How Are We Going to Vote This Year?

“Whither?” by Howard Pyle (1904)

...Now the fate of the nation lies with us voters to determine.

It does not lie with the Republican Candidate nor with the Democratic Candidate. They are our servants and only do our bidding when we elect them to office.

The VOTER must decide which of these two parties to put in power, and he alone.

He is the sovereign, and upon him lies the entire responsibility of that decision. So we had better take care what we are about when we cast our ballot. Don’t let us be too quick about it; let us take time to think!...

So how are we going to vote this year? THAT is the question!

—From “How Are We Going To Vote This Year?” by Howard Pyle, published anonymously in Collier’s Weekly for November 5, 1904 (and subsequently reprinted in various newspapers). Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “I think it is as good a thing as we have had in this campaign, and I want to thank you for it with all my heart.” And journalist Richard Victor Oulahan later remarked, “I have been told that the cartoon entitled ‘Whither?’ with the accompanying reading matter entitled ‘How Are We Going to Vote This Year?’ was more effective as a campaign advertisement than anything else put out in behalf of President Roosevelt by the Literary Bureau of the National Committee.”

Sahibs, Sikhs, Pathans, Boers, Kipling...and Pyle?

Howard Pyle’s “Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib” illustrated Rudyard Kipling’s short story, “A Sahib’s War,” in Collier’s Weekly for December 7, 1901.

The setting is South Africa during the Second Boer War (which was then in progress): “a tall young man deprived of understanding” is about to be hanged from a tree by two turbaned soldiers: Umr Singh, a Sikh, in the center, and Sikander Khan, a Pathan, on the right. But their efforts are thwarted by the ghost of a beloved British cavalry officer, Captain Corbyn (“Kurban Sahib”), recently killed in an ambush, who drifts toward them, saying, “No. It is a Sahib’s War.” A Boer woman is cowering on the ground with upraised “paroxysmal hands” (Singh and Khan sport them, too - common Pylean appendages).

The original for this has yet to turn up, so while I’m confident Pyle painted it in oil, I don’t know if it’s black and white, part color, or full color, or how large it is. The 9 x 10" halftone plate was retouched by an engraver, but it’s a pretty awful reproduction. Even so, its otherworldly weirdness and strength come through.