n with the butts of rifles; "The Exodus from Antwerp," "The Mothers
of Belgium," "The Widows of Belgium," and others which revealed
unimaginable depths of human agony, impressed the London crowd as by
a solemn ritual. They saw with a vividness hitherto unapproached the
hideousness of the war, the unequivocal brutality of the German method,
and the naked, insatiable greed in the German purpose. Not now could the
timidest soul believe that Germany was fighting a war of defense. Here
was the fact inescapable that civilization itself was threatened; here
was the whole carnival of lust and conquest as mercilessly depicted on
the faces of its agents as they themselves had trampled onward to their
shocking goal.

The exhibition was crowded daily for twenty weeks. From nine in the
morning till six at night the galleries were packed with people of every
grade of society. It is not too much to say that no oration, no
literature, no art had brought the real meaning of the war home so
convincingly to Londoners as these cartoons. Parents who had already
given their sons, wives who had given husbands, were strengthened in
their resignation and comforted in their sorrow; those who yet had the
sacrifice to make were fortified in their resolve. As I have said, the
cumulative effect of these hundred and fifty cartoons on the emotions
of a people just awakening to and suffering from the desperate realities
of the war was almost overwhelming, and many a man and woman quivered
and cried under this pitiless revelation of the stupendous suffering
that had been and was yet to be.

The exhibition was carried from London to the principal English and
Scottish cities, and thence to Paris. Everywhere the story was the same.
Crowds flocked to see and heed the artist's fiery records; statesmen,
soldiers, artists did him honor. In London he was received by the Prime
Minister and the artistic and learned societies; in Paris he was made
a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and given a reception at the
Sorbonne--the highest purely intellectual honor that can be bestowed
upon any man. France, equally with England, acclaimed him as the new
champion of humanity. In the provincial cities of England, as in London,
crowds thronged the galleries daily for weeks at a time. In Liverpool
alone five thousand persons visited the exhibition in one afternoon;
Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh told the same story of
the people being aroused and inspirite