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Mr. Punch's History of the Great War

by Charles L. Graves · English · Gutenberg #11571 · 417,129 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mr. Punch's History of the Great War

Author: Charles L. Graves


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11571]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. PUNCH'S HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR ***

Mr. PUNCH'S

HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR

1919


First Impression July 1919
Second    "      July 1919
Third     "      August 1919
Fourth    "      August 1919
Fifth     "      September 1919
Sixth     "      October 1919
Seventh   "      October 1919



[Illustration: PEACE--THE SOWER]


TO THE READER


  _For whatsoever worth or wit appears
  In this mixed record of five hectic years,
  This tale of heroes, heroines--and others--
  Thank first "O. S." and then his band of brothers
  Who took their cue, with pencil and with pen,
  From the gay courage of our fighting men.
  Theirs be the praise, not his, who here supplies
  Merely the editorial hooks and eyes
  And, rich by proxy, prodigally spends
  The largess of his colleagues and his friends._

_C. L. G_.


PROLOGUE


Though a lover of peace, Mr. Punch from his earliest days has not been
unfamiliar with war. He was born during the Afghan campaign; in his youth
England fought side by side with the French in the Crimea; he saw the old
Queen bestow the first Victoria Crosses in 1857; he was moved and stirred
by the horrors and heroisms of the Indian Mutiny. A little later on, when
our relations with France were strained by the Imperialism of Louis
Napoleon, he had witnessed the rise of the volunteer movement and made
merry with the activities of the citizen soldier of Brook Green. Later on
again he had watched, not without grave misgiving, the growth of the great
Prussian war machine which crushed Denmark, overthrew Austria, and having
isolated France, overwhelmed her heroic resistance by superior numbers and
science, and stripped her of Alsace-Lorraine.

In May, 1864, Mr. Punch presented the King of Prussia with the "Order of
St. Gibbet" for his treatment of Denmark.

In August of the same year he portrayed the brigands dividing the spoil and
Prussia grabbing the lion's share, thus foreshadowing the inevitable
conflict with Austria.

In the war of 1870-1 he showed France on her knees but defying the new
Caesar, and arraigned Bismarck before the altar of Justice for demanding
exorbitant securities.

And in 1873, when the German occupation was ended by the payment of the
indemnity, in a flash of prophetic vision Mr. Punch pictured France,
vanquished but unsubdued, bidding her conqueror "Au revoir."

[Illustration: GAUL TO THE NEW CAESAR

"Defiance, Emperor, while I have strength to hurl it!"

_(Dec. 17, 1870)_]

More than forty years followed, years of peace and prosperity for Great
Britain, only broken by the South African war, the wounds of which were
healed by a generous settlement. But all the time Germany was preparing for
"The Day," steadily perfecting her war machine, enlarging her armies,
creating a great fleet, and piling up colossal supplies of guns and
munitions, while her professors and historians, harnessed to the car of
militarism, inflamed the people against England as the jealous enemy of
Germany's legitimate expansion. Abroad, like a great octopus, she was
fastening the tentacles of permeation and penetration in every corner of
the globe, honeycombing Russia and Belgium, France, England and America
with secret agents, spying and intriguing and abusing our hospitality. For
twenty-five years the Kaiser was our frequent and honoured, if somewhat
embarrassing, guest, professing friendship for England and admiration of
her ways, shooting at Sandringham, competing at Cowes, sending telegrams of
congratulation to the University boat-race winners, ingratiating himself
with all he met by his social gifts, his vivacious conversation, his
prodigious versatility and energy.

[Illustration:

THE REWARD OF (DE)MERIT

King Punch presenteth Prussia with the Order of "St. Gibbet."

(_May 7_, 1864)]

Mr. Punch was no enemy of Germany. He remembered--none better--the debt we
owe to her learning and her art; to Bach and Beethoven, to Handel, the
"dear Saxon" who adopted our citizenship; to Mendelssohn, who regarded
England as his second home; to her fairy tales and folk-lore; to the
Brothers Grimm and the _Struwwelpeter_; to the old kindly Germany
which has been driven mad by War Lords and Pan-Germans. If Mr. Punch's
awakening was gradual he at least recognised the dangerous elements in the
Kaiser's character as far back as October, 1888, when he underlined
Bismarck's warning against Caesarism. In March, 1890, appeared Tenniel's
famous cartoon "Dropping the Pilot"; in May of the same year the Kaiser
appears as the _Enfant Terrible_ of Europe, rocking the boat and
alarming his fellow-rulers. In January, 1892, he is the Imperial
Jack-in-the-Box with a finger in every pie; in March, 1892, the modern
Alexander, who

  Assumes the God,
  Affects to nod,
  And seems to shake the spheres;

though unfortunately never nodding in the way that Homer did. (This
cartoon, by the way, caused _Punch_ to be excluded for a while from
the Imperial Palace.)

In February, 1896, Mr. Punch drew the Kaiser as Fidgety Will. In January,
1897, he was the Imperial actor-manager casting himself for a leading part
in _Un Voyage en Chine_; in October of the same year he was "Cook's
Crusader," sympathising with the Turk at the time of the Cretan ultimatum;
and in April, 1903, the famous visit to Tangier suggested the Moor of
Potsdam wooing Morocco to the strains of

  "Unter den Linden"--always at Home,
  "Under the Limelight," wherever I roam.

[Illustration:

"AU REVOIR!"

GERMANY: "Farewell, Madam, and if--"

FRANCE: "Ha! We shall meet again!"

(_Sept. 27, 1873._)]

In 1905 the Kaiser was "The Sower of Tares," the enemy of Europe.

In 1910 he was Teutonising and Prussifying Turkey; in 1911 discovering to
his discomfort that the Triple Entente was a solid fact.

And in September, 1913, he was shown as unable to dissemble his
disappointment at the defeat of the German-trained Turkish army by the
Balkan League.

[Illustration: THE STORY OF FIDGETY WILHELM

(Up-to-date Version of "Struwwelpeter")

  "Let me see if Wilhelm can
  Be a little gentleman;
  Let me sec if he is able
  To sit still for once at table!"

  "But Fidgety Will
  He _won't_ sit still."

  Just like any bucking horse.
  "Wilhelm! We are getting cross!"

_Feb._ 1, 1896.]

[Illustration:

THE SOWER OF TARES

(_After Millais, Aug. 23, 1905_)]

So, too, with Turkey. From 1876 to 1913 Mr. Punch's cartoons on the Near
East are one continuous and illuminating commentary on Lord Salisbury's
historic admission that we had "backed the wrong horse," culminating in the
cartoon "Armageddon: a Diversion" in December, 1912, when Turkey says
"Good! If only all these other Christian nations get at one another's
throats I may have a dog's chance yet." Throughout the entire series the
Sick Man remains cynical and impenitent, blowing endless bubble-promises of
reform from his hookah, bullying and massacring his subject races whenever
he had the chance, playing off the jealousies of the Powers, one against
the other, to further his own sinister ends.

[Illustration: SOLID

GERMANY: "Donnerwetter! It's rock. I thought it was going to be paper."
(_Aug. 2, 1911_)]

Yet Mr. Punch does not wish to lay claim to any special prescience or
wisdom, for, in spite of lucid intervals of foresight, we were all deceived
by Germany. Nearly fifty years of peace had blinded us to fifty years of
relentless preparation for war. But if we were deceived by the treachery of
Germany's false professions, we had no monopoly of illusion. Germany made
the huge mistake of believing that we would stand out--that we dared not
support France in face of our troubles and divisions at home. She counted
on the pacific influences in a Liberal Cabinet, on the looseness of the
ties which bound us to our Dominions, on the "contemptible" numbers of our
Expeditionary Force, on the surrender of Belgium. She had willed the War;
the tragedy of Sarajevo gave her the excuse. There is no longer any need to
fix the responsibility. The roots of the world conflict which seemed
obscure to a neutral statesman have long been laid bare by the avowals of
the chief criminal. The story is told in the Memoir of Prince Lichnowsky,
in the revelations of Dr. Muehlon of Krupp's, in the official
correspondence that has come to light since the Revolution of Berlin.
Germany stands before the bar of civilisation as the _reus confitens_
in the cause of light against darkness, freedom against world enslavement.

So the War began, and if "when war begins then hell opens," the saying
gained a tenfold truth in the greatest War of all, when the aggressor at
once began to wage it on non-combatants, on the helpless and innocent, on
women and children, with a cold and deliberate ferocity unparalleled in
history. Let it now be frankly owned that in the shock of this discovery
Mr. Punch thought seriously of putting up his shutters. How could he carry
on in a shattered and mourning world? The chronicle that follows shows how
it became possible, thanks to the temper of all our people in all parts of
the Empire, above all to the unwavering confidence of our sailors and
soldiers, to that "wonderful spirit of light-heartedness, that perpetual
sense of the ridiculous" which, in the words of one of Mr. Punch's many
contributors from the front, "even under the most appalling conditions
never seemed to desert them, and which indeed seemed to flourish more
freely in the mud and rain of the front line trenches than in the
comparative comfort of billets or 'cushy jobs.'" Tommy gave Mr. Punch his
cue, and his high example was not thrown away on those at home, where, when
all allowance is made for shirkers and slackers and scaremongers, callous
pleasure-seekers, faint-hearted pacificists, rebels and traitors, the great
majority so bore themselves as to convince Mr. Punch that it was not only a
privilege but a duty to minister to mirth even at times when one hastened
to laugh for fear of being obliged to weep. In this resolve he was
fortified and encouraged, week after week, by the generous recognition of
his efforts which came from all parts of our far-flung line.

This is no formal History of the War in the strict or scientific sense of
the phrase; no detailed record of naval and military operations. There have
been many occasions on which silence or reticence seemed the only way to
maintain the national composure. It is _Mr. Punch's_ History of the
Great War, a mirror of varying moods, month by month, but reflecting in the
main how England remained steadfastly true to her best traditions; how all
sorts and conditions of men and women comported themselves throughout the
greatest ordeal that had ever befallen their race.




Mr. PUNCH'S HISTORY of the GREAT WAR



_August, 1914._


Four weeks ago we stood on the verge of the great upheaval and knew it not.
We were thinking of holidays; of cricket and golf and bathing, and then
were suddenly plunged in the deep waters of the greatest of all Wars. It
has been a month of rude awakening, of revelation, of discovery--of many
moods varying from confidence to deep misgiving, yet dominated by a sense
of relief that England has chosen the right course. Sir Edward Grey's
statement that we meant to stand by France and fulfil our obligations to
Belgium rallied all parties. "Thrice armed is he that hath his quarrel
just." The Fleet "stands fast" and the vigil of the North Sea has begun.
Lord Kitchener has gone to the War Office, and in twelve days from the
declaration of War our Expeditionary Force, the best trained and equipped
army that England has ever put into the field, landed in France. The
Dominions and India are staunch. Every able-bodied public school boy and
under-graduate of military age has joined the colours. The Admiralty is
crowded with living counterparts of Captain Kettle, offering their services
in any capacity, linking up the Merchant Marine with the Royal Navy in one
great solidarity of the sea.

The Empire is sound and united. So far the omens are good. But as the days
pass the colossal task of the Allies becomes increasingly apparent.
Peace-loving nations are confronted by a Power which has prepared for war
for forty years, equipped in every detail as no Power has ever been
equipped before, with a docile and well-disciplined people trained to arms,
fortified by a well-founded belief in their invincibility, reinforced by
armies of spies in every country, hostile or neutral. We are up against the
mightiest War-machine of all time, wonderful in organisation, joining the
savagery of the barbarian to the deadliest resources of modern science. The
revelation of the black soul of Germany is the greatest and the most
hideous surprise of this month of months, crowning long years of treachery
and the abuse of hospitality with an orgy of butchery and devastation--the
torture and massacre of old men, women and children, the shooting of
hostages, the sack and burning of towns and the destruction of ancient
seats of learning. Yet we feel that in trampling upon heroic Belgium, who
dared to bar the gate, Germany has outraged the conscience of the world and
sealed her ultimate doom.

The month closes in gloom, the fall of Liége, Namur and Brussels, the sack
of Louvain, and the repulse of the Russian raid into East Prussia at
Tannenberg following in rapid succession. Against these disasters we have
to set the brilliant engagement in the Heligoland Bight. But the onrush of
the Germans on the Western front is not stayed, though their time-table has
been thrown out by the self-sacrifice of the Belgians, the steadfast
courage of French's "contemptible little army" in the retreat from Mons,
and the bold decision of Smith-Dorrien, who saved the situation at Le
Cateau. In these days of apprehension and misgiving, clouded by alarming
rumours of a broken and annihilated army, it sometimes seems as though we
should never smile again. Where, in a world of blood and tears, can
_Punch_ exercise his function without outraging the fitness of things?
These doubts have been with us from the beginning, but they are already
being resolved by the discovery--another of the wonders of the time--that
on the very fringes of tragedy there is room for cheerfulness. When our
fighting men refuse to be downhearted in the direst peril, we at home
should follow their high example, note where we can the humours of the
fray, and "bear in silence though our hearts may bleed."

[Illustration:

BRAVO, BELGIUM!]

[Illustration: MEDICAL OFFICER: "Sorry I must reject you on account of your
teeth."

WOULD-BE-RECRUIT: "Man, ye're making a gran' mistake. I'm no wanting to
bite the Germans, I'm wanting to shoot 'em."]

Germany in one brief month has given us a wonderful exhibition of
conscienceless strength, of disciplined ferocity. She has shown an equally
amazing failure to read the character of her foes aright. We now know what
German Kultur means: but of the soul and spirit of England she knows
nothing. Least of all does she understand that formidable and incorrigible
levity which refuses to take hard knocks seriously. It will be our
privilege to assist in educating our enemies on these and other points,
even though, as Lord Kitchener thinks, it takes three years to do it. The
Mad Dog of Europe is loose, but we remember the fate of the dog who "to
serve some private ends went mad and bit the man." "The man recovered from
his bite, the dog it was that died." Meanwhile the Official Press Bureau
has begun its operations, the Prince of Wales's Relief Fund for the relief
of those who may suffer distress through the war is started, and in the
City

  Because beneath grey Northern Skies
    Some grey hulls heave and fall,
  The merchants sell their merchandise
    All just as usual.



_September, 1914._


Another month of revelations and reticences, of carnage and destruction,
loss and gain, with the miracle of the Marne as the first great sign of the
turning of the tide. On September 3 the Paris Government moved to Bordeaux,
on the 5th the retreat from Mons ended, on the 13th Joffre, always
unboastful and laconic, announced the rolling back of the invaders, on the
15th the battle of the Aisne had begun. What an Iliad of agony, endurance
and heroism lies behind these dates--the ordeal and deliverance of Paris,
the steadfastness of the "Contemptibles," the martyrdom of Belgium!

Day by day Germany unmasks herself more clearly in her true colours from
highest to lowest. The Kaiser reveals himself as a blasphemer and
hypocrite, the Imperial crocodile with the bleeding heart, the Crown Prince
as a common brigand, the High Command as chief instigators to ferocity, the
rank and file as docile instruments of butchery and torture, content to use
Belgium women as a screen when going into action.

  THE TWO GERMANIES

  Marvellous the utter transformation
  Of the spirit of the German nation!

  Once the land of poets, seers and sages,
  Who enchant us in their deathless pages,

  Holding high the torch of Truth, and earning
  Endless honour by their zeal for learning.

  Such the land that in an age uncouther
  Bred the soul-emancipating LUTHER.

  Such the land that made our debt the greater
  By the gift of _Faust_ and _Struwwelpeter_.

  Now the creed of Nietzsche, base, unholy,
  Guides the nation's brain and guides it solely.

  Now Mozart's serene and joyous magic
  Yields to RICHARD STRAUSS, the haemorrhagic.[A]

  Now the eagle changing to the vulture
  Preaches rapine in the name of culture.

  Now the Prussian _Junker_, blind with fury,
  Claims to be God's counsel, judge and jury,

  While the authentic German genius slumbers,
  Cast into the limbo of back numbers.

[Footnote A: Great play is made in Strauss's _Elektra_ with the
"slippery blood" motive.]

The campaign of lies goes on with immense energy in all neutral countries,
for the Kaiser is evidently of opinion that the pen is perhaps mightier
than the sword.

At home the great improvisation of the New Armies, undertaken by Lord
Kitchener in the teeth of much expert criticism, goes steadily on. Lord
Kitchener asked for 500,000 men, and he has got them. On September 10 the
House voted another half million. The open spaces in Hyde Park are given
over to training; women are beginning to take the place of men. Already the
spirit of the new soldiers is growing akin to that of the regulars. One of
Mr. Punch's brigade, who has begun to send his impressions of the mobilised
Territorials, sums it up very well when he says that, amateurs or
professionals, they are all very much alike. "Feed them like princes and
pamper them like babies, and they'll complain all the time. But stand them
up to be shot at and they'll take it as a joke, and rather a good joke,
too." Lord Roberts maintains a dignified reticence, but that is "Bobs'
way":

  He knew, none better, how 'twould be,
    And spoke his warning far and wide:
  He worked to save us ceaselessly,
    Setting his well-earned ease aside.

  We smiled and shrugged and went our way,
    Blind to the swift approaching blow:
  His every word proves true to-day,
    But no man hears, "I told you so!"

Meanwhile General Botha, Boer and Briton too, is on the war-path, and we
can, without an undue stretch of imagination, picture him composing a
telegram to the Kaiser in these terms: "Just off to repel another raid.
Your customary wire of congratulations should be addressed, 'British
Headquarters, German South-West Africa.'"

[Illustration: GOD (AND THE WOMEN) OUR SHIELD

Study of a German Gentleman going into Action]

The rigours of the Censorship are pressing hard on war correspondents.
Official news of importance trickles in in driblets: for the rest,
newspaper men, miles from the front, are driven to eke out their dispatches
with negligible trivialities. We know that Rheims Cathedral is suffering
wanton bombardment. And a great many of us believe that at least a quarter
of a million Russians have passed through England on their way to France.
The number of people who have seen them is large: that of those who have
seen people who have seen them is enormous.

[Illustration: PORTER: "Do I know if the Rooshuns has really come to
England? Well, sir, if this don't prove it, I don't know what do. A train
went through here full, and when it came back I knowed there'd been
Rooshuns in it, 'cause the cushions and floors was covered with snow."]

We gather that the Press Bureau has no notion whether the rumour is true or
not, and cannot think of any way of finding out. But it consents to its
publication in the hope that it will frighten the Kaiser. Apropos of the
Russians we learn that they have won a pronounced victory (though not by
us) at Przemysl.

Motto for the month: _Grattez le Prusse et vous trouverez le barbare_.

[Illustration: UNCONQUERABLE

THE KAISER: "So, you see--you've lost everything."

THE KING OF THE BELGIANS: "Not my soul."]



_October, 1914._


Antwerp has fallen and the Belgian Government removed to Havre. But the
spirit of the King and his army is unshaken.

Unshaken, too, is the courage of Burgomaster Max of Brussels, "who faced
the German bullies with the stiffest of stiff backs." The Kaiser has been
foiled in his hope of witnessing the fall of Nancy, the drive for the
Channel ports has begun at Ypres, and German submarines have retorted to
Mr. Churchill's threat to "dig out" the German Fleet "like rats" by
torpedoing three battleships. Trench warfare is in full and deadly swing,
but "Thomas of the light heart" refuses to be downhearted:

  He takes to fighting as a game,
  He does no talking through his hat
  Of holy missions: all the same
  He has his faith--be sure of that:
  He'll not disgrace his sporting breed
  Nor play what isn't cricket. There's his creed.

Last month Lord Kitchener paid a high tribute to the growing efficiency of
the "Terriers" and their readiness to go anywhere. _Punch's_
representative with the "Watch Dogs" fully bears out this praise. They have
been inoculated and are ready to move on. Some suggest India, others Egypt.
"But what tempted the majority was the thought of a season's shooting
without having to pay for so much as a gun licence, and so we decided for
the Continent."

News from the front continues scanty, and Joffre's laconic
_communiqués_ might in sum be versified as follows:

  On our left wing the state of things remains
  Unaltered on a general review,
  Our losses in the centre match our gains,
  And on our right wing there is nothing new.

Nor do we gain much enlightenment from the "Eyewitness" with G.H.Q., though
his literary skill in elegantly describing the things that do not matter
moves our admiration.

[Illustration: THE BULL-DOG BREED

OFFICER: "Now, my lad, do you know what you are placed here for?"

RECRUIT: "To prevent the henemy from landin', sir."

OFFICER: "And do you think you could prevent him landing all by yourself?"

RECRUIT: "Don't know, sir, I'm sure. But I'd have a damn good try!"]

The Kaiser's sons continue to distinguish themselves as first-class
looters, and the ban laid on the English language, including very properly
the word "gentleman," has been lifted in favour of Wilhelm Shakespeare.

The prophets are no longer so optimistic in predicting when the War will
end. One of Mr. Punch's young men suggests Christmas, 1918. But 500 German
prisoners have arrived at Templemore, co. Tipperary. It's a long, long way,
but they've got there at last.



_November, 1914_.


The miracle of the Marne has been followed by another miracle--that of
Ypres. Outgunned and outnumbered, our thin line has stemmed the rush to the
sea.

