Another vampiric octopus. Poster circa 1917. “Freiheit Der Meere” (Freedom of the Seas), Subtitled: England Der Blutsauger Derwelt (England, The Bloodsucker of the World) (Morrow, 2005)

Image Source: Hoover Institute Political Poster Database (accessed 2nd Oct 2010)

Morrow, J.H., “The Great War: An Imperial History”, Routledge, 2005 p.176

‘The Irish Devil-Fish’ by Sir John Tenniel, published in Punch, or the London Charivai,  June 18th 1881. The captions read: ’ “The creature is formidable, but there is a way of resisting it, *** The Devil-fish, in fact, is only vulnerable through the head” Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, Book IV., Ch. iii.’¹. The (stereotypical) Irish octopus is the ‘Land League’². The arms read: ‘anarchy’, ‘sedition’, ‘lawlessness’, ‘rebellion’, ‘outrage’ (?), ‘intimidation’, ‘obstruction’ and ‘terrorism’. The man wielding the knife is William Gladstone³: a former Prime Minister of the UK. It relates to the Plan of Campaign and the 1881 enactment of the Irish Coercion Act (Protection of Person and Property Act 1881), a reaction against protests and the Plan of Campaign. The Irish Coercion Act ‘permitted the Viceroy to detain people for as “long as was thought necessary”’⁴⁵. The Plan of Campaign was formulated by Irish politicians for the protection of tenants from landlords⁶

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References/Notes:

Image Source: Pharyngula http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/another_reason_to_love_the_iri.php (Accessed: 16th March 2009)

1. See also ‘The Modern Devil-Fish’. The quote appears on page 357 of the James Hogarth translation published by The Modern Library, New York, 2002. As an aside: possibility of linking Victor Hugo to political cartoons where the octopus/devil fish emerges from a cave? There are several French cartoons (Les Monopoles and la Pieuvre Maconnique  for example) that show the octopus attacking people from the safety of a cave, as in ‘Toilers of the Sea’. The knife stabbing head is another (as in ‘The Modern Devil-Fish’). Perhaps this is also the origin of the idea of a network with a central intelligence as shorthand for monopoly (ie. ‘action at a distance’ MacDougall). English translation/editions of ‘Toilers of the Sea’: New York 1867 (the year after it was published in Brussels), and UK edition 1887.
2. See also ‘Landlordism: a vampiric octopus (Northrop, 1900s)’, a English postcard that shows the reverse of this cartoon: the landlords are the (vampiric) octopus.
3. Myers, P.Z.  (2007), ‘Another reason to love the Irish’, Pharyngula, http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/another_reason_to_love_the_iri.php (Accessed 16th March 2000)
4. Wikipedia (Feb 2009), ‘Irish Coercion Act’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Coercion_Act (Accessed: 16th March 2009)
5. A parallel to current events and anti-terror laws?
6. Wikipedia (Dec 2008), ‘Plan of Campaign’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_of_Campaign(Accessed: 16th March 2009)

“The English Octopus: It feeds on nothing but gold” by (or published by) William “Coin” Hope Harvey was published in Coin’s Financial School 1894. It shows the “Rothschild” octopus either squatting on or replacing the UK. It has dendritic limbs that stretch over the globe/map¹ into gold producing areas which also show national debts amongst other figures. A caption that appeared under the cartoon: “‘The Rothschilds own 1,600,000,000² in gold’- Chicago Daily News. This is nearly over half the gold in the Chicago wheat pit.”³. William Harvey was a colleague of William Jennings Bryan⁴. Both were for bimetallism, and against using the gold standard alone. Bernstein notes that “[p]opular opinion among the Americans held that the gold standard was a devilish concoction of foreigners, especially the hated British and British Jews in particular.”⁵. IMAGE SOURCE: http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/larouche-rothschild.pdf

Footnotes:

1. Interesting geography: no defined countries in Africa except Egypt and South Africa (Cape Colony) or Asia except China, India and Japan, and Australia did not exist yet: it is a collection of colonies (Federation formalised 1 January 1901).
2. Ah, valueless numbers. I am not sure what this refers to: money?
3. Bernstein, P.L. (2000): The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession, John Wiley and Sons, p. 261 http://books.google.com/books?id=53zTrfaIqSEC (Accessed: 1st Feb 2009)
4. Bryan has appeared with octopuses in ‘Hunting the Octopus’, and an (antitrust, monopoly) octopus featured on one of his election posters in 1900.
5. Bernstein, The Power of Gold