Description
Object description
obverse design : Arthur Balfour, full-length caricature figure, leaning forward over a lectern to display a "Lusitania
Medallion", held in his left hand, to three frock-coated gentlemen. Two of his audience peer inquisitively at the object, the third, in the
background, stands with his arms raised high in indignation facing a bearded figure holding a sketch pad and pencil. The artist is a self-
portrait of Goetz (see Notes)
obverse text : "DIFFICILE EST SATI RAM NON SCRIBERE"
reverse design : soldier, Scottish, standing, wearing kilt and glengarry bonnet and playing bagpipes. He holds in front of him a poster
marked - "ENGL FLUG BLATT EIN DEUTSCHER SEE SIEG LUSITANIA MEDAILLE 1916"
exergue : "DIE.LVSITANIA.MÜNZE GIBT.LORD.BALFOVR STOFF.Z.REDEN 9.XI.1916"
reverse text : "ENGLISCHE HETZ ARBEIT IN SCHWEDEN"
Label
This First World War satirical medal by Goetz was almost certainly a reaction to Arthur Balfour's Guildhall speech of 9
November 1916 (fully reported in 'The Times', 10 November 1916) in which the British First Lord of the Admiralty denounced the German
Navy's war against commerce. Balfour made specific reference to Goetz's notorious Lusitania medal and contrasted virtuous German utterances
at the Hague Conference in 1909 with piratical German behaviour on the high seas during the war. Indeed British anti-German propaganda
based on the use of a copy of Goetz's first pattern 'Lusitania Medallion' (with the incorrect date of the sinking) was so successful that
in January 1917 the Bavarian War Office ordered that the manufacture of Goetz's original be forbidden and all available pieces confiscated.
MED 326 has been interpreted as an attempt by Goetz to undo some of the damage caused by his first, incorrectly dated, 'Lusitania
Medallion' by deriding subsequent British propaganda efforts, especially those directed at neutral Sweden and Norway. Interestingly the
obverse design contains a caricature self-portrait of the medallist. Engstrom identifies the subsidiary characters examining the medal as
Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey, the outraged figure in the background as Winston Churchill or Prime Minister Asquith. The Latin quotation
(a line from Juvenal) is translated as 'It is not difficult to write a satire' and the text in the exergue as 'The Lusitania medal gives
Lord Balfour food for talk'. The reverse design features the stylised 'British kilted soldier' Goetz often employed to personify perfidious
Albion. The text on the poster is translated as 'English bulletin. A German naval victory Lusitania Medal' and the principal text around
the edge as 'English intrigues in Sweden'.