The road to Calais has been blocked like that to Paris. Heartening news
comes from afar of the fall of Tsing-tau before our redoubtable Japanese
allies, and with it the crumbling of Germany's scheme of an Oriental
Empire; of the British occupation of Basra; and of the sinking of the
_Emden_, thanks to the "good hunting" of the _Sydney_--the first
fruits of Australian aid. A new enemy has appeared in Turkey, but her
defection has its consolations. It is something to be rid of an
"unspeakable" incubus full of promises of reform never fulfilled, "sick"
but unrepentant, always turning European discord to bloody account at the
expense of her subject nationalities: in all respects a fitting partner for
her ally and master.

At sea our pain at the loss of the _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_ off
Coronel is less than our pride in the spirit of the heroic Cradock, true
descendant of Grenville and Nelson, prompt to give battle against
overwhelming odds. The soul of the "Navy Eternal" draws fresh strength from
his example. So, too, does the Army from the death of Lord Roberts, the
"happy warrior," who passed away while visiting the Western front. The best
homage we can pay him is not grief or

    Vain regret for counsel given in vain,
  But service of our lives to keep her free
    The land he served: a pledge above his grave
  To give her even such a gift as he,
    The soul of loyalty, gave.

Even the Germans have paid reluctant tribute to one who, as Bonar Law said
in the House, "was in real life all, and more than all, that Colonel
Newcome was in fiction." He was the exemplar _in excelsis_ of those
"bantams," "little and good," who, after being rejected for their
diminutive stature, are now joining up under the new regulations:

  Apparently he's just as small,
    But since his size no more impedes him
  In spirit he is six foot tall--
    Because his country needs him.

[Illustration: THE EXCURSIONIST

TRIPPER WILHELM: "First Class to Paris."

CLERK: "Line blocked."

WILHELM: "Then make it Warsaw."

CLERK: "Line blocked."

WILHELM: "Well, what about Calais?"

CLERK: "Line blocked."

WILHELM: "Hang it! I _must_ go _somewhere_! I promised my people
I would."]

We have begun to think in millions. The war is costing a million a day. The
Chancellor of the Exchequer has launched a war loan of 230 millions and
doubled our income tax. The Prime Minister asks for an addition of a
million men to the Regular Army. But the country has not yet fully awakened
to the realities of war. Football clubs are concerned with the "jostling of
the ordinary patrons" by men in uniform. "Business as usual" is interpreted
as "pleasure as usual" in some quarters. Rumour is busy with stories of
mysterious prisoners in the Tower, with tales of huge guns which are to
shell us from Calais when the Germans get there; with reports (from neutral
sources) of the speedy advent of scores of Zeppelins and hundreds of
aeroplanes over London. But though

  Old England's dark o' nights and short
    Of 'buses: still she's much the sort
  Of place we always used to know.

[Illustration: T.B.D.

OFFICER'S STEWARD: "Will you take your bath, sir, before or after
haction?"]

It is otherwise with Belgium, with its shattered homes and wrecked towns.
The great Russian legend is still going strong, in spite of the statements
of the Under-Secretary for War, and, after all, why should the Germans do
all the story telling? By the way, a "German Truth Society" has been
founded. It is pleasant to know that it is realised over there at last that
there is a difference between Truth and German Truth. The British Navy, we
learn from the _Kölnische Zeitung_, "is in hiding." But our fragrant
contemporary need not worry. In due course the Germans shall have the
hiding.

In some ways the unchanged spirit of our people is rather disconcerting.
One of Mr. Punch's young men, happening to meet a music-hall acquaintance,
asked him how he thought the war was going, and met with the answer: "Oh, I
think the managers will have to give in." And the proposal to change the
name of Berlin Road at Lewisham has been rejected by the residents.



_December, 1914_.


In less than six weeks Coronel has been avenged at the battle of the
Falkland Islands:

  Hardened steel are our ships;
    Gallant tars are our men;
  We never are wordy
    (STURDEE, boys, STURDEE!),
  But quietly conquer again and again.

Here at least we can salute the vanquished. Admiral von Spee, who went down
with his doomed squadron, was a gallant and chivalrous antagonist, like
Captain Müller, of the _Emden_. Germany's retort, eight days later, by
bombarding Scarborough and Whitby, reveals the normal Hun:
  Come where you will--the seas are wide;
    And choose your Day--they're all alike;
  You'll find us ready when we ride
    In calm or storm and wait to strike;
  But--if of shame your shameless Huns
    Can yet retrieve some casual traces--
  Please fight our men and ships and guns,
    Not womenfolk and watering places.

Austria's "punitive expedition" has ended in disaster for the Austrians.
They entered Belgrade on the 2nd, and were driven out twelve days later by
the Serbs. King George has paid his first visit to the front, and made
General Foch a G.C.B. We know that the General is a great authority on
strategy, and that his name, correctly pronounced, rhymes with Boche, as
hero with Nero. He is evidently a man likely to be heard of again. Another
hitherto unfamiliar name that has cropped up is that of Herr Lissauer, who,
for writing a "Hymn of Hate" against England, has been decorated by the
Kaiser. This shows true magnanimity on the part of the Kaiser, in his
capacity of King of Prussia, since the "Hymn of Hate" turns out to be a
close adaptation of a poem composed by a Saxon patriot, in which Prussia,
not England, was held up to execration.

Kitchener's great improvisation is already bearing fruit, and the New
Armies are flocking to the support of the old. Indian troops are fighting
gallantly in three continents. King Albert "the unconquerable," in the
narrow strip of his country that still belongs to him, waits in unshaken
faith for the coming of the dawn. And as Christmas draws on the thoughts of
officers and men in the waterlogged trenches turn fondly homeward to
mothers, wives and sweethearts:

  Cheer up! I'm calling far away;
    And wireless you can hear.
  Cheer up! You know you'd have me stay
  And keep on trying day by day;
    We're winning, never fear.

Christmas at least brings the children's truce, and that is something to be
thankful for, but it is not the Christmas that we knew and long for:

ON EARTH--PEACE

  No stir of wings sweeps softly by;
    No angel comes with blinding light;
  Beneath the wild and wintry sky
    No shepherds watch their flocks to-night.

  In the dull thunder of the wind
    We hear the cruel guns afar,
  But in the glowering heavens we find
    No guiding, solitary star.

  But lo! on this our Lord's birthday,
    Lit by the glory whence she came,
  Peace, like a warrior, stands at bay,
    A swift, defiant, living flame!

  Full-armed she stands in shining mail,
    Erect, serene, unfaltering still,
  Shod with a strength that cannot fail,
    Strong with a fierce o'ermastering will.

  Where shattered homes and ruins be
    She fights through dark and desperate days;
  Beside the watchers on the sea
    She guards the Channel's narrow ways.

  Through iron hail and shattering shell,
    Where the dull earth is stained with red,
  Fearless she fronts the gates of Hell
    And shields the unforgotten dead.

  So stands she, with her all at stake,
    And battles for her own dear life,
  That by one victory she may make
    For evermore an end of strife.

[Illustration: THE CHILDREN'S PEACE

PEACE: "I'm glad that they, at least, have their Christmas unspoiled."]

Yet we have our minor war gains in the temporary disappearance of cranks
and faddists, some of whom have sunk without a ripple. And though the Press
Censor's suppressions and delays and inconsistencies provoke discontent in
the House and out of it, food for mirth turns up constantly in unexpected
quarters. The Crown Prince tells an American interviewer that there is no
War Party in Germany, nor has there ever been. The German General Staff
have begun to disguise set-backs under the convenient euphemism that the
situation has developed "according to expectation." An English village
worthy, discussing the prospects of invasion, comes to the reassuring
conclusion that "there can't be no battle in these parts, Jarge, for there
bain't no field suitable, as you may say; an' Squire, 'e won't lend 'em the
use of 'is park." The troubles of neutrality are neatly summed up in a
paper in a recent geography examination. "Holland is a low country, in fact
it is such a very low country that it is no wonder that it is dammed all
round."

The trials of mistresses on the home front are happily described in the
reply of a child to a small visitor who inquired after her mother. "Thank
you, poor mummie's a bit below herself this morning--what with the cook and
the Kaiser."

[Illustration:

POMPOUS LADY: "I shall descend at Knightsbridge."

TOMMY (aside): "Takes 'erself for a bloomin' Zeppelin!"]

We have to thank an ingenious correspondent for drawing up the following
"credibility index" for the guidance of perplexed newspaper readers:

  London, Paris, or Petrograd (official)                100
    "       "          "      (semi-official)            50
  Berlin (official)                                      25
  It is believed in military circles here that--         24
  A correspondent that has just returned from the
    firing-line tells me that--                          18
  Our correspondent at Rome announces that--             11
  Berlin (unofficial)                                    10
  I learn from a neutral merchant that--                  7
  A story is current in Venice to the effect that--       5
  It is rumoured that--                                   4
  I have heard to-day from a reliable source that--       3
  I learn on unassailable authority that--                2
  It is rumoured in Rotterdam that--                      1
  Wolff's Bureau states that--                            0



_January, 1915_.


General von Kluck "never got round on the right." Calais is Calais still,
and the Kaiser, if he still wishes to give it a new name, may call it the
"Never, Never Land." "General Janvier" is doing his worst, but our men are
sticking it out through slush and slime. As for the Christmas truce and
fraternisation, the British officer who ended a situation that was proving
impossible by presenting a dingy Saxon with a copy of _Punch_ in
exchange for a packet of cigarettes, acted with a wise candour:

  For there he found, our dingy friend,
    Amid the trench's sobering slosh,
  What must have left him, by the end,
    A wiser, if a sadder, Boche,
  Seeing himself, with chastened mien,
  In that pellucid well of Truth serene.

There can be no "fraternising" with Fritz until he realises that he has
been fooled by his War Lords; and his awakening is a long way off. Lord
Kitchener has been charged with being "very economical in his information"
vouchsafed to the Lords, but it is well to be rid of illusions. This has
not been a month of great events. General Joffre is content with this
ceaseless "nibbling." The Kaiser, nourished by the flattery of his tame
professors, encourages the war on non-combatants.

The Turks are beginning to show a gift for euphemism in disguising their
reverses in the Caucasus, which shows that they have nothing to learn from
their masters; Austria, badly mauled by the Serbians, addresses awful
threats to Roumania; and the United States has issued a warning Note on
neutral trading. But the American Eagle is not the Eagle that we are up
against.

[Illustration: THE FLIGHT THAT FAILED

THE EMPEROR: "What! No babes, Sirrah?"

THE MURDERER: "Alas, Sire, none."

THE EMPEROR: "Well, then, no babes, no iron crosses."

(_Exit murderer, discouraged_.)]


The number of Mr. Punch's correspondents on active service steadily grows.
Some of them are at the Western front; others are still straining at the
leash at home; another of the _Punch_ brigade, with the very first
battalion of Territorials to land in India, has begun to send his
impressions of the shiny land; of friendly natives and unfriendly ants; of
the disappointment of being relegated to clerical duties instead of going
to the front; of the evaporation of visions of military glory in the
routine of typing, telephoning and telegraphing; of leisurely Oriental
methods. Being a soldier clerk in India is very different from being a
civilian clerk in England. Patience, good Territorials in India, your time
will come.

[Illustration: THE SHIRKERS' WAR NEWS

"There! What did I tell you? Northdown Lambs beaten--two to nothing."]

At home, though the "knut" has been commandeered and nobly transmogrified,
though women are increasingly occupied in war work and entering with
devotion and self-sacrifice on their new duties as substitutes for men, we
have not yet been wholly purged of levity and selfishness. Football news
has not receded into its true perspective; shirkers are more pre-occupied
with the defeat or victory of "Lambs" or "Wolves" in Lancashire than with
the stubborn defence, the infinite discomfort and the heavy losses of their
brothers in Flanders.

Overdressed fashionables pester wounded officers and men with their
unreasonable visits and futile queries. The enemies in our midst are not
all aliens; there are not a few natives we should like to see interned.

The Kaiser has had his first War birthday and, as the Prussian Government
has ordered that there shall be no public celebrations, this confirms the
rumours that he now wishes he had never been born.

Germany, says the _Cologne Gazette_ in an article on the food
question, "has still at hand a very large supply of pigs"--even after the
enormous number she has exported to Belgium. Germany, however, does not
only export pigs; her trade in "canards" with neutrals grows and grows,
chiefly with the United States, thanks to the untiring mendacity of
Bernstorff and Wolff. Compared with these efforts, the revelations of
English governesses at German courts, which are now finding their way into
print, make but a poor show.

As the British armies increase, the moustache of the British officer, one
of the most astonishing products of these astonishing times, grows "small
by degrees and beautifully less." Waxed ends, fashionable in a previous
generation, are now only worn by policemen, taxi-drivers and labour
leaders. The Kaiser remains faithful to the Mephistophelean form. But in
proof of his desire to make the best of both worlds, nether and celestial,
he continues to commandeer "Gott" on every occasion as his second in
command. Out-Heroding Herod as a murderer of innocents, he enters into a
competition of piety with his grandfather. For we should not forget that
the first German Emperor's messages to his wife in the Franco-Prussian War
were once summed up by Mr. Punch:

  Ten thousand French have gone below;
  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.



_February, 1915_.


January ended with a knock for the Germans off the Dogger Bank, when the
_Blücher_ was sunk by our Battle-Cruiser Squadron:

  They say the _Lion_ and the _Tiger_ sweep
  Where once the Huns shelled babies from the deep,
  And _Blücher_, that great cruiser--12-inch guns
  Roar o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep.

And now it is the turn of "Johnny Turk," who has had _his_ knock on
the Suez Canal, and failed to solve the _Riddle of the Sands_ under
German guidance. Having safely locked up his High Seas Fleet in the Kiel
Canal, the Kaiser has ordered the U-boat blockade of England to begin by
the torpedoing of neutral as well as enemy merchant ships.

You may know a man by the company he keeps, and the Kaiser's friends are
now the Jolly Roger and Sir Roger Casement.

Valentine's Day has come and gone. Here are some lines from a damp but
undefeated lover in the trenches:

  Though the glittering knight whose charger
    Bore him on his lady's quest
  With an infinitely larger
    Share of warfare's pomp was blest,
  Yet he offered love no higher,
    No more difficult to quench,
  Than the filthy occupier
    Of this unromantic trench.

[Illustration: RUNNING AMOK

GERMAN BULL: "I know I'm making a rotten exhibition of myself; but I shall
tell everybody I was goaded into it."]

The fusion of classes in the camps of the New Armies outdoes the mixture of
"cook's son and duke's son" fifteen years ago. The old Universities are now
given up to a handful of coloured students, Rhodes' scholars and reluctant
crocks. As a set-off, however, a Swansea clergyman and football enthusiast
has held a "thanksgiving service for their good fortune against Newcastle
United." Meanwhile, the Under-Secretary for War has stated that the army
costs more in a week than the total estimates for the Waterloo campaign,
and that our casualties on the Western front alone have amounted to over
100,000. So what with submarine losses, ubiquitous German spies, the German
propaganda in America, and complaints of Government inactivity, the
pessimists are having a fine time. Tommy grouses of course, but then he
complains far more of the loss of a packet of cigarettes or a tin of
peppermints or a mouth-organ than of the loss of a limb.

Germany's attitude towards the United States tempers the blandishments of
the serenader with the occasional discharge of half-bricks. There is no
such inconsistency in the expression of her feelings about England.
Articles entitled "_Unser Hass gegen England_" constantly appear in
the German Press, and people are beginning to wonder whether the
_Hass_ is not the Kaiser. Apropos of newspapers, we are beginning to
harbour a certain envy of the Americans. Even their provincial organs often
contain important and cheering news of the doings of the British Army many
days before the Censor releases the information in England. Daylight saving
is again being talked of, and it would surely be an enormous boon to rush
the measure through now so that the Germans may have less darkness of which
to take advantage. And there is a general and reasonable feeling that more
use should be made of bands for recruiting. The ways of German musicians
are perplexing. Here is the amiable Herr Humperdinck, composer of "Hänsel
and Gretel," the very embodiment of the old German kindliness, signing the
Manifesto of patriotic artists and professors who execrate England, while
Strauss, the truculent "Mad Mullah" of the Art, holds aloof. Dr. Hans
Richter, who enjoyed English hospitality so long, now clamours for our
extinction; it is even said that he has asked to be allowed to conduct a
_Parsifal_ airship to this country.

[Illustration: STUDY OF A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD HAVING ITS MORNING HATE]



_March, 1915._


A new and possibly momentous chapter has opened in the history of the War
by the attempt to force the Dardanelles. At the end of February the Allied
Fleet bombarded the forts at the entrance, and landed a party of
bluejackets. Since then these naval operations have been resumed, and our
new crack battleship _Queen Elizabeth_ has joined in the attack. We
have not got through the Narrows, and some sceptical critics are asking
what we should do if we got through to Constantinople, without a land
force. It is a great scheme, if it comes off; and the "only begetter" of
it, if report is true, is Mr. Winston Churchill, the strategist of the
Antwerp expedition, who now aspires to be the Dardanelson of our age.
Anyhow, the Sultan, lured on by the Imperial William o' the Wisp, is
already capable of envying even his predecessor:

  Abdul! I would that I had shared your plight,
    Or Europe seen my heels,
  Before the hour when Allah bound me tight
    To WILLIAM'S chariot-wheels!

Germany, always generous with other people's property, has begun to hint to
Italy possibilities of compensation in the shape of certain portions of
Austro-Hungarian territory. She has also declared that she is "fighting for
the independence of the small nations," including, of course, Belgium. In
further evidence of her humanity she has taken to spraying our soldiers in
the West with flaming petrol and squirting boiling pitch over our Russian
allies. It is positively a desecration of the word devil to apply it to the
Germans whether on land, on or under water, or in the air.

We have begun to "push" on the Western front, and Neuve Chapelle has been
captured, after a fierce battle and at terrible cost. Air raids are
becoming common in East Anglia and U-boats unpleasantly active in the North
Sea. Let us take off our hats to the mine-sweepers and trawlers, the new
and splendid auxiliaries of the Royal Navy. Grimsby is indeed a "name to
resound for ages" for what its fishermen have done and are doing in the war
against mine and submarine:

  Soles in the Silver Pit--an' there we'll let 'em lie;
  Cod on the Dogger--oh, we'll fetch 'em by an' by;
  War on the water--an' it's time to serve an' die,
    For there's wild work doin' on the North Sea ground.
  An' it's "Wake up, Johnnie!" they want you at the trawlin'
  (With your long sea-boots and your tarry old tarpaulin);
  All across the bitter seas duty comes a-callin'
    In the Winter's weather off the North Sea ground.
  It's well we've learned to laugh at fear--the sea has taught us how;
  It's well we've shaken hands with death--we'll not be strangers now,
  With death in every climbin' wave before the trawler's bow,
    An' the black spawn swimmin' on the North Sea ground.

[Illustration: WILLIAM O' THE WISP]

These brave men and their heroic brothers in the trenches are true
sportsmen as well as patriots, not those who interpret the need of
lightheartedness by the cult of "sport as usual" on the football field and
the racecourse. And the example of the Universities shines with the same
splendour. Of the scanty remnant that remain at Oxford and Cambridge all
the physically fit have joined the O.T.C. Boat-race day has passed, but the
crews are gone to "keep it long" and "pull it through" elsewhere:

  Not here their hour of great emprise;
    No mounting cheer towards Mortlake roars;
  Lulled to full tide the river lies
    Unfretted by the fighting oars;
  The long high toil of strenuous play
    Serves England elsewhere well to-day.

London changes daily. The sight of the female Jehu is becoming familiar;
the lake in St. James's Park has been drained and the water-fowl driven to
form a concentration camp by the sorry pool that remains beside the
Whitehall Gate.

Spy-hunting is prevalent in East Anglia, but the amateurs have not achieved
any convincing results. Spring poets are suffering from suspended
animation; there is a slump in crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils and lambkins.
Their "musings always turn away to men who're arming for the fray." The
clarion and the fife have ousted the pastoral ode. And our military and
naval experts, harassed by the Censor, take refuge in psychology.

The _Kölnische Zeitung_ has published a whole article on "Mr. Punch."
The writer, a Herr Professor, finds our cartoons lacking in "modest
refinement." Indeed, he goes so far as to say that the treatment of the
Kaiser savours of blasphemy. One is so apt to forget that the Kaiser is a
divinity, so prone to remember that Luther wrote, "We Germans are Germans,
and Germans we will remain--that is to say, pigs and brutish animals." This
was written in 1528: but "the example of the Middle Ages" is held up to-day
by German leaders as the true fount of inspiration.

[Illustration: THE WAR SPIRIT AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

ARDENT EGYPTOLOGIST (who has lately joined the Civic Guard): "No, I seem to
have lost my enthusiasm for this group since I noticed Bes-Hathor-Horus was
out of step with the other two."]



_April_, 1915.


A hundred years ago Bismarck was born on April 1, the man who built with
blood and iron, but now only the blood remains. Yet one may doubt whether
even that strong and ruthless pilot would have commended the submarine crew
who sank the liner _Falaba_ and laughed at the cries and struggles of
drowning men and women. Sooner or later these crews are doomed to die the
death of rats:

  But you, who sent them out to do this shame;
    From whom they take their orders and their pay;
  For you--avenging wrath defers its claim,
    And Justice bides her day.

