I think that such revenge
is in truth merely realization. The victims of the war have to sit on
such real benches in such real rags. And being one of the fiercest, it
is also one of the most delicate of the Dutch artist's studies. Nothing
could be truer than the insolent and swollen decay of the Jew Ferdinant;
or the more effeminate collapse of the Kaiser, the very spike on whose
helmet droops with sentiment.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
[Illustration: FIVE ON A BENCH
In a year and a half.]
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WHAT ABOUT PEACE, LADS?
War--so certain of their own prophets have said--is a "national industry
of Germany." Here we see a German _chevalier d' industrie_ attempting to
escape with his swag. Never in modern times has a nation gone to war
with a more cynical and shameless determination to make the campaign pay
for itself by the plunder of private property. Quite recently an order
was found on the body of a German, enjoining all officers to assist in
the "patriotic duty" of "draining financially the occupied territories."
We are dealing, not with an honourable and civilized nation, but with a
band of murdering brigands. The keepers of the national conscience have
devised a monstrous and barbarous code of ethics, in which "patriotism"
is the sole duty, and the tribal god the only arbiter of right and
wrong. As in Roman law, the property of an enemy is for a German _res
nullius_--it has no owner.
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