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1916

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CARTOONS AND CARICATURES IN WAR TIME

My cartoons," he tells the reader, were photographed direct from the originals -almost all of which are anonymous loose sheets. They are to be found for the most part in the Collection Hennin, of the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris. Others come from the Musée Carnavalet, and a few I was able to purchase from antiquarians." 1

In the French Revolution France was suffering from a bad attack of hysteria. But it was at first a hysteria of moral idealism. The epoch affords a striking illustration of the truth that emotionalism uncontrolled by reason is always dangerous. The earlier pictures represent the earlier phases of this Revolution. There are no caricatures, no malice, little humor. The artist at once interprets and inspires the idealism of the nation. Liberty crowning Benjamin Franklin; the King and Necker, his Minister of Finance, united by a double chain emblematical of their united love for the people and emerging from the darkness of the past; a coach drawn by six owls representing wisdom and containing three figures, one representing the clergy as driver, two others representing respectively the nobility and the peasants, symbolizing the union of the three estates, proceeding harmoniously to Versailles; Necker borne aloft by the Duc d'Orléans and Lafayette and trampling upon the chains which symbolize the slavery from which the people are emancipated; France as a mother teaching her two children to clasp hands as a symbol of the new spirit of fraternity-indicate the general character of the pictures of the first year of the Revolution. As this beautiful dream disappears and the conflict between the people and the nobility deepens, the pictures change in character. The priesthood are made the subjects of bitter caricature. Mirabeau's measure for the confiscation of the estates of the Church is gleefully welcomed by satirical pictures. One represents a fat priest assailed by two merry highwaymen; a second pictures a priest literally reduced to a skeleton coming as a suppliant to representatives of the nobility and army; a third portrays a fat priest in a press operated by two men, the gold dropping out of his mouth, while two lean companions are walking away in the distance, and a fourth fat priest is being brought up to take his place in the press.

There is, however, but little humor in "Symbol and Satire in the French Revolution," by Ernest F. Henderson, Ph.D., L.H.D. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912.

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these caricatures. The nation is too bitter against its oppressors, and especially against the King and the Queen, who have played the part of pretended friends only that they might deceive the people. A caricature to be humorous must have some vraisemblance, and that quality these caricatures lack. They are not arguments to win an opponent or to arouse the indifferent; they are taunts to wound a foe. Marie Antoinette is pictured as a harpy tearing up the Constitution with her sharp talons, and Louis XVI as a horned pig, obese and stupid of countenance. But Louis XVI was not a pig, horned or otherwise; he was a good-natured, weak gentleman in a place that called for a leader of vision and strength; and Marie Antoinette was not a harpy, she was a fanatical imperialist who did not believe that the people had any rights or that rulers owed to them any duties, not even the duty of keeping faith with them.

With the period which followed the French Revolution there came a notable change in journalistic art. Idealism disappeared, and with it good will. The era was one of fierce combat, and the artists were fired by the popular passions and took part in the fierce campaigns. The artists' arrows flew thick and fast from the quivers of England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Russia. Some of them were mere fun; but most of them were arguments, appeals, denunciations. Tragedy was not wanting, but comedy generally held the stage with every variety of ridicule, caricature, and travesty, some farcical, some grim, all inspired by an unmistakable spirit of moral earnestness. The artistic fecundity of this period is amazing. Mr. Broadley in his handsome volumes on "Napoleon in Caricature" gives in an appendix 1,743 caricatures, from which he has made the selection for his very fully illustrated work. It is estimated that there are in existence nearly two thousand caricatures of Napoleon, and in pictures, prints, miniatures, medallions, and medals eighty thousand portraits.

The contrast in artistic conception and method of the different nationalities represented in Mr. Broadley's two volumes would be an interesting subject for study, but to enter upon it would extend this article beyond reasonable limits. And yet a certain uniformity of spirit animates them all; that which

"Napoleon in Caricature, 1795-1821," by A. M. Broadley, with an introductory essay on "Pictorial Satire as a Factor in Napoleon's History," by J. Holland Rose. In two volumes. The John Lane Company, 1911.

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inspires the Allies in the present war, that which is expressed by Wordsworth in the lines quoted by Mr. Rose in his Introduction:

"No parleying now! In Britain is one breath; We are all with you now from shore to shore ;Ye men of Kent, 'tis victory or death."

