THE CARTOONIST IN WAR-TIME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 89, 7 March 1941, Page 16

THE CARTOONIST IN WAR-TIME

"In many cases the 1914 Cartoons might, with date reversed to 1941, be completely at home in to-day’s newspaper" Says DOROTHY I. SCOTT in this article for "The Listener"

LUCKY Londoners! In spite of chaos about you, nights in the bowels of the earth, and familiar surroundings devastated in a moment’s fury, you can still slip down to the corner on a perilous errand, and return to your air-raid shelter with a copy of that journal to which Low contributes his cartoons. Never, surely, has the cartoonist had such a world in which to splash black venom from his pen! The jutting jowl of Mussolini; the enraged-rabbit-with-Chaplin-moustache which is Hitler; the villainous whiskers, as in a stage melodrama, of Comrade Stalin; Sarah-Gamp-Chamberlain and Bulldog-Drummond-Churchill; the benign Mother-Goose expression with which the purposeful lord of the U.S.A. habitually disguises his inward determination; these must surely have been created expressly that their features might adorn the cartoon-page of the daily papers! Or is it that, having gazed on so many caricatures of these and other notabilities, we cannot now envisage them as ordinary citizens in appearance? That the cartoons have led us, in thinking of Mr. Eden, to see in effect the (/pink-and white tailor’s dummy; and in pondering on the abstract idea of American aid for Britain, to substitute the mental picture of two hands clasped above a_ storm-tossed ocean? Nightmares by Raemakers As a child, I remember seeing my verv first war-cartoon. Yes, there was @ war on at that time too (the same war, Mr. Coward tells us), but it was unfortunate that some unthinking adult chose to initiate me into the cartoonist’s art by showing me some drawings of the master-cartoonist of 1914-1918. Yes, it was Raemakers, of course, and he gave me nightmares for months afterwards. (Perhaps that adult was not so unthinking after all; the effect on me was a vicious hatred of war which I will never lose). I woke in the dark, still seeing the armoured giant hacking with his battle-axe at the base of the Cross, where hung an emaciated, suffering Christ-circling vultures above, and a mountain-pass below. I remember still the gasp of terror with which I greeted this drawing, and the sickening disgust with which I gazed at fig-

ures of blood-stained women and mangled children, victims of the barbarism of that war and of all wars. When it was explained to me that these were "cartoons," I was lost. I had seen local pictures of politicians with exaggerated heads, and words printed coming out of their mouths, and I suppose I imagined that all cartoons must be humorous, in a mild way. But what was there to laugh at, in this cruel drawing, too realistic altogether, of the sinking "Lusitania"? This vicious and righteous anger was a new element. Later I was to encounter it in many another cartoonist, and long afterwards, when local and topical sketches are forgotten, I can still bring to mind, at will, the clear image of Raemakers’ Christ rising from the dead of the battlefields .. . Dyson’s Fiend with horns and hooves regarding the night-lit New York streets

with the sad words, "Well, well, one lives and learns!" ... Wragg’s pitiful drawing of an underfed slum-dweller resting in a wood of tall trees, his bicycle by his side, and the breathed thanksgiving "One Day in Thy Courts" . . . And such tremendous jests as Norman Lindsay’s "The War-God Sounds His Gong!" in which the young Australia, a small listening boy playing soldiers, hears afar-off the call of World War Number One in the shape of a colossal Mars clanging his reverberations around the world in flames. No Art of Caricature To turn from such men as Raemakers, Gulbransen, Kapp, and Dyson, to the work of Low, Bateman, Strube, Caran d’Ache, and Heath Robinson, is to realise the sheer futility of setting any standard or beginning any sort of

