Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 4 (of 4).—1892-1914
by Charles L. Graves · English · Gutenberg #48405 · 739,087 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 4 (of 4).—1892-1914
Author: Charles L. Graves
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. PUNCH'S HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLAND, VOL. 4 (OF 4).—1892-1914 ***
MR. PUNCH'S HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLAND VOL. IV. OF IV.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with
underscores: _italics_.
[Illustration: AFTER TEN YEARS
Reproduced from the original cartoon.]
Mr. Punch's History
of Modern England
By
CHARLES L. GRAVES
IN FOUR VOLUMES
VOL. IV.--1892-1914
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1922
_Published by arrangement with the Proprietors of "Punch"_
CONTENTS
PART I
THE PASSING OF THE OLD ORDER
HIGH POLITICS
CAPITAL AND LABOUR
EDUCATION AND THE CHURCHES
THE ADVANCE OF WOMEN
INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, NOVELTIES
CHANGING LONDON
PART II
SOCIAL LIFE IN TRANSITION
CROWN AND COURT
VANITY FAIR
FASHION IN DRESS
LETTERS AND JOURNALISM
FINE ARTS, DRAMA AND MUSIC
SPORT AND PASTIME
INDEX TO THE FOUR VOLUMES
PART I
THE PASSING OF THE OLD ORDER
HIGH POLITICS
Transition and growth, change and decay and reconstruction marked the
half-century covered in the previous three volumes. In the twenty-two
years that divide the return of the Liberals in 1892 from the "Grand
Smash" (as Mr. Page has called it) of 1914, these features are
intensified to an extent that renders the task of attempting even a
superficial survey perilous and intractable to one who is neither a
philosopher nor a trained historian. The wisest and sanest of those who
have lived through these wonderful times are too near their heights
and depths to view them in true perspective. Whatever merit attaches
to this chronicle is due to its reliance on contemporary opinion as
expressed in the pages of an organ of independent middle-class views.
It is within these limits a history of Victorians and post-Victorians
written by themselves.
"Full closes," unfashionable in modern music, are generally artificial
in histories. But the period on which we now enter did more than merely
coincide with the end of one century and the beginning of another.
It marked the passing of the Old Order, the passing of the Victorian
age: of the Queen, who, alike in her virtues and limitations, in the
strength and narrowness of her personality, epitomized most of its
qualities; and of the type of Elder Statesmen, of whom, with the sole
exception of Mr. Balfour, none remains at the moment as an active
force in the political arena. Of the Ministry of 1892-5 the only
survivor who mixes in practical politics is Mr. Asquith, but his record
as a legislator hardly entitles him to the name of an Elder Statesman
in the Victorian sense. Sir George Trevelyan, Lord Morley, Lord
Eversley and Lord Rosebery have all retired into seclusion. So, too,
with the Unionist Ministers who held office from 1895 to 1905. Veterans
such as Lord Chaplin, Lord George Hamilton and Lord Lansdowne enjoy
respect, but they do not sway public opinion, and are debarred by age
from active leadership and office. Lord Midleton stood aside to make
way for younger men when the Coalition Government was formed, and Lord
Selborne is perhaps the only Conservative statesman who held office
before 1906 who has any chance of sitting in a future Cabinet.
It was not only an age of endings; it was also an age of beginnings,
fresh and sometimes false starts, both as regards men and measures.
It witnessed the coming of the Death Duties in 1894, when Sir William
Harcourt's "Radical Budget," by equalizing the charges on real and
personal property, paved the way for the more drastic legislation
introduced by the Liberals in 1906 and the following years. This was
Harcourt's greatest achievement, and perhaps the most notable effort
in constructive policy of the short-lived Liberal administration; for
the second Home Rule Bill was dropped on its rejection by the Peers.
Under the Unionist administrations of 1895-1905 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain,
as Colonial Secretary, and Mr. Wyndham, by his Irish Land Purchase
Act, rendered conspicuous service in the domain of Imperial and Home
policy. Yet at the culminating point of his popularity Mr. Chamberlain
left the Government to prosecute that Fiscal Campaign which broke up
the Government, broke down his strength, and ended a brilliant career
in enforced retirement. Mr. Wyndham's withdrawal from the Government,
owing to friction over Irish policy, closed in early middle age the
career of the most gifted and attractive politician of his generation.
[Illustration: "IL GIOCONDO"
The enigmatic smile of this Old Master distinguishes it from that other
National treasure, the "Bonar Lisa."]
From 1906 onwards we are confronted by the meteoric and Protean
personalities of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill, who
between them have held almost all the great offices of State, and
ranged over the whole spectrum of Party colours, and lastly of Lord
Birkenhead. Mr. Churchill's father had once called Mr. Gladstone "an
old man in a hurry." One wonders what Lord Randolph would have called
his son Winston, of whom it was said "he likes things to happen, and
when they don't happen he likes to make them happen." In comparison
with the discreet progress of Reform in the last century the pace
became fast and furious. The demands of organized Labour were conceded
in the Trade Disputes Bill of 1906--the greatest landmark in industrial
legislation of the last half-century--and in 1910 the People's Budget
led to the revolt and surrender of the House of Lords.
