: International cartoons of the war by Adam H Pearl Helen Pearl Editor - World War 1914-1918 Humor caricatures etc.

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down

Editor: H. Pearl Adam

INTERNATIONAL CARTOONS OF THE WAR

INTERNATIONAL CARTOONS OF THE WAR

SELECTED WITH AN INTRODUCTION

E. P. DUTTON & CO. 681 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK

International Cartoons of the War

INTRODUCTION

THE HISTORIAN who, a couple of centuries hence, tries to get at the real kernel of the great War, will find himself overwhelmed with material, buried under evidence, like the great authority on Penguinia. Every doubtful point will be clearly and irrefutably decided for him in at least seven different ways. A burning sense of conviction may be his, but he will not be sure which conviction it is. The lot of the historian has changed for the worse since the days of Herodotus. It no longer suffices for an account of a battle to be possible if not probable, marvellous if not possible, for it to 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 many Truths as there are actors.

When the war broke out in August, 1914, the curious art of conveying a knowledge of thoughts and fact between two or more human organisms, the only art or appliance which man has really invented without referring to Nature--the art of writing--was resorted to on every hand. An unprecedented crop of war books began to sprout from the blood-fertilized fields of Flanders. Men might safely exclaim: "Mine enemy hath written a book"; 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 polychromatic procession of Government literature. Along with them flowed the swift and multitudinous efforts of journalism. And in a very short time began those strange enterprises, at once droll and portentous, the Serial Histories of the War.

What the great historian will make of all this when his time comes to correlate it, it is difficult to say. If he feel conscientiously bound to consult contemporary evidence, there is little hope for him, unless he takes the bold step of writing a historical novel out of his inner consciousness instead.

But there will be at least one unfailing guide for him. The very increase in mechanical processes which contributes to his undoing in the matter of books, will come to his aid with regard to pictures. Every great event since the invention of mechanical reproductive processes has produced its due reflection in the mirror of the artist. The crude old broadsheets told their tale of the Napoleonic wars more vividly than any historian could; and the present struggle, while it slew nearly every other art for the time being, worked up to fever-pitch the output of pictorial comment. In France, where this form of expression has always been popular, an unexampled flood of cartoon and caricature poured from artists both celebrated and unknown. Other countries followed suit, in proportion to their national liking for prints; and the evidence supplied by this mass of international material is as direct and reliable as anyone need demand.

THE VALUE of the contemporary cartoon is very great; for it deals almost entirely with what people are feeling, in distinction to what they are doing. It uses their deeds as a mere background to their emotions, and it is only the emotions which count. What the soldier feels, the sailor, the mother at home, the man in the street--these are the really important things, for it is these things which are the causes of events. If enough ordinary people want peace at any price, the Governments of all the States in the world will be powerless to wage war one moment longer; if enough ordinary people consider their honour involved in fighting to a finish, emperors and kings and presidents and trade unions and the N.C.C. will united be unable to break the smallest twig from the olive.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

Login to post a comment!