Raemaekers' Cartoon History of the War, Volume 3 The Third Twelve Months of War — Key Ideas to Explore

Cartoon and Document as Juxtaposed Narratives

Each spread in this volume presents a full-page cartoon opposite a page of text—typically a government statement, a newspaper report, or a speech excerpt. The effect is not merely illustrative but argumentative: Raemaekers' visual hyperbole is grounded by the dry, often evasive language of officialdom. For instance, the cartoon "A Fool's Paradise" faces a Russian Provisional Government proclamation warning of "internal disorganisation and defeat at the front," while Kerensky's speech on the same page admits that the people "have tasted freedom and are slightly intoxicated." The cartoon's title thus becomes a gloss on the text, and the text a sobering footnote to the image.

Recurring Motifs: Kings, Crown Princes, and the Mask of Authority

Raemaekers repeatedly targets monarchs and their heirs. The table of contents includes "King Tino at Athens to his Brother-in-law William," "The Crown Prince Preaches to America," and "William: 'I wonder how long my dear friend and Ally....'" These figures are often shown in theatrical or predatory poses, their speech bubbles revealing cynical calculations. The cartoon "William: 'Here's luck, Hindenburg.'" suggests a toast between conspirators, while "Attila: 'You have burned and plundered the villages....'" equates the Kaiser with the Hun king. This consistent visual vocabulary—crowns, uniforms, and exaggerated facial features—turns historical actors into archetypes of ambition and cruelty.

Movement Between Fronts and Home Fronts

The volume's arrangement shifts between battlefront scenes and domestic or diplomatic settings. Early cartoons such as "Canada on Vimy Ridge" and "The French Victory at Verdun" focus on specific Allied operations, while later entries like "In the Office of a German Newspaper in America" and "The Socialist Bait For Russia" address propaganda and political subversion. This alternation mirrors the war's expanding geography: the front is no longer a line in France but a global network of influence and interference. The inclusion of documents like President Wilson's Draft Law proclamation and the British Admiralty's welcome to the U.S. Navy League underscores how the home front became a theater of mobilization.

The Russian Revolution as a Turning Point

Several cartoons and texts in the latter half of the volume grapple with the collapse of Tsarist Russia and the rise of the Provisional Government. "The Rebirth of Russia" and "For Holy Russia and Humanity!" appear alongside the text of the Provisional Government's May 1917 proclamation, which warns of "anarchy and civil war." Kerensky's speech, quoted at length, pleads for discipline: "What we need is sobriety and discipline." Raemaekers' treatment of Russia is notably less satirical than his depictions of the Central Powers; the tone shifts toward alarm and exhortation. The cartoon "A Poison-gas Attack on New Russia" visualizes the threat of internal dissolution as a chemical weapon, blending the volume's recurring gas imagery with political metaphor.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to the interplay between image and text, noting how Raemaekers' visual shorthand—skulls, crowns, gas clouds, and broken treaties—both amplifies and undercuts the official documents. The volume does not provide a continuous narrative but a series of snapshots, each demanding interpretation. Because the excerpts are incomplete, the full sequence of cartoons and their cumulative argument remains partly conjectural; what is clear is the editor's intention to let the war speak in two registers at once: the sardonic and the bureaucratic.

That gray afternoon, Raemaekers’ ink-bleak cartoons made the war’s machinery feel crushingly inevitable, all grinding alliances and collapsing empires. I set it down, restless, and my fingers found something older—Gordon’s journals from Kartoum, a different lonely vigil, equally patient, equally doomed. The rain kept falling. One quiet certainty, dying slowly on paper, simply led to another. The Journals of Major-Gen. C. G. Gordon, C.B., at Kartoum. — Story, Setting & Ideas