International cartoons of the war — A Closer Reading

Humor as a Weapon

The cartoons in this collection often employ humor not for mere entertainment but as a rhetorical tool. For instance, the drawing 'A Dinner at Headquarters' uses a quote from Heine to compare German leaders to pigs crowned with laurel—a pointed insult wrapped in literary allusion. Similarly, 'The Consultation on the Kaiser' depicts Dr. George and Dr. Albert discussing the effectiveness of '75 pills' (a reference to the French 75mm field gun), framing the war as a medical treatment for the Kaiser. These examples show how the cartoons blend wit with political commentary, targeting specific figures and policies.

However, not all humor is subtle. The cartoon 'In the Bagnio' shows a prisoner who killed his mother and another who says 'I was Emperor of Germany,' equating the Kaiser with a criminal. Such direct comparisons suggest that the collection's humor often serves to delegitimize the enemy, reinforcing the Allied cause.

Atrocity and Innocence

Several cartoons focus on the victimization of children, challenging the notion that this is purely a humor collection. Poulbot's drawing of a child killing a spider with the caption 'Don't be frightened, kill her—I've got hold of her' uses a domestic scene to mirror the brutality of war. More starkly, 'The German Atrocities' depicts a seven-year-old boy shot for pointing a wooden gun at German soldiers. The caption notes this incident 'is alleged to have taken place in the village of Magny, Alsace,' and the image is described as part of a cheap series printed in 'colours the most brilliant and most naïve.'

These pieces operate as propaganda, eliciting outrage rather than laughter. The editor's commentary acknowledges the horror, noting that even Poulbot's 'sympathetic pencil lent itself to horror as easily as to mirth.' This duality—humor and horror coexisting—is a defining feature of the collection, complicating its catalog classification.

National Styles and Perspectives

The excerpts include cartoons from French, Polish, and German sources, each with distinct stylistic and thematic approaches. The French cartoons, such as those by Poulbot and Baldo, often focus on everyday life and children, using irony to critique the enemy. Baldo's drawing of children mistaking a Zeppelin for a sausage—'if it had been a sausage the Boches would have eaten it long ago'—employs a child's logic to mock German greed.

In contrast, the Polish cartoonist M. d'Ostoya targets class and ethnic prejudice, as in the drawing where a Prussian officer dismisses a Jewish soldier despite his own 'thirteen quarterings of nobility.' This highlights internal tensions within the Central Powers. The German cartoon 'The Sacred Union' by Garcia Benito satirizes the French 'Union Sacrée' by showing a marchioness unable to distinguish friend from foe in uniform. Together, these examples demonstrate how the collection offers a multi-national perspective, though the editor's selections clearly favor the Allied viewpoint.

Readers should approach International Cartoons of the War not as a straightforward humor anthology but as a curated artifact of wartime visual culture. The editor's introduction and captions provide context, but the images themselves often resist simple categorization. Pay attention to the tension between the stated aim of providing 'unfailing guide' for future historians and the raw, propagandistic nature of many drawings. This collection rewards those who examine both the artistry and the ideology embedded in each frame.

Some evenings I linger over the wartime cartoons in International Cartoons of the War, where a Polish soldier's grin masks such weariness. It reminds me of another volume, that old History of the Revolt of the Netherlands — Volume 01 — Inside the Classic, whose pages hold the same quiet ache — how people laugh, briefly, to keep despair at arm's length.