This war of the pencils accompanying the war of the guns was made more effective in both interpreting and inspiring the growing public sentiment against Napoleon than the average reader of the history of those times. might imagine. Mr. Rose, who is himself no mean authority on the Napoleonic era, quotes, with his indorsement, the saying of a French author, M. Grand-Coterel, that "the earlier efforts [of the English caricaturists] were so many battalions sent to the Continent, ever worrying Napoleon and raising the spirits of his enemies." As the war progressed there were exchanges of ideas between Russian and English caricaturists. "Several of Terebeneff's ideas were taken by Gillray or Cruikshank, while theirs lent variety to the output on the banks of the Neva and Moskwa. Working in unison, these artists did much to inspire the North Germans and Austrians to resist the Emperor of the West." Napoleon, who was a supreme egoist, appreciated the value to his enemies of this campaign of caricatures, forbade their publication in France, and endeavored by treaty to prevent their publication in other countries. "In 1807 he endeavored to introduce into the draft of the Treaty of Amiens a clause providing that persons who ventured to ridicule his person or policy should be treated as murderers or forgers and be liable to extradition." But he was not above endeavoring to use himself the instrument he desired to prohibit to others. Mr. Rose quotes a letter written by the Emperor to M. Fouché, Minister of Police, not only directing him to employ caricature in the press against the English, but even suggesting a possible caricature, a suggestion which was afterward carried into effect.

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There is an important distinction between the cartoon and the caricature, though it is not always recognized by the artist.

The caricature is always intended to be humorous, and always depends for its humor, in part at least, on some exaggeration or travesty. The reader will observe that I say intends to be humorous. Our daily papers contain some grotesque travesties on life which both in art and in humor would do

little credit to a child not yet out of the nursery. Charity requires one to suppose that these compositions are intended to be humorous; but this presumption requires stretching charity to its utmost limit.

The cartoon is not necessarily, not even generally, humorous. Its value lies in the ability of the artist to interpret a great truth pictorially in a limited space. One of the most famous cartoons in the history of art is Kaulbach's cartoon of the Reformation.

In the center, but the background, of the picture, stands Luther holding aloft an open Bible. Grouped about him in effective tableaux, with globe and telescope and book and lyre, are the great discoverers, inventors, authors, artists, and statesmen who have given the (then) present generation its impulses to quickened thought and spiritual life. Here are Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Wycliffe, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Bacon, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Coligny, William of Orange, Queen Elizabeth. No paragraph, scarcely a chapter, could so effectively portray the results of that intellectual and spiritual awakening which goes by the name of the Reformation as the artist has portrayed them by his pencil on a single canvas.

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Analogous to this is a much smaller and simpler cartoon given in Broadley's "Napoleon in Caricature," "The Step-Ladder of Napoleon's Rise and Fall." On five steps, respectively labeled in German "Big Boy," Military Scholar," Soldier,' General," "First Consul," Napoleon ascends to his coronation as "Emperor of the French;" on three descending steps, representing respectively the flight from Spain, the flight from Russia, the expulsion from Germany, he descends to the edge of the last step, from which he is about to throw himself off to his death. Underneath in a cave by the sea he sits half covered with seaweed, while Father Time shears off from the map of the world the isle of Elba and presents it to him.

Sometimes the cartoon represents in a single figure the characteristics of a man or a nation. The artist, says Ruskin, is first of all a seeing and a feeling creature. The cartoonist sees and feels the true qualities of the person, the nation, or the race which he wishes to portray, and then combines them in a composite picture which interprets his sitter to the general public. An illustration of the debased use of the cartoon is furnished

1916

CARTOONS AND CARICATURES IN WAR TIME

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by the conventional Jew in the issues of "Life." Its cartoons of the Jew are always travesties, never a composite picture. On the other hand, "Punch's 66 John Bull" admirably suggests the courage and caution, the persistence and obstinacy, the slow-mindedness and steadiness, the loyalty and solidity, of the Englishman. And "Uncle Sam " as Mr. Robert Carter, the cartoonist of the New York" Sun," portrays him, transformed from the older caricature, yet preserving its essential lineaments, suggests the commingled simplicity and shrewdness, energy and easygoing nature, sharpness and kindliness, which make up the contradictory character of the typical American.1

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The cartoonist has often furnished in his portraitures a better impression of the public estimate in which a popular hero is held than can be obtained from any essay, however critical. The life of Theodore Roosevelt in - cartoons and caricatures-and there are many more caricatures than cartoons-leaves on the mind of the reader the impression of a public opinion enthusiastic as to Mr. Roosevelt's virtues and partial as to his faults. Probably the quality which in these caricatures is most emphasized is his indomitable energy, a quality which in America's estimate is generally esteemed a virtue. "Punch's contrasted cartoons of Disraeli and Gladstone make a similar revelation of England's estimate of these two statesmen." No historian, not even Mr. Bryce, has so effectively portrayed the agility in balancing of that shrewdest of politicians as did "Punch" in its famous caricature of Disraeli performing on the tight rope. More difficult, but equally admirable in conception and execution, are its cartoons of Mr. Gladstone, Puritan in temper, steadfast in purpose, always taking himself and everybody else seriously, and equally ready to

