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"The Order of Butchery with the Knives"

Raemaekers, Louis, 1917, Chromolithograph
"The Order of Butchery with the Knives"
"The Order of Butchery with the Knives"
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Category
Library Item
Item no
32920
Title
"The Order of Butchery with the Knives"
Description
"Death: 'From your father you received The Order of Merit with the oak leaves. From me, your dearest comrade, please accept The Order of Butchery with the Knives."

"The expression of the Crown Prince while he is being decorated by Death is sly, fatuous, imbecile, and yet enigmatic. Does he feel anything at all, or is he depreciating Death's heavy, accumulating 'honours'? It is unlikely that he, or Marshal Von Haeseler, his aged tutor, at Verdun, who was retired in disgrace shortly after the letter quoted, below had anticipated the 'monstrous obstinacy' of the French defence; but they and all militarists, Prussian or otherwise, may muse over the saying of Voltaire, 'Amongst the European nations war, at the end of several years, renders the conqueror almost as wretched as the conquered. It is a gulf which swallows up everything and empties all the channels of abundance."
Artist / maker
Date
1917
Size
36.3 x 25.3 cm
Location
Art and Design Library
Copyright
Louis Raemaekaers' drawings are reproduced by kind permission of the Louis Raemaekers Foundation.