Power of the editorial cartoon

Editorial cartoons can convey powerful messages. Some go on to attain iconic status. These can be rooted in epic events. One such cartoon, appearing on June 18, 1940, came at a desperate time for Britain. Two weeks earlier, its army had barely escaped through Dunkirk. The day before, its ally France had announced it would yield to the invading Germans. Cartoonist David Low depicted a British soldier standing on a rocky outcrop into stormy coastal waters. Armed only with a rifle, he shook his fist at German bombers approaching Britain through a darkened sky. The caption blared defiance: “Very well, alone.”

Any German seeing the cartoon might have taken it for sadly misplaced British truculence and obstinacy. But the British meant to fight, and Low's cartoon epitomised their mood. Five years, one month, and three days later, on July 21, 1945, the British staged a victory parade along a main street in central Berlin.

Canadian troops participated in that triumphal march. A photograph shows the kilted pipe band of Hamilton's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada marching at the head of the Canadian contingent. In ironic symbolism, far behind the advancing Canucks looms Berlin's famed Victory Column, celebrating Prussia's three successful wars from 1864 to 1871 which brought the modern German state into being.

Since the Second World War, the Argylls have been a militia regiment in Hamilton. A grimmer symbolism involving one of their soldiers and a war monument occurred this year in Ottawa. Since 2000, Canada's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been situated directly in front of the National War Memorial. On Canada Day 2006, three drunken louts dishonoured the warrior by urinating on his sarcophagus. This helped prompt a ceremonial sentry program there beginning in 2007. Corporal Nathan Cirillo from the Argylls had the duty on Oct. 22 this year. Without warning a twisted, malignant entity shot him twice in the back at close range, fatally.

The next day the Halifax Chronicle Herald featured a striking work by editorial cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon. A one third larger than life bronze figure of a First World War soldier has come down from the National War Memorial and knelt to lift Cirillo's body. Two others reach down from the monument to receive him. This cartoon quickly gained national, even international, attention. Deservedly so. It is in the same league as David Low's famous work.

MacKinnon's cartoon had no caption; it needed none. Yet when I saw it I recalled words used by a British First World War soldier-poet to end his poem The Volunteer, about a man eager for a military role in his life. Captain Herbert Ashley Asquith's poetry closed with mention of Agincourt, a centuries-old British victory. My mind substituted a Canadian battle from amongst those which the bronze figures in downtown Ottawa memorialize:

Writer David Haas is a long term St. Albert resident.