Admirable illustrations of individual cartoons, which might perhaps be better called character sketches, will be found in the "Life and Letters of Charles Samuel Keene," by George Somes Layard. The Macmillan Company, 1892. "A Cartoon History of Roosevelt's Career, Illustrated by 630 Contemporary Cartoons and Man v Other Pictures, by Albert Shaw. The Review of Reviews Company.

3"Sir John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character from the Collection of Mr. Punch." Bradbury, Agnew & Co., London, 1887.

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instruct the public on any and every question, political, ecclesiastical, theological, or literary.

Finally, there is the cartoonist who uses his pencil as an instrument of a vivid imagination inspired by an indignant conscience. The cartoons of such an artist as Louis Raemaekers 1 are in art what an epigram is in literature. A glance at his pictures gives to the eye information which pages of print would fail to give, and produces a moral impression which the orator would despair of producing by his oration. It is not strange that Germany has put a price of twelve thousand marks upon the artist's, head. No hospital can heal the wounds which his pencil has inflicted on Germany's reputation. No, I am wrong—which she has inflicted on her own reputation by the deeds which Raemaekers has so vividly portrayed and interpreted.

It seems to me, from such comparison as the works in my library have enabled me to make, that in artistic simplicity and moral power the best caricaturists and cartoonists of the twentieth century surpass those whose pencil did so much to interpret the French Revolution and the Napoleonic campaigns. In the whole collection of satiric art which I have had the opportunity to examine I have found nothing more impressive than a cartoon published, I believe, on the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania. It consists of a perfectly simple gravestone, with one mourner bowing her head over it, and the following inscription engraved upon it:

In
Memory of

115 American Citizens Men, Women

And Children Murdered by a Nation Too Savage to Spare Abandoned by

A Country
Too Proud to Fight
May 7, 1915

Published serially in "Land and Water," complete in twenty-six fortnightly parts. See also article "John Raemaekers and His War Cartoons," by Lewis R. Freeman, in The Outlook, March 15, 1916, p. 626

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HOW THE NEWSPAPERS TELL THE STORY

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OF ELECTION DAY

BY ALEXANDER McD. STODDART

Is it Hughes or is it Wilson? What Senators, whose terms are about to expire, will go back to the Senate, or who will be their successors? What party wins the House of Representatives? Who wins the Governorship? What party will control the Legislature? Who are elected to city, town, and county offices?

The daily newspapers of the United States have for months been preparing to answer these questions on the date of this issue of The Outlook. This article, by an experienced newspaper man, tells how this task is accomplished.-THE EDITORS.

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turns.

Practically all the newspapers, unofficially, get together in the collection of election reIn addition, they have the assistance of the news associations, but no newspaper which justifies its name depends upon the work of the news associations entirely.

Still the news associations perform a great service, particularly in the city of New York, where the New York City News Association, with its elaborate machinery, collects the returns so rapidly that sometimes a few hours after the polls have closed the winners are known to the crowds at the bulletin boards in front of the newspaper offices.

The reporters who have traveled with the Presidential and other candidates from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Canadian to the Mexican border, together with special correspondents, all of them, from their talks with leaders and observations made upon the man in the street," come back on election day primed with information that is of much value on that particular night.

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In addition there are the Washington correspondents, familiar with previous results of elections which have made Senators and Representatives; the State Capitol correspondents, familiar with both branches of the Legislature; and political reporters, familiar with local politics.

Weeks before the election newspapers all over the country are asked by others to give

them proofs of their forecasts, and in this exchange, brought up to date week by week until the close of the final day of campaigning, these observations, gathered independently, prove of much value in foreshadowing the great event.

Every out-of-town correspondent practically knows in advance just exactly what his newspaper expects on the night of election, so that there is no delay in telling what to send. Months are given to this sort of preparation, and nothing is left undone when the men in the home office sit down at their desks to record the verdict at the polls.

The

On the night of a National election the news of the world must be told in one-half the space that is usually allotted to it. men assigned to "boil down" the news of the world work also at high pressure, because they have so much additional work to do. their assistants being taken from them to work on returns.