Yet concurrently with the democratic drift of Liberal finance and
social reform, the principle of a continuity of foreign policy,
initiated by Lord Rosebery, and continued by Lord Salisbury and Lord
Lansdowne, was faithfully maintained by Sir Edward Grey, whose sober
and frugal expositions contrasted strangely with the vivacity and
flamboyant rhetoric of his colleagues. The Anglo-French _Entente_ and
the Anglo-Japanese Alliance both came into being when Lord Lansdowne
was at the Foreign Office, and the influence of the Liberal Imperialist
group in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Cabinet secured a free hand for
the Foreign Minister. It is the fashion in some quarters to regard the
late King Edward as "the only begetter" of the _Entente_; it is at any
rate within the mark to credit him with having missed no opportunity of
fostering it by his tact and _bonhomie_. It was no easy task. When he
visited Paris in 1902 the official greetings were perfectly correct,
but the animosity aroused over the Boer war found vent in outrageous
and unseemly caricatures. England was then the most unpopular country
in the world; and in allaying this general distrust and dislike, the
personal relations of King Edward with foreign statesmen and rulers
wrought powerfully for goodwill and a better understanding.
[Illustration: STUDENTS ON THE MAKE
MR. F. E. SMITH: "Master of epigram--like me!"
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: "Wrote a novel in his youth--like me!"
TOGETHER: "Travelled in the East--like us. How does it end?"
(Mr. W. F. Monypenny's official "Life of Disraeli" has just been
published.)]
[Sidenote: _Foes and Friends_]
Looking back, in the light of fuller knowledge, on the South African
war of 1899-1902, we cannot fail to recognize how narrowly we escaped
the active hostility of more than one European Power; how much we owe
to the wise magnanimity of the British Government in granting full
autonomy to the Transvaal in 1906--an act not only justified by the
sequel but approved by those who voted against it. It converted the
most formidable of those who fought against us into loyal servants of
the Empire in her hour of greatest need; it allayed the misgivings
of those at home who had opposed the Boer war, and it silenced the
criticisms of foreigners who had denounced our aim as the extermination
of a people rightly struggling to be free. Whatever views may be held
as to the origin of the Boer war--that it was forced on by mining
magnates, or that it was the inevitable result of a reactionary system
which threatened our hold on South Africa--it remains one of the very
few examples of a war which, in the long run, left things better than
they had been, and satisfied the aspirations of the majority of the
conquered. And if we did not learn all the lessons that we might have
learned from the military point of view, the experience was not thrown
away. The services of Kitchener, Plumer and Byng, to mention only three
out of scores of names, proved that what was comparatively a little war
was a true school of leadership for the greatest of all.
Great Britain's warlike operations throughout this period were
intra-Imperial, and the scale of the South African campaign, in which
from first to last we put 250,000 men into the field, dwarfed the
troubles in Ashanti and on the Indian frontier into insignificance.
That we kept out of all the other wars which convulsed the world
between 1892 and 1914 must be put down to good management as well as
good luck. It is remarkable to notice the steady if gradual convergence
of the war clouds on Europe, the drawing in of the war zone from the
circumference to the centre, beginning with the conflict between China
and Japan. The brief and inglorious Greco-Turkish war hardly counts,
and Europe was not physically engaged in the Spanish-American war,
where all the fighting was done in the New World. Politically its
significance was far-reaching, as revising the Monroe Doctrine and
enlarging the Imperial horizons of the United States. Politically,
again, the "Boxer" rising in China affected the European Powers, whose
competing interests in the "integrity of China" were not reconciled by
their joint expedition for the relief of the Legations in 1900. Here
again the fighting was in the Far East, as it was in the Russo-Japanese
war, if we except the "regrettable incident" of the Dogger Bank; and
Russia has always been as much an Oriental as a Western Power. But the
Russo-Japanese war shook Tsardom to its foundations, promoted Japan
to the status of a Great Power, and compensated her largely for the
intervention of Russia, Germany and France in robbing her of the spoils
of her victory over China. The European conflagration broke out in
1912 with the war of the Balkan League on Turkey. Victory crowned the
efforts of a righteous cause--the relief of oppressed nationalities
from the oppressions and exactions of a corrupt and tyrannous rule--but
was wasted by the internecine quarrels and irreconcilable demands of
the victors. Serbia, who had lived down much of the odium excited by
the barbarous murders of Alexander and Draga, and had borne more than
her share of the war against Turkey, was isolated, partly by her own
intransigence, mainly by the greed, the diplomatic manoeuvres and
the treachery of her allies, and in her isolation fell a victim to the
dynastic ambitions of Austria. The assassination of the Crown Prince
Ferdinand at Sarajevo was the excuse for Austria's ultimatum to Serbia,
the proximate cause of the Great War of 1914. Whether engineered
in Vienna or not, the murder secured the removal of an heir whose
succession to the throne of Austria-Hungary was looked upon with grave
suspicion by a powerful group in Austria who had no desire to upset the
House of Hapsburg but profoundly distrusted the Crown Prince. In the
homely phrase Sarajevo killed two birds with one stone. It eliminated
an uncertain and unpopular prince, and furnished Austria with an
opportunity for gratifying her long-standing hostility to Serbia. But
there was a third and bigger bird; for the complicity of Germany in
dispatching the Ultimatum is no matter for surmise. Without her support
and pressure it would never have been sent.
[Illustration: THE ROAD TO RUIN]
[Sidenote: _Punch on World Politics_]
Confronted on all sides by problems of such magnitude and far-reaching
importance, it is not to be wondered at if _Punch_--primarily a comic
journal--failed to gauge their full significance, or to preserve an
attitude of inflexible consistency in his comments. There was always
a certain divergence between his editorial policy as expressed in the
cartoons and the comments of individual members of his staff. This
elasticity made for impartiality in the main; but it became somewhat
perplexing at the time of the Boer war, when a general support of
the Government was combined with very sharp criticism of Lord Milner.
Yet if _Punch_ here and elsewhere spoke with more than one voice, his
views on high policy, international relations and home affairs exhibit
a certain general uniformity and continuity. He supported both the
_Entente_ and the alliance with Japan. The spasm of irritation over the
Fashoda incident soon passed; he resented the intervention of Russia
and Germany which robbed Japan of the fruits of her victory over China,
and his sympathies were unmistakably with Japan in the war with Russia.
