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INTERNATIONAL CARTOONS
OF THE WAR
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BRAVO, BELGIUM!
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CARTOONS
OF THE WAR
SELECTED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
by H. PEARL ADAM
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
681 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
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Colour-Plate—Rheims Cathedral—by Marcel
Gaillard. That on the Title-page is reprinted
by permission from Le Mot, Paris.
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International Cartoons of the War
INTRODUCTION
THE HISTORIAN who, a couple of centuries hence, tries to get at the realkernel of the great War, will find himself overwhelmed with material, buriedunder evidence, like the great authority on Penguinia. Every doubtfulpoint will be clearly and irrefutably decided for him in at least seven differentways. A burning sense of conviction may be his, but he will not besure which conviction it is. The lot of the historian has changed for theworse since the days of Herodotus. It no longer suffices for an accountof a battle to be possible if not probable, marvellous if not possible, for itto rank as history; mankind chose to start on the thorny quest of Truth,and is now beginning to see that in every affair there are exactly as manyTruths as there are actors.
When the war broke out in August, 1914, the curious art of conveyinga knowledge of thoughts and fact between two or more human organisms,the only art or appliance which man has really invented without referringto Nature—the art of writing—was resorted to on every hand. An unprecedentedcrop of war books began to sprout from the blood-fertilized fieldsof Flanders. Men might safely exclaim: "Mine enemy hath written abook"; they had perforce to add: "And so hath each of my friends."They poured from the Press, little books and big, sober and hysterical,speculative and emotional. After them came the sedate polychromaticprocession of Government literature. Along with them flowed the swiftand multitudinous efforts of journalism. And in a very short time beganthose strange enterprises, at once droll and portentous, the Serial Historiesof the War.
What the great historian will make of all this when his time comes tocorrelate it, it is difficult to say. If he feel conscientiously bound to consultcontemporary evidence, there is little hope for him, unless he ta