criticism. As Low himself says, "There is no art of caricature. There are only caricaturists." And the Lows, the Batemans, the Robinsons, are the genii who conjure laughter out of chaos, whose anger is not expressed in direct outpouring. but reveals itself by cunning and devious means, as though the perpetrator of the drawings were prompted, not by a sternly classical Muse, but by some malicious demon offering a forked tail dipped in gall as a substitute for a pen. It doesn’t really matter what side of politics you’re on, you simply have to laugh at these artists, even if you recognise that the laugh is against yourself. If you’re a Tory of the royal and ancient vintage, you won’t particularly like Rollin Kirby’s " King George Cuts Buckingham Palace Expenses," wherein King George V. is pictured in an ermine bathrobe saying to the Queen: "My dear, you left the light burning in the bathroom!" If you’re a confirmed follower of Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Stalin, you are hardly likely to revel in Low’s drawing of "The Russian Terror Again," wherein Soviet plenipotentiaries sit in judgment on a child’s toy and condemn it to be shot at dawn. But both these cartoons are so skilfully executed, and convey their messages in so ludicrous a style, that even Kipling’s " jelly-bellied flag-flapper " must chuckle with Rollin Kirby, and it is only the most immovable of proletarian revolutionaries who can’t get a laugh out of Low. ; M We of the twentieth century recognise the dot-dash style of Fougasse (author of those delightful "Don‘t. Spread Rumours" cartoons), the roaring of Norman Lindsay, and the frugal opulence of Low, as representative of our own mode of thought. We no longer thrill to an engraved Britannia, robust and majestic, enthroned on a suitable rock, and labelled " Mistress of the Seven Seas." We laugh instead at Mr. Chamberlain poking Hitler in the rear with that celebrated umbrella. It is not that we don’t respect Britannia, but she is required nowadays to come off her pedestal and mingle with the throng. Cartoons of the Last War . It’s interesting to look back at cartoons of the last War, and see how they (Continued on next page)

CARTOONS IN WAR-TIME (Continued from previous page) compare with those of to-day. In many cases the 1914 cartoons might, with date reversed to 1941, be completely at home in to-day’s newspapers-for example, the "War-God" cartoon mentioned above, and MRaemakers’ liner sinking with women and_ children aboard, I should dearly love, also, to see reprinted Heath Robinson’s cartoons of the last War. A crazy patched balloon is attached by a rickety stairway to a submerged submarine, complete with barnacles, seaweed, crabs and lobsters. From the Zeppelin-cum-balloon two spiked-Helmets are dropping a sackful of smoking bombs on the target, a gun fires a shell at it, and the submarine attendant, appropriately garbed as a diver, sees that a torpedo scores a direct hit from below; the target is an old woman in a shawl, rowing a cargo of fruit in a dinghy, across a calm sea. Another Heath Robinson effort represents a dilapidated aeroplane, much patched, with a kite attached; to the kite-tail are suspended magnets; a shower of buttons flies upwards, leaving embarrassed Tommies on_ the ground, flying for shelter with trousers hastily hitched. This is called, "The Button-Magnet; used by the Germans to render our troops uncomfortable before an attack in force." In the German Camp In the opposite camp, German cartoonists were also busy. " Scottish Soldiers" by P.S., represents three emaciated Kilties, with briar pipes and spiked helmets, one of whom bears a striking but probably accidental resemblance to Ramsay Macdonald; their boots are several sizes too large for their spindle-shanks, and their belts would circle their stomachs twice. Another false impression was created by a Blampied cartoon of two languid British officers sitting at home knitting socks as their contribution to the War Effort. Hitler, in "Mein Kampf" declares that "the result of the caricatures of the British that have appeared

in the German Press was an undervaluation for which the German people have had to pay dearly." The cartoons mentioned above were not great examples of humour, although the drawing was impeccable, but a really humorous note .was struck in "France Calls up her Last Reserve: Sarah Bernhardt, as the Maid of Orleans, arrives at Méilitary Headquarters." The divine Sarah, clad in the clanking armour of Saint Joan of Arc, carries her sword through streets lined with cheering gendarmes, her escort following with laurel wreath, ‘circlet of bays, notes of congratulation, telegrams, and bouquets of flowers, as at a stage premiere. Minhinnick In the world of cartooning, the best thing that has come out of the War in our own immediate sphere is Minhinnick. Some of us know that Minhinnick is here in New Zealand, but we didn’t realise to what heights he ‘could rise until the War gave him a couple of safe and reliable targets in the shape of the Two Dictators. I must confess that when I first saw the, face of the redoubtable John A. Lee, I puzzled for some moments over the problem of where I had seen him before, well knowing that I really hadn’t. "He reminds me of someone," I said. Suddenly I had it! He reminded me of his own caricatures, drawn by Minhinnick! Probably I’d say the same upon coming face to face with Messieurs A. Hitler, B. Mussolini, or J. Stalin! Everyone who saw it will agree that this artist’s drawing of "The Breaking Dam," with the valiant, figure of Finland trying to stop the bursting avalanche of water with bare hands, was as grimly heroic a picture as has ever been drawn of the unequal struggle of the small nation against the aggressor. . Perhaps when it is all over someone will collect in one volume all the car-| ' toons of all the nations, in this war and the last, satirical, venomous or just plain funny. What a colossal tome it would be-and what an epitaph for a state of things that might never have arisen if mankind had,learned, with the cartoonists, to ridicule instead of hate!