“Another Simple Simon” (March 15, 1915)
by Edward Scott “Ted” Brown (1876-1942)
13 x 17 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
One cartooning historian describes Brown as “an absolute whirling dervish at the drawing board, producing more material for the daily pages than anyone except the great George Frink.” Brown worked for the “Chicago Daily News” (ca. 1908-24) and the “New York Herald-Tribune” (1925-42).
Ted Brown, who spent his early years chasing the Alaska gold rush of 1898, returned to the US with no gold score and was a longtime editorial cartoonist for the New York Herald-Tribune, supplanting Jay N. (Ding) Darling in that position. Brown took ill in mid-1942 and died in late December.
Wilhelm was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia. He was attracted to and impressed by the pomp of military heraldry but his theatrical posturing as ‘supreme warlord’ only disguised his unpredictability and ineffectiveness as a war leader. He reigned for 30 years, right up to his abdication and exile after WW1 (1918). His behavior made him a gift for Allied satirists and caricaturists. During the First World War his image was seen as the personification of evil and ultimate source of all German ‘frightfulness.’
Schrecklichkeit (German “terror” or “frightfulness”) was a word used by English speakers to describe an assumed military policy of the German Army towards civilians in World War I. It was the basis of German actions during their terror march through Belgium in 1914. Similar policies were followed later in France, the Russian-held area of Poland, and in Russia.
In early 1915, the second year of World War I, the Kaiser was seen as inept and power-mad.
He had insatiable appetite for war and conquest, but he had bitten off more than he can chew in taking on the world. Germany was facing set-back after set-back on multiple fronts.
Exactly one month later, the military upped the ante on “frightfulness” in a severe way, dragging tanks of chlorine gas onto the battlefield in the first example of using chemical warfare in the modern age.
He proved indecisive and ineffective as a war leader and increasingly strategic and political power fell to the German High Command. He became a shadow monarch during the war, useful to his generals as a public-relations figure who toured the front lines and handed out medals. After 1916, Germany was, in effect, a military dictatorship dominated by two generals, Paul von Hindenburg, who would be President of Germany during the rise of Hitler, 15 years later, and Erich Ludendorff.