_Punch_ was consistently and increasingly critical of the Kaiser, while
perhaps over-ready to dissociate his temper from that not only of the
German people but of the educated classes; he was also consistently
alive to the menace of German competition in naval armaments and trade,
though by no means disposed to acquit British merchants and workmen
from a provocative lethargy. Towards America, _Punch's_ attitude
shows a progressive benevolence. The Venezuela incident and President
Cleveland's message at the beginning of this period brought us within
measurable distance of a rupture, happily averted by negotiation, as
the later and less serious difficulty over the Alaska boundary was
averted by arbitration. One may fairly say that _Punch's_ relief at
the pacific adjustment of these outstanding questions was far greater
than his sensitiveness on the point of national honour. He did not
refrain from the use of the word "filibustering" in connexion with
the Spanish-American war, in which the gallantry of Cervera went far
to enlist sympathy on the beaten side; but with the accession to the
Presidency of Mr. Roosevelt, a man in many ways after _Punch's_ own
heart, though not exempt from criticism for his controversial methods,
a friendlier tone became apparent, and the historic "indiscretion" of
Admiral Sims's speech at the Guildhall in 1910 helped to create the
atmosphere of goodwill which rendered possible the fulfilment of his
prophecy.
On National Defence and the maintenance of our naval supremacy _Punch_
continued to speak with no uncertain voice. He applauded Lord Roberts's
patriotic but neglected warnings and his advocacy of universal military
service, and lent a friendly but not uncritical approval to the
Territorial Army scheme.
[Illustration: THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE
JOHN BULL: "Recruits coming in nicely, Sergeant?"
RECRUITING SERGEANT PUNCH: "No, Sir. The fact is, Mr. Bull, if
you can't make it better worth their while to enlist, you'll have to
shoulder a rifle yourself!"]
[Sidenote: _Gladstonian Home Rule_]
In regard to Ireland and Home Rule, after the rejection of the Home
Rule Bill of 1893 _Punch's_ independent support of the Liberals gave
place to a general support of the Unionist policy, tempered by a more
or less critical attitude towards Ulster. He cannot be blamed for
neglecting to note the obscure and academic beginnings of the Sinn Fein
movement, or for failing to forecast that triple alliance of Sinn Fein
with the old physical force party and the Labour extremists under
Larkin which led to the rebellion of Easter, 1916. The Government
expert, who devoted seven years to the neglect of his duties, was
sunk in unholy ignorance of all that was going on until the explosion
took place. For the rest, _Punch_ became increasingly critical of
the demands of Labour and the parochial outlook of its leaders;
increasingly antagonistic to the measures passed in satisfaction of
those demands. At the same time he devoted more space than ever to
satirizing, ridiculing, and castigating the excesses, extravagances
and eccentricities of "smart" society, the week-end pleasure hunt of
the idle rich, and all the other features which may be summed up in
the phrase, "England de Luxe." Pictorially his record reveals perhaps
more amusement than disgust at the carnival of frivolity which reached
its climax in the years before the war. The note of misgiving is not
lacking, but it is sounded less vehemently than in the 'eighties of the
last century. In the main _Punch's_ temper may be expressed, to borrow
from Bagehot, as an "animated moderation."
To turn from outlines to details, one is confronted in 1893 with Mr.
Gladstone's second attempt to solve a problem which Giraldus Cambrensis
pronounced insoluble seven centuries ago. _Punch's_ earlier cartoons
on the Home Rule Bill are negligible, but the difficulties of the
Premier's position are aptly shown in the picture of Gladstone as a
knight in armour on a perilous pathway between the Irish Nationalist
bog and the "last ditch" of Ulster. The accompanying text, modelled
on Bunyan, represents Mr. Gladstone as a Pilgrim relying as much on
tactics as the sword. The most genial reference to Ulster is that in
which she figures as the Widow Wadman asking Uncle Toby, "Now, Mr.
Bull, do you see any 'green' in my eye?" and Uncle Toby protests he
"can see nothing whatever of the sort." Otherwise _Punch's_ attitude is
unsympathetic, witness the use of the term "Ulsteria" and the epigram
on the second reading of the Bill, put, it is true, into the mouth of
"A rebellious Rad":--
Butchered--to make an Easter Holiday,
For Orangemen who yearn to have their say!
They've got political _delirium tremens_.
_Orange_? Nay, they're sour as unripe lemons!
In the "Essence of Parliament" little is said of the arguments,
but we get a glimpse of Lord Randolph Churchill's
return to the political arena and echoes of the unbridled
loquacity of Mr. Sexton. The cartoons are more instructive,
notably that on the introduction of the "Guillotine" by Gladstone,
with the G.O.M. as chief operator, Harcourt and
Morley as republican soldiers, and Amendments, as heads,
falling into a waste-paper basket. The fate of the measure is
neatly hit off in the "Little Billee" cartoon; Home Rule as
"Little Billee" is about to be massacred by the House of Lords,
represented by Salisbury and Hartington as chief villains.
"Little Billee" in the legend not only survived but attained
high distinction in after life; but it is hard to say whether
_Punch_ implied a similar resurrection for the Bill of 1893. But
whatever were his views on the merits of Home Rule, _Punch_
was decidedly critical of the Government's naval policy, and
when Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley had simultaneously made
seemingly irreconcilable speeches on the subject, he adroitly
invoked the shade of Cobden, who had, in certain conditions,
proclaimed himself a Big Navyite. _Punch_ fortified the
argument by a set of verses headed "Rule Britannia" and
ending with this stanza:--
Devotion to the needs of home
And claims parochial is not all.
Beware lest shades more darkling come
With gloomier writings on the wall.