The tide of "frightfulness" rolls strong on land as on sea. The second
battle of Ypres has begun and the enemy has resorted to the use of a new
weapon--poison gas. He had already poisoned wells in South West Africa, but
this is an uglier outcome of the harnessing of science to the Powers of
Darkness. Italy grows restive in spite of the blandishments of Prince
Bülow, and as the month closes we hear of the landing of the Allies in
Gallipoli, just two months after the unsupported naval attempt to force the
Dardanelles. British and Australian and New Zealand troops have achieved
the impossible by incredible valour in face of murderous fire, and a
foothold has been won at tremendous cost of heroic lives. Letters from the
Western front continue cheerful, but it does not need much reading between
the lines to realise the odds with which our officers and men have to
contend, the endless discomfort and unending din. They are masters of a
gallant art of metaphor which belittles the most appalling horrors of
trench warfare; masters, too, of the art of extracting humorous relief from
the most trivial incidents.

On the home front we have to contend with a dangerous ally of the enemy in
Drink, and with the self-advertising politicians who do their bit by asking
unnecessary questions. Sometimes, but rarely, they succeed in eliciting
valuable information, as in Mr. Lloyd George's statement on the situation
at the front. We have now six times as many men in the field as formed the
original Expeditionary Force, and in the few days fighting round Neuve
Chapelle almost as much ammunition was expended by our guns as in the whole
of the two and three-quarter years of the Boer War.

[Illustration: THE HAUNTED SHIP

GHOST OF THE OLD PILOT: "I wonder if he would drop me _now!_"]

The Kaiser has been presented with another grandson, but it has not been
broken to the poor little fellow who he is. It is also reported that the
Kaiser has bestowed an Iron Cross on a learned pig--one of a very numerous
class.



_May, 1915_.


We often think that we must have got to the end of German "frightfulness,"
only to have our illusions promptly shattered by some fresh and amazing
explosion of calculated ferocity. Last month it was poison gas; now it is
the sinking of the _Lusitania_. Yet Mr. Punch had read the omens some
seven and a half years ago, when the records established by that liner had
created a jealousy in Germany which the Kaiser and his agents have now
appeased, but at what a cost! The House of Commons is an odd place, unique
in its characteristics. Looking round the benches when it reassembled on
May 10th, and noting the tone and purport of the inquiries addressed to the
First Lord, one might well suppose that nothing remarkable had happened
since Parliament adjourned. The questions were numerous but all practical,
and as unemotional as if they referred to outrages by a newly-discovered
race of fiends in human shape peopling Mars or Saturn. The First Lord,
equally undemonstrative, announced that the Board of Trade have ordered an
inquiry into the circumstances attending the disaster. Pending the result,
it would be premature to discuss the matter. Here we have the sublimation
of officialism and national phlegm. Of the 1,200 victims who went down in
this unarmed passenger ship about 200 were Americans. What will America say
or do?

[Illustration: AN OMEN OF 1908

Reproduced from "Christmas Cards for Celebrities," in _Mr. Punch's
Almanack_ of that year]

[Illustration: HAMLET U.S.A.

SCENE: The Ramparts of the White House.

PRESIDENT WILSON: "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!"

VOICE OF ROOSEVELT (_off_): "That's so!"]

  In silence you have looked on felon blows,
    On butcher's work of which the waste lands reek!
  Now in God's name, from Whom your greatness flows,
    Sister, will you not speak?

Many unofficial voices have been raised in horror, indignation, and even in
loud calls for intervention. The leaven works, but President Wilson, though
not unmoved, gives little sign of abandoning his philosophic neutrality.

In Europe it is otherwise. Italy has declared war on Austria; her people
have driven the Government to take the path of freedom and honour and break
the shackles of Germanism in finance, commerce and politics.

Italy has not declared war on Germany yet, but the fury of the German Press
is unbounded, and for the moment Germany's overworked Professors of Hate
have focused their energies on the new enemy, and its army of "vagabonds,
convicts, ruffians and mandolin-players," conveniently forgetting that the
spirit of Garibaldi is still an animating force, and that the King inherits
the determination of his grandfather and namesake.

On the Western front the enemy has been repulsed at Ypres. Lord Kitchener
has asked for another 300,000 men, and speaks confidently of our soon being
able to make good the shortage of ammunition.

On the Eastern front the Grand Duke Nicholas has been forced to give
ground; in Gallipoli slow progress is being made at heavy cost on land and
sea. The Turk is a redoubtable trench fighter and sniper; the difficulties
of the _terrain_ are indescribable, yet our men continue the epic
struggle with unabated heroism. King Constantine of Greece, improved in
health, construes his neutrality in terms of ever increasing benevolence to
his brother-in-law the Kaiser.

[Illustration: (series of six panels) THE REWARD OF KULTUR]

At home the great event has been the formation of a Coalition Government--a
two-handed sword, as we hope, to smite the enemy; while practical people
regard it rather as a "Coal and Ammunition Government." The cost of the War
is now Two Millions a day, and a new campaign of Posters and Publicity has
been inaugurated to promote recruiting. Volunteers, with scant official
recognition, continue their training on foot; the Hurst Park brigade
continue their activities, mainly on rubber wheels. An evening paper
announces:

VICTORY IN GALLIPOLI.

LATE WIRE FROM CHESTER.

Mr. Punch is prompted to comment:

  For these our Army does its bit,
    While they in turn peruse
  Death's honour-roll (should time permit)
    After the Betting News.

More agreeable is the sportsmanship of the trenches, where a correspondent
tells of the shooting of a hare and the recovery of the corpse, by a
reckless Tommy, from the turnip-field which separated our trenches from
those of Fritz.

Amongst other signs of the times the emergence of the Spy Play is to be
noted, in which the alien enemy within our gates is gloriously confounded.
Yet, if a certain section of the Press is to be believed, the dark and
sinister operations of the Hidden Hand continue unchecked.

The Germans as unconscious humorists maintain their supremacy _hors
concours_. A correspondent of the _Cologne Gazette_ was with other
journalists recently entertained to dinner in a French villa by the Crown
Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. "The party, while dining," we are told,
"talked of the defects of French taste, and Prince Rupprecht said that
French houses were full of horrors." True, O Prince, but the French are
determined to drive them out. Better still, in the month which witnessed
the sinking of the _Lusitania_ we read this panegyric of the Teuton in
_Die Welt_: "Clad in virtue and in peerless nobility of character,
unassailed by insidious enemies either within or without, girded about by
the benign influences of Kultur, the German, whether soldier or civilian,
pursues his destined way, fearless and serene."



_June, 1915._


The weeks that have passed since the sinking of the _Lusitania_ have
left Germany not merely impenitent but glorying in her crime. "The
destruction of the _Lusitania_," says Herr Baumgarten, Professor of
Theology, "should be greeted with jubilation and enthusiastic cheering, and
everybody who does not cheer is no real or true German." Many harsh things
have been said of the Germans, but nothing quite so bitter as this
suggestion for a test of nationality. But while Germany jubilates, her
Government is painfully anxious to explain everything to the satisfaction
of America. The conversations between the two Powers are continuous but
abortive. President Wilson's dove has returned to him, with the report
"Nothing doing," and the American eagle looks as if he would like to take
on the job.

Germany has had her first taste of real retaliation in the bombardment of
Karlsruhe by Allied airmen, and is furiously indignant at the attack on an
"unfortified and peaceful" town--which happens to be the headquarters of
the 14th German Army Corps and to contain an important arsenal as well as
large chemical, engineering and railway works. Also she is very angry with
Mr. Punch, and has honoured him and other British papers with a solemn
warning. Our performances, it seems, are "diligently noted, so that when
the day of reckoning arrives we shall know with whom we have to deal, and
how to deal with them effectually." It is evident that in spite of Italy's
entry into the war the mass of the Germans are still true to their old hate
of England.

[Illustration: ON THE BLACK LIST

KAISER (as executioner): "I'm going to hang you."

PUNCH: "Oh, you are, are you? Well, you don't seem to know how the scene
ends. It's the hangman that gets hanged."]

[Illustration: SOME BIRD

THE RETURNING DOVE (to President Woodrow Noah):

"Nothing doing."

THE EAGLE: "Say, Boss, what's the matter with trying me?"]

But Germany does not merely talk. She has been indulging in drastic
reprisals in consequence of Mr. Winston Churchill's memorandum on the
captured submarine crews. As a result 39 imprisoned British officers,
carefully selected, have been subjected to solitary confinement under
distressing conditions in return for Mr. Churchill's having hinted at
possible severities which were never carried out. Moral: Do not threaten
unless you mean to act. The retirement of Mr. Churchill to the seclusion of
the Duchy of Lancaster and the appointment of Mr. Balfour to the First
Lordship of the Admiralty afford hope that the release of the Thirty-Nine
from their special hardship will not be unduly postponed. The Coalition
Government is shaking down. A Ministry of Munitions has been created, with
Mr. Lloyd George in charge; and members of the Cabinet have decided to pool
their salaries with a view to their being divided equally. Mr. McKenna has
made his first appearance as Chancellor of the Exchequer and introduced a
Bill authorising the raising of a War Loan unlimited in extent, but, being
a man of moderate views, will be satisfied if nine hundred millions are
forthcoming. Lord Haldane has been succeeded in the Lord Chancellorship by
Lord Buckmaster, having caused by one unfortunate phrase a complete
oblivion of all the services rendered by his creation of the Territorial
system. The cry for "more men" has now changed to one for "more shells,"
and certain newspapers, always in search of a scapegoat, have entered on a
campaign directed against Lord Kitchener, the very man whom a few short
months ago they hailed as the saviour of the situation. Finding that the
public cannot live on their hot air, they are doing their best to make our
flesh creep and keep our feet cold. Let us hope that K. of K. will find the
Garter some slight protection against this hitting below the belt.

The Russian retreat continues, but there is no _débâcle._ Greece shows
signs of returning sanity in the restoration to power of her one strong
man, M. Venizelos. If there were a few more like him then (to adapt Porson)
"the Germanised Greek would be sadly to seek." As it is, he flourishes
exceedingly, under the patronage of a Prussianised Court.

In Gallipoli the deadly struggle goes on; our foothold has been
strengthened by bitter fighting and our lines pushed forward for three
miles by a few hundred yards--a big advance in modern trench warfare.
Blazing heat and a plague of flies add to the discomforts of our men, but a
new glory has been added to the ever growing vocabulary of the war in
"Anzac." There is a lull on the Western front, if such a word properly can
be applied to the ceaseless activities of the war of position, of daily
_strafe_ and counter-_strafe_.

At home, khaki weddings are becoming common form. By an inversion of the
old order the bride is now eclipsed by the bridegroom:

  'Tis well: the lack of fine array
    Best fits a sacrificial altar;
  Her man to-morrow joins the fray,
    And yet she does not falter;
  Simple her gown, but still we see
  The bride in all her bravery.

Society is losing much of its snap through the political truce. It is all
very well to talk of the lion lying down with the lamb, but of course it
makes life a distinctly duller business both for the lion and the lamb when
each has lost his or her dearest enemy. For the rest, there is a brisk
trade in anti-gas respirators, "lonely soldiers" are becoming victimised by
fair correspondents, and a new day has been added to the week--flag day.

Proverb for the month, suggested by the activities of the Imperial
infanticide: "The hand that wrecks the cradle rules the world."



_July, 1915_.


The last month of the first year of the war brings no promise of a speedy
end; it is not a month of great battles on land or sea, but rather of omens
and foreshadowings, good and evil. To the omens of victory belongs the
sinking of the _Pommern_, named after the great maritime province, so
long coveted by the Brandenburgers, the makers of Prussia and the true
begetters of Prussianism. Of good omen, too, has been the "clean sweep"
made by General Botha in German South-West Africa, where the enemy
surrendered unconditionally on July 9. And though the menace of the U-boat
grows daily, there _may_ be limits to America's seemingly
inexhaustible forbearance. There are happily none to the fortitude of our
bluejackets and trawlers.

Pundits in the Press, fortified by warnings from generals in various Home
Commands, display an increasing preoccupation with the likelihood of
invasion by sea. Mr. Punch naturally inclines to a sceptical attitude,
swayed by long adherence to the views of the Blue Water School and the
incredulousness of correspondents engaged in guarding likely spots on the
East Coast. With runaway raids by sea we are already acquainted, and their
growing frequency from the air is responsible for various suggested
precautions, official and otherwise--pails of sand and masks and
anti-asphyxiation mixtures--which are not viewed with much sympathy in the
trenches. _There_ the men meet the most disconcerting situations--as,
for example, the problem of spending a night in a flooded meadow occupied
by a thunderstorm--with irrelevant songs or fantasias on the mouth-organ.

[Illustration: FIRST TRAWLER SKIPPER (to friend who is due to sail by next
tide): "Are ye takin' any precautions against these submarines, Jock?"

SECOND SKIPPER: "Ay! Although I've been in the habit o' carryin' my bits of
bawbees wi' me, I went an' bankit them this mornin', an' I'm no taking ma
best oilskins or ma new seaboots."

FIRST SKIPPER; "Oh, _you're_ a'richt then. Ye'll hae practically
nothin' tae lose but yer life."]

  Oh, there ain't no band to cheer us up, there ain't no Highland pipers
  To keep our warlike ardure warm round New Chapelle and Wipers,
  So--since there's nothing like a tune to glad the 'eart o' man,
  Why Billy with his mouth-organ 'e does the best 'e can.

  Wet, 'ungry, thirsty, 'ot or cold, whatever may betide 'im,
  'E'll play upon the 'ob of 'ell while the breath is left inside 'im;
  And when we march up Potsdam Street, and goose-step through Berlin,
  Why Billy with 'is mouth-organ 'e'll play the Army in!

[Illustration: THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA

SINBAD THE KAISER: "This submarine business is going to get me into trouble
with America; but what can an All-Powerful do with a thing like this on his
back?"]

When officers come home on leave and find England standing where she did,
their views support the weather-beaten major who said that it was "worth
going to a little trouble and expense to keep _that_ intact." But you
can hardly expect people who live in trenches which have had to be rebuilt
twice daily for the last few months and are shelled at all hours of the day
or night, to compassionate the occasional trials of the home-keeping
bomb-dodger. The war, as it goes on, seems to bring out the best and the
worst that is in us. South Wales responded loyally to the call for
recruits, yet 200,000 miners are affected by the strike fever.

The House, where party strife for a brief space was hushed by mutual
consent, is now devastated by the energies of indiscreet, importunate,
egotistic or frankly disloyal question-mongers. We want a censorship of
Parliamentary Reports. The Press Bureau withholds records of shining
courage at the front lest they should enlighten the enemy, but gives full
publicity to those

  Who give us words in lieu of deeds,
  Content to blather while their country bleeds.

There is, however, some excuse for those importunates who wish to know on
what authority the Premier declared at Newcastle that neither our Allies
nor ourselves have been hampered by an insufficient supply of munitions. In
two months' fighting in Gallipoli our casualties have largely exceeded
those sustained by us during the whole of the Boer War. And financial
purists may be pardoned for their protests against extravagant expenditure
in view of the announcement that the war is now costing well over three
millions daily. The idea of National Registration has taken shape in a
Bill, which has passed its second reading. The notion of finding out what
everyone can do to help his country in her hour of need is excellent. But
the Government do not seem to have realised that half a million volunteer
soldiers have been waiting and ready for a job for the last six months:

  And when at last you come and say
    "What can you do? We ask for light
  On any service you can pay,"
    The answer is: "_You_ know all right,
  And all this weary while you knew it;
  The trouble was you wouldn't let us do it."

The German Press is not exactly the place where one expects to find
occasion for merriment. Yet listen to this from the _Neueste
Nachrichten_: "Our foes ask themselves continuously, How can we best get
at Germany's vital parts? What are her most vulnerable points? The answer
is, her humanity--her trustful honesty." Here, on the other hand, thousands
of people, by knocking months and years off their real age, have been
telling good straightforward lies for their country. At the Front euphemism
in describing hardship is mingled with circumlocution in official
terminology. Thus one C.O. is reported to refer to the enemy not as Germans
but "militant bodies of composite Teutonic origin."

A new and effectual cure for the conversion of pessimists at home has been
discovered. It is simply to out-do the prophets of ill at their own game.
The result is that they seek you out to tell you that an enemy submarine
has been sunk off the Scillies or that the Crown Prince is in the Tower. It
is the old story that optimists are those who have been associating with
pessimists and _vice versâ_. But seriousness is spreading. We are told
that even actresses are now being photographed with their mouths shut,
though one would have thought that at such a time all British
subjects--especially the "Odolisques" of the variety stage--ought to show
their teeth.



_August_, 1915.


Ordinary anniversaries lead to retrospect: after a year of the greatest of
all wars it is natural to indulge in a stock-taking of the national spirit,
and comforting to find that, in spite of disillusions and disappointments,
the alternation of exultations and agonies, the soul of the fighting men of
England remains unshaken and unconquerable. Three of the Great Powers of
Europe espoused the cause of Liberty a year ago; now there are four, and
the aid of Italy in engaging and detaching large Austrian forces enables us
to contemplate with greater equanimity a month of continuous Russian
withdrawal, and the tragic loss of Warsaw and the great fortresses of
Novo-Georgievsk and Brest-Litovsk. And if there is no outward sign of the
awakening of Germany, no slackening in frightfulness, no abatement in the
blasphemous and overweening confidence of her Ruler and his War-lords who
can tell whether they have not moments of self-distrust?

       *       *       *       *       *

THE WAYSIDE CALVARY. August 4th, 1915.

  Now with the full year Memory holds her tryst,
    Heavy with such a tale of bitter loss
  As never Earth has suffered since the Christ
          Hung for us on the Cross.

  If God, O Kaiser, makes the vision plain;
    Gives you on some lone Calvary to see
  The Man of Sorrows Who endured the pain
          And died to set us free--

  How will you face beneath its crown of thorn
    That figure stark against the smoking skies,
  The arms outstretched, the sacred head forlorn,
          And those reproachful eyes?

  How dare confront the false quest with the true,
    Or think what gulfs between the ideals lie
  Of Him Who died that men may live--and you
          Who live that man may die?

  Ah, turn your eyes away; He reads your heart;
    Pass on and, having done your work abhorred,
  Join hands with JUDAS in his place apart,
          You who betrayed your Lord.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is the way of modern war that we know little of what is going on, least
of all on sea. Some of our sailormen have had their chance in the
Heligoland Bight, off the Dogger Bank and Falkland Isles, and in the
Dardanelles. It is well that we should remember what we owe to the patient
vigil of their less fortunate comrades, the officers and men of the Grand
Fleet, and to the indefatigable and ubiquitous activities of the ships
officially classified as "Light Cruisers (Old)":

[Illustration: AFTER ONE YEAR]

  From Pole unto Pole, all the oceans between,
  Patrolling, protecting, unwearied, unseen,
  By night or by noonday, the Navy is there,
  And the out-of-date cruisers are doing their share,
  The creaky old cruisers whose day is not done,
  Built some time before Nineteen-hundred-and-one.

At any rate, we know for certain that British submarines have made their
way into the Baltic, a "sea change" extremely disquieting to the Germans,
who, for the rest, have suffered in a naval scrap in the Gulf of Riga with
the Russians. On the Western front our troops are suffering from two
plagues--large shells and little flies. These troubles have not prevented
them from scoring a small though costly success at Hooge. From Gallipoli
comes the news of fresh deeds of amazing heroism at Suvla Bay and Anzac.

The war of Notes goes on with unabated energy between Germany and the
U.S.A. At home a brief period has been set to the pernicious activities of
importunate inquisitors by the adjournment of the House till mid-September.
"Dr. Punch" is of opinion that the Mother of Parliaments is sorely in need
of a rest and needs every hour of a seven weeks' holiday. In the Thrift
campaign, which has now set in, everybody expects that everybody else
should do his duty; and the universal eruption of posters imploring us to
subscribe to the War Loan indicates the emergence of a new Art--that of
Government by advertisement. To the obvious appeals to duty, patriotism,
conscience, appeals to shame, appeals romantic and even facetious are now
added. It may be necessary, but the method is not dignified. All that can
be said is that "Govertisement," or government by advertisement, is better
than Government by the Press, a new terror with which we are daily
threatened.

Mr. Winston Churchill, the greatest of our quick-change political artists,
is said to be devoting his leisure to landscape painting. The particular
school that he favours is not publicly stated, but we have reason to
believe that he intends to be a Leader.

The Archbishop of Cologne says that, on being congratulated on his Eastern
successes, the Kaiser "turned his eyes to heaven with the most
indescribable expression of intense gratitude and religious fervour." Yes,
we can quite imagine that it beggared description. But there is no
difficulty in finding the right phrase for his address to the inhabitants
of Warsaw: "We wage war only against hostile troops, not against peaceful
citizens." It is not "_splendide mendax_." That is the due of boys who
overstate, and men who understate, their age in order to serve their
country in the field.

[Illustration: OFFICER (to boy of thirteen who, in his effort to get taken
on as a bugler, has given his age as sixteen): "Do you know where boys go
who tell lies?"

APPLICANT: "To the Front, sir."]

A correspondent reminds Mr. Punch that four years ago he wrote as follows:
"Lord Haldane, in defending the Territorials, declared that he expects to
be dead before any political party seriously suggests compulsory military
service. We understand that, since making this statement, our War Minister
has received a number of telegrams from Germany wishing him long life." But
we suspect that when he said dead he meant politically dead. Still, we owe
Lord Haldane the Territorials, and they are doing great work in Europe and
most valuable, if thankless, work in India. As "One of the _Punch_
brigade" writes: "The hearts of very few of the Territorials now
garrisoning India are in their work, though, of course, we know that
actually it is essential duty we are performing." "They also serve," who
patiently endure the dull routine of existence largely spent in a stifling
fort on the blistering and dust-swept plains, and find relief in the
smallest incident that breaks the monotony. As, for example, when a
quartermaster-sergeant was held up by a native guard at a bridge, and, on
demanding an explanation, had his attention directed to the notices on the
wall, "Elephants and traction engines are not allowed to cross this
bridge."



