Bears

President Roosevelt points to the White House, which has four bear pelts on it. Uncle Sam and a patriotic lady bow toward it.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-05-12

President Roosevelt holds strings attached to four bears and holds a “Wash. D.C.” suitcase as he marches toward a “labor” man. The “labor” man is leaning up against a book entitled “the law” and holds a “protest against federal interference” paper. Caption: The President: “Uphold law and order and there’ll be no need of federal troops.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-05-11

President Roosevelt holds a rifle behind his back and reaches out to shake a bear’s hand. Caption: Meanwhile, other animals he has known are having a brief respite.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-04-22

President Roosevelt sits in a chair by the fire and reads a newspaper. A bear skin rug underneath him says, “If mother could see me now!” There are antlers and skins of various animals on the wall. Caption: When the president’s vacation is ended.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-04-23

President Roosevelt holds a rifle and looks at several bears in a tree. Caption: Roosevelt: “Let me see, there’s one for each member of the cabinet and—two for Taft!”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-05-02

Several bears wearing snowshoes greet President Roosevelt, who holds a rifle. They say, “The pleasure is all ours, Mr. President!”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-04-16

“I have your letter of the 19th inst. All right, as soon as I begin to see any reasonable prospect of the bear being bagged, I will let you know.”

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1900-04-20

A female figure holds out a crown labeled “The New Frisco,” fashioned after a city skyline. A bear sits on the ground next to her and, in the background, are 16th or 17th century sailing ships. The context of this cover cartoon is the destruction of San Francisco three weeks previous, and the city’s hopes for renewal.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This Hassmann cover, an elegant and sunny poster-like statement, was Puck‘s first response to the horrendous San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, approximately three weeks earlier. Exigencies of planning, publishing, and distributing a weekly magazine with a cover date that was usually a week later than the printing sometimes led Puck to miss events related to daily headlines, or address them after the major components of the story.

The Russian Bear, as a soldier with rifle, has been turned into a scarecrow. A crow labeled “Japan” bites its nose. Another crow labeled “England” is perched on its cap. A crow labeled “Germany” is flying around its head. A crow labeled “Turkey” is on the ground at its feet. A crow labeled “China” is perched on the rifle butt. All these crows, and several others on a fence nearby, are cawing with laughter at the scarecrow.

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Comments and Context

The term “Sick Man of Europe” has been applied through centuries of international diplomacy to several countries — the Ottoman Empire and Turkey during periods of decline, and Great Britain when parts of its empire fell away. In the years prior to World War I, Russia surely wore the mantle.

The Russian Bear eyes a house of cards. Each card is labeled a different country, “England, France, Germany, Japan, U.S., Austria, China, Italy, [and] Turkey”, and the king on each card bears some facial characteristics of the ruler of the country, including Uncle Sam. A dove of “Peace” has landed on top of the cards. The bear’s right paw and claws are touching the “Japan” card.

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Comments and Context

In this cartoon, remarkable for its cleverness and caricatural details, Joseph Keppler illustrates the threats to peace in daily news, and the larger situation in international relations. The “house of cards” is dispositive in two ways: the cartoonist has pictured the major nations of the world, and their leaders, when challenges to the world order arose; and the meaning of the phrase — a precarious situation — is perfectly portrayed.

The British Lion, the Russian Bear, a cat labeled Austria, and three dogs labeled “France, Italy, [and] Germany” gather around a table for Thanksgiving dinner. The British Lion is holding a large knife labeled “Dismemberment of Turkey,” but the platter is empty. Looking in from the left is a turkey wearing a fez labeled “Turkey.” Caption: Turkey — Ha! Ha! How disappointed they look! Now I have lots to be thankful for.

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Comments and Context

In cartoonist Pughe’s drawing the only thing that the symbol of Turkey, the turkey in the doorway, can really be happy about is the frustration on the faces of those neighboring powers who were prepared to gobble it up. The once-mighty Ottoman Empire, reduced to the country of Turkey but slowly chipped away, province by province, people by people, tribe by tribe, for more than a century.

The Russian bear blows soap bubbles labeled “Promises” through a meerschaum pipe with a Chinese face, using liquid from a bowl labeled “Manchurian soft soap.”

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Comments and Context

This Keppler cartoon about Russia’s troubling habits is from the interregnum between the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War.

A bear and a bull appear as gladiators in an arena. The bear has one foot on the bull and is about to plunge a sword labeled “Raids” into the bull. Sheep at the edge of the wall appear to be signaling death to the bull.

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Comments and Context

Icons and symbols are the mother’s milk of political cartooning. Parties, movements, and countries have had animals and figures representing them, and many origin stories are interesting; some are lost in obscurity.

A family of bears dressed as humans stands near railroad tracks. The youngest cub is crying. A train labeled “Presidential Special” has just passed and standing on the back of the last car is President Theodore Roosevelt holding papers labeled “Speeches.” The mother bear indicates that Roosevelt is on a campaign tour rather than a hunting expedition. Caption: Mother Bruin–Don’t be alarmed, children! This is not a shooting trip!

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Comments and Context

This cartoon aims for an easy target — President Roosevelt and hunting, particularly for bears. He was an avid hunter, as the public knew. Many articles and chapters of books devoted were to the subject. In fact, only months after he was sworn in as president, Roosevelt went on a famous bear hunt in the canebrakes of Louisiana and Mississippi, and initial lack of success led well-meaning guides to rope a bear — which Roosevelt angrily refused to shoot — giving birth to the legend, image, and popularity of the “teddy bear.”

