumors which have of late been rife concerning a party of politicians in the Dutch State who have been persuaded into recommending a studied neutrality now, indeed, but a secret agreement with Germany that shall not come into force until after the declaration of peace. The draftsman warns his countrymen that they are not, in their simplicity, capable of holding their own against a combination of Teutonic violence and Teutonic guile. It may be that these Dutch disciples of Wilhelmstrasse have not the naÏvetÉ which Raemaekers sees proper to attribute to them. Their attitude has something more ignoble than simple, and they remind us not a little of the particularists of the seventeenth century, whose selfish and senseless anti-Orange policy left the Dutch without a friend in Europe. But we can confidently believe that general public opinion in Holland to-day will be too wholesome and too intelligent to pursue the suicidal path which the “Toekomst” and its German inspirers indicate.

EDMUND GOSSE.