Golz and Entente

This woodcut by Peet Aren depicts military aggression during World War I, showing two large artillery pieces labeled 'ULTIMATUM' aimed downward, with a flag bearing a cross at lower left. The artist renders the weapons in bold black strokes characteristic of German Expressionist woodcut, a medium favored for political prints. The composition suggests the coercive diplomacy and threat of military force that defined wartime rhetoric. Aren works in a tradition extending from Hogarth and Gillray through 19th-century satirists like Daumier and Nast, who used prints to critique power and expose state violence. By 1918, such graphic political commentary had evolved into the visual language of modern cartooning—direct, urgent, and formally inventive—establishing conventions the emerging comic strip and comic book would inherit and develop.