_September, 1915_.


The Tsar has succeeded the Grand Nicholas as Generalissimo of his armies,
and the great Russian retreat has ended. Yet it would be rash to say that
the one event has caused the other. Lord Kitchener's statement that on the
Eastern front the Germans had "almost shot their last bolt" is a better
summary, and when we reflect on their enormous superiority in artillery and
equipment, that is a great tribute to the strategy of the Grand Duke in
conducting the most difficult retreat of modern times. Germany, though a
mistress of the entire alphabet of frightfulness, is making increasing play
with the _U_'s and _Z_'s, and Admiral Percy Scott, who predicted
the dangers of the former, is now entrusted with the task of coping with
the latter menace.

Five months have elapsed since the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the
pro-German campaign in the United States is more active than ever, thanks
to the untiring efforts of Count Bernstorff and his worthy ally, Dr. Dumba,
in promoting strikes and _sabotage_; but President Wilson, "Le Grand
Penseur," declines to be rushed by the interventionists, and is giving his
detached consideration to the "concessions" of the German Government in
regard to submarine warfare. But three thousand miles of ocean no longer
keep America free from strife. The enemy is within her gates, plotting,
spying and bribing. The lesser neutrals in Europe find it harder to
dissemble their sympathies, but Ferdinand of Bulgaria maintains a vulpine
inscrutability.

[Illustration: THE UNSINKABLE TIRP

GERMAN CHANCELLOR: "Well, thank Heaven, that's the last of Tirpitz."

TIRPITZ (reappearing): "I don't think!"]

By way of a sidelight on what happens on the Western front, a wounded
officer sends a characteristic account of his experiences after "going over
the top" at 3 A.M. "The first remark, as distinct from a shout that I heard
after leaving our parapet, came from Private Henry, my most notorious
malefactor. As the first attempt at a wire entanglement in our new position
went heavenward ten seconds after its emplacement, and a big tree just to
our right collapsed suddenly like a dying pig, he turned round with a grin,
observing: 'Well, sir, we _do_ see a bit of life, if we _don't_
make money.' I never saw a man all day who hadn't a grin ready when you
passed, and a bit of a _riposte_ if you passed the time of day with
him." Our officers only think of their men, and the men of their officers.
In Gallipoli our soldiers have discovered a new method of annoying the
Turk:

  We go and bathe, in shameless scores
    Beneath his baleful een,
  Disrobe, unscathed, on sacred shores
    And wallow in between;
  Nor does a soldier then assume
  His university costume,
  And though it makes the Faithful fume,
    It makes the Faithless clean.

The return of the wounded to England is marked by strange incidents,
pathetic and humorous. Thus it has been reserved for an officer, reported
dead in the casualty list, to ring up his people on the telephone and
correct "this silly story about my being killed." And the cheerfulness of
the limbless men in blue is something wonderful. They "jest at scars," but
not because they "never felt a wound." It is a high privilege to entertain
these light-hearted heroes, one of whom recently presented his partner in a
lawn tennis match with a fragment of shell taken direct from his
"stummick." And the recipient rightly treasures it as a love-token.

Parliament has reassembled, the inquisitors returning (unhappily) like
giants refreshed after their holiday. But they sometimes contribute to our
amusement, as when one relentless and complacent critic declared that, on
the matter of conscription, he should himself "prefer to be guided--very
largely--by Lord Kitchener." The concession is something. Most of the
importunate questionists are on the other side:

  "Take from us any joys you like," they cry;
    "We'd bear the loss, however much we missed 'em;
  Let truth and justice, fame and honour die,
    But spare, O spare, our Voluntary System!"

Amongst other signs of the times the increase of girl gardeners and the
sacrifice of flower beds to vegetables are to be noted. But War changes are
sometimes disconcerting, even when they are most salutary. For example,
there is the _cri de coeur_ of a passenger on a Clydebank tramcar in
Glasgow on Saturday night, with a lady conductor: "I canna jist bottom
this, Tam. It's Seterday nicht an' this is the Clydebank caur, an' there's
naebody singin' an' naebody fechtin' wi' the conductor." Liquor control
evidently does mean something.


[Illustration: A HANDY MAN

MARINE;(somewhat late for parade): "At six o'clock I was a bloomin'
'ousemaid: at seven o'clock I was a bloomin' valet; at eight o'clock I was
a bloomin' waiter; an' _now_ I'm a bloomin' soldier!"]

The War vocabulary grows and grows. "Pipsqueaks," "crumps" and "Jack
Johnsons," picturesque equivalents for unpleasant things, have long been
familiar even to arm-chair experts. The strangely named "Archie," and
"Pacifist," the dismay of scholars--a word "mean as what it's meant to
mean"--now come to be added to the list. A new and admirable explanation of
the R.F.A., "Ready for anyfink," is attributed to a street Arab. Our
children are mostly lapped in blissful ignorance, but their comments are
often illuminating. As, for instance, the suggestion of a small child asked
to give her idea of a suitable future for Germany and the Kaiser: "After
the war I wouldn't let Heligoland belong to anybody. I would put the
Germans there, and they should dig and dig and dig until it was all dug
into the sea. The Kaiser should be sent to America, and they should be as
rude as they liked to him. If he went in a train no one was to offer him a
seat; he was to hang on to a strap, and he is to be called Mr. Smith."
Cooks are being bribed to stay by the gift of War Bonds. Smart fashionables
are flocking to munition works, and some of them sometimes are not
unnaturally growing almost frightened at the organising talents they are
developing. So are other people.

A vigorous campaign against flies has been initiated by the journal which
describes itself as "that paper which gets things done." Nothing is too
small for it. Meanwhile it is announced that "Lord Northcliffe is
travelling and will be beyond the reach of correspondence until the end of
next week." Even he must have an occasional rest from his daily mail.

We have to apologise for any suggestion to the effect that the Huns are
devoid of humour. The German Society for the Protection and Preservation of
Monuments has held a meeting in Brussels and expressed its thanks to the
German Military Authorities for the care they had taken of the Monuments in
Belgium. The function ended with an excursion to Louvain, where the
delegates, no doubt, enjoyed a happy hour in the Library.



_October, 1915_.


September ended with the Western front once more ablaze, with bitter
fighting at Loos and a great French offensive in Champagne. With October
the focus of interest and anxiety shifts to the Balkans. Austrian armies,
stiffened with Germans, have again invaded Serbia and again occupied
Belgrade. The Allies have landed at Salonika, and Ferdinand of Bulgaria has
declared war on Serbia. Thus a new theatre of war has been opened, and
though it is well to be rid of a treacherous neutral, the conflict enters
on a fresh and formidable phase. When Ferdinand went to Bulgaria he is said
to have resolved that if ever there were to be any assassinations he would
be on the side of the assassins. He has been true to his word ever since
the removal of Stamboloff:

  Here stands the Moslem with his brutal sword
    Still red and reeking with Armenia's slaughter;
  Here, fresh from Belgium's wastes, the Christian Lord,
    His heart unsated by the wrong he wrought her;
  And you between them, on your brother's track,
  Sworn, for a bribe, to stick him in the back.

France and England have declared their intention of rendering all possible
help to Serbia in her new ordeal, but Greece, false to her treaty with
Serbia, and dominated by a pro-German Court and Government, hampers us at
every turn. "'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more." So Byron sang, and a
Byron _de nos jours_ adds a new stanza to his appeal:

  Lo, a new curse--the Teuton bane!
    Again rings out the trumpet call;
  France, England, Russia, joined again,
    For freedom fight, for Greece, for all;
  And Greece--shall she that call ignore?
  Then is she living Greece no more!

Life in the trenches grows more strenuous as the output of high explosive
increases, and the daily toll of our best and bravest makes grievous
reading for the elders at home, "who linger here and droop beneath the
heavy burden of our years," though many of them cheerfully undertake the
thankless fatigues of guarding the King's highway as specials. But letters
from the front still show the same genius for making light of hardship and
deadly peril, the same happy gift of extracting amusement from trivial
incidents. So those who spend their days and nights under heavy shell fire
and heavy rain write to tell you that "tea is the dominating factor of
war," or that "the mushrooming and ratting in their latest quarters" are
satisfactory. And even the wounded, in comparing the hazards of London with
those at the front, only indulge in mild irony at the expense of the
"staunch dare-devil souls who stay at home."

In Parliament Sir Edward Carson has explained the reasons of his
resignation of office--his difference from his colleagues in the
difficulties arising in the Eastern theatre of war; and a resolution has
been placed on the order-book proposing the appointment of a Committee of
Inquiry on the Dardanelles campaign. No abatement of the plague of
questions is yet noticeable, but some slight excuse may be found for the
"ragging" of the Censor. This anonymous worthy, it appears, recently
excised the words "and the Kings" from the well-known line in Mr. Kipling's
"Recessional":

  The Captains and the Kings depart.

Apparently the Censor cannot admit any reference to the movements of
royalty.

[Illustration: REALISATION

("When I went to Bulgaria I resolved that if there were to be any
assassinations I would be on the side of the assassins."
STATEMENT BY FERDINAND.)]

When the Kaiser was at Windsor in 1891 he told the Eton College Volunteers
he was glad to see so many of them taking an interest in the study of arms,
and hoped that if ever they had to draw their swords in earnest they would
use them to some purpose for their country. Now that there are three
thousand Etonians at the front he is beginning to be sorry he spoke. The
Kaiser, by his own confession, is sorry in another way. He has told a
Socialist deputy, "with tears in his eyes," that he was sincerely sorry for
France, which was "the greatest disappointment of his life." Even
crocodiles sometimes speak the truth unwittingly. Meanwhile the Hamburg
_Fremdenblatt_ asserts that, "We Germans would gladly follow the
Kaiser's lead through the very gates of hell, were it necessary." The
qualification is surely superfluous, in the light of the murder of the
heroic English hospital matron, Edith Cavell, at Brussels on October 12.
Her life was one long act of mercy. She died with unshaken fortitude after
the mockery of a trial on a charge of having assisted fugitive British and
Belgian prisoners to escape. But her great offence was that she was
English. The names of her chief assassins are General Baron von Biasing,
the Governor of Brussels, General von Sauberschweig, the Military Governor,
and the Baron von der Lancken, the Head of the Political Department. Many
years will pass before the echoes of that volley fired at dawn in a
Brussels prison yard will die away.

[Illustration: LANDLADY; "'Ere's the Zeppelins, sir!" LODGER: "Right-o! Put
'em down outside."]

A new phase has been reached in the Conscription controversy, and the
burning question appears to be whether the necessary men are to be
compelled to volunteer or persuaded to be compulsorily enrolled. One of our
novelist military experts, who is not always lucky with figures, though he
thoroughly enjoys them, is alleged to have discovered that there are no
more men than can be raised by conscription, but that the same does not, of
course, apply to the voluntary system.

The _Daily Mail_ asks, "Have we a Foreign Office?" We understand that
a search-party is going carefully through Carmelite House. We have
certainly got a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, so efficient in the
discharge of his duties that he has made himself an accomplished landscape
painter in three months.

A visitor to a remote East Anglian village in search of rest has found
recreation in discussing with the inhabitants the Great War, of which he
found some of them had heard. "Them there Zett'lins," said one old woman,
"I almost shruk as I heerd the mucky varmints a-shovellin' on the
coals--dare, dare! How my pore heart did beat!" And an onlooker, who had
seen a bomb drop near a church, informed the visitor that it "fared to him
like the body of the chach a-floatin' away--that it did and all! It made a
clangin' like a covey of lorries with their innards broke loose." Another
inhabitant said that he had two boys fighting. "One on 'em is in France,
wherever that might be, and Jimmy's in that hare old Dardelles." He
couldn't rightly say when the elder had gone out, "but it might be a yare
ago come muck-spreadin'."



_November_, 1915.


More money and more men is still the cry. The war is now costing five
millions a day, and the new vote of credit for £400,000,000 will only carry
us on till the middle of February. This is "Derby's Day," and the new
Director of Recruiting inspires confidence in his ability to make good, in
spite of the Jeremiads of Lord Courtney and Lord Loreburn. The lot of a
Coalition Government is never easy, and public opinion clamours not for
Jeremiahs but for Jonahs to lighten the Ship of State. Mr. Winston
Churchill, wearying of his sinecure at the Duchy of Lancaster, has resigned
office, explained himself in a long speech, and rejoined his regiment at
the Western front. Lord Fisher, whose doubts and hesitations about the
Dardanelles expedition were referred to by the late First Lord, has been
content to leave his record of sixty-one years' service in the hands of his
countrymen. In the briefest maiden speech ever delivered in either House he
stated that it was "unfitting to make personal explanations affecting the
national interest when my country is in the midst of a great war." Here at
least the traditions of the "Silent Service" have been worthily maintained,
just as they are maintained by the Port Officer R.N.R. at an Oriental
seaport, a thousand miles from the front, out of the limelight, with no
chance of glory, with fever from morn till night, who "worries along by the
grace of God and the blessing of cheap cheroots."

In Flanders the rain has begun its winter session, and, as a military
humorist put it, trench warfare is becoming a constant drain. The problem
of parapet mending has been reduced to arithmetical form _à la_
Colenso, as follows: "If two inches of rain per diem brings down one
quarter of a company's parapet, and one company, working about twenty-six
hours per diem, can revet one-eighth of a company's parapet, how long will
your trenches last--given the additional premisses that no revetments to
speak of are to be had, and that two inches of rain is only a minimum
ration?" The infantryman finds the men of the R.F.C. interesting and
stimulating companions. "These airy fellows talk of war as if it were a
day's shooting, and they the cock pheasants with the best of the fun up
aloft. Upon my word, the hen who hatched such birds should be a proud, if
anxious, mother." The same correspondent sends a pleasant account of the
mutual estimates of French and English, prompted by their experiences as
brothers in arms. "Our idea of our Ally as a soldier is that his
_élan_ and gay courage are very much more remarkable even than
supposed; but for the dull, heavy work of continued warfare there is
wanted, if we may say so without offence, the more stolid qualities of the
English. On the other hand, the French opinion of their Ally as a soldier
is that his dash and devilment are really astonishing, even to the most
expectant critic; but for the sordid, monotonous strain of this trench
business it needs (a thousand pardons!) the duller persistence of the
French."

[Illustration: THE PERSUADING OF TINO]

In Greece the quick change of Premiers proceeds with kaleidoscopic
rapidity. The attitude of the successive Prime Ministers has been described
as (1) Tender and affectionate neutrality toward the Entente Powers; (2)
Malevolent impartiality toward the Central Powers; (3) Inert cupidity
toward all the belligerent Powers; (4) Genial inability; (5) Strict
pusillanimity.

Lord Milner has gone so far in the House of Lords as to say that "such war
news as is published has from first to last been seriously misleading." The
Balkan intelligence that is allowed to reach us does not exactly deserve
this censure. To call it misleading would be too high praise; it seldom
rises beyond a level of blameless irrelevance. It is hardly a burlesque of
the facts to say that a cable from Amsterdam informs us that the Copenhagen
correspondent of the _Echo de Paris_ learns from Salonika, _viâ_
Lemnos and Nijni Novgorod, that in high official circles in Bukarest it is
rumoured that in Constantinople the situation is considered grave; and then
we are warned that too much credence must not be given to this report. The
number of Censors at the Press Bureau being exactly forty, and their minute
knowledge of English literature having been displayed on several occasions,
it is said that Sir John Simon contemplates their incorporation as an
Academy of "Immortals--for the duration of the War."

[Illustration: PADDY (who has had his periscope smashed by a bullet): "Sure
there's seven years' bad luck for the poor devil that broke that, anyhow."]

Mr. Punch's Correspondent "Blanche" sends distressing details of some of
the new complaints contracted by smart war workers. These include
munition-wrists, shell-makers' crouch, neuro-committee-itis, and
Zeppelin-eye through looking up into the sky too long with a telescope.

A great deal depends on what you look at and what you look through. Thus
Mr. Walter Long says that when he reads carping criticisms upon the conduct
of the War he looks through his window at the people in the street and is
always surprised to see the quiet steadfast manner in which they are going
about their business. It is a good plan, but not always successful. The
Kaiser got his view of the Irish people through a Casement, and it was
entirely erroneous.

The _Cologne Gazette_ has stated that "there is in England no real
soldiers' humour such as we have." Certainly we have nothing like it,
though we confess to preferring the home-grown brand.



_December, 1915_


Kut and Ctesiphon, Ctesiphon and Kut. Thus may the events of the last month
in Mesopotamia, no longer a "blessed word," be expressed in a bald formula,
which takes no account of the unavailing heroism of General Townshend's
small but splendid force. Things have not been going well in the East. The
Allies have been unable to save Serbia, Monastir has fallen, and our lines
have been withdrawn to Salonika. The experts are now divided into two
camps, the Westerners and the Easterners, and the former, pointing to the
evacuation of Gallipoli, are loud in their denunciations of costly
"side-shows," and the folly of strengthening Germany's hold on Turkey by
killing out the Turks, instead of concentrating all our forces on killing
the Germans on the Western front. The time is not yet come to decide which
is right. But all are agreed with the British officer who described the
Australian soldier at Gallipoli as "the bravest thing God ever made," and
so prompted these lines:

  Bravest, where half a world of men
    Are brave beyond all earth's rewards,
  So stoutly none shall charge again
    Till the last breaking of the swords;
  Wounded or hale, won home from war,
    Or yonder by the Lone Pine laid;
  Give him his due for evermore--
    "The bravest thing God ever made!"

Though the wings of the angel of Peace cannot be heard, peace kite-flying
has already begun in Vienna, but Germany is anxious to represent it as
unauthorised and improper. Mr. Henry Ford's voyage to Europe on the
_Oscar II_ with a strangely assorted group of Pacificists does more
credit to his heart than his head, and the conflicting elements in his
party have earned for his ship the name of "The Tug of Peace." Anyhow,
England is taking no risks on the strength of these irregular "overtures."
A vote has been passed for a further increase of our "contemptible little
Army" to four millions; and the manufacture of high explosive goes on in an
ever-increasing ratio. Sir Douglas Haig has succeeded Sir John French as
Commander-in-Chief of our Armies in France; Sir William Robertson is the
new Chief of Staff--Scotsmen both of the finest type--and the appointments
are universally approved, even by the _Daily Mail_. The temper of the
men in France is well hit off by an officer when he says that "Atkins is
really best when an ordinary mortal might be contemplating suicide or
desertion." And officers arriving on leave at Victoria at 2 A.M. are driven
to the conclusion that they are sent back to England from time to time to
check their optimism, which at the front survives even being sent to
so-called rest camps in the middle of a malodorous marsh for nine hours'
military training _per diem_. The "philosophy of Thomas" is
inscrutable, but no doubt he derives satisfaction from comparisons:

  If we're standin' in two foot o' water, you see
  Quite likely the Boches are standin' in three;
  An' though the keen frost may be ticklin' our toes,
  'Oo doubts that the Boches' 'ole bodies is froze?

  So 'ere's our philosophy, simple an' plain:
  Wotever we 'ates in the bloomin' campaign,
  'Tis balm to our souls, as we grumble an' cuss,
  To feel that the Boches are 'atin' it wuss.

Hardest of all is the lot of the trooper in the trenches, who "thinks all
day and dreams all night of a slap-bang, tally-ho! open fight," but for the
time being "like a blinded mole toils in a furrow and lives in a hole."

[Illustration: AN UNAUTHORISED FLIRTATION

THE KAISER (to Austrian Emperor): "Franz! Franz! I'm surprised and
pained."]

The National Thrift campaign is carried on with great earnestness in
Parliament. Luxury, waste, unnecessary banquets, high legal salaries have
all come under the lash of the economy hunters. Of the maxim that "Charity
begins, at home," they have, however, so far shown no appreciation beyond
abstaining from voting any addition to their salary of £400 a year. Mr.
Asquith's announcement that he takes his salary, and is going to continue
taking it, has naturally lifted a great weight from the minds of these
vicarious champions of economy.

[Illustration: TOMMY (finding a German prisoner who speaks English): "Look
what you done to me, you blighters! 'Ere--'ave a cigarette?"]

Evidence of the chastened condition of the enemy is to be found in the
statement on the official notepaper of Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau "that it
assumes no responsibility of any kind for the accuracy of the news which it
circulates." But there is no confirmation of the report that its dispatches
will in future be known as "Lamb's Tales." The German Imperial Chancellor
has replied to an appeal from a deputation of German Roman Catholics on
behalf of the Armenians that "The German Government, in friendly
communication with the Turkish Government, has been at constant pains to
better the situation of Turkey's Christian subjects." Thanks to this
friendly intervention, more than half a million Armenians will never suffer
again from Turkish misrule.


Mr. Roosevelt has added to the picturesqueness of political invective by
describing Mr. Wilson's last Presidential message as "worthy of a Byzantine
logothete." It is not often that one finds a rough-rider and ex-cowboy who
is able to tackle a don in his own lingo. But Tommy at the front manages to
converse with the _poilu_ without any vocabulary at all:

  I met a chap the other day a-roostin' in a trench,
  'E didn't know a word of ours nor me a word of French,
  An' 'ow it was we managed--well, I cannot understand,
  But I never used the phrase-book, though I 'ad it in my hand.

