We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Few figures are more rapidly forgotten than dead journalists, except perhaps dead cartoonists. Yet the graphic work of Sir David Low (1891–1963) has not entirely slipped from memory. He is recalled as the inventor of the contradictory certainties of Colonel Blimp and as a scourge of appeasement. Particularly in the years immediately before, during and after the Second World War he achieved an international reputation. He was not perceived, and did not see himself, as a “funny man” but as a commentator on and analyst of international politics. His cartooning he presented as a form of argument to educate opinion in defence of liberal values and democratic institutions and in favour of rational conduct in international affairs. For these reasons his graphic and print journalism are revealing about the strengths and limitations of the outlook which might be termed “liberal internationalism.” Precisely because of this ideological content the United States became crucial in Low's thought at a time when liberal values and democratic institutions seemed under imminent threat and American capacity to accede to or refuse the role of “successor to John Bull” more apparent.
1 Watt, D. Cameron, Successor To John Bull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 den Hollander, A. N. J., “Countries Far Away – Cognition At a Distance,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, (1966–1967), 368.Google Scholar
3 Unless otherwise indicated biographical information on Low comes from Low, David, Low's Autobiography (London: Michael Joseph, 1956).Google Scholar
4 Gunther, John, Inside Europe (London: Michael Joseph, 1956), 220.Google Scholar
5 For the careers, outlook, connections with each other and with British liberals and socialists of these journalists see the relevant volumes of Who Was Who; Dictionary of American Biography; Miller, Webb, I found No Peace (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1940)Google Scholar; Swing, Raymond Gram, Good Evening! (London: Bodley Head, 1965) especially 154–55, 301Google Scholar; John Gunther, Inside Europe. Low also met American writers and artists through his friendships with H.G. Wells and Harold Laski; Low, 286–87. Hugh Dalton was irritated at the need to cultivate Swing as an interventionist before Pearl Harbor in 1941. Reynolds, David, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–1941: A Study In Competitive Cooperation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 351, note 90.Google Scholar
6 Low, 125, 233–34.
7 Figure 1; Time, Dec. 1936.
8 New Yorker, 12 June 1948; Low, 40.
9 “Notes for “Sermons by Artists'” [1934;] “Talk to Ruskin Society,” 24 June 1935, both in Low Archive, in private hands. All Low Archive material consulted in copies held by Centre for Study of Cartoons and Caricature, the Library, University of Kent, Canterbury (hereafter Cartoon Centre). These items in file 2, Cartoon Centre.
10 New York World Telegram, 26 Oct. 1936.
11 Low, 235.
12 “U.S.A. Notes [1948]” in “Low Note Book 17A,” Cartoon Centre.
13 “Notes for “Sermons by Artists,” 10.
14 den Hollander, A. N. J., “Countries Far Away,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 9 (1966–1967), 368.Google Scholar
15 Low, 235–38.
16 Brinkley, Alan, Voices of Protest, Huey Long, Father Coughlin And The Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 269–83.Google Scholar
17 “U.S.A. Notes” [1948], Cartoon Centre.
18 Enclosure in R. A. Llewellyn to David Low, 30 Nov. 1938, file 11, Low material, Cartoon Centre.
19 “Notes for ‘Sermons by Artists,’” 10.
20 For Streit's ideas see: Streit, Clarence K., Union Now (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939)Google Scholar; Streit, Clarence K., Union Now With Britain (London: Jonathan Cape, 1941)Google Scholar; David Reynolds, The Creation Of The Anglo-American Alliance, 263, 365 note 48. Low's long-term interest in supranational integration in David Low to Clarence K. Streit, 21 Feb. 1957, file 4, Low material, Cartoon Centre.
21 “Evolution,” Survey-Graphic, Feb. 1939, a special issue on minorities edited by Raymond Gram Swing.
22 Figure 2, originally in Evening Standard (ES), 11 Feb, 1929.
23 Low, 219.
24 ES, 23 June 1939; ES, 29 June 1942; New York Times (NYT), 22 Sept. 1946.
25 NYT, 30 Oct. 1949.
26 NYT, 20 July 1952, “Jumping to reckless conclusions…”; NYT, 18 Oct. 1953, “Fate has made us all honorary Americans”; NYT, 19 Dec. 1954, “Old Low's History…”.
27 E.g. NYT, 16 March, 16 Nov. 1952.
28 NYT, 18 Oct. 1953.
29 Low, David, A Cartoon History Of Our Times With An Introduction And Text By Quincy Howe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939), 5Google Scholar. Originally published May 1932.
