The old
verve and elan came back with all the old fire, and along with these,
new depths of grim courage and tenacity, and, we are told, of
spirituality, which may be the making of a new France greater than the
world has ever known.
And that we shall welcome. France, Belgium, Serbia, Russia have suffered
in ways we but faintly comprehend on this side of the water. When the
Great Settling Day conies, this new higher spirit of France will, it is
to be devoutly hoped, make for restraint in the universal craving for
vengeance, and prove a weighty factor in the righteous re-adjustment of
things and the proper fitting together of the jig-saw map of Europe.
JOHN OXENHAM.
[Illustration: LIBERTE! LIBERTE, CHERIE!]
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I--"A KNAVISH PIECE OF WORK"
There can be no defence of the spirit of hatred in which the Germans
have, so fatally for their future, carried on this amazing mad war of
theirs, in violation of all human instincts of self-respect and
self-preservation, to say nothing of the obligations of religion and
morality observed among mankind from the first dawnings of civilization.
The knavery, the villainy, and the besotted bestiality of it can never
be forgotten, and must never be forgiven, and Louis Raemaekers, gifted
as he is with the rare dramatic genius that discriminates his Cartoons,
has but discharged an obvious patriotic duty in publishing them to the
world at large, as true and faithful witnesses to the unspeakable and
inexpiable abominations wrought throughout Belgium and French Flanders
by the Germans--which, already, in the course of Divine retribution,
have involved their own country in material losses it will take from
three to four generations to repair; and their once honoured name in
contempt, and reprobation, and infamy, wherefrom it can never be
redeemed.
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