  I winked at 'im to start with; 'e grinned from ear to ear;
  An' 'e says "Tipperary," an' I says "Sooveneer";
  'E 'ad my only Woodbine, I 'ad 'is thin cigar,
  Which set the ball a-rollin', an' so--well, there you are!

  I showed 'im next my wife an' kids, 'e up an' showed me 'is,
  Them funny little Frenchy kids with 'air all in a frizz;
  "Annette," 'e says, "Louise," 'e says, an' 'is tears began to fall;
  We was comrades when we parted, but we'd 'ardly spoke at all.



_January, 1916_.


The New Year brings us a mixed bag of tricks, good and bad. Our armies grow
in numbers and efficiency, in men and munitions. The new Commander-in-Chief
on the Western front, and his new Chief of Staff, inspire confidence in all
ranks, combatant and non-combatant. John Ward, the Labour Member, hitherto
a strong opponent of conscription, and now a full-blown Colonel, has
hurried over from the front to defend the Compulsory Service Bill in a
manly and animated speech, and the Bill, despite the "Pringling" and
pacificism of a small but local minority, has passed through Committee.

Against these encouraging omens we have to set the complete evacuation of
Gallipoli, the scene of unparalleled heroism and unavailing sacrifice, the
fall of Monastir, the overrunning of Serbia, labour troubles on the Clyde,
and the ignominious exemption of Ireland from the Military Service Bill.
General Townshend, _rebus angustis animosus_--"in a tight place but
full of beans"--is besieged in Kut, and the relieving forces have not been
able to dislodge the Turks. Climate and weather and _terrain_ are all
against us.

Humanitarian Pacificists are much impressed by Germany's piteous
lamentations over the brutality of the blockade. In these appeals to
America optimists detect signs of cracking. Cooler observers explain them
as evidence of her policy of shamming dead.

English mothers who have lost their only sons cannot be expected to show
sympathy for an Emperor who combines the professions of a Jekyll with the
ferocity of a Hyde. Yet few of them would rewrite the record of these short
lives; their pride is greater than their pain.

While the daily toll of life is heavy, War, shorn of its pomp and
pageantry, drags wearily in the trenches. The Lovelace of to-day is a
troglodyte, biding his time patiently, but often a prey to _ennui_.
This is how he writes to Lucasta to correct the portrait painted by her
fancy:

  Above, the sky is very grey, the world is very damp.
  His light the sun denies by day, the moon by night her lamp;
  Across the landscape, soaked and sad, the dull guns answer back,
  And through the twilight's futile hush spasmodic rifles crack.

  The papers haven't come to-day to show how England feels;
  The hours go lame and languidly between our Spartan meals;
  We've written letters till we're tired, with not a thing to tell
  Except that nothing's doing, weather beastly, writer well.

  So when you feel for us out here--as well I know you will--
  Then sympathise with thousands for their country sitting still;
  Don't picture battle-pieces by the lurid Press adored,
  But miles and miles of Britishers, in burrows, badly bored.

[Illustration:

FOR NEUTRALS

"Why do we torpedo passenger ships? Because we are being starved by the
infamous English."


FOR NATIVES

"Who says we are in distress? Look what our splendid organisation is
doing."]

Small wonder that Lovelace in the trenches envies the Flying Man:

  He rides aloof on god-like wings,
    Taking no thought of wire or mud,
  Saps, smells, or bugs--the mundane things
    That sour our lives and have our blood.

  The roads we trudged with feet of lead,
    The shadows of his pinions skim;
  The river where we piled our dead
    Is but a silver thread to him.

Lovelace in the air might tell another story; but both are at one with
their prototype in the spirit which made him say: "I could not love thee,
dear, so much, loved I not honour more," though neither of them would say
it.

In this context one may add that the Flying Men are not alone in exciting
envy. Bread is the staff of life, and in the view of certain officers in
the trenches the life of the Staff is one long loaf.

The discussion on the withdrawal of Members' salaries has died down. The
incident is now buried, and here is its epitaph:

  Some three-score years or so ago six hundred gallant men
  Made a charge that cost old England dear; they lost four hundred then:
  To-day six hundred make a charge that costs the country dear,
  But now they take four hundred each--four hundred pounds a year.

Our journalists have been visiting the Fleet, and one of them, in a burst
of candour tempered with caution, declares that "one would like to describe
much more than one has seen, but that is impossible." Some other
correspondents have found no such difficulty. But for admirable candour
commend us to the _Daily Mail_ of December 24, where we read, "The
_Daily Mail_ will not be published to-morrow, and for that reason we
seize the occasion to-day of bidding our readers a Merry Christmas"--and a
very good reason too. Mr. Punch is glad to reprint a ten-year-old girl's
essay on "Patriotism": "Patriotism is composed of patriots, and they are
people who live in Ireland and want Mr. Redmond or other people to be King
of Ireland. They are very brave, some of them, and are so called after St.
Patrick, who is Ireland's private saint. The patriots who are brave make
splendid soldiers. The patriots who are not brave go to America." And here
is a topical extract from a letter written to a loved one from the Front:

"I received your dear little note in a sandbag. You say that you hope the
sandbag stops a bullet. Well, to tell the truth, I hope it don't, as I have
been patching my trousers with it."

[Illustration:

TOMMY (dictating letter to be sent to his wife): "The nurses here are a
very plain lot--"

NURSE: "Oh, come! I say! That's not very polite to us."

TOMMY: "Never mind. Nurse, put it down. It'll please her!"]

Tommy is adding to his other great qualities that of diplomacy, to judge
from the incident illustrated above.



_February, 1916_.


The Epic of the Dardanelles is closed; that of Verdun has begun, and all
eyes are focused on the tremendous struggle for the famous fortress. The
Crown Prince has still his laurels to win, and it is clear that no
sacrifice of German "cannon fodder" will be too great to deter him from
pushing the stroke home. Fort Douaumont has fallen, and the hill of the
Mort Homme has already terribly justified its cadaverous name. The
War-lords of Germany are sorely in need of a spectacular success even
though they purchase it at a great price, for they are very far from having
everything their own way. Another Colony has gone the way of Tsing-tau, New
Guinea and South-West Africa. The German Kamerun has cried "Kamerad!"
General Smuts, like Botha, "Boer and Briton too," has gone off to take
command in East Africa, and in the Caucasus Erzerum has fallen to the
Russians. The Kaiser is reported to be bitterly disappointed with Allah.

Sir Edward Grey is not altogether satisfied with the conduct of the Neutral
Powers. He has no desire to make things as irksome to them as some of his
critics desire. But he has pointed out that in the matter of preventing
supplies from reaching the enemy by circuitous routes Great Britain has her
own work to do, and means to do it thoroughly.

The miraculous forbearance of President Wilson, in face of the activities
of Count Bernstorff, is even more trying to a good many of his countrymen
than it is to the belligerent Briton. Mr. Roosevelt, for instance, derives
no satisfaction from being the fellow-countryman of a man who can "knock
spots" off Job for patience. The _New York Life_ has long criticised
the President with a freedom far eclipsing anything in the British Press.
It has now crowned its "interventionist" campaign by a "John Bull number,"
the most generous and graceful tribute ever paid to England by the American
Press.

[Illustration: THE CHALLENGE

"Halt! Who comes there?" "Neutral." "Prove it!"

"What I would say to Neutrals is this: Do they admit our right to apply the
principles which were applied by the American Government in the war between
North and South--to apply those principles to modern conditions and to do
our best to prevent trade with the enemy through neutral countries? If the
answer is that we are not entitled to do that, then I must say definitely
it is a departure from neutrality."--SIR EDWARD GREY.]

[Illustration:

GRANNIE (dragged out of bed at 1.30 a.m., and being hurriedly dressed as
the bombs begin to fall): "Nancy, these stockings are not a pair."]

The Military Service Bill has passed through both Houses, and may be
trusted to hasten still further the amazing growth of our once
"contemptible little" Army. The pleasantest incident during the month at
Westminster has been the tribute paid to the gallantry and self-sacrifice
of the officers and men of our mercantile marine. The least satisfactory
aspect of Parliamentary activity has been the ventilation of silly rumours
at Question time, in which Mr. Ginnell has been so well to the fore as to
suggest some subtle connection between cattle-driving and hunting for
mares' nests.

Steps have already been taken to restrict the imports of luxuries, and
Ministers are believed to be unanimous in regarding "ginger" as an article
whose importation might be profitably curtailed. It has been calculated
that the annual expenses saved by the closing of the London Museums and
Galleries amount to about one-fifth of the public money spent on the
salaries of Members of Parliament. In other words:

  Let Art and Science die,
  But give us still our old Loquacity.

Intellectual retrenchment, of course, is desirable,

  But let us still keep open one collection
    Of curiosities and quaint antiques,
  Under immediate Cabinet direction--
    The finest specimens of talking freaks,
  Who constitute our most superb museum,
  Judged by the salaries with which we fee 'em.

Lord Sumner, however, seems to have no illusions on this score. He is
reported to have said that "if the House of Lords and the House of Commons
could be taken and thrown into a volcano every day the loss represented
would be less than the daily loss of the campaign." It sounds a drastic
remedy, but might be worth trying.

Field-Marshal Lord French has taken over the responsibility for home
defence against enemy aircraft, with Sir Percy Scott as his expert adviser.
But the status of Sir Percy, who, as officially announced, "has not quite
left the Admiralty and has not quite joined the War Office," seems to
suggest "a kind of giddy harumfrodite--soldier an' sailor too."

The War fosters the study of natural and unnatural history.

[Illustration: FIRST LADY: "That's one of them Australian soldiers."

SECOND LADY: "How do you know?"

FIRST LADY: "Why, can't you see the Kangaroo feathers in his hat?"]

Many early nestings are recorded as the result of mild weather, and at
least one occasional visitor _(Polonius bombifer_) has laid eggs in
various parts of the country.



_March_, 1916.


The month of the War god has again justified its name and its traditions.
Both entry and exit have been leonine. The new submarine "frightfulness"
began on the 1st, and the battle round Verdun, in which the fate of Paris,
to say the least, is involved, has raged with unabated fury throughout the
entire month.

Germany's junior partners, Turkey and Bulgaria, are for the moment more
concerned with bleeding Germany than with shedding their blood for her;
Enver Pasha is reported to have gone to pay a visit to the tomb of the
Prophet at Medina; Portugal, our oldest ally, is now officially at war with
Germany, and the dogs of frightfulness are already toasting "_der
Tagus_."

On our share of the Western front there is still what is nominally
described as a "lull." But, as a young Officer writes, "you must not
imagine that life here is all honey. Even here we do a bit for our
eight-and-sixpence." Once upon a time billets were billets. They now very
often admit of being shelled with equal exactitude from due in front and
due in rear, and water is laid on throughout. "It is a fact well known to
all our most widely circulated photographic dailies that the German gunners
waste a power of ammunition. The only criticism I have to make is that I
wish they would waste it more carefully. The way they go strewing the stuff
about around us is such that they're bound to hit someone or something
before long. Still, we have only two more days in these trenches, and they
seldom give us more than ten thousand shells a day."

[Illustration: Verdun, February--March, 1916]

Letters from second-lieutenants seldom go beyond a gentle reminder that
their life is not an Elysium. They offer a strange contrast to the
activities of Parliamentary grousers and scapegoat hunters. If the Germans
were in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily shelled
as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull
rumble of the bombardment as Paris can, one wonders if Members would still
be encumbering the Order-paper with the vexatious trivialities that now
find place there, or emitting what a patriotic Labour Member picturesquely
described as "the croakings and bleatings of the fatted lambs who have
besmirched their country." _Per contra_ we welcome the optimism of Mr.
Asquith in discussing new Votes of Credit, though he reminds us of Micawber
calculating his indebtedness for the benefit of Traddles. It will be
remembered that when the famous IOU had been handed over, Copperfield
remarked, "I am persuaded not only that this was quite the same to Mr.
Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the
difference until he had had time to think about it." Then we have had the
surprising but welcome experience of Mr. Tim Healy championing the
Government against Sir John Simon's attack on the Military Service Bill;
and have listened to Lord Montagu of Beaulieu's urgent plea in the Lords
for unity of air control, a proposal which Lord Haldane declared could not
be adopted without some "violent thinking." Most remarkable of all has been
Mr. Churchill's intervention in the debate on the Naval Estimates, his
gloomy review of the situation--Mr. Churchill is always a pessimist when
out of office--and the marvellous magnanimity of his suggestion that Lord
Fisher should be reinstated at the Admiralty, on the ground that his former
antagonist was the only possible First Sea Lord. Mr. Balfour dealt so
faithfully with these criticisms and suggestions that there seems to be no
truth in the report that Mr. Churchill has been asked to join the
Government as Minister of Admonitions. A new and coruscating star has swum
into our Parliamentary ken in the shape of the Member for Mid-Herts, and
astronomers have labelled it "Pegasus [Greek: pi beta]." When the House of
Commons passed the Bill prohibiting duels it ought to have made an
exception in favour of its own Members. Nothing would have done more to
raise the tone of debate, for offenders against decorum would gradually
have eliminated one another. Yet Parliament has its merits, not the least
of them being the scope it still affords for hereditary talent. Lord Derby,
at the moment the most prominent man on the Home Front after the Premier,
is the grandson of the "Rupert of Debate," and the new Minister of Blockade
enters on his duties close on fifty years after another Lord Robert Cecil
entered the Cabinet of Lord Derby. So history repeats itself with a
difference. In spite of the Coalition, or perhaps because of it, the old
strife of Whigs and Tories has revived, though the lines of cleavage are
quite different from what they were. Thus the new Tories are the men who
believe that the War is going to be decided by battles in Flanders and the
North Sea, and would sacrifice everything for victory, even the privilege
of abusing the Government. The new Whigs are the men who consider that the
House of Commons is the decisive arena, and that even the defeat of the
Germans would be dearly purchased at the cost of the individual's right to
say and do what he pleased.

[Illustration: "He's kicked the Corporal!"

"He's kicked the Vet.!!"

"He's kicked the Transport Officer!!!"

"He's kicked the Colonel!!!!"

MULE HUMOUR]

[Illustration: THE VICAR: "These Salonikans, Mrs. Stubbs, are, of course,
the Thessalonians to whom St. Paul wrote his celebrated letters."

MRS. STUBBS: "Well, I 'ope 'e'd better luck with 'is than I 'ave. I sent my
boy out there three letters and two parcels, and I ain't got no answer to
'em yet."]

After the exhibition of Mr. Augustus John's portrait of Mr. Lloyd George,
the most startling personal event of the month has been the dismissal of
Grand Admiral Tirpitz. According to one account, he resigned because he
could not take the German Fleet out. According to another, it was because
he could no longer take the German people in.

At Oxford the Hebdomadal Council have suspended the filling of the
Professorship of Modern Greek for six months. Apparently there is no one
about just now who understands the modern Greek. A French correspondent
puts it somewhat differently: "_La Grèce Antique_: Hellas. _La Grèce
Moderne_: Hélas!"



_April, 1916_.


Who would have thought when the month opened that at its close a new front
within the Four Seas would be added to our far-flung line, Dublin's finest
street half ruined, Ireland placed under martial law? Certainly not Mr.
Birrell or Mr. Redmond or the Irish Nationalist Members. The staunchest
Unionist would acquit Mr. William O'Brien of any menace when in the Budget
Debate, three weeks before the Rebellion of Easter Week, he gave it as his
opinion that Ireland ought to be omitted from the Budget altogether. So,
too, with Mr. Tim Healy, whose principal complaint was that the tax on
railway tickets would put a premium on foreign travel; that people would go
to Paris instead of Dublin, and Switzerland instead of Killarney. No, so
far as the Government and Ireland's Parliamentary representatives went, it
was a bolt from the blue--or the green. Mr. Birrell, Chief Secretary for
Ireland for nine years, a longer period than any of his predecessors, has
shown himself conspicuous at once by his absence and his innocence, and
England in her hour of need, with the submarine peril daily growing and all
but starved out after a heroic defence, stands to pay dearly for the
privilege of entrusting the administration of Ireland to an absentee
humorist.

On the Western front Verdun still rivets all eyes. The German hordes are
closing in on the fortress, but at a heavier cost for each mile gained than
they have ever paid before.

Germany's colossal effort would inspire admiration as well as respect if
she would only fight clean. The ugly stories of her treatment of prisoners
have now culminated in the terrible record of the typhus-stricken camp at
Wittenberg, where the German doctors deserted their post.

[Illustration: THE REPUDIATION

Martin Luther (to Shakespeare): "I see my countrymen claim you as one of
them. You may thank God that you're not that. They have made my
Wittenberg--ay, and all Germany--to stink in my nostrils."]

[Illustration: THE GRAPES OF VERDUN

THE OLD FOX: "You don't seem to be getting much nearer them?"

THE CUB: "No, Father. Hadn't we better give it out that they're sour?"]

The report of Mr. Justice Younger's Committee, in which the tale of this
atrocity is fully told, is being circulated in neutral countries, and Mr.
Will Thorne has suggested that it should also be sent to our conscientious
objectors. It is well to administer some sort of corrective to the
information diffused by the neutral newsmonger:

  Who cheers us when we're in the blues,
  With reassuring German news,
  Of starving Berliners in queues?
      The Neutral.

  And then, soon after, tells us they
  Are feeding nicely all the day,
  And in the old familiar way?
      The Neutral.

  Who sees the Kaiser in Berlin,
  Dejected, haggard, old as sin,
  And shaking in his hoary skin?
      The Neutral.

  Then says he's quite a Sunny Jim,
  That buoyant health and youthful vim
  Are sticking out all over him?
      The Neutral.

  Who tells us tales of Krupp's new guns,
  Much larger than the other ones,
  And endless trains chock-full of Huns?
      The Neutral.

  And then, when our last hope has fled,
  Declares the Huns are either dead
  Or hopelessly dispirited?
      The Neutral.

  In short, who seems to be a blend
  Of Balaam's Ass, the bore's godsend,
  And _Mrs. Gamp's_ elusive friend?
      The Neutral.

In Parliament we have had the biggest Budget ever known introduced in the
shortest Budget speech of the last half-century, at any rate. Mr. Pemberton
Billing is doing his best every Tuesday to bring the atmosphere of the
aerodrome into the House. Mr. Tennant has promised his sympathetic
consideration to Mr. Billing's offer personally to organise raids on the
enemy's aircraft bases, and the House is bearing up as well as can be
expected under the shadow of this impending bereavement. Mr. Swift MacNeill
is busy with his patriotic effort to purge the roll of the Lords of the
peerages now held by enemy dukes. For the rest, up to Easter Week, the
Parliamentary situation has been described as "a cabal every afternoon and
a crisis every second day."

It is one of the strange outcomes of this wonderful time that there is more
gaiety as well as more suffering in hospitals during the War than in peace.
Certainly such a request would never have been heard in normal years as
that recently made by a nurse to a roomful of irrepressible Tommies at a
private hospital:

"A message has just come in to ask if the hospital will make a little less
noise as the lady next door has a touch of headache."

For shouting "The Zepps are coming!" a Grimsby girl has been fined £1. It
was urged in defence that the girl suffered from hallucinations, one being
that she was a daily newspaper proprietor. But the recent Zeppelin raids
have not been without their advantages. In a spirit of emulation an
ambitious hen at Acton has laid an egg weighing 5-1/4 oz.

[Illustration:

VISITOR (at Private Hospital): "Can I see Lieutenant Barker, please?"

MATRON: "We do not allow ordinary visiting. May I ask if you are a
relative?"

VISITOR (boldly): "Oh, yes! I'm his sister."

MATRON: "Dear me! I'm very glad to meet you. _I'm his mother_."]



_May, 1916_.


Verdun still holds out: that is the best news of the month. The French with
inexorable logic continue to exact the highest price for the smallest gain
of ground. If the Germans are ready to give 100,000 men for a hill or part
of a hill they may have it. If they will give a million men they may
perhaps have Verdun itself. But so far their Pyrrhic victories have stopped
short of this limit, and Verdun, like Ypres, battered, ruined and evacuated
by civilians, remains a symbol of Allied tenacity and the will to resist.

The months in war-time sometimes belie their traditions, but it is fitting
that in May we should have enlisted a new Ally--the Sun. The Daylight
Saving Bill became Law on May 17. Here is a true economy, and our only
regret is that Mr. Willett, the chief promoter of a scheme complacently
discussed during his lifetime as ingenious but impracticable, should not
have lived to witness its swift and unmurmuring acceptance under stress of
war.

The official _communiqués_ from the Irish Front in the earlier stages
of the Dublin rebellion did not long maintain their roseate complexion.
Even before the end of April a Secret Session--the second in a week--was
held to discuss the Irish situation. By a strange coincidence this Secret
Session immediately followed the grant by the Commons of a Return relating
to Irish Lunacy accounts. From the meagre official summary we gather that
the absence of reporters has at least the negative advantage of shortening
speeches. In a very few days, however, the Prime Minister discarded
reticence, admitting the gravity of the situation, the prevalence of street
fighting, the spread of the insurrection in the West, the appointment of
Sir John Maxwell to the supreme command, and the placing of the Irish
Government under his orders. The inevitable sequel--the execution of the
responsible insurrectionist leaders--has led to vehement protests from
Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien against militarist brutality. The House of
Commons is a strange place. When Mr. Birrell rose on May 3 to give an
account of his nine years' stewardship, the Unionists, and not the
Unionists alone, were thinking of a lamp-post in Whitehall. When he had
concluded his pathetic apologia and confessed his failure to estimate
accurately the strength of Sinn Fein, members were almost ready to fall on
his neck, but they no longer wanted his head.