30 Figure 3, DL 1280, Cartoon Centre, ES, 15 Dec. 1937.
31 Figure 4, Low, , A Cartoon History, 31Google Scholar. FDR's speech was on 5 Oct. 1937.
32 Reynolds, , The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 10–16.Google Scholar
33 Figure 5, David, Low, Low On The War, A Cartoon Commentary Of The Years 1939–1941 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1941), 87, 91, 112Google Scholar; Reynolds, 148.
34 ES, 28 Nov. 1940, DL 1679, Cartoon Centre.
35 ES, 28 May 1941, DL 1734, Cartoon Centre.
36 Figure 6; Reynolds, 174; Low, , Low On The War, 147Google Scholar, “Fire Bomb,” ES, 9 Dec. 1941, DL 1801, Cartoon Centre.
37 The Living Age, Jan. 1941; Current History and Forum, April 1941; NYT, 1 June 1941.
38 The Living Age, April 1941.
39 David, Low, Years of Wrath, A Cartoon History 1932–1945 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1949), 237Google Scholar; NYT, 2 Oct. 1943, 15 Nov. 1944; Figure 7 “Argument on a wall,” ES, 19 Sept. 1945, DL 2468 Cartoon Centre; NYT, 5 Oct. 1947.
40 Figure 8, ES, 7 March 1946, DL 2539 Cartoon Centre; Figure 9, New Republic, 24 March 1947, David, Low, Low's Cartoon History 1945–1953 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), 47.Google Scholar
41 David Low to Kingsley Martin, 9 Aug. 1950, file 10, Low material, Cartoon Centre.
42 Saturday Review of Literature, 22 July 1939; Book Review Digest (1939, 1941); Saturday Review of Literature, 6 Sept. 1941. Reviewers who adopted an anti-isolationist tone included the radical journalist Vincent Sheean and the liberal cartoonist Rollin Kirby.
43 Quincy, Howe, England Expects Every American To Do His Duty (London: Robert Hale, 1938), esp. 217–38Google Scholar; Howe, , Blood Is Cheaper Than Water (London: Robert Hale, 1939)Google Scholar. By 1940 Howe was less certainly isolationist. See Chamberlain's continued liberalism in domestic politics in John, Chamberlain, The American Stakes (New York: Carrick and Evans, 1940)Google Scholar. Quotations from Chamberlain's review in New Republic, 23 Aug. 1939.
44 “The Cartoonist's Armoury” in Gombrich, E. H., Meditations On A Hobby Horse and Other Essays On The Theory of Art (London: Phaidon Press, 2nd edn., 1971), 127–42Google Scholar; quotation in Time, 8 April 1957.
45 NYT, 18 Feb. 1940; “Notes for ‘Sermons by Artists,’” 1. It followed “In this evolutionary world, in which man is improving, generation on generation, why should we return to the inferior past for our wisdom,” ibid., 3.
46 Meyer, Berger, The Story of the New York Times 1851–1951 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951), 570Google Scholar; Ayer Directory of Newspapers and Publications (N. W. Ayer: Philadelphia, 1941, 1947). 1941 vol., 645, 657, 660, 661, 672; 1947 vol., 670, 671.Google Scholar
47 Low's friend, Wells, judged the New Deal optimistically, like Low himself, earlier than many members of the British Left. By the late 1930s even many socialist sceptics of the US joined Low in seeing it as a crucial element in a system of collective security against fascism. Henry, Pelling, American And The British Left From Bright To Bevan (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1956), 137 ff.Google Scholar
48 Low acted on the idea of critical support when, along with other British public figures, he signed a letter in NYT urging a compromise peace in Korea on the occasion of Attlee's famous visit to Washington in the early stages of the war; NYT, 9 Dec. 1950.
49 Morgan, Kenneth O., Labour in Power 1945–1951 (Oxford: O.U.P., 1985), 262–277Google Scholar; Harris, Kenneth, Attlee (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), 293, 304–05, 312–13Google Scholar; Pimlott, Ben, Hugh Dalton (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985), 499, 592Google Scholar; Rolph, C. H., Kingsley, The Life, Letters and Diaries of Kingsly Martin (London: Victor Gollancz, 1973), 302–06Google Scholar; Hyams, Edward, The New Statesman. The History of the First Fifty Years 1913–1963 (London: Longmans, 1963), 254–61Google Scholar; Martin, Kingsley, Harold Laski (1892–1950). A Biographical Memoir (London: Victor Gollancz, 1953), 242–52Google Scholar; Deane, Herbert A., The Political Ideas of Harold Laski (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). 302–09, 318–29Google Scholar; Laski, Harold, The American Democracy: a Commentary and an Interpretation (London: Allen and Unwin, 1949).Google Scholar