The managing editor, whom Julian Ralph once referred as being in charge of seveneighths of the newspaper, is at the head of the election staff, assisted by the city editor, whose work the late Andrew E. Watrous characterized in one line: The man who writes twenty thousand words a day about his neighbors."

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Following in importance are the news editor, who looks after the out-of-town correspondents, and the make-up man, who sees that each article has its proper place in the paper, and also that the presses start on time telling the world the result it is waiting for.

On the night of election every worker has alongside of his typewriter on his desk a supply of copy paper that is cut up from the big rolls of paper that are left on the cores after the press-room has gone as far as it dares on each roll of print paper. There are sharpened pencils, clean ink-wells with fresh ink, and new pens, paste, and mucilage,

HOW THE NEWSPAPERS TELL THE STORY OF ELECTION DAY 567

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What it looks

and the room looks as if a school examination were about to take place. like when election night is a thing of the past only the janitor knows. The floor is more convenient than scrap-baskets.

Each man is given the work he is most familiar with or that he is best adapted to do. Naturally the Washington correspondent and his assistant look after the Congress and Senate; the traveling correspondents are given the States they are particularly familiar with; the Capitol correspondent, the Legislature, and so on. Each is also responsible for the "lead," the introduction to the table that tells the story in a nutshell.

The story of what happened during the day is written and ready for the copy desk practically before the polls are closed, so that the reporters are ready for their night assignments-to cover the various headquarters, get statements from the prominent elected and defeated candidates, and anything else that may be of interest.

A clever reporter must be assigned to write the bulletins for the crowd outside the newspaper offices clamoring for news, and the art man must have any number of amusing pictures prepared to throw on the screen. Keeping up with the progress of the times, free outdoor moving pictures must be given to the crowds while waiting for the figures.

The simplest manner of making out certain tables is to print the name of each candidate, with his politics alongside, and eliminate those who are defeated, so that when closing time arrives the tables show merely the winners. This does away entirely with any new setting of type. The compositor merely removes the line or half-line not needed.

When the vote is to be recorded, the table is done in the same way, except that there is a blank left for the vote and the plurality. Then all that is needed is to set "straight copy."

In New York the police collect the election returns, which, because of their organization, simplifies the great problem of letting the result be known early. Practically all the New York newspapers are members of the New York City News Association, which "covers" routine news in all departments, and sends the facts without bias or color to its membership. Thus when election night comes these reporters are turned loose on election returns, and the machinery has been so arranged in advance that there is little or no friction.

Charts are prepared in advance showing

every election district's vote last year or two years ago or four years ago, as it is needed. When one, two, or one hundred or two thousand election districts report their vote this election day, a glance at the chart shows what these districts previously gave.

Thus shortly after the polls close the story of the vote comes into the newspaper office over specially put in telegraphic wires as follows:

President-300 election districts, Greater New York, give Wilson, D., 21,842; Hughes, R., 16,466; same districts four years ago gave Wilson, D., 20,142; Roosevelt, P., 12,184; Taft, R., 5,678.

Governorship-42 election districts, Greater New York, give Seabury, D., 3,154; Whitman, R., 2,860; same districts two years ago gave Whitman, R., 2,190; Glynn, 2,990; Sulzer, Amer., 82.

The Associated Press, the United Press, the International News Service, and like organizations, collecting the returns of the Nation, send in like bulletins reading somewhat similarly:

President Albany County,sixteen districts missing, give Wilson, D., 16,825; Hughes, R., 23,892; same districts four years ago gave Wilson, D., 16,689; Roosevelt, P., 4,442; Taft, R, 19,987.

Governorship-Albany county, five election districts missing, give Whitman, R., 26,540; Seabury, D., 14,876; same districts two years ago gave Whitman, R., 25,600; Glynn, D., 13,765; Sulzer, Amer., 3,198.

These returns never cease coming in, minute by minute, hour by hour, until finally by midnight the election editors have a very good idea of the vote in every State of the Union.

These bulletins, prepared in advance, leaving blank spaces to be filled in by the actual figures, are placed in neat piles on the desk of the telegraph operator, so that when he receives the telegraphic sign for the President or the Governorship or whatever bulletin he is to write, he merely picks up the blank bulletin and in a few moments the bulletin is complete.

The idea back of these prepared bulletins is merely that they are time-savers.

When Chester S. Lord (affectionately called "Boss" Lord) was managing editor of the New York "Sun," in the other days, he devised a chart which the "Sun" used on election nights year after year. It saved time when time was of the greatest value.

The purpose of the chart was to give at a

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