Raemaekers' Cartoon History of the War Volume II Part 10

On the 20th of April, 1916, a number of transports arrived at Ma.r.s.eilles carrying a large number of Russian troops for the support of France. The troops had come by water through the East. Russian troops continued to arrive in France for some time afterwards.

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_THE DEATH'S HEAD HUSSAR AT VERDUN_

In short, with ever-ebbing vigor, the German Army is smas.h.i.+ng its head against the walls of Verdun. The weight and vigor of the blows decrease, but the suicidal mania continues. Two months have pa.s.sed since the early success of the German attack ended with the capture of Vaux village.

Each resumption of the attempt to take Verdun since that time has been a cause for increasing wonder. What is there about this enterprise that has turned it into a fatal obsession, from which the German high command cannot escape, however great the cost of continuance?

_From the Paris Figaro.

April, 1915._

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_SIR JUDAS CAs.e.m.e.nT_

On April 24 Sir Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt, a former Consul General, was captured in the act of trying to land German arms on the west coast of Ireland. He had been conveyed thither in a German submarine, with two Irish soldiers from German prisons. A German auxiliary cruiser loaded with 20,000 rifles and ammunition was taken and sunk at the same time. The vessel was sunk by its own men, and the twenty-two German bluejackets on board were made prisoners....

Cas.e.m.e.nt had last been heard of in Germany, where he had attempted to induce Irish prisoners of war to join an anti-British expedition to Ireland. Testimony at his preliminary trial in London subsequently showed that on Good Friday he had landed near Tralee from the German submarine U-19 with a soldier named Bailey and another named Monteith.

In "McKinna's Fort" he was seen to drop a paper containing a code and the words: "Await further instructions. Have decided to stay. Further ammunition and rifles are needed. Send another s.h.i.+p." The small collapsible boat in which he and his companions had landed also helped to betray them, and Cas.e.m.e.nt and Bailey were arrested before they could get away in the automobile which was waiting for them.

_Current History, New York._

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_GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND_

The manifesto of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic did not secure the support or signature of a single elected representative of any section of the Irish people, or of any man who had won influence by public services for Ireland. Its signatories were a convicted dynamiter, a handful of minor poets, journalists and schoolmasters, a junior corporation official, and a Syndicalist leader. The movement, wrote Mr. Redmond, was insane and anti-patriotic: "Germany plotted it, Germany organized it, Germany paid for it. So far as Germany's share in it is concerned, it is a German invasion of Ireland, as brutal, as selfish, as cynical as Germany's invasion of Belgium."

_The Times History of the War._

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_THE GRAVES OF ALL HIS HOPES_

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"_THE SUSs.e.x_"

"_You need cooling, my friend_"

I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Imperial German Government that if it is still its purpose to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of submarines, notwithstanding the now demonstrated impossibility of conducting that warfare in accordance with what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and undisputable rules of International Law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue and that unless the German Imperial Government should now declare and effect the abandonment of its present methods of warfare against pa.s.senger and freight-carrying vessels, this Government can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the Government of the German Empire altogether.

PRESIDENT WILSON'S _Address to Congress, April 19, 1916._

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"_I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WERE TOO PROUD TO FIGHT!_"

This decision I have arrived at, to break off diplomatic relations with Germany unless her methods of submarine warfare were abandoned, with the keenest regret; the possibility of the action contemplated I am sure all thoughtful Americans will look forward to with unaffected reluctance.

But we cannot forget that we are in some sort and by the force of circ.u.mstances the responsible spokesmen of the rights of humanity, and that we cannot remain silent while those rights seem in process of being swept utterly away in the maelstrom of this terrible war. We owe it to a due regard for our own rights as a nation, to our sense of duty as a representative of the rights of neutrals the world over, and to a just conception of the rights of mankind to take this stand now with the utmost solemnity and firmness.

PRESIDENT WILSON'S _Address to Congress.

April 19th, 1916._

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"_Indeed, I am the most humane fellow in the world._"