[Illustration: HELD:]

[Illustration: WANTED--A ST. PATRICK

ST. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL: "I'm afraid I'm not so smart as my brother-saint at
dealing with this kind of thing. I'm apt to take reptiles too lightly."]

Even Sir Edward Carson admitted that Mr. Birrell had been well intentioned
and had done his best. By the middle of the month Mr. Asquith had gone to
Ireland, in the hope of discovering some arrangement for the future which
would commend itself to all parties. By the 25th he was back in his place
after nine days in Dublin. But he had no panacea of his own to prescribe;
no cut-and-dried plan for the regeneration of Ireland. All he could say was
that Mr. Lloyd George had been deputed by the Cabinet to confer with the
various Irish leaders, and the choice is generally approved. If anyone
knows how to handle high explosives without causing a premature concussion
it should be the Minister of Munitions.

Ireland has dominated the political scene at home, for it is impossible not
to connect our new commitments across St. George's Channel with the
introduction and passing of the new Military Service Bill establishing
compulsion for all men, married or single--always excepting Ireland. The
question of man-power is paramount. Mr. Asquith is at last convinced that
"Wait and See" must yield to "Do it Now": that the nation won't have the
sword of Damocles hanging over its head any longer, but will have
compulsion in its hand at once. On the progress of the War Mr. Asquith has
said little in Open Session, but any omission on his part has been made
good by Mr. Churchill, now home on unlimited leave, who has spoken at great
length on the proper use of armies.

Mr. Arthur Ponsonby and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, who raised the question of
Peace on Empire Day, urging the Government to open negotiations with
Germany, have elicited from the Foreign Secretary the deliberate statement
that the only terms of peace which the German Government had ever put
forward were the terms of victory for Germany, and that we could not reason
with the German people so long as they were fed with lies.

Mr. Henry James, who so nobly repaid the hospitality England was proud to
show him by adopting her nationality in her hour of greatest need, said
shortly before his death that nothing grieved him more than the constant
loss of England's "best blood, seed and breed." The mothers of England
"give their sons," but they know that the choice did not rest with them:

  We did not give you--all unasked you went,
    Sons of a greater motherhood than ours;
  To our proud hearts your young brief lives were lent,
    Then swept beyond us by resistless powers.
  Only we hear, when we have lost our all,
      That far clear call.

But how can the grief be measured of those

                     Whose best,
    Eager to serve a higher quest
  And in the Great Cause know the joy of battle,
    Gallant and young, by traitor hands,
    Leagued with a foe from alien lands,
  Struck down in cold blood, fell like butchered cattle?

Though Ireland is not for the moment a source of humour she contrives to be
the cause of it in others. A daily paper tells us that Sir Robert Chalmers
is to be "Permanent Under-Secretary of Ireland _pro tem_." Another
daily paper, the _Daily Mail,_ to be precise, has discovered a new
test of valour: "Mr. Hellish, a regular reader of the _Daily Mail_ for
years, was awarded the V.C. last month for conspicuous bravery."



_June, 1916_.


At last the long vigil in the North Sea has ended in the glorious if
indecisive battle of Jutland, the greatest sea fight since Trafalgar. Yet
was it indecisive? After the momentary dismay caused by the first Admiralty
_communiqué_ with its over-estimate of our losses, public confidence,
shaken where it was strongest, has been restored by further information and
by the admissions of the enemy. We have to mourn the loss of many ships,
still more the loss of splendid ships' companies and their heroic captains.
We can sympathise with the cruel disappointment of those who, after bearing
the brunt of the action, were robbed of the opportunity of overwhelming
their enemy by failing light and the exigencies of a strategy governed in
the last resort by political caution. But look at the sequel. The German
Fleet, badly battered, retires to port; and despite the paeans of
exultation from their Admirals, Kaiser, and Imperial Chancellor, remains
there throughout the month. Will it ever come out again? Meanwhile,
Wilhelmshaven is closed indefinitely, and nobody is allowed to see those
sheep in Wolff's clothing--the "victorious fleet." The true verdict, so
far as we can judge, may be expressed in homely phrase: The British Navy
has taken a knock but given a harder one. We can stand it and they can't.

[Illustration: THE LOST CHIEF

In Memory of Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener, Maker of Armies]

Within a week of Jutland the Empire has been stirred to its depths by the
tragic death of Lord Kitchener in the _Hampshire_, blown up by a mine
off the Shetlands on her voyage to Archangel. On the eve of starting on his
mission to Russia his last official act had been to meet his critics of the
House of Commons face to face, reply to their questions and leave them
silenced and admiring. On the day of the battle of Jutland these critics
had moved the Prime Minister to declare that Lord Kitchener was personally
entitled to the credit for the amazing expansion of the army. Sir Mark
Sykes, no mean authority, asserted that in Germany our War Secretary was
feared as a great organiser, while in the East his name was one to conjure
with; and Sir George Reid, a worthy representative of the Dominions,
observed that his chief fault was that he was "not clever at circulating
the cheap coin of calculated civilities which enable inferior men to rise
to positions to which they are not entitled." These tributes were delivered
in his lifetime; they deserve to be contrasted with the appreciations of
those journalists who clamoured for his appointment, then clamoured for his
dismissal, and profaned his passing with their insincere eulogies. Three
weeks of Recess elapsed before the Houses could render homage to the
illustrious dead. In the Lords the debt has been paid by a statesman, Lord
Lansdowne, a soldier, Lord French, and a friend, Lord Derby. In the Commons
the speeches were all touched with genuine emotion and the sense of
personal loss. Through all these various tributes rang the note of duty
well done, and Mr. Bonar Law did well to remind the House of the sure
instinct which caused Lord Kitchener to realise at the very outset the
gigantic nature of the present War. In a sense his loss is irreparable, yet
his great work was accomplished before he died. Sometimes accused of
expecting others to achieve the impossible, he had achieved it himself in
the crowning miracle of his life, the improvisation of the New Armies.

The violation of Greek territory by the Bulgarian troops, as might be
expected, has not led to any effective protest from King Constantine. On
the contrary, one seems to hear this benevolent neutral deprecating any
apology on the part of King Ferdinand: "Please make yourself at home. This
is Liberty Hall."

It is otherwise with the irruption of the Russians under General Brusiloff.
His great offensive is a source of offence to the Austrians, who have good
reason to complain that the "steam-roller" is exceeding the speed limit. Or
to change the metaphor, the bear and his tormentor have changed places.

Ireland has receded a little from her place in the limelight, and though
debates on martial law continue, and Irish members ask an inordinate number
of questions arising out of the hot Easter week in Dublin, the temperature
is no longer "98 in the shade" as a local wit described it at the time.
Ministers are extremely economical of information: the anticipated
settlement still hangs fire, and there are increasing fears that it will
not hold water.

[Illustration: THE FAR-REACHING EFFECT OF THE RUSSIAN PUSH]

A number of professional fortune-tellers have been fined at Southend for
having predicted Zeppelins. The fraudulent nature of their pretensions was
sufficiently manifest, since even the authorities had been unable to
foresee the Zeppelins until some time after they had arrived.

The discussions in Parliament and out of it of the way in which things get
into the papers which oughtn't to, are dying down. A daily paper, however,
has revived them by the headline, "Cabinet leekage." Now, why, in wonder,
do they spell it in that way?

It is quite impossible to keep pace with all the new incarnations of women
in war-time--'bus-conductress, ticket-collector, lift-girl, club waitress,
post-woman, bank clerk, motor-driver, farm-labourer, guide, munition maker.
There is nothing new in the function of ministering angel: the myriad
nurses in hospital here or abroad are only carrying out, though in greater
numbers than ever before, what has always been woman's mission. But
whenever he sees one of these new citizens, or hears fresh stories of their
address and ability, Mr. Punch is proud and delighted. Perhaps in the past,
even in the present, he may have been, or even still is, a little given to
chaff Englishwomen for some of their foibles, and even their aspirations.
But he never doubted how splendid they were at heart; he never for a moment
supposed they would be anything but ready and keen when the hour of need
struck.

[Illustration: FARMER (who has got a lady-help in the dairy): "'Ullo,
Missy, what in the world be ye doin'?"

LADY: "Well, you told me to water the cows, and I'm doing it. They don't
seem to like it much."]



_July, 1916_.


On the home front we have long been accustomed to the sound of guns, small
and great, but it has come from training camps and inspires confidence
rather than anxiety. We have been spared the horrors of invasion,
occupation, wholesale devastation. In certain areas the noise of bombs and
anti-aircraft guns has grown increasingly familiar, and on our south-east
and east coasts war from the air, on the sea, and under the sea has become
more and more audible as the months pass by. But July has brought us a new
experience--the sound fifty or sixty miles inland in peaceful rural
England, amid glorious midsummer weather, of the continual throbbing night
and day of the great guns on the Somme, where our first great offensive
opened on the 1st, and has continued with solid and substantial gains, some
set-backs, heavy losses for the Allies, still heavier for the enemy. Names
of villages and towns, which hitherto have been to most of us mere names on
the map, have now become luminous through shining deeds of glory and
sacrifice--Contalmaison and Mametz, Delville Wood, Thiepval and
Beaumont-Hamel, Serre and Pozières.

The victory, for victory it is, has not been celebrated in the German way.
England takes her triumphs as she takes defeats, without a sign of having
turned a hair:

  Yet we are proud because at last, at last
    We look upon the dawn of our desire;
  Because the weary waiting-time is passed
    And we have tried our temper in the fire;
      And proving word by deed
  Have kept the faith we pledged to France at need.

  But most because, from mine and desk and mart,
    Springing to face a task undreamed before,
  Our men, inspired to play their prentice part
    Like soldiers lessoned in the school of war,
      True to their breed and name,
  Went flawless through the fierce baptismal flame.

  And he who brought these armies into life,
    And on them set the impress of his will--
  Could he be moved by sound of mortal strife,
    There where he lies, their Captain, cold and still
      Under the shrouding tide,
  How would his great heart stir and glow with pride!

[Illustration: "TWO HEADS WITH BUT A SINGLE THOUGHT"

FIRST HEAD: "What prospects?" SECOND HEAD: "Rotten." FIRST HEAD: "Same
here."]

The results of the battle of the Somme are shown in a variety of ways: by
the reticence and admissions of the German Press, by its efforts to divert
attention to the exploits of the commercial submarine cruiser
_Deutschland_; above all, by the Kaiser's fresh explosions of piety.
"The Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be." There is no further sign
of his fleet, which remains crippled by its "victory." Nor can he, still
less his Ally, draw comfort from the situation on the Russian or Italian
fronts.

[Illustration: WELL DONE, THE NEW ARMY]

Mr. Punch finds the usual difficulty in getting any details from his
correspondents when they have been or are in the thick of the fighting.
Practically all that they have to say is that there was a "damned noise,"
that breakfast was delayed by the "morning hate," or that an angry sub
besought a weary O.C. "to ask our gunners not to serve faults into our
front line wire." One of them, however, a very wise young man, ventures on
the prediction that the War will last well into 1918. As the result of a
brief leave he has learned an important truth. "In England they assume that
you, having just arrived from France, _know_. When you return to
France, it is assumed that you, having just arrived from England,
_know_."

In Parliament Ireland is beginning to suffer from a rival in unenviable
notoriety. Mesopotamia does not smell particularly sweet just now, but that
may add to its usefulness as a red herring. Geographers are said to have
some difficulty in defining its exact boundaries, but the Government are
probably quite convinced that it is situate between the Devil and the Deep
Sea. Two Special Commissions are to be set up to inquire into the
Mesopotamian and Dardanelles Expeditions. Public opinion has been painfully
stirred by the harrowing details which have come to light of the
preventible sufferings endured by British troops. From their point of view
the supply of their medical needs, now guaranteed, is worth a wilderness of
Special Commissions. But Ireland still holds the floor, though Mr. Asquith
is frugal of information as to the prospective Irish Bill and has
deprecated discussion of the Hardinge Report, the most scarifying public
document of our times. The Lords, unembarrassed by any embargo, have
discussed the Report in a spirit which must make Mr. Birrell thank his
stars that he got in his confession first. But why, he may ask, should he
be judged by Lord Hardinge, himself a prospective defendant at the bar of
public opinion?

Following the lead of a certain section of the Press, certain Members have
begun to wax vocal on the subject of reprisals, uninterned Aliens, and the
Hidden Hand. Their appeals to the Home Office to go on the spy-trail have
not met with much sympathy so far. An alleged Austrian taxi-driver has
turned out to be a harmless Scotsman with an impediment in his speech. More
interesting has been the sudden re-emergence of Mr. John Burns. He sank
without a trace two years ago, but has now bobbed up to denounce the
proposal to strengthen the Charing Cross railway-bridge. We could have
wished that he had been ready to "keep the bridge" in another sense; but at
least he has been a silent Pacificist. Mr. Winston Churchill, when his
journalistic labours permit, has contributed to the debates, and Lord
Haldane has again delivered his famous lecture on the defects of English
education. But for Parliamentary sagacity _in excelsis_ commend us to
Mr. McCallum Scott. He is seriously perturbed about the shortage of
sausage-skins and, in spite of the bland assurance of Mr. Harcourt that
supplies are ample, is alleged to be planning a fresh campaign with the
assistance of Mr. Hogge. Another shortage has given rise to no anxiety, but
rather the reverse. In a police court it was recently stated that there are
no longer any tramps in England. Evidently the appeal of that stirring old
song, "Tramp! tramp! tramp! the boys are marching," has not been without
its effect.

[Illustration: CONJURER (unconscious of the approach of hostile aircraft):
"Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I want you to watch me closely."]

Yet another endurable shortage is reported from the seaside, where an old
sailor on the local sea front has been lamenting the spiritual starvation
brought about by the war. "Why," he said, "for the first time for twenty
years we ain't got no performing fleas down here." And performers, when
they do come, are not always successful in riveting the attention of their
audience.



_August, 1916_.


The third year of the War opens well for the Allies; so well that the
Kaiser has again issued a statement denying that he is responsible for it.
The Big Push on the Somme goes on steadily, thanks to fine leadership, the
steadfast heroism of the New Armies, and the loyal co-operation of the
munition-workers at home, who have deferred their holiday rather than
hamper their brothers in the trenches by a lessened output.

Here one fact may suffice as a sample. The weekly consumption of high
explosives by the Army is now between eleven and twelve thousand times as
much as it was in September, 1914. Yet when a lieutenant is asked to state
what it is really like being along with the B.E.F. when it is in its
pushful mood, he sedulously eschews heroics, and will not commit himself to
saying more than that it's all right--that he doesn't think there is any
cause for anxiety. "We seem to have ceased to have sensations out here. It
is a matter of business; the only question is how long is it going to take
to complete." So, too, with the Tommies. "Wonderful," declares the man in
the ranks to persistent seekers after thrilling descriptions of war. "You
never see the like. Across in them trenches there was real soda-water in
bottles." To return to our lieutenant, he "simply can't help being a little
sorry for the Boche now that his wild oats are coming home to roost." Even
his poetic friends, formerly soulful and precious, take this restrained
view. The Attributes of the Enemy are thus summed up by one trench bard:

  If Boches laughed and Huns were gents,
  They'd own their share of continents;
  There'd be no fuss, and, what is more,
  There wouldn't even be a war.
  Whereas the end of all this tosh
  Can only be there'll be no Boche.

[Illustration: THE BIG PUSH

MUNITION WORKER: "Well, I'm not taking a holiday myself just yet, but I'm
sending these kids of mine for a little trip on the Continent."]

Another poet, an R.F.C. man, adopts the same vein, void alike of hate or
exultation:

  Returning from my morning fly
  I met a Fokker in the sky,
  And, judging from its swift descent,
  It had a nasty accident.
  On thinking further of the same
  I rather fear I was to blame.

It is easy to understand why the enemy nations find England so
disappointing and unsatisfying to be at war with.

Italy, too, has had her Big Push on the Isonzo, capturing Monte Sabotino,
which had defied her for fifteen months, and Gorizia--a triumph of
scientific preparation and intrepid assault. The Austrian poison-gas attack
on the Asiago plateau has been avenged, and the objectives of the long and
ineffectual offensive of the previous winter carried with thousands of
prisoners at a comparatively cheap price. To add to Austria's humiliation
her armies on the Eastern Front have been placed under the Prussian
Hindenburg. And Rumania has joined the Allies at the end of what has been a
very bad month for the Central Empires. English newspapers have been
excluded from Germany, and Berlin has added truthless to meatless days. But
the Germans have long since found a substitute for veracity as well as for
leather and butter and rubber and bread. They are said to have found a
substitute for International Law, and it is an open secret that they are
even now in search of a substitute for victory. We might even suggest a few
more substitutes which have not yet been utilised. As, for example, a
substitute for Verdun with the German flag flying over it; substitutes for
several German Colonies; a substitute for Austria as an ally; and
substitutes for Kultur and Organisation and Efficiency and World Power and
the Mailed Fist and the Crown Prince and the Kaiser and the War and all the
things that haven't come off.

Various momentous decisions have been arrived at in Parliament. The Cabinet
are _not_ to be cinematographed, and unnecessary taxi-whistling is to
be suppressed, without any prejudice to the squealing of importunate
chatterers below the gangway. Ireland has again dominated the Parliamentary
scene; the Nationalists have resumed their freedom of action with attacks
on Sir John Maxwell and martial law, and are displaying an embarrassing
industry reminiscent of the 'Eighties. Mr. Ginnell has been removed by
order of the Speaker; Mr. Duke has succeeded Mr. Birrell; and the
discussion of three Irish Bills has bulked so large that one might almost
forget we were at war. In such brief moments as could be spared from Irish
affairs the Premier has proposed a fresh Vote of Credit for 450 millions,
has introduced a Bill for extending the life of Parliament, and another
establishing a new Register. The last has been unmercifully belaboured in
debate, the Prime Minister himself describing it as "a halting, lopsided,
temporary makeshift." The apparently insoluble problem is that of enabling
soldiers in the trenches to exercise the franchise. Soldiers and sailors
can very well wait for their votes, but not for their money, and the delays
in providing pensions for discharged men have been condemned by members of
all parties. So the War is not altogether forgotten by the House. Mr. Lloyd
George, the new War Secretary, without wasting breath on the pessimistic
comments of his colleague Mr. Churchill, has given an encouraging survey of
the general situation. The cry has gone up that Mr. Hughes Must Come Back
from Australia, and Mr. Swift MacNeill has been rewarded for his
pertinacity by extracting a promise from Mr. Asquith that he will purge the
Peerage of its enemy Dukes. Better still is the solemn assurance of the
Premier that the Government are taking steps to discover the identity of
all those who are in any way responsible for the judicial murder of Captain
Fryatt--the worst instance of calculated atrocity against non-combatants
since the murder of Nurse Cavell.

The education of our New Armies is full of strange and noble surprises. Now
it is an ex-shop boy converted into an R.H.A. driver. Or again it is a
Tommy learning to appreciate the heroism of a French peasant woman:

  'Er bloke's out scrappin' with the rest,
    Pushin' a bay'net in Argonne;
  She wears 'is photo on 'er breast,
    "_Mon Jean_," she sez--the French for John.

  She 'ears the guns boom night an' day;
    She sees the shrapnel burstin' black;
  The sweaty columns march away,
    The stretchers bringin' of 'em back.

  She ain't got no war-leggin's on;
    'Er picture's never in the Press,
  Out scoutin'. She finds breeks "_no bon_,"
    An' carries on in last year's dress.

  At dawn she tows a spotty cow
    To graze upon the village green;
  She plods for miles be'ind a plough,
    An' takes our washin' in between.

  She tills a patch o' spuds besides,
    An' burnt like copper in the sun,
  She tosses 'ay all day, then rides
    The 'orse 'ome when the job is done.

  The times is 'ard--I got me woes,
    With blistered feet an' this an' that,
  An' she's got 'ers, the good Lord knows,
    Although she never chews the fat.

  But when the Boche 'as gulped 'is pill,
    An' crawled 'ome to 'is bloomin' Spree,
  We'll go upon the bust, we will,
    Madame an' Monsieur Jean an' me.

Or once more it is the young officer shaving himself in a captured German
dug-out before an old looking-glass looted from a _château_ by a dead
German, and apologising to its rightful owner:

  Madame, at the end of this long campaign,
  When France comes into her own again
  In the setting where only she can shine,
  As you in your mirror of rare design--
       Forgive me, who dare
       In a German lair
  To shave in your mirror at Pozières.

Then there are "lonely soldiers" in India, envious of their more fortunate
comrades in Flanders, and soldiers quite the reverse of lonely during their
well-earned leave.


[Illustration:

THE CAPTAIN: "Your brother is doing splendidly in the Battalion. Before
long he'll be our best man."

THE SISTER: "Oh, Reginald! Really, this is so very sudden."]

The education of those on the Home Front is also proceeding. There are some
maids who announce the approach of Zeppelins as if they were ordinary
visitors. There are others who politely decline to exchange a seat at an
attic window for the security of the basement.

[Illustration:

MISTRESS (coming to maid's room as the Zeppelins approach): "Jane! Jane!
Won't you come downstairs with the rest of us?"

LITTLE MAID: "Oh, thank you, Mum, but I can see beautiful from here, Mum."]