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons to careless trust should ne'er be slaves.
[Sidenote: _Mr. Gladstone and his Successor_]
Yet when Mr. Gladstone resigned the premiership, early in 1894,
_Punch's_ tribute is an unqualified eulogy of the "Lancelot of our
lists":--
"Unarm, _Eros_; the long day's task is done."
This is no _Antony_; here's a nobler one;
Yet like the Roman his great course is run.
From source to sea a fair full-flooded flow
Of stainless waters, swelling as they go,
Now widening broad in the sun's westering glow,
Broad widening to the ocean, whither all
The round world's fertilizing floods must fall,
The sweeping river with the streamlet small.
Hang up the sword! It struck its latest stroke,
A swashing one, there where the closed ranks broke
Into wild cheers that all the echoes woke.
That stroke, the last, was swift, and strong, and keen,
Now hang thou there, though sheathed, yet silver-clean,
For never felon stroke has dimmed thy sheen!
For thee, good knight and grey, whose gleaming crest
Leads us no longer, every generous breast
Breathes benediction on thy well-won rest.
The field looks bare without thee, and o'ercast
With dark and ominous shadows, and thy last
_Reveille_ was a rousing battle-blast!
But though with us the strife may hardly cease,
We wish thee, in well-earned late-coming ease,
Long happy years of honourable peace!
The "last stroke" referred to was doubtless the speech in which Mr.
Gladstone uttered his warning to the Lords, a warning translated into
action by the Parliament Act of 1910. Lord Rosebery, his successor,
came from the gilded chamber, and, in spite of his democratic record
and brilliant gifts, was not enthusiastically welcomed by the Liberal
Party. But _Punch_ had no misgivings at the moment and acclaimed
him in a cartoon in which he enters the lists, "from spur to plume
a star of tournament," with Harcourt as his squire, a reading of
their relations hardly borne out by the sequel. The Cabinet were not
a "band of brothers," and, as we have said above, the most notable
legislative feature of the Liberal administration was the "Radical
Budget" of Sir William Harcourt. _Punch's_ comment, in the cartoon "The
Depressed Dukes" and the verses on "The Stately Homes of England,"
combined prescience with a touch of malice. The Duke of Devonshire
is shown saying to the Duke of Westminster, "If this Budget passes,
I don't know how I am going to keep up Chatsworth," and the Duke of
Westminster replies, "If you come to that, we may consider ourselves
lucky if we can keep a tomb over our heads." Mr. Chamberlain's famous
phrase about "ransom" is recalled, in view of his _rapprochement_
to the Tories, to illustrate his falling away from Radicalism, and
_Punch's_ references to him are, for a while, critical to the verge of
hostility. Sambourne's picture of the interesting development of the
"Josephus Cubicularius (orchidensis)" exhibits his evolution from the
manufacturer of screws, the republican and the radical, to the patriot,
society pet, and full-blown Conservative with a peerage looming in
the future; while in the "Essence of Parliament" he is ironically
complimented on investing the High Court of Westminster with "the tone
and atmosphere of the auction-room."
On the other hand, _Punch_ recognized that a disposition to add to our
Imperial responsibilities was no longer a Tory monopoly. Uganda was
annexed in 1894, and John Bull is seen finding a black baby on his
doorstep: "What, _another_! Well, I suppose I must take it in," the
explanatory verses being headed "_Prestige oblige_." The assassination
of President Carnot prompts a tribute to France:--
Sister in sorrow now as once in arms,
Of old fair enemy in many a field--
an obvious adaptation of Sir Philip Sidney's "that sweet enemy France."
But in the realm of foreign affairs the most striking event was the
Chino-Japanese war. Here _Punch's_ sympathies are clearly revealed in
his cartoon, "Jap the Giant-killer," with an up-to-date fairy-tale
text; in the picture of Japan as the Infant Phenomenon lecturing on
the Art of War to John Bull, Jonathan, the Kaiser and other crowned
heads; and in the condemnation of the jealous intervention of Russia
and Germany to rob Japan, who had "played a square game," of the fruits
of victory. The death of the Tsar Alexander III in November, 1894, is
commemorated in a cartoon in which Peace is chief mourner. _Punch_, as
we have seen, had not been enthusiastic over the gravitation of Russia
towards a French alliance; but no official declaration of its existence
was made until 1897, though it was mentioned publicly by M. Ribot in
1895.
[Illustration: "WHO SAID--'ATROCITIES'?"
(After the popular engraving)
"Old as I am my feelings have not been deadened in regard to matters
of such a dreadful description." (_Mr. Gladstone's Birthday speech at
Hawarden on the Armenian atrocities_.)]
[Sidenote: _The Seven Lord Roseberys_]
The Rosebery Cabinet resigned in June, 1895. _Punch's_ admiration
for Lord Rosebery had steadily waned during his brief tenure of the
Premiership, and distrust of his versatility is revealed in the
versified comment on Mr. St. Loe Strachey's article in the _Nineteenth
Century_. There the "Seven Ages of Rosebery" are traced, in the manner
of Jaques, from the Home Ruler onward through the phase of London
County Council chairman to Premier, and Sphinx _à la_ Dizzy, ending:--
Last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history,
Newmarket Rosebery, _Ladas_-owner, Lord--
_Sans_ grit, _sans_ nous, _sans_ go, _sans_ everything.
Lord Salisbury's third Cabinet was reinforced by the inclusion of
the Liberal-Unionists--the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Goschen and Mr.
