The Daily News. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17. CARTOONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 241, 17 February 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17. CARTOONS.

The reading public has lately been edified J and instructed by voluminous reports of a case in which an eminent public man claimed damages against a newspaper for publishing a cartoon. In the matter of comment per picture New Zealand is more kindly than any other country, possibly because of the sensitiveness of public men. Every notable modern public man has been subject to the ridicule of the public, per medium of the cartoonist or caricaturist, and one may go so far as to say that men lik» Gladstone, Disraeli, Roosevelt, CampbellBannerman, Seddon, Parkes, G. Reid, and others owed a great deal of their popularity to the artists who lampooned them. Roosevelt has been greatly aided by the cartoonist in opposition to him, and he once expressed his feelings thus: "Let the artists Represent me as a monster of iniquity if they like, but don't let them forget me." The journalistic artist has a power in his hands that the mere writer cannot wield, and the force of his comment is in a direct and simple appeal. Cartoonists may easily stir a nation, just as a song-writer, a musician, a poet, a statesman, or an author may. Latterly the commentary cartoon has been less biting, although in France, America, and even Germany, pictorial comments on public men are frequently so gross that if they were published in relation to New Zealand men the whole police force would turn pale with horror. There is no doubt in the mind of any person who knows the work of the great cartoonists that they have been moulders of opinion and makers of history. Men like May, Xast, Tenniel, Rambournc. Partridge, Hopkins, Lindsay, Gould, and Hill—only a few of the modern notable cartoonists—have distinct national places, and effect distinct, and frequently beneficial, results. It is not even necessary for a cartoonist to be a good draughtsman. Carrnthers Gould frequently perpetrates anatomical impossibilities, but he often "gets there." Tenniel gave a queer feeling of dignity and woodenne.ss in combination—and so on. The greatest cartoons in history have been those which explained themselves by pictures that shouted their story to the man who could not read. Cartoonists as a general thing are not model men, and unlike the steady, everyday worker, care only to work when they are so inclined. A story is told of a cartoonist who could not be found, although all the hotels were carefully searched. His editor was frantic, and was faced with a knotty problem and a Wank page. A sudden inspiration seized him, and he wrote at the foot of the blank page. "The Political Situation," and let it go to press. History says that fancy prices were given for that cartoon. Curiously, in all countries greater liberty is given to the pictorial commentator than to the writing critic, who. however, usually supplies the idea that may make a cartoonist famous, and which, by the way, may give a lampooned person more notoriety than he deserves. To the bulk of people the more or less eminent are known by cartoonists' caricatures of them, so that the late Mr. Gladstone's collar was a valuable asset to him. Mr. Seddon's pictured bulk gained him celebrity, and Sir George Reid's placidity, eye-glass and "duck" feet possibly had as much to do with his eminence as his native genius. The possession by a public man of any physical peculiarity, trick of dress, or gesture, is worth much to him —and certainly to the cartoonist. The cartoonist has "no time" for "beauty men,"—and, bv the way, no beauty man ever rose to be so eminent as to be worth caricature. Just as Rougct de Lisle stirred the people with his famous "hymn," and just as Julia Ward Howe roused America with the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," so may any cartoonist illustrating a great idea appeal to a whole nation. Xo written satire can contain the sting that a great cartoon may hold, and no word picture can compare in vividness (o the "line" of a sifted artist. The development of carloon drawing is. of course, dependent on the material available. The average cartoonist is expected to saw off something at intervals, however trifling the event calling for pictorial comment may be, and so one remembers that but few cartoons that have contained great inspirations, just as one remembers hut few newspaper articles that have been install) in appeal and lasting in power. It is still impossible to "make a silk purse on) of a sow's ear." and impossible to invent events and people who supply material for the kind of pictorial comment that will live. The greatest of all cartoonists have onlv become -o by the accident of happenings. The obscure public person who is lampooned into sudden notoriety by the pen of a great cartoonist should fall on the arlist'= neck anil give him gold—and the artist, if he is true to the species, will spend the gnhl before the chill is off it. There is a public man in New Zealand who ought to be verv sovrv in.st now for quarrelling with a pictorial advertisement.