Cartoons from the Foreign Desk

Since Trump was dreaming about annexing Canada as a 51st state, today's Graphical History Tour's first stop is with our northern neighbors for a quick reality check.

Tell us how you really feel, Johnny Canuck. And don't hold back.

"The Black Hand of Foreign Domination" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Star, Dec. 5, 1924

100 Decembers ago, U.S. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover endorsed a "Super Power Project" to meet Atlantic states' growing energy needs with power from Canada's hydroelectric dams along the St. Lawrence River. The Montreal Star fretted that "These official prognostications from across the boundary will sooner or later be directed upon Canada with pressure that any government will find it difficult, if not impossible, to resist."

That the project would benefit states far from the river and its watershed, such as Massachusetts, rankled some Canadians. These days, there is a compact among states and provinces bordering the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River; it is still exceedingly rare for Canadian interests to scuttle any U.S. plan to bend the rules of the compact in its favor.

"Ye Merrie Yuletide" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, Dec. 10, 1924

Racey returned to the theme of Yankee bullying of his home country a few days later; this time in the timber industry.

In his chapter of Sketches from an Unquiet Country: Canadian Graphic Satire 1840-1940, Christian Vachon put forth the case that the popular image of Uncle Sam was invented by Canadian cartoonists and copied by Thomas Nast. Here, Racey appears to have copied his personification of "American Interests" from U.S. cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper’s turn-of-the-century characterization of the Trusts.

"Wahlnot" in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 7, 1924

In case you have been overwhelmed by the constant barrage of campaign fund-raising emails that continue unabated regardless of the election having past, consider the plight of der geplagte Michel 100 years ago this month. Germany held elections for the Reichstad on December 7 — for the second time in six months. Nazis, Communists, monarchists, Social Democrats, and "Catholic Centrists" all competed for voters' affections.

At least none of them had discovered Mailchimp. 

"Die beiden Unzufriedenen" in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 21, 1924

When the ballots were counted, the parties on the left and right extremes had lost seats in the 

I haven't been able to definitively credit these two cartoons, initialed rather than signed. Kladderadatsch had abandoned its occasional practice of printing a credit above its cartoons; with the prospect of one or another radical element coming to power, it's understandable that a cartoonist might want some degree of anonymity. 

Of Kladderadatsch's regular cartoonists, Oskar Garvens, Werner Hahmann, Arthur Johnson, Hans-Maria Lindloff, M. Richter, and the occasional Egon Erwin Kisch, I would rule out Hahmann, who initialed his cartoons in the same style as his signature, and Johnson, whose drawing style doesn't match. The signed cartoons of Czech-born Kisch have a quickly sketched quality to them, but some of his other published work is more thoroughly polished. I can't dismiss Lindloff, Garvens, or some other cartoonist.

"A Confiding Old Gentleman..." by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 9, 1924

Turning to U.S. cartoonists, here's William Hanny's take on the news from France, which arrested and deported 60 members of the French Communist Party in December.

Hanny's cartoon makes reference to the supposed "Zinoviev letter" that had helped bring down the first Labour government of British Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald in October. Although the letter is now believed to have been forged, it was still widely accepted as genuine at the time.

"Declaring Himself In" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 13, 1924

British-French relations also come up in another Hanny cartoon a few days later. The British government announced that it would like France to repay $3 billion in loans to finance the Great War, which concerned the Coolidge administration because the U.S. was waiting for France to cough up $4 billion to repay loans from America.

The French, for their part, were impatiently expecting reparations from Germany, anticipated to be facilitated under the Dawes Plan, namesake of the U.S. Vice President-elect.

"Who'll Get the Short End" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Dec. 14, 1924

As illustrated by J.P. Alley, the U.S. concern was that France would be unable to meet its obligations to both the U.S. and Great Britain, necessitating negotiation of a deal more favorable to France than the one already in effect regarding repayment of British wartime loans from the U.S.

Retiring French Ambassador to the U.S. Jean Jules Jusserand promised that his country's debt to the U.S. would be repaid "to the last cent," but protested that five sixths of the money borrowed was spent in the U.S., and besides, "I think you will not forget that we spent more blood than any of the Allies, much treasure, and further, that we were the only country that supplied a battlefield."

"It Was 'Nearly Over With'" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Dec. 17, 1924

The London Post opined that U.S. pressure on its allies over wartime loans was out of line, and that it was America that owed a debt to the Entente powers: "Is it sound morality or even good business to mulct France of sums lent to her for helping to save America, and incidentally the Monroe Doctrine, from the clutches of Germany?"

Maybe we should've just sicced tariffs on them all instead.

Oh, that's right. We did.