THE circumstances of the incident depicted in this cartoon are well known. A British submarine was stranded, helpless, on the Danish coast. Its men were lined up—as men once lined up on the Birkenhead—and stood at attention while German guns poured shell on them and their craft. Further, this happened in Danish territorial waters, where, by all the laws of humanity, and by the law of nations as well, the crew of the submarine were entitled to consider themselves immune. Had there been any respect for international law on the part of their aggressors, they would have been immune.

Now, if one observes the faces of the two German naval officers in the cartoon, it is easy to understand why such outrages as this have come about. Raemaekers knows his German, and, whether he is portraying officer or man, emperor or soldier, he takes care in each case to bring out the fact that the man represented belongs to a nation that has either lost, or has not yet found, a soul. These two who stand above the guns are two of the world’s materialists, men who understand only that the end must be accomplished, no matter what the means may be.

From their soulless philosophy has arisen not only incidents like these, but the manufacture of a German God, such as the speeches of the Kaiser describe. There has arisen, too, the denial of Western Christianity altogether in a certain patronage of Islam, designed to placate Turkish opinion, a patronage that is inconsistent even with the worship of the German God. It is all means to the one end, world domination. Germany has set out to gain the whole world, and has lost what soul she had. Striving to set herself above the law, she has merely placed herself outside the law, and for this her punishment is at hand.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.