Chamberlain. It was a powerful combination, but suffered in the long
run from the inherent drawbacks of all coalitions, though the course
of events postponed the inevitable disruption. Before the Liberals
left office, Mr. Gladstone had emerged from his retirement to denounce
the "Armenian Atrocities" and urge British intervention. Here, as in
earlier years, _Punch_ sided with the advanced Liberals, rejoiced
in his well-known cartoon, "Who said 'Atrocities'?" that there was
life in the old dog (Mr. Gladstone) yet; welcomed the adhesion of the
Duke of Argyll to Mr. Gladstone's campaign in another cartoon of the
"Old Crusaders: Bulgaria, 1876, Armenia, 1895"; and denounced the
unchangeable ferocity of the Turk. When the Bishop of Hereford invited
his clergy to send up petitions respecting the Armenian atrocities,
one vicar refused to protest against Turkish crimes, on the ground
that the English Government was exercising all its ingenuity to
persecute and plunder Christians here. This referred to the Liberal
Government's Welsh Disestablishment Bill. _Punch_ ironically declared
that the vicar's logic was as convincing as his Christian sympathy was
admirable. On the return of the Unionists to power, _Punch_ continued
to urge strong measures, and lamented the powerlessness of the "Great
Powers" to bring about reforms in Turkish administration.
[Sidenote: _The Kiel Canal_]
The retirement of Mr. Peel from the Speakership afforded _Punch_ a
fitting opportunity for recognizing his great qualities in maintaining
the dignity of his position, his "awesome mien and terrible voice" in
administering rebukes, and for joining in the chorus of congratulation
to the new Conductor of the Parliamentary Orchestra, Mr. Gully. As
for the protest of Lord Curzon, Lord Wolmer and Mr. St. John Brodrick
against the exclusion of peers from the House of Commons, _Punch_ dealt
faithfully with the movement in his comments on the "Pirate Peers."
Better still is the cartoon in which a bathing woman addresses a little
boy wearing a coronet, and battering with his toy spade at the door
of a bathing-machine labelled House of Commons. "Come along, Master
Selborne," she says, "and take your dip like a little nobleman." This
incident of May, 1895, is hardly worth mentioning save as an example
of self-protective insurance against future legislation aimed at
the power of the Upper House. For years to come _Punch's_ political
preoccupations were almost exclusively with questions of Imperial
policy and international relations. The opening of the Kiel Canal
practically coincided with the return to power of Lord Salisbury, and
is celebrated by _Punch_ in the same number in which he ironically
adapts Shakespeare's _Coriolanus_ to illustrate the alliance of Lord
Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain. _Punch's_ representative went out on
the _Tantallon Castle_ with Mr. Gladstone, and gives a lively account
of the junketings on board and on shore, and the entertainment of
sovereigns and local magnates. In more serious vein _Punch_ editorially
hails the canal as a "Path of Peace," banishing misgivings and
remembrances of Denmark and France:--
Not war alone, but trade, will take the track
That shuns the wild and stormy Skager-Rak;
And may Brunsbüttel's now familiar name
Be little linked with Empire's big war-game;
May battle-echoes in the Baltic cease;
And the Canal be a new Path of Peace.
A couple of months later our friendly relations with Italy inspired a
cartoon in which Britannia congratulates Italy, but advises her to be
less visionary and more practical. Italy's finances were causing her
trouble; otherwise the advice showed an inability to sound the springs
of Italian policy. _Punch's_ pacific dreams were dispelled in the
autumn by the renewed troubles in Ashanti. Britannia, as he put it,
expected more than an umbrella this time; King Coffee's umbrella had
cost us £900,000 in 1874. Happily the expedition was well organized
and its immediate purpose executed, though a further expedition became
necessary in 1900. Far graver anxieties threatened us from Africa at
the close of the year, and since _Punch's_ criticisms of and comments
on the successive phases of controversy and conflict betray a certain
amount of variation and even inconsistency, it is as well to point
out that the unfriendly tone he had shown towards "Joe" in previous
years had largely abated upon Mr. Chamberlain's accession to office
as Colonial Secretary. In the account of a dinner held in the late
autumn of 1895 to celebrate the opening of railway communication
between Natal and the Cape, Mr. Chamberlain's speech is extolled as
"splendidly pitched, admirably phrased, and full of the Palmerstonian
ring." Simultaneously in "The Imperial Federalists' Vade Mecum" _Punch_
discourses on the difficulties, no longer insuperable, which attended
on the translation into reality of that dream of Imperial Federation
which had once been regarded as a nightmare.
[Sidenote: _Dr. Jameson's Popularity_]
The abortive Jameson Raid at the close of December, 1895, came as
a bombshell; and _Punch_, in his "Tug of War" cartoon, shows the
Uitlander trying to pull the British Lion into the Transvaal, while
Mr. Chamberlain is pulling him back. Canning's well-known lines on
"The Pilot that weathered the Storm" are rewritten in honour of Mr.
Chamberlain's handling of the crisis. A few months earlier _Punch_ had
ridiculed the Kaiser for his arbitrary absolutism in sending to prison
a private University teacher "for writing in praise of a certain kind
of soap." The famous telegram to President Krüger was dealt with more
audaciously in an apocryphal letter purporting to have been sent by the
Queen to her grandson:--
MEIN LIEBER WILLY,--Dies ist aber über alle Berge. Solch
eine confounded Impertinenz have ich nie gesehen. The fact of the
matter is that Du ein furchtbarer Schwaggerer bist. Warum kannst
Du nie ruhig bleiben, why can't you hold your blessed row? Musst
Du deinen Finger in jeder Torte haben? Was it for this that I made
you an Admiral meiner Flotte and allowed you to rig yourself out in
einer wunderschönen Uniform mit einem gekokten Hut? If you meant mir
any of your blooming cheek zu geben why did you make your grandmamma
Colonel eines Deutschen Cavallerie Regiments? Du auch bist Colonel
of a British Cavallerie Regiment, desto mehr die Schade, the more's
the pity. Als Du ein ganz kleiner Bube warst have ich Dich oft
tüchtig gespankt, and now that you've grown up you ought to be
spanked too.... Du weist nicht wo Du bist, you dunno where you are,
and somebody must teach you. Is Bismarck quite well? Das ist ein
kolossaler Kerl, nicht wahr? So lange. Don't be foolish any more.
