Today’s cartoon is copied from an original by Clifford K. Berryman. Berryman was a cartoonist who worked extensively in Washington D.C. and this cartoon appeared in the Washington Post on March First 1900.
The cartoon shows a very large John Bull-ish British
soldier looking down on a diminutive Boer soldier, between which are the words
Paadeberg Drift. Paarderberg was a hard fought battle in February 1900 in which
the Boer forces of General Piet Cronje were besieged and then surrendered to
the British force commanded by Lord Roberts.
The message of the cartoon seems pretty clear to me.
American public opinion, like that of much of the rest of the world, was pretty
hostile to the war and in this cartoon the relative sizes of the soldiers are
reinforced by the two banners proclaiming the sizes of the relative armies in
the battle. The overweight, sneering British soldier – and John Bull was a
figure commonly used to depict Britain by American cartoonists – looks like a
swaggering bully
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