The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-01-21
WAR ECHOES

Cleveland Plain Dealer: In Spain there
 have been found remarkable cave draw ings made by men who lived long before the dawn of history. There are lifelike representations of animals, inlcuding some species which not been known in Spain since the beginning of manlSinds written record. The drawings are, of course. very interesting now, not only to archaeolo- gists, but also to mankind in general They indicate that the human animal, in
 the depths of savagery, had a finer side Along the River Aisne in northern
 France there are innumerable caves, grot- toes and quarries. The rock Is chalky,
 and easy to draw or carve on. For many
 weeks this region has been occupied by an army of invasion. It's mission is to kill. But there must be luls in the busi- ness of killing. And in the lulls some of the soldiers have been decorating the rocks with remarkable works of art For there are in the German army
 many men of high artistic ability. No nation stands so high in the arts as Ger
 many. and it is inevitable that when Ger
 many goes to war against most of the world her artists must take their places in the ranks of the fighters. Some of the carvings on the rocks of the Aisne are
 of notable merit. There are portraits and landscapes and imaginative or allegorical scenes.
 Posterity, of course, will look back on the present war as a period of barbarism But posterity, examining the rock pie lures along the Aisne, will be reminded that the men who went out to kill were after all, men of fine sensibilities and
 high culture. And then posterity will try
 to reconcile ireeconcilable facts. It will try to understand how such men, fighting against men of equal refinement, could
 have persuaded themselves that it was
 their duty to leave the gentler things of life and the nobler things of life to go
 forth to kill and be killed.
 It will be almost as puzzling as the re-
 markable drawings of the prehistoric and slant-browed cave men.
 Sir Ray Lankester in the Strand: It Is a truly marvellous thing that the Kaiser, who suffers from a morbid condition of both body and brain, whom most Eng lishmen have regarded as a megaloma-
 hiac should have been able to infect the whole German people with his insane au- dacity and his infamous lack of honor and morality. It implies great and excep- tional understanding. vast patience, and l histrionic capacity on his part. It is ob-
 vious that concurrently there must have ] been a childish receptivity, a dullness of
 mind, and helpless subservience widely spread among the German people. who
 have been hypnotized by the Kaiser and l used by him for his mad projects. Be- 1 fore the war of 1S70-1 comparativelv few of the Germans had been converted by the Prussians, whom, as a rule. thev
 hated. They were an easy-going, senti-
 mental. hard-working. fairly honest peo- pie. whom no one disliked. Their com-
 plete change of attitude and action under | the present Kaiser Is like nothing so
 much as the sudden transformation which
 we have seen in this country of large l numbers of hitherto decent, well-behaved. and harmless women into mad viragoes,
 burning houses and breaking windows. and shouting Votes for women!' There is more than a mere superficial resem- blance between these mad women and the l deluded German people who burn and ravage theirI nighbors' lands. shouting. 'Kultur!" and Deutschland uber Alles!'s'