Deine Dich liebende,
GRANDMAMMA.
This was followed up by the picture of the Kaiser as "Fidgety Phil."
But _Punch_ was already alive to the widespread hostility to England
which prevailed on the Continent, and did not shrink from suggesting
that we were ready at need to take up the challenge. He admitted the
popularity of "Dr. Jim," but irony underlies his dialogue between the
dubious Londoner, who asks:--
"How will they treat this Doctor Jim,
Who doesn't return a winner?"--
and the Hearty Citizen who replies:--
"There's only one way of treating _him_."--
"And that is?"--"Give him a dinner."
_Punch_ is ironically sympathetic, again, in his comment on the
statement that "About 130 letters awaited Dr. Jameson ... many of
them containing offers of marriage." A few months later, however,
_Punch_ supported the demand for his release on account of ill-health.
The cartoon based on Mr. Rhodes's resignation in May is headed,
"The Pity of it." South Africa (as Othello) says to him: "Cassio, I
love thee; but never more be officer of mine." _Punch_ adds as his
authority a statement in _The Times_: "Mr. Rhodes has no longer any
power of assailing or menacing the Transvaal. The military authority
in the Company's territory is in the hands of Sir Richard Martin.
The administration is in the hands of Lord Grey." It was about the
same time that _Punch_ published a design for a statue of Krüger, in
which the British Lion is shown in chains while Chamberlain kneels
obsequiously to the President.
[Illustration: THE RHODES COLOSSUS
Striding from Cape Town to Cairo]
South Africa was not our only source of anxiety in 1896. Indeed,
it may be said to have temporarily receded into the background as
a storm centre. For our strained relations with the United States
over the Venezuelan arbitration had been brought to a critical stage
by President Cleveland's message. The conciliatory speeches of Mr.
Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour in January led _Punch_ to represent them
in the act of placating the American Eagle with caresses and sugar.
He was better inspired in his open letter to Mr. W. D. Howells, the
distinguished American writer, recognizing his generous and courageous
efforts to create a better mutual understanding between the two
countries. In particular he saluted the "Golden words" in which Mr.
Howells criticized his own countrymen:--
[Sidenote: _Letter to Mr. Howells_]
"What I chiefly object to in our patriotic emotion, however, was
not that it was so selfish but that it was so insensate, so stupid.
It took no account of things infinitely more precious than national
honour, such as humanity, civilization, and
'the long result of time'
which must suffer in a conflict between peoples like the English and
the Americans. For the sake of having our ships beat their ships, our
poor fellows slaughter their poor fellows, we were all willing, for
one detestable instant at least, to have the rising hopes of mankind
dashed, and the sense of human brotherhood blunted in the hearts of
the foremost people of the world."
But is there, as you say, "in the American heart a hatred of England,
which glutted itself in her imagined disaster and disgrace when we
all read the President's swaggering proclamation, in which he would
not yield to the enemy so far as even to write good English"? Is
there to be no forgiveness, are we never to cancel old scores and
begin our international book-keeping, if I may so term it, on a clean
page? I do not think our people hate yours. Your dash, your pluck,
your humour, your keen common sense, your breezy and inexhaustible
energy, your strength and broad capacity for government, all these
qualities command and obtain from us a sincere tribute of admiration.
If you hate us, we must submit to that melancholy condition, but never
submit in such a fashion as to cease from honest effort to abate
and in the end to remove all hatred. Blood, as one of your naval
captains[1] said on a memorable occasion, is thicker than water. So
saying, he dashed in to the help of our sorely pressed ships. Let us
then call a truce to petty and malignant carping, and join hands in
an alliance dependent not upon written treaties, but upon the noble
sympathy of two great nations engaged in the same work of civilization
and progress. You, Sir, speaking for others, I trust, as well as for
yourself, have set us an example.
Believe me, yours in all cordial friendship,
PUNCH.
[Footnote 1: Josiah Tatnall, flag-officer of the East India Squadron in
1856.]
It was in the same spirit that _Punch_ welcomed a remark in the New
York _Morning Press_: "After all the English people are our people,
and we are theirs," and deprecated as suicidal any efforts to forsake
a common heritage and rend asunder a family tree. The tension passed,
thanks to diplomacy and arbitration, and towards the close of the year
we find _Punch_ welcoming Mr. McKinley on his election as President,
the Shade of Washington (with a somewhat bulbous nose) congratulating
Columbia: "'Sound Money' is the best policy." Meanwhile the expedition
to Khartum had been decided on; the House of Commons, reassured by a
confident speech from Mr. Chamberlain, having approved of the forward
policy by a two to one vote, in spite of the misgivings of Mr. Morley,
Sir William Harcourt and Sir Charles Dilke. _Punch_, mindful of 1884,
registered his approval in the cartoon in which the Shade of Gordon
in the desert utters the one word, "Remember!" Wars and rumours of
wars did not distract _Punch's_ attention from the peaceful rivalry of
commerce. He was still much concerned by Germany's competition, which
he typified in his cartoon of British Trade as the old woman whose
petticoats were "cut all round about," while she was asleep, by a
German pedlar. And the commercial significance of Li Hung Chang's visit
is not overlooked in the generally farcical handling of that extremely
astute Oriental. In the cartoon "China in the Bull Shop," rival
Continental shopkeepers, who had got no orders out of him, are consumed
with envy and curiosity. If _Punch_ is to be believed, their envy was
ill-founded. Li Hung Chang displayed a boundless inquisitiveness,
but there was "nothing doing" in the way of business between him and
his hosts. _Punch_ drew mainly on his imagination for the events of
the visit, and ascribed to Li Hung Chang a number of topical Chinese
proverbs. The best of them--"Half an official welcome is better than an
ill-bred mobbing"--refers to his arrival in the "dead" season.
