Louis Raemaekers was a Dutch artist who worked for the British during World War I, making illustrations prompted by the secret British War Propaganda Bureau. The Propaganda Bureau was the first official British government body to produce images supporting the British cause, and the government formed it after learning that Germany had established a similar agency. When the Germans broke the 1839 Treaty of London protecting Belgium by attacking the neutral country in 1914, the British latched onto this action and reports of atrocities (some fictitious) as a leitmotif of wartime propaganda.

— Exhibition label, Belligerent Encounters: Graphic Chronicles of War and Revolution, 1500–1945, July 31–October 23, 2011, Galleries 124–127.