According to the German papers Prince Frederick Leopold of Prussia has been
severely reprimanded by the Kaiser for permitting his wild swine to escape
from their enclosure and damage neighbouring property. It would be
interesting to know if Prince Leopold excused himself on the ground that he
had merely followed the All Highest's distinguished example. When Princes
are rebuked common editors cannot hope to escape censure. The editor of the
_Vorwärts_ has again been arrested, the reason given being that the
newspaper does not truthfully represent Germany's position in the War. If
the title of the organ is any indication of its contents the charge would
appear to be more than justified.



_September, 1916_.


"IAN HAY" wrote a fine book on "The First Hundred Thousand"--the first
batch of Kitchener's Army. Another book, equally glorious, remains to be
written about another Hundred Thousand--the Sweepers of the Sea. And with
them are to be reckoned the heroes of the little ships of whom we hear
naught save the laconic record in a daily paper that "the small steamer
------ struck a mine yesterday and sank," and that all the crew were lost:

  Who to the deep in ships go down,
   Great marvels do behold,
  But comes the day when some must drown
   In the grey sea and cold.
  For galleons lost great bells do toll,
   But now we must implore
  God's ear for sunken Little Ships
   Who are not heard of more.

  When ships of war put out to sea,
   They go with guns and mail,
  That so the chance may equal be
   Should foemen them assail;
  But Little Ships men's errands run,
   And are not clad for strife;
  God's mercy, then, on Little Ships
   Who cannot fight for life.

  To warm and cure, to clothe and feed,
   They stoutly put to sea,
  And since that men of them had need
   Made light of jeopardy;
  Each in her hour her fate did meet,
   Nor flinched nor made outcry;
  God's love be with these Little Ships
   Who could not choose but die.

  To friar and nun, and every one
   Who lives to save and tend,
  Sisters were these whose work is done
   And cometh thus to end;
  Full well they knew what risk they ran
   But still were strong to give;
  God's grace for all the Little Ships
   Who died that men might live.

September has brought us good tidings by land and air. Thiepval and Combles
are ours, and the plague of the Zeppelins has been stayed. The downing of
the Zepp at Cuffley by Lieutenant Robinson gave North London the most
thrilling aerial spectacle ever witnessed. There has been much diversity of
opinion as to the safest place to be in during a Zeppelin raid--under cover
or in the open, on the top floor or in the basement; but recent experiences
suggest that by far the most dangerous place on those occasions is in a
Zeppelin. But perhaps the most momentous event of the month has been the
coming of the Tanks, a most humorous and formidable addition to the
_fauna_ of the battlefield--half battleship, half caterpillar--which
have given the Germans the surprise of their lives, a surprise all the more
effective for being sudden and complete. The Germans, no doubt, have their
surprise packets in store for us, but we can safely predict that they are
not likely to be at once so comic and so efficient as these unlovely but
painstaking monsters. As an officer at the front writes to a friend: "These
animals look so dreadfully competent, I am quite sure they can swim. Thus,
any day now, as you go to your business in the City, you may meet one of
them trundling up Ludgate Hill, looking like nothing on earth and not
behaving like a gentleman." As for the relations between the Allies in the
field the same correspondent contributes some enlightening details. The
French aren't English and the English aren't French, and difficulties are
bound to arise. The course of true love never did run smooth. Here it
started, as it generally does, with a rush; infatuation was succeeded by
friction, and that in turn by the orthodox aftermath of reconciliation.
"How do we stand now? We have settled down to one of those attachments
which have such an eternity before them in the future that they permit of
no gushing in the present." The War goes well on the Western Front, the
worst news being the report that the Kaiser has undertaken to refrain in
future from active participation in the conduct of military operations.

[Illustration:

THE SWEEPERS OF THE SEA.

MR. PUNCH: "Risky work, isn't it?"

TRAWLER SKIPPER: "That's why there's a hundred thousand of us doin' it."]

Peace reigns at Westminster, where legislators are agreeably conspicuous by
their absence. But other agencies are active. According to an advertisement
in the _Nation_ the Fabian Research Department have issued two
Reports, "together with a Project for a Supernatural Authority that will
Prevent War." The egg, on the authority of the _Daily Mail_, is
"disappearing from our breakfast table," but even the humblest of us can
still enjoy our daily mare's nest. The effect of the Zeppelin on the young
has already been shown; but even the elderly own its stimulating influence.



_October, 1916_.


Mr. Punch's correspondents at the Front have an incorrigible habit of
euphemism and levity. Even when things go well they are never betrayed into
heroics, but adhere to the schoolboy formula of "not half bad," just as in
the blackest hours they would not admit that things were more than "pretty
beastly." Yet sometimes they deviate for a moment into really enlightening
comment. No better summary of the situation as it stands in the third year
of the War can be given than in the words of the faithful "Watch-dog," who
has long been on duty in trench and dug-out and crater-hole:--

"This War has ceased to become an occupation befitting a
gentleman--gentleman, that is, of the true Prussian breed. It was a happy
and honourable task so long as it consisted of civilising the world at
large with high explosive, poisonous gas and burning oil, and the world at
large was not too ready to answer back. To persist in this stern business,
in face of the foolish and ignoble obstinacy of the adversary, required
great courage and strength of mind; but the Prussian is essentially
courageous and strong. Things came to a pretty pass, however, when the
wicked adversary made himself some guns and shells and took to being stern
on his own. People who behave like that, especially after they have been
conquered, are not to be mixed with--anything to keep aloof from such. One
had to leave Combles, one had to leave Thiepval, one may even have to leave
Bapaume to avoid the pest; these nasty French and English persons, with
their disgusting tanks, intrude everywhere nowadays." The German engineer
is being hoist with his own petard:

  Yet you may suck sweet solace from the thought
   That not in vain the seed was sown,
  That half the recent havoc we have wrought
   Was based on methods all your own;
  And smile to hear our heavy batteries
  Pound you with imitation's purest flatteries.

Yet, at best, this is sorry comfort for the Kaiser.

[Illustration: THE REJUVENATING EFFECT OF ZEPPELINS]

It is not a picnic for the men in our front line. Reports that the
situation is "normal" or "quiet" or "uneventful" represent more or less
correctly what is happening at G.H.Q., Divisional Headquarters, Brigade
Headquarters, or even Battalion Headquarters. They represent understatement
to the _n_th when applied to the front trenches. But listen again to
the "Watch-dog." He admits that some of our diamonds are not smooth, but
adds "for myself I welcome every touch of nature in these our warriors. It
is good to be in the midst of them, for they thrive as never before, and
their comforts are few enough these wet bloody days."

The Crown Prince, after seven months of ineffective carnage before Verdun,
has been giving an interview to an American ex-clergyman, representing the
Hearst anti-British newspapers, in which he appears in the light of a
tender-hearted philanthropist, longing for peace, mercy, and the delights
of home-life. Mr. Lloyd George, in an interview with an American
journalist, has defined our policy as that of delivering a "knock out" to
Prussian military despotism, a pugilistic metaphor which has wounded some
of our Pacificists. Our Zeppelin bag is growing; Count Zeppelin has sworn
to destroy London or die, but now that John Bull is getting his eye in, the
oath savours of suicide.

[Illustration:

THE SUNLIGHT-LOSER

KAISER (as his sainted Grandfather's clock strikes three): "The British are
just putting their clocks back an hour. I wish I could put ours back about
three years."]

The Allies have presented an ultimatum to Greece, but Mr. Asquith's appeal
to the traditions of ancient Hellas is wasted on King Constantine, who, if
he had lived in the days of Marathon and Salamis, would undoubtedly have
been a pro-Persian. As for his future, Mr. Punch ventures on a prediction:

  Tino, if some day Hellas should arise
    A phoenix soaring from her present cinders,
  Think not to share her passage to the skies
    Or furnish purple copy for her Pindars;
  You'll be in exile, if you don't take care,
  Along with brother William, Lord knows where!

A couple of months ago, on the occasion of sharks appearing on the Atlantic
coast of the U.S.A., it was freely intimated at the fashionable
watering-places that there was such a thing as being too proud to bathe.
Now a new and untimely irritant has turned up off the same shores in the
shape of U-boats. Their advent is all the more inconsiderate in view of the
impending Presidential Election, at which Mr. Wilson's claim is based on
having kept America out of the War.

[Illustration:

COMRADES IN VICTORY

Combles, September 26th

POILU: "Bravo, mon vieux!"

TOMMY: "Same to you, mate."]

Members have returned to St. Stephen's refreshed by seven weeks' holiday,
and the Nationalists have been recruiting their energies, but unfortunately
nothing else, in Ireland. By way of signalising his restoration, after an
apology, Mr. Ginnell handed in thirty-nine questions--the fruits of his
enforced leisure. The woes of the interned Sinn Feiners who have been
condemned to sleep in a disused distillery at Frongoch have been duly
brought forward and the House invited to declare that "the system of
government at present maintained in Ireland is inconsistent with the
principles for which the Allies are fighting in Europe." The system of
administration in Ireland is, and always has been, inconsistent with any
settled principles whatsoever; but to propose such a motion now is
equivalent to affirming that Ireland is being treated by Great Britain as
Belgium and Poland and Serbia have been treated by Germany. Mr. Redmond
made no attempt to prove this absurd thesis, but when he demanded that
martial law should be withdrawn and the interned rebels let loose in a
Home-ruled Ireland--while the embers of the rebellion were still
dangerously smouldering--he asked too much even of that amicable and
trustful beast, the British Lion. Mr. Duke is not exactly a sparkling
orator, but he said one thing which needed saying, namely, that Irishmen
ought to work out a scheme of Home Rule for themselves, and lay it before
Parliament, instead of expecting Englishmen to do their work for them and
then complaining of the result. In the division-lobby the Nationalists
received the assistance of some forty or fifty British Members, who
supported the motion, Mr. Punch suspects, more out of hatred of the
Coalition than of love for Ireland. But they were easily out-voted by
British Home Rulers alone. The impression left by the debate was that the
Nationalist Members had a great deal more sympathy with the Sinn Feiners
than they had with the innocent victims of the rebellion.

[Illustration:

MOTHER: "Come away, Jimmy! Maybe it ain't properly stuffed."]

The need of a War propaganda at home is illustrated by the answers to
correspondents in the _Leeds Mercury_. "Reasonable questions" are
invited, and here is one of the answers: "T.B.--No, it is not General Sir
William Robertson, but the Rev. Sir William Robertson Nicoll who edits
_The British Weekly_." But then, as another journal pathetically
observes, "About nine-tenths of what we say is of no earthly importance to
anybody." Further light is thrown on this confession by the claim of an
Islington applicant for exemption: "Once I was a circus clown, but now I am
on an evening newspaper."

We are grateful to Russia for her efforts, but, as our artist shows above,
the plain person is apparently uncertain as to the quality of our Ally.

We are glad to learn that, on the suggestion of Mr. Asquith, the Lord
Mayor's banquet will be "of a simple nature." Apropos of diet, an officer
expecting leave writes: "My London programme is fixed; first a Turkish
bath, and then a nice fried sole." History repeats itself. A fried sole was
the luxury which officers who served in the Boer War declared that they
enjoyed most of all after their campaigning.



_November, 1916._


Francis Joseph of Austria has died on the tottering throne which has been
his for nearly seventy years. In early days he had been hated, but he had
shown valour. Later on he had shown wisdom, and had been pitied for his
misfortunes. It was a crowning irony of fate which condemned him in old age
to become the dupe and tool of an Assassin. He should have died before the
War--certainly before the tragedy of Sarajevo.

The British Push has extended to the Ancre, and the Crown Prince, reduced
to the position of a pawn in Hindenburg's game, maintains a precarious hold
on the remote suburbs of Verdun. Well may he be sick, after nine months of
futile carnage, of a name which already ranks in renown with Thermopylae.

As the credit of the Crown Prince wanes, so the cult of Hindenburg waxes.

[Illustration:

HINDENBURGITIS; OR, THE PRUSSIAN HOME MADE BEAUTIFUL]

Monastir has been recaptured by the Serbians and French; but Germany has
had her victories too, and, continuing her warfare against the Red Cross,
has sunk two hospital ships. Germany's U-boat policy is going to win her
the War. At least so Marshal Hindenburg says, and the view is shared by
that surprising person the neutral journalist. But in the meantime it
subjects the affections of the neutral sailorman to a severe trial.

King Constantine, however, remains unshaken in his devotion to German
interests. He has also shown marked originality by making up a Cabinet
exclusively composed of University Professors. But some critics scent in
his action a hint of compulsory Ministerial Service, and predict Labour
troubles.

At home we have to note the steady set of the tide of public opinion in
favour of Food Control. The name of the Dictator is not yet declared, but
the announcement cannot be long postponed. Whoever he may be, he is not to
be envied. We have also to note the steady growth on every side of
Government bungalows--the haunts (if some critics are to be believed) of
the Great Uncombed, even of the Hidden Hand. The men of forty-one were not
wanted last March. Mr. Lloyd George tells us that they are wanted now, or
it would mean the loss of two Army Corps. The Germans, by the way, appear
to be arriving at a just conception of their relative value. Lord Newton
has informed the Lords that the enemy is prepared to release 600 English
civilian prisoners in return for some 4,000 to 7,000 Germans. Parliament
has developed a new grievance: Ministers have confided to Pressmen
information denied to M.P.'s. And a cruel wrong has been done to Erin,
according to Mr. Dillon, by the application of Greenwich time to Ireland,
by which that country has been compelled to surrender its precious
privilege of being twenty-five minutes behind the times. The injustice is
so bitter that it has reconciled Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy.

The Premier has hinted that if the House insisted on having fuller
information than it receives at present another Secret Session might be
held. When one considers the vital problems on which Parliament now
concentrates its energies--the supply of cocaine to dentists, the
withholding of pictures of the Tanks, etc.--one feels that there should be
a Secret Session at least once a week. Indeed, if the House were to sit
permanently with closed doors, unobserved and unreported, the country might
be all the better for it.

[Illustration:

A STRAIN ON THE AFFECTIONS

NORWEGIAN (to Swede): "What--you here, too. I thought you were a friend of
Germany?"

SWEDE: "I was."]

It is the fashion in some quarters to make out that fathers do not realise
the sacrifice made by their sons, but complacently acquiesce in it while
they sit comfortably at home over the fire. Mr. Punch has not met these
fathers. The fathers--and still more the mothers--that he knows recognise
only too well the unpayable nature of their debt.

  They held, against the storms of fate,
    In war's tremendous game,
  A little land inviolate
    Within a world of flame.

  They looked on scarred and ruined lands,
    On shell-wrecked fields forlorn,
  And gave to us, with open hands,
    Full fields of yellow corn;

  The silence wrought in wood and stone
    Whose aisles our fathers trod;
  The pines that stand apart, alone,
    Like sentinels of God.

  With generous hands they paid the price,
    Unconscious of the cost,
  But we must gauge the sacrifice
    By all that they have lost.

  The joy of young adventurous ways,
    Of keen and undimmed sight,
  The eager tramp through sunny days,
    The dreamless sleep of night,

  The happy hours that come and go,
    In youth's untiring quest,
  They gave, because they willed it so,
    With some light-hearted jest.

  No lavish love of future years,
    No passionate regret,
  No gift of sacrifice or tears
    Can ever pay the debt.

Yet if ever you try to express this indebtedness to the wonderful young men
who survive, they turn the whole thing into a jest and tell you, for
example, that only two things really interest them, "Europe and their
stomachs"--nothing in between matters.

[Illustration: PAT (examining fare): "May the divil destroy the Germans!"

SUB: "Well, they don't do you much harm, anyway. You don't get near enough
to 'em."

PAT: "Do they not, thin? Have they not kilt all the half-crown officers and
left nothing but the shillin' ones?"]

Guy Fawkes Day has come and gone without fireworks, pursuant to the Defence
of the Realm Act. Even Parliament omitted to sit. Apropos of Secret
Sessions, Lord Northcliffe has been accused of having had one all to
himself and some five hundred other gentlemen at a club luncheon. The
_Daily Mail_ describes the debate on the subject as a "gross waste of
time," which seems to come perilously near _lèse-majesté!_ But then,
as a writer in the _Evening News_--another Northcliffe paper--safely
observes, "It is the failing of many people to say what they think without
thinking."



_December, 1916_.


Rumania has unhappily given Germany the chance of a cheap and spectacular
triumph--of which, after being badly pounded on the Somme, she was sorely
in need. Here was a comparatively small nation, whom the Germans could
crush under their heel as they had crushed Belgium and Serbia. So in
Rumania they concentrated all the men they could spare from other fronts
and put them under their best generals. Their first plans were thwarted,
but eventually the big guns had their way and Bukarest fell. Then, after
the usual display of bunting and joy-bells in Berlin, was the moment to
make a noble offer of peace. The German peace overtures remind one of Mr.
Punch's correspondents of the American advertisement: "If John Robinson,
with whose wife I eloped six months ago, will take her back, all will be
forgiven."

The shadowy proposals of those who preach humanity while they practise
unrestricted frightfulness have not deceived the Allies. They know, and
have let the enemy know, that they must go on until they have made sure of
an enduring peace by reducing the Central Empires to impotence for evil.

When Mr. Asquith announced in the House on December 4 the King's approval
of Reconstruction, few Members guessed that in twenty-four hours he would
have ceased to be Prime Minister and that Mr. Lloyd George would have begun
Cabinet-making. There has been much talk of intrigue. But John Bull doesn't
care who leads the country so long as he leads it to victory. And as for
Certain People Somewhere in France, we shall probably not be far wrong in
interpreting their view of the present change as follows:

  Thank God, we keep no politicians here;
    Fighting's our game, not talking; all we ask
  Is men and means to face the coming year
    And consummate our task.

  Give us the strongest leaders you can find,
    Tory or Liberal, not a toss care we,
  So they are swift to act and know their mind
    Too well to wait and see.

[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE MOCK TURTLE-DOVE

KAISER          }
                }(breathlessly): "Well?"
BETHMANN-HOLLWEG}

THE BIRD: "Wouldn't even look at me!"]

The ultimate verdict on Mr. Asquith's services to the State as Prime
Minister for the first two and a half years of the War will not be founded
on the Press Campaign which has helped to secure his downfall. But, as one
of the most bitterly and unjustly assailed ex-Ministers has said, "personal
reputations must wait till the end of the War." Meanwhile, we have a
Premier who, whatever his faults, cannot be charged with supineness.

[Illustration:

THE NEW CONDUCTOR

Opening of the 1917 Overture]

Mr. Bonar Law, the new Leader of the House, has made his first appearance
as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Moving a further Vote of Credit for 400
millions, he disclosed the fact that the daily cost of the War was nearer
six than five millions. In regard to the peace proposals he found himself
unable to better the late Prime Minister's statement that the Allies would
require "adequate reparation for the past and adequate security for the
future." In lucidity and dignity of statement Mr. Asquith was certainly
above criticism. Lord Devonport has been appointed Food Controller and
warned us of rigours to come. The most thrilling speech heard at
Westminster this month has been that of Major Willie Redmond, fresh from
the invigorating atmosphere of the front. While some seventy odd
Nationalist Members are mainly occupied in brooding over Ireland's woes,
two are serving in the trenches--William Redmond and Stephen Gwynn, both of
them middle-aged men. _O si sic omnes_!

Our wounded need all their patience to put up with the curiosity of
non-combatants. A lady, after asking a Tommy on leave what the stripes on
his arm were for, being told that they were one for each time he was
wounded, is reported to have observed, "Dear me! How extraordinary that you
should be wounded three times in the same place!" Even real affection is
not always happily expressed.

[Illustration:

"Have you brought me any souvenirs?"

"Only this little bullet that the doctor took out of my side."

"I wish it had been a German helmet."]

The tenderness with which King Constantine is still treated, even after the
riot in Athens in which our bluejackets have been badly mishandled, is
taxing the patience of moderate men. Mr. Punch, for example, exasperated by
the cumulative effect of Tino's misdeeds, has been goaded into making a
formidable forecast of surrender or exit:

  You say your single aim is just to use
    Your regal gifts for your beloved nation;
  Why, then, I see the obvious line to choose,
    Meaning, of course, the path of abdication;
  Make up your so-called mind--I frankly would--
  To leave your country for your country's good.

The German Emperor was prevented from being present at the funeral of the
late Emperor Francis Joseph by a chill. One is tempted to think that in a
lucid interval of self-criticism William of Hohenzollern may have wished to
spare his aged victim this crowning mockery.

Motto for Meatless Days: "The time is out of joint." This is a _raison de
plus_ for establishing an _Entente_ in the kitchen and getting
Marianne to show Britannia how to cook a cabbage.



_January, 1917_.


Though the chariots of War still drive heavily, 1917 finds the Allies in
good heart--"war-weary but war-hardened." The long agony of Verdun has
ended in triumph for the French, and Great Britain has answered the Peace
Talk of Berlin by calling a War Conference of the Empire. The New Year has
brought us a new Prime Minister, a new Cabinet, a new style of Minister.
Captains of Commerce are diverted from their own business for the benefit
of the country. In spite of all rumours to the contrary Lord Northcliffe
remains outside the new Government, but his interest in it is, at present,
friendly. It is very well understood, however, that everyone must behave.
And in this context Mr. Punch feels that a tribute is due to the outgoing
Premier. Always reserved and intent, he discouraged Press gossip to such a
degree as actually to have turned the key on the Tenth Muse. Interviewers
had no chance. He came into office, held it and left it without a single
concession to Demos' love of personalia.

[Illustration: THE DAWN OF DOUBT

GRETCHEN: "I wonder if this gentleman really is my good angel after all!"]