[Sidenote: _Two Modern Hamlets_]
Lord Rosebery resigned the leadership of the Liberal Party in June.
While still in office he had estranged the Radical stalwarts by his
Imperialist foreign policy and his heretical view of the necessity of
converting the "predominant partner," England, before attempting to
revive Home Rule. His Government, as one of his colleagues put it, were
condemned to the task of "ploughing the sands." In the intervening year
the gulf that severed him from the stalwarts and the Nonconformist
conscience had been widened by his refusal to join in Mr. Gladstone's
Armenian crusade, and henceforth he decided to "plough a lonely
furrow." In later years he made occasional dramatic interventions,
but his official career, like that of his contemporary at Eton, Lord
Randolph Churchill, closed before he was fifty.
[Illustration: THE CHESTERFIELD HAMLET
LORD R-S-B-RY (in leading rôle):
"The 'Party's' out of joint;--O, cursèd spite,
That ever I was 'asked' to set it right!"
Act i, scene 5, _Mr. Punch's edition_.
]
Our relations with the United States were bettered at the opening
of 1897 by the signing of the Arbitration Treaty adjusting the
Venezuelan question. In Europe events did not conduce to diminish
our unpopularity. It was the year of the brief Greco-Turkish war,
which revived old divisions of opinion at home. _Punch_ was no lover
of the Turk; he realized the difficulties of King George, whom he
depicted as Hamlet at Athens, recognizing (like Lord Rosebery) that
the "time was out of joint" and deploring "the cursed spite that he
was ever born to set it right"; but he supported Lord Salisbury in
severely rebuking the hundred M.P.'s who had sent the King a message of
encouragement. The verses, modelled on Tennyson's "Charge of the Light
Brigade," disparaged the message as mere gaseous talk, which did not
mean business, and was bound to end in smoke. Criticism of the Kaiser
becomes more animated than moderate; the frequent prosecutions for
_lèse-majesté_, and the famous pamphlet, in which Professor Quidde of
Munich ingeniously satirized the Kaiser's megalomania in an historical
essay on the aberrations of Caligula, inspire a caustic open letter
to Wilhelm II, the gist of which is that, though old enough to know
better, he was still the victim of the capricious extravagance of
youth:--
Formerly I imagined that throughout Germany, and from time to time in
Russia, Austria, or in Italy, an imperial but soaringly human boy was
lifting his glass and crying, "Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!" amid the clatter of
swords and the admiring shouts of a profusely-decorated soldiery. Now
I know that a stout gentleman is doing these things, and reducing his
hearers to an abyss of melancholy at his dismal failure in dignity. A
boy who played fantastic tricks with the telegraph-wires incurred but
a mild censure. What shall be said of a middle-aged and pompous party
whose pleasure it is to play practical jokes that set two nations by
the ears?
[Sidenote: _The "Raid" and its Aftermath_]
Yours is a great inheritance, greatly won by heroic deeds. Your
people are by nature the mildest and most loyal, and by tradition and
education the most thoughtful, in Europe. But mild and loyal as they
are their minds must rise in revolt against a sovereign who reproduces
in the crudest form the stale theories of divine right and arbitrary
government, whose one notion of administration is to increase his
stupendous military forces by taxation while diminishing the number
of his reasonable critics by imprisonment. You have travelled, cocked
hat in hand, to capital after capital, you have dismissed Bismarck,
you have made yourself into the tin god of a great monarchy, you have
shouted, reviewed, toasted, speechified, you have donned a thousand
different uniforms, you have dabbled in the drama, you have been
assisted in the design of allegorical cartoons, you have composed
hymns to Ægir, and Heaven knows how many others--and to-day the
result of all your restless and misdirected energies is that you have
added not only to your army but also to the foreign ill-wishers of
your country and to her internal distractions. And at this moment,
in spite of the millions of men and money that go to form her army,
Germany is weaker than she has been at any moment since the Empire was
proclaimed at Versailles. This feat, Sir, you have accomplished, and
such credit as attaches to it is yours alone. Where and how do you
propose to end?
In lighter vein but with equal disrespect _Punch_ satirizes the
instructions to Prince Henry on starting with the naval expedition to
Kiao-Chow. In particular _Punch_ dwells, not unfairly, on the Kaiser's
insistence on the sanctity of his mission. It was to be a Holy war:--
To preach abroad in each distinct locality
The gospel of my hallowed personality.
Another was added to the long list of Indian Frontier wars in the
Tirah campaign. _Punch_ did well to recognize the loyalty of native
officers, N.C.O.s and men, while saluting the achievements of the
Gordon Highlanders in his verses to their Commander, Colonel Mathias.
The men were "doing splendidly," but as Colonel _Punch_ says in one
cartoon, "Yes, they always do; but is this 'forward policy' worth all
this?" And a similar misgiving is revealed in an article implying that
so-called "peaceful missions" to barbarian kings were too often closely
followed up by punitive expeditions. The "repercussions" of the Jameson
Raid were not overlooked. _Punch_ made merry over President Krüger's
famous claim for "moral and intellectual damages"; but his criticisms
are not confined to the Boers. The proceedings of the South African
Committee of Inquiry prompted a parallel between Warren Hastings
and Cecil Rhodes, in which the Indian proconsul remarks to the new
Empire-builder: "_I_ succeeded and was impeached; you fail--and are
called as a witness."
