And among the Belgian confreres there must certainly
have been many who showed as much courage as any soldier, when they
decided not to eat and be silent, but to starve and to speak.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
[Illustration: THE DUTCH JOURNALIST TO HIS BELGIAN CONFRERE: "Eat and
hold your tongue."]
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A BORED CRITIC
From Homeric warfare to subterranean conflict of modern trenches is a
far cry, and Ares, God of Battles, may well yawn at the entertainment
with which the Demon of War is providing him. But the spectator of this
grim "revue" lacks something of the patience of its creator, and our
Mephistopheles, marking the god's protest, will doubtless hurry the
scene and diversify it with new devilries to restore his interest.
Indeed, that has happened since Raemaekers made his picture.
The etiquette of butchery has become more complicated since Troy fell,
yet it has been so far preserved till now that the fiend measures Ares
with his eyes and speculates as to how far the martial god may be
expected to tolerate his novel engines. Will asphyxiating gas, and
destruction of non-combatants and neutrals on land and sea, trouble him?
Or will he demand the rules of the game, and decline to applaud this
satire on civilization, although mounted and produced regardless of cost
and reckoning?
As the devil's own entertainment consists in watching the effects of his
masterpiece on this warlike spectator, so it may be that those who
"staged" the greatest war in mankind's history derive some bitter
instruction from its reception by mankind.
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