Stolzer, Rob :: Williams, Gaar

Gaar Williams - Dawes Committee Editorial Cartoon - 1921

Artist: Gaar Williams (All)

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Gaar Williams - Dawes Committee Editorial Cartoon - 1921 Comic Art

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Artwork Details

Title:	Gaar Williams - Dawes Committee Editorial Cartoon - 1921
Artist:	Gaar Williams (All)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Comic Strip
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	654
Likes on CAF:	0 1
Comments:	1
Added to Site:	8/25/2019
Comic Art Archive:

Description

I have not been able to track down an exact date of publication for this marvelous Gaar Williams cartoon, but it is obviously from February 1921, during the three-day House of Representatives hearing to investigate expenditures during WWI. Below is information cobbled together about Charles Dawes and the events leading up to his national fame. The information was largely found, and sometimes lifted, from the US Senate website:

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Charles Dawes was Calvin Coolidge�s Vice-President from 1925 to 1929, but before that he was tapped by General John J. Pershing to be the chief of supply procurement for the American forces in Europe during WWI, assigning him to head the board that collected supplies and to coordinate purchases to hold down inflation and duplication of orders. Dawes was one who spoke his mind, and admired those who were people of action, rather than those who simply talked. To that end, Dawes said, "Action, then, is everything�words nothing except as they lead immediately to it," adding, "I came out of the war a postgraduate in emergency conferences." After the Armistice in 1918, Dawes remained in Europe to oversee the disposition of surplus military property. In 1919 he resigned his commission and returned to the United States.

Dawes was out of the spotlight after the war, but in February 1921 an event occurred that brought Dawes to the attention not only of president-elect Harding but of the entire nation. A House of Representatives committee to investigate war expenditures called Dawes to testify. Republicans�who held the majority�were clearly eager to uncover any information about "extravagant purchases" in the AEF that might tarnish the outgoing administration of Woodrow Wilson. Journalist Bascom Timmons recorded that Dawes, a busy man, had resented being called by the committee. On the morning that he was due to testify, he walked around the Capitol waiting for the committee to assemble, getting angrier all the time. It took only a spark to set him off. In the course of the interrogation, Representative Oscar Bland, an Indiana Republican, pressed Dawes on how much the American army had paid for French horses.

"Hell'n Maria!" Dawes exclaimed, jumping up from his seat and striding to the mahogany table where the committee sat. "I will tell you this, that we would have paid horse prices for sheep, if they could have hauled artillery!" Peppering his remarks with profanity, Dawes lectured the committee on the urgency of getting supplies to soldiers who were being shot at. He recounted how he had cut through the red tape and "had to connive with the smuggling of horses over there," but he got the horses to drag the cannon to the front. Turning the fire on "pinhead" politicians, Dawes roared: "Your committee can not put a fly speck on the American Army. . . . I am against that peanut politics. This was not a Republican war, nor was it a Democratic war. It was an American war."

Afterwards, Dawes explained that he had "suddenly decided that so far as I could bring it about either the Committee or I would go out of business." His "Hell 'n Maria" testimony took up seven hours for three sessions of the committee, with the official stenographers complaining that he often spoke too rapidly. Dawes' defense of the AEF won great praise from both parties. The newspapers, and especially the editorial cartoonists, loved Dawes' indignant outburst and quaint expletive. His published testimony, even with the expletives deleted, became a Government Printing Office best seller. The incident made him a national figure, and in July 1921, when Congress created the Bureau of the Budget, Harding appointed Dawes as its first director.

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Dawes' national spotlight eventually brought him to the Vice-Presidency under Calvin Coolidge, where his brashness was not always seen in the most positive light.

In terms of drawing, the late 1910s through the mid-1920s is Gaar Williams' sweet spot, to my mind. The line work is lush and with a ton of movement. Whatever kind of nib Williams use, he surely made it sing.

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	Rob Stolzer Premium Gallery Owner
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Country:	UNITED STATES
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Duke Fuller
Member Since 2008

Posted on 9/17/2020

Great illustration and story! Thanks for sharing. I just aquired four illustrations myself and have posted here.

Cheers! -and great collection you have!!!

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