A large bear wearing a crown labeled “Russia” clutches a diminutive Emile Loubet labeled “France” as an explosion sends clouds of smoke labeled “Balkan Trouble” billowing skyward. Loubet is afraid that once the Russian Bear has him in its grasp, it won’t let go. Caption: Russian Bear — Don’t be afraid! I won’t drop you! / France — That’s what scares me!

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Comments and Context

When France formed an alliance with Russia, its major aims were to envelop an emergent Germany on the continent, and to “fish in the troubled waters” of the Pacific through Russian proxies. France did not foresee getting embroiled in ancient, internecine, and intractable squabbles of tribes, religions, languages, and hatreds of the Balkan states. But, as Russia chose to fish in those neighboring waters, France feared being drawn in to conflicts of no interest to itself.

A fox labeled “France” and the Russian Bear walk away from a grape arbor labeled “Anglo-Japanese Alliance.” They have tried the grapes and found them not palatable.

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Comments and Context

This seemingly innocent anthropomorphic cartoon ably suggests the troubling and complicated situation of international politics leading to the Great War a dozen years in its future. Treaties, “understandings,” secret alliances — some of them broken, and shifting — starting about the time of this cartoon are major factors in the cauldron that armed the Guns of August (1914, the commencement of continental hostilities). Great Britain ended a generation of “splendid isolation” — avoiding entangling alliances — with the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, the grape arbor of this cartoon. England’s concern partly was animated by a desire to counter Russia’s stated expansionist goals. France, which had treaty “obligations” with Russia, suddenly realized the possibility of being squeezed by powers from the east and west in the event of conflict. So Russia and Japan had reasons not to savor the grapes in the cartoon. A significant aspect of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty inured to the benefit of the United States and Theodore Roosevelt. During the negotiations he hosted to end the Russo-Japanese War two years subsequent, he was able to call upon Great Britain and its special relationship with Tokyo for assistance and back-channel communications. In the same manner also, Germany, tellingly absent from the 1902 round of alliances, was useful when Roosevelt recruited Kaiser Wilhelm to play a role with his cousin Czar Nicholas.

Uncle Sam is in a tree, chased there by the Russian Bear which is standing at the base of the tree. Uncle Sam has dropped his rifle labeled “U.S. Duty on Russian Sugar.” Caption: Uncle Sam (to Russia). — Don’t shoot! I’ll come down!

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Comments and Context

It might seem odd in our times that around 1900 one of the most controversial and contested commodities in the world was sugar. Perhaps it is even more of a surprise that Russia was a major sugar producer. Sugar’s uses might be clear, but it is a fact that much of the world’s sugar at the time was derived from not just from sugar cane, but also from sugar beets, beetroot, and other plants, and honey. Many countries had complicated systems of export penalties and incentives, depending on harvests, as well as assessed penalties for exports and bounties for production. Russia had rules more complicated than those of most countries, but it heavily relied on income from sugar exports. When the United States, in a position figuratively to be smothered in Cuban cane sugar after the Spanish-American War, sought to renegotiate details of its sugar trade, the Russian Empire was not happy.

The Russian bear, wearing a military uniform and with sword drawn, stands on one side of a ditch. Facing the bear on the other side of the ditch are various rulers, including “Japan,” “Germany,” “France,” “Italy,” and “Austria,” as well as John Bull representing “England” and Uncle Sam, standing, holding rifles with fixed bayonets. Behind them sits a man labeled “China,” laughing.

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Comments and Context

Western nations and Japan, in the last chapters of the Boxer Rebellion, had to deal with what was almost a rear-guard movement — the forces of the Russian Czar were attempting to profit from the chaos and preoccupation in the Celestial City. It was a foreshadowing of Russia (Soviet, not Imperial) declaring war on Japan, scant days before its surrender in World War II. J. S. Pughe’s cartoon suggests that the Western and Japanese nations were beneficent, perhaps welcome, protectors of China, which was not the case, at least in the Chinese view.

A woman representing China struggles with the Russian Bear, while the German emperor and the British Prime Minister, Lord Robert Cecil Salisbury, implore Russia not to be so greedy and to share some of China with them. Uncle Sam sits on a fence in the background, whittling a stick. Caption: England and Germany (to Russia). — Hold on there! Don’t be so selfish! If she’s going to be saved, we want to have a hand in it!

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Comments and Context

Just as Germany was comparatively late to the major nations’s scramble for colonies, Russia sought to capitalize on the disorder and crumbling central government in China at this time. A German-Anglo alliance, formed to check Russian expansion was, obviously, short-lived, but Russia’s primary frustration was its timing: the Boxer Rebellion, growing furious at this time, targeted all foreigners in China.

Illustration showing the Russian bear looking across a river to Afghanistan at a large beehive labeled “British Beehive Herat Honey” on a building with minarets. Caption: Russia. — I would like to have the honey, but I’m afraid of the bees!

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Comments and Context

Keppler’s cartoon illustrates a snapshot in time of a centuries-old and virtually intractable conflict played out in Central Asia, specifically Afghanistan. Included are traditional trade routes, East-West geopolitical ambitions, British colonial expansion and a desire to insulate its “jewel in the crown,” India, the claims of Persia (now Iran) on Herat and other territory, and Russian desires for a warm-water port. The “Charge of the Light Brigade” and Rudyard Kipling novels have tried to romanticize the bloody friction in history. Some trivialized the momentous factors as “The Great Game,” many of which persist today. Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, is one of the world’s oldest, and connected by roads to Kabul and Kandahar. At the moment of Keppler’s cartoon, Imperial Russia was not dissuaded from meddling in Herat by geography or other factors, but by British military presence.