Germany has not yet changed her Chancellor, though he is being bitterly
attacked for his "silly ideas of humanity"--and her rulers have certainly
shown no change of heart. General von Bissing's retirement from Belgium is
due to health, not repentance. The Kaiser still talks of his "conscience"
and "courage" in freeing the world from the pressure which weighs upon all.
He is still the same Kaiser and Constantine the same "Tino," who, as the
_Berliner Tageblatt_ bluntly remarks, "has as much right to be heard
as a common criminal." Yet signs are not wanting of misgivings in the
German people.

Mr. Wilson has launched a new phrase on the world--"Peace without Victory";
but War is not going to be ended by phrases, and the man who is doing more
than anyone else to end it--the British infantryman--has no use for them:

  The gunner rides on horseback, he lives in luxury,
  The sapper has his dug-out as cushy as can be,
  The flying man's a sportsman, but his home's a long way back,
  In painted tent or straw-spread barn or cosy little shack;
  Gunner and sapper and flying man (and each to his job say I)
  Have tickled the Hun with mine or gun or bombed him from on high,
  But the quiet work, and the dirty work, since ever the War began,
  Is the work that never shows at all, the work of the infantryman.

  The guns can pound the villages and smash the trenches in,
  And the Hun is fain for home again when the T.M.B.s begin,
  And the Vickers gun is a useful one to sweep a parapet,
  But the real work is the work that's done with bomb and bayonet.
  Load him down from heel to crown with tools and grub and kit,
  He's always there where the fighting is--he's there unless he's hit;
  Over the mud and the blasted earth he goes where the living can;
  He's in at the death while he yet has breath, the British   infantryman!

  Trudge and slip on the shell-hole's lip, and fall in the clinging mire--
  Steady in front, go steady! Close up there! Mind the wire!
  Double behind where the pathways wind! Jump clear of the ditch, jump
                clear!
  Lost touch at the back? Oh, halt in front! And duck when the shells come
                near!
  Carrying parties all night long, all day in a muddy trench,
  With your feet in the wet and your head in the rain and the sodden
                khaki's stench!
  Then over the top in the morning, and onward all you can--
  This is the work that wins the War, the work of the infantryman.

And if anyone should think that this means the permanent establishment of
militarism in our midst let him be comforted by the saying of an old
sergeant-major when asked to give a character of one of his men. "He's a
good man in the trenches, and a good man in a scrap; but you'll never make
a soldier of him." The new armies fight all the harder because they want to
make an end not of this war but of all wars. As for the regulars, there is
no need to enlarge on their valour. But it is pleasant to put on record the
description of an officer's servant which has reached Mr. Punch from
France: "Valet, cook, porter, boots, chamber-maid, ostler, carpenter,
upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coalheaver, diplomat, barber,
linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and
infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, if a very old soldier, and a
man of the most human kind."

Parliament is not sitting, but there is, unfortunately, no truth in the
report that in order to provide billets for 5,000 new typists and
incidentally to win the War, the Government has commandeered the Houses of
Parliament. The _Times Literary Supplement_ received 335 books of
original verse in 1916, and it is rumoured that Mr. Edward Marsh may very
shortly take up his duties as Minister of Poetry and the Fine Arts. Mr.
Marsh has not yet decided whether he will appoint Mr. Asquith or Mr.
Winston Churchill as his private secretary. Meanwhile, a full list of the
private secretaries of the new private secretaries of the members of the
new Government may at any moment be disclosed to a long suffering public.

On the Home Front the situation shows that a famous literary critic was
also a true prophet:

  O Matthew Arnold! You were right:
  We need more Sweetness and more Light;
  For till we break the brutal foe,
  Our sugar's short, our lights are low.

The domestic problem daily grows more acute. A maid, who asked for a rise
in her wages to which her mistress demurred, explained that the gentleman
she walked out with had just got a job in a munition factory and she would
be obliged to dress up to him.

[Illustration:

COOK (who, after interview with prospective mistress, is going to think it
over):

"'Ullo! Prambilator! If you'd told me you 'ad children I needn't have
troubled meself to 'ave come."

THE PROSPECTIVE MISTRESS: "Oh! B-but if you think the place would
otherwise suit you, I dare say we could board the children out."]

Maids are human, however, though their psychology is sometimes
disconcerting. One who was told by her mistress not to worry because her
young man had gone into the trenches responded cheerfully, "Oh, no, ma'am,
I've left off worrying now. He can't walk out with anyone else while he's
there."

[Illustration: THE RECRUIT WHO TOOK TO IT KINDLY]



_February_ 1917,


The rulers of Germany--the Kaiser and his War-lords--proclaimed themselves
the enemies of the human race in the first weeks of the War. But it has
taken two years and a half to break down the apparently inexhaustible
patience of the greatest of the neutrals. A year and three-quarters has
elapsed since the sinking of the _Lusitania_. The forbearance of
President Wilson--in the face of accumulated insults, interference in the
internal politics of the United States, the promotion of strikes and
_sabotage_ by the agents of Count Bernstorff--has exposed him to hard
and even bitter criticism from his countrymen. Perhaps he over-estimated
the strength of the German-American and Pacificist elements. But his
difficulties are great, and his long suffering diplomacy has at least this
merit, that if America enters the War it will be as a united people.
Germany's decision to resort to unrestricted submarine warfare on February
1 is the last straw: now even Mr. Henry Ford has offered to place his works
at the disposal of the American authorities.

Day by day we read long lists of merchant vessels sunk by U-boats, and
while the Admiralty's reticence on the progress of the anti-submarine
campaign is legitimate and necessary, the withholding of statistics of new
construction does not make for optimism. Victory will be ours, but not
without effort. The great crisis of the War is not passed. That has been
the burden of all the speeches at the opening of Parliament from the King's
downward.

Lord Curzon, who declared that we were now approaching "the supreme and
terrible climax of the War," has spoken of the late Duke of Norfolk as a
man "diffident about powers which were in excess of the ordinary." Is not
that true of the British race as a whole? Only now, under the stress of a
long-drawn-out conflict, is it discovering the variety and strength of its
latent forces. The tide is turning rapidly in Mesopotamia. General Maude,
who never failed to inspire the men under his command on the Western front
with a fine offensive spirit, has already justified his appointment by
capturing Kut, and starting on a great drive towards Baghdad.

[Illustration: THE LAST THROW]

On the Salonika front, to quote from one of Mr. Punch's ever-increasing
staff of correspondents, "all our prospects are pleasing and only Bulgar
vile." On the Western front the British have taken Grandcourt, and our
"Mudlarks," encamped on an ocean of ooze, preserve a miraculous equanimity
in spite of the attention of rats and cockroaches and the vagaries of the
transport mule.

[Illustration:

HEAD OF GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT (in his private room in recently commandeered
hotel): "Boy! Bring some more coal!"]

At home the commandeering of hotels to house the new Ministries proceeds
apace, and a request from an inquiring peer for a comprehensive return of
all the buildings requisitioned and the staffs employed has been declined
on the ground that to provide it would put too great a strain on officials
engaged on work essential to winning the War.

The criticisms on the late Cabinet for its bloated size have certainly not
led to any improvement in this respect, and one of the late Ministers has
complained that the Administration has been further magnified until, if all
its members, including under-secretaries, were present, they would fill not
one but three Treasury Benches. Already this is a much congested district
at question-time and the daily scene of a great push. Up to the present
there are, however, only thirty-three actual Ministers of the Crown, and
their salaries only amount to the trifle of £133,000. The setting up of a
War Cabinet, "a body utterly unknown to the law," has excited the
resentment of Mr. Swift MacNeill, whose reverence for the Constitution
(save in so far as it applies to Ireland) knows no bounds; and Mr. Lynch
has expressed the view that it would be a good idea if Ireland were
specially represented at the Peace Conference, in order that her delegates
might assert her right to self-government.

England, in February, 1917, seems to deserve the title of "the great Loan
Land." Amateurs of anagrams have found satisfaction in the identity of
"Bonar Law" with "War Loan B." As a cynic has remarked, "in the midst of
life we are in debt." But the champions of national economy are not happy.
The staff of the new Pensions Minister, it is announced, will be over two
thousand. It is still hoped, however, that there may be a small surplus
which can be devoted to the needs of disabled soldiers. Our great warriors
are in danger of being swamped by our small but innumerable officials.

[Illustration: <b>A PLAIN DUTY</b>

"Well, good-bye, old chap, and good luck! I'm going in here to do my bit,
the best way I can. The more everybody scrapes together for the War Loan,
the sooner you'll be back from the trenches."]

The older Universities, given over for two years to wounded soldiers and a
handful of physically unfit or coloured undergraduates, are regaining a
semblance of life by the housing of cadet battalions in some colleges. The
Rhodes scholars have all joined up, and normal academic life is still in
abeyance:

  In Tom his Quad the Bloods no longer flourish;
    Balliol is bare of all but mild Hindoos;
  The stalwart oars that Isis used to nourish
    Are in the trenches giving Fritz the Blues,
      And many a stout D.D.
  Is digging trenches with the V.T.C.

[Illustration: The Brothers Tingo, who are exempted from military service,
do their bit by helping to train ladies who are going on the land.]

It is true that Mr. Bernard Shaw has visited the front. No reason is
assigned for this rash act, and too little has been made of the fact that
he wore khaki just like an ordinary person. Amongst other signs of the
times we note that women are to be licensed as taxi-drivers:

  War has taught the truth that shines
  Through the poet's noble lines:
  "Common are to either sex
  _Artifex and opifex_."

A new danger is involved in the spread of the Army Signalling Alphabet. The
names of Societies are threatened. The dignity of Degrees is menaced by a
code which converts B.A. into Beer Ack. Initials are no longer sacred, and
the great T.P. will become Toc Pip O'Connor, unless some Emma Pip
introduces a Bill to prevent the sacrilege.



_March,_ 1917.


With the end of Tsardom in Russia, the fall of Baghdad, and the strategic
retreat of Hindenburg on the Western front, all crowded into one month,
March fully maintains its reputation for making history at the expense of
Caesars and Kaisers. It seems only the other day when the Tsar's assumption
of the title of Generalissimo lent new strength to the legend of the
"Little Father." But the forces of "unholy Russia"--Pro-German Ministers
and the sinister figure of Rasputin--have combined to his undoing, and now
none is so poor to do him reverence. In the House of Commons everybody
seems pleased, including Mr. Devlin, who has been quite statesmanlike in
his appreciation, and the Prime Minister, in one of his angelic visits to
the House, evoked loud cheers by describing the Revolution as one of the
landmarks in the history of the world. But no one noticed that Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman's outburst in 1906, just after the dissolution of
Russia's first elected Parliament: "_La Duma est morte; vive la Duma_!
" has now been justified by the event--at any rate for the moment, for
Revolutions are rich in surprises and reactions. The capture of Baghdad
inspires no misgivings, except in the bosoms of Nationalist members, who
detect in the manifesto issued by General Maude fresh evidences of British
hypocrisy.

The fleet of Dutch merchantmen, which has been sunk by a waiting submarine,
sailed under a German guarantee of "relative security." Germany is so often
misunderstood. It should be obvious by this time that her attitude to
International Law has always been one of approximate reverence. The shells
with which she bombarded Rheims Cathedral were contingent shells, and the
_Lusitania_ was sunk by a relative torpedo. Neutrals all over the
world, who are smarting just now under a fresh manifestation of Germany's
respective goodwill, should try to realise before they take any action what
is the precise situation of our chief enemy: He has (relatively) won the
War; he has (virtually) broken the resistance of the Allies; he has
(conditionally) ample supplies for his people; in particular he is
(morally) rich in potatoes. His finances at first sight appear to be pretty
heavily involved, but that soon will be adjusted by (hypothetical)
indemnities; he has enormous (proportional) reserves of men; he has
(theoretically) blockaded Great Britain, and his final victory is
(controvertibly) at hand. But his most impressive argument, which cannot
fail to come home to hesitating Neutrals, is to be found in his latest
exhibition of offensive power, namely, in his (putative) advance--upon the
Ancre.

A grave statement made by the Under-Secretary for War as to the recent
losses of the Royal Flying Corps on the Western front and the increased
activity of the German airmen has created some natural depression. The
command of the air fluctuates, but the spirit of our airmen is a sure
earnest that the balance will be redressed in our favour. Mr. Punch has
already paid his tribute to the British infantryman. Let him now do his
homage to the heroes whose end is so often disguised under the laconic
announcement: "One of our machines did not return."

[Illustration: ALSO RAN

WILHELM: "Are you luring them on, like me?" MEHMED: "I'm afraid I am!"]

  I like to think it did not fall to earth,
    A wounded bird that trails a broken wing,
  But to the heavenly blue that gave it birth,
    Faded in silence, a mysterious thing,
  Cleaving its radiant course where honour lies
  Like a winged victory mounting to the skies.

  The clouds received it, and the pathless night;
    Swift as a flame, its eager force unspent,
  We saw no limit to its daring flight;
    Only its pilot knew the way it went,
  And how it pierced the maze of flickering stars
  Straight to its goal in the red planet Mars.

  So to the entrance of that fiery gate,
    Borne by no current, driven by no breeze,
  Knowing no guide but some compelling fate,
    Bold navigators of uncharted seas,
  Courage and youth went proudly sweeping by,
  To win the unchallenged freedom of the sky.

Parliament has been occupied with many matters, from the Report of the
Dardanelles Commission to the grievances of Scots bee-keepers. The woes of
Ireland have not been forgotten, and the Nationalists have been busily
engaged in getting Home Rule out of cold storage. Hitherto every attempt of
the British Sisyphus to roll the Stone of Destiny up the Hill of Tara has
found a couple of Irishmen at the top ready to roll it down again. Let us
hope that this time they will co-operate to install it there as the throne
of a loyal and united Ireland. Believers in the "Hidden Hand" have been on
the war-path, and as a result of prolonged discussion as to the
responsibility for the failure of the effort to force the Dardanelles, the
House is evidently of opinion that Lord Fisher might now be let alone by
foes and friends. The idea of blaming _Queen Elisabeth_ for the fiasco
is so entirely satisfactory to all parties concerned that one wonders why
the Commission couldn't have thought of that itself.

[Illustration: THE INFECTIOUS HORNPIPE]

Mr. Bernard Shaw, returned from his "joy-ride" at the Front, has declared
that "there is no monument more enduring than brass"; the general feeling,
however, is that there is a kind of brass that is beyond enduring.
Armageddon is justified since it has given him a perfectly glorious time.
He is obliged, in honesty, to state that the style of some of the buildings
wrecked by the Germans was quite second rate. He entered and emerged from
the battle zone without any vulgar emotion; remaining immune from pity,
sorrow, or tears. In short:

  He went through the fiery furnace, but never a hair was missed
  From the heels of our most colossal Arch-Super-Egotist.

According to the latest news from Sofia, 35,000 Bulgarian geese are to be
allowed to go to Germany. As in the case of the Bulgarian Fox who went to
Vienna, there appears to be little likelihood that they will ever return.

[Illustration: FOOD RESTRICTION

SCENE: HOTEL.

LITTLE GIRL: "Oh, Mummy! They've given me a dirty plate."

MOTHER: "Hush, darling. That's the soup."]

Apropos of food supplies, Lord Devonport has developed a sense of judicial
humour, having approved a new dietary for prisoners, under which the bread
ration will be cut down to 63 ounces per week, or just one ounce less than
the allowance of the free and independent Englishman. The latest morning
greeting is now: "_Comment vous Devonportez-vous?_"



_April_, 1917.


Once more the rulers of Germany have failed to read the soul of another
nation. They thought there was no limit to America's forbearance, and they
thought wrong. America is now "all in" on the side of the Allies. The Stars
and Stripes and the Union Jack are flying side by side over the Houses of
Parliament. On the motion introduced in both Houses to welcome our new
Ally, Mr. Bonar Law, paraphrasing Canning, declared that the New World had
stepped in to redress the balance of the old; Mr. Asquith, with a
fellow-feeling, no doubt, lauded the patience which had enabled President
Wilson to carry with him a united nation; and Lord Curzon quoted Bret
Harte. The memory of some unfortunate phrases is obliterated by the
President's historic message to Congress, and his stirring appeal to his
countrymen to throw their entire weight into the Allied scale. The War,
physically as well as morally, is now _Germania contra Mundum_. Yet,
while we hail the advent of a powerful and determined Ally, there is no
disposition to throw up our hats. The raw material of manpower in America
is magnificent in numbers and quality, but it has to be equipped and
trained and brought across the Atlantic. Many months, perhaps a whole year,
must elapse before its weight can be felt on the battle front. The
transport of a million men over submarine-infested seas is no easy task.
But while we must wait for the coming of the Americans on land, their help
in patrolling the seas may be counted on speedily.

[Illustration:

THE NEW-COMER: "My village, I think?"

THE ONE IN POSSESSION: "Sorry, old thing; I took it half-an-hour ago."]

[Illustration: SWOOPING FROM THE WEST

(_It is the intention of our new Ally to assist us in the patrolling of
the Atlantic_.)]

The British have entered Péronne; the Canadians have captured Vimy Ridge.
But the full extent of German frightfulness has never been so clearly
displayed as in their retreat. Here, for once, the German account of their
own doings is true. "In the course of these last months great stretches of
French territory have been turned by us into a dead country. It varies in
width from 10 to 12 or 13 kilometres, and extends along the whole of our
new positions. No village or farm was left standing, no road was left
passable, no railway track or embankment was left in being. Where once were
woods, there are gaunt rows of stumps; the wells have been blown up.... In
front of our new positions runs, like a gigantic ribbon, our Empire of
Death" (_Lokal Anzeiger_, March 18, 1917). The general opinion of the
Boche among the British troops is that he is only good at one thing, and
that is destroying other people's property. One of Mr. Punch's
correspondents writes to say that while the flattened villages and severed
fruit trees are a gruesome spectacle, for him "all else was forgotten in
speechless admiration of the French people.

"Their self-restraint and adaptability are beyond words. These hundreds of
honest people, just relieved from the domineering of the Master Swine, and
restored to their own good France again, were neither hysterical nor
exhausted." The names of the new German lines--Wotan and Siegfried and
Hunding--are not without significance. We accept the omen: it will not be
long before we hear of fresh German activities in the _Götterdämmerung_
line. Count Reventlow has informed the Kaiser that without victory a
continuation of the Monarchy is improbable. The "repercussion" of
Revolution is making itself felt. Even the Crown Prince is reported
to have felt misgivings as to the infection of anti-monarchial ideas,
and Mr. Punch is moved to forecast possibilities of upheaval:

  Not that the Teuton's stolid wits
    Are built to plan so rude a plot;
  Somehow I cannot picture Fritz
    Careering as a _sans-culotte_;
  Schooled to obedience, hand and heart,
    I can imagine nothing odder
  Than such behaviour on the part
    Of inoffensive cannon-fodder.

  And yet one never really knows.
    You cannot feed his massive trunk
  On fairy tales of beaten foes,
    Or Hindenburg's "victorious" bunk;
  And if his rations run too short
    Through this accursed British blockade,
  Even the worm may turn and sport
    A revolutionary cockade.

On the German Roll of Dishonour this month appears the name of one who has
been _grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum_. Baron
Moritz Ferdinand von Bissing, the German Military Governor-General of
Belgium, who was largely responsible for the murder of Nurse Cavell and the
chief instigator of the infamous Belgian deportations, after being granted
a rest from his labours, is reported to have died "of overwork." Here for
once we find ourselves in perfect agreement with the official German view.
In a recent character sketch of the deceased Baron, the _Cologne
Gazette_ observed, "He is a fine musician, and his execution was good."
It would have been.

The proceedings in Parliament do not call for extended comment. Mr. Asquith
has handsomely recanted his hostility to women's suffrage, admitting that
by their splendid services in the war women have worked out their own
electoral salvation. An old spelling-book used to tell us that "it is
agreeable to watch the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar when
gauging the symmetry of a peeled pear." Lord Devonport, occupied in
deciding on the exact architecture and decoration of the Bath bun (official
sealed pattern), would make a companion picture. For the rest the House has
been occupied with the mysteries of combing and re-combing. The best War
saying of the month was that of Mr. Swift MacNeill, in reference to
proposed peace overtures, that it would be time enough to talk about peace
when the Germans ceased to blow up hospital ships.

[Illustration:

DYNASTIC AMENITIES

LITTLE WILLIE (of Prussia): "As one Crown Prince to another, isn't your
Hindenburg line getting a bit shaky?"

RUPPRECHT (of Bavaria): "Well, as one Crown Prince to another, what about
your Hohenzollern line?"]

Although the streets may have been sweetened by the absence of posters,
days will come, it must be remembered, when we shall badly miss them. It
goes painfully to one's heart to think that the embargo, if it is ever
lifted, will not be lifted in time for most of the events which we all most
desire--events that clamour to be recorded in the largest black type, such
as "Strasbourg French Again," "Flight of the Crown Prince," "Revolution in
Germany," "The Kaiser a Captive," and last and best of all, "Peace." But
Mr. Punch, with many others, has no sympathy to spare for the sorrows of
the headline artist deprived for the time being of his chief opportunity of
scaremongering.

In the competition of heroism and self-sacrifice the prize must fall to the
young--to the Tommy and the Second Lieutenant before all. Yet a very good
mark is due to the retired Admirals who have accepted commissions in the
R.N.R., and are mine-sweeping or submarine-hunting in command of trawlers.
Yes, "Captain Dug-out, R.N.R.," is a fine

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