To Whom Belongs the Cartoonist?

While busy with the final touches of the Hans Bendix-manuscript, a political youth group in Denmark - the Conservative one - is busy in their own way, publishing paroles on how the foreign secretary of the 1930'ies, P. Munch, insisted on peace, giving the dicators of his day free reins. Is this not the case today as well?

It is very much implied that they know better themselves. Then as now.

Now, P. Munch insisted on the importance of The League of Nations. Negociating was to the new language across the national borders, making war a thing of the past. This was to him taking an active part in one's day and time, not just waiting for an aggressor to strike.

The thought is beautiful only not very efficient when dealing with not just the likes of Hitler, but the actual one himself. Hans Bendix for one very much opposed P. Munch. Munch exercised another insistence directed at the gentlemen of the press, in particular the blasted cartoonists, to KEEP QUIET: Shut up, and shut up now! - or you will destroy the whole project.


So, invariably, while not writing what I might personally find of pros and cons of the stance of Munch, I am laying the landscape of a cartoonist and his foreign secetrary battling each other all through the 1930'ies. The one thing I am NOT looking forward to is how every more or less extreme right-wing party of today will make Hans Bendix their new best friend. Those very same parties, whose predessors had a hard time keeping their right arm in check.

On the other hand it is the very same cartoonist, who made certain that this is exactly how we remember them. However much they are trying to climb the high moral horse today. They are there to be seen, printed and thus proven guilty in the daily paper. Below we have the Conservative Youth Group, abbreviated then as now to KU, having a word with their own political leader, John Christmas Møller. This is from the original paper, hence the poor quality of the photo:

"Christmas Møller has demanded that the Ministry of Justice investigates
the methods of the political youth organizations".
- Why, you need anything investigated, Granddad, as if the methods are not fully obvious!
Hans Bendix, November 27, 1935.

I cannot help seeing a certain affinity to the Self-Righeous Islamists of today attacking WillisFromTunis...