Of the second or Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, the last great
State pageant of her reign, one may say that it was more than a great
act of veneration and loyalty; it was a celebration of Imperial
expansion and solidarity which formed a reassuring interlude on the eve
of events that were destined to test that solidarity to the utmost. For
1898 was the year of Fashoda, of the conflict over the "open door" in
China, and of the Spanish-American war. I put Fashoda first, because
the incident came perilously near embroiling us in war with France.
It was not an isolated expression of French resentment, since the
general attitude of British public opinion over the Dreyfus affair had
greatly inflamed Anglophobia in France. _Punch_, like the majority of
Englishmen, was strongly Dreyfusard. Early in the year he published his
cartoon, based on Holman Hunt's picture, in which Zola figures as the
"Dreyfus Scapegoat"--a reference to the famous "J'accuse" article--and
a similar spirit is shown in the "Dreyfus Dictionary," in which strong
hostility is shown to all the leading actors on the anti-Dreyfus side.
On a large and sincerely patriotic section of the French public,
exasperated by what they considered to be a gratuitous interference in
a domestic affair, _Punch's_ comments on the occupation of Fashoda in
the Sudan by Colonel Marchand operated like vitriol on a raw wound.
They certainly were not flattering to one, who if not a very discreet
was a very gallant soldier. Beginning with a farcical burlesque of the
stealthy invasion of the French, they go on from ridicule to contempt.
"Marchez, Marchand," says John Bull to the Colonel, ironically
congratulating him on having had a "nice little scientific trip." The
last straw was the cartoon in which John Bull says: "Go away, go away,"
to a French organ-grinder with a little monkey in uniform perched on
his instrument, which is labelled Fashoda. The organ-grinder says,
"Eh? What you give me if I go?" and John Bull retorts: "I'll give
you something if you _don't_." A "furious Gaul" broke _Mr. Punch's_
windows, and now we can understand and forgive the retaliation. It may
have been an added sting to say, as _Punch_ did on the best authority,
that Colonel Marchand had been really saved from the Dervishes by
Kitchener's success at Omdurman. Anyhow, it was fortunate that Lord
Kitchener, who had served with the French in 1870 in Chanzy's army, was
in charge of the negotiations with Colonel Marchand on the spot. The
French Government did not give way until six weeks had passed, during
which Irish members had avowed their sympathy with France, and _Punch_
addressed her with serious warnings and even bellicose threats.
For the peaceful adjustment of what looked like a _casus belli_, we
certainly owe more to Lord Kitchener than to _Punch_. The battle of
Omdurman, fought on September 2, 1898, was the culminating point of
a carefully planned campaign which had lasted more than two years,
and was duly celebrated in _Punch's_ cartoon of the re-occupation of
Khartum, with the statue of Gordon, avenged after thirteen years, in
the background. Lord Kitchener lost no time in issuing his appeal for
funds to erect the Gordon Memorial College in Khartum, to which _Punch_
dedicated his cartoon of "Dreaming True." The agreement delimiting the
respective spheres of England and France in North Africa was not signed
till January 19, 1899, but Punch had foreshadowed the issue in his
cartoon of John Bull as a "Fixture" in Egypt, his features replacing
the battered countenance of the Sphinx.
[Illustration: "FOR QUEEN AND EMPIRE!!"]
It cannot be said that _Punch_ was any more conciliatory to the United
States over the Spanish-American war than he had been to France over
Fashoda. He is sympathetic to the young King of Spain, shown as a
small boy on the throne threatened by Bellona and Revolution. Both in
prose and verse he is distinctly hostile to the U.S.A., ironically
crediting them with no desire to annex Cuba, but talking almost in the
same breath of "filibustering" and "spread-eagling." And when Cuba was
acquired _Punch_ professes to regard it as anything but an unmixed
blessing. Spain is shown saying to Uncle Sam: "Well, you wanted him!
You've got him! And I wish you joy of him!"--Cuba being represented as
an ill-conditioned little coloured boy. _Punch's_ reading of the Treaty
of Peace was that Uncle Sam would agree to anything if Spain would take
Cuba back; while in another cartoon European resentment of American
intrusion into European politics is typified by a very "sniffy" Europa
asking Uncle Sam if he is "any relation of the late Colonel Monroe."
All this did not make for good blood, or the promotion of that friendly
understanding applauded in _Punch's_ letter to Mr. Howells, but it
may be pleaded in extenuation that some of the sanest and wisest and
noblest Americans were not at all happy about the Spanish war, and
that Charles Eliot Norton openly denounced the mixture of hypocrisy and
thoughtlessness with which his countrymen had plunged into it.
[Sidenote: _The "Open Door" in China_]
[Illustration: "GOD SAVE THE KING!"]
The conflicting commercial interests of various Powers in China are
also the subject of a good deal of frank comment at the expense of
Russia and Germany. In one cartoon the British Lion is shown with a
barrow-load of goods denied entrance by the Bear at the "free port" of
Talienwan. In another, the "Open Door" is reduced to a farce, being
occupied by the Bear armed to the teeth and a German entrenched in
tariffs. A third, entitled "The Sentinels," is based on the view that
the occupation of Port Arthur left us no alternative but to occupy
Wei-hai-wei in order to restore the equilibrium upset by Russia. The
powerlessness of the young Emperor, who had proposed a scheme of
reforms, is clearly indicated in the dialogue in which the "Son of
Heaven" discusses his Aunt--the formidable Dowager-Empress. _Punch_ had
a friendly greeting for the young Queen of Holland on the attainment of
her majority, referring to the House of Orange as a link with our Royal
family; but for the most part wherever he saw a crowned head he hit
it. The _lèse-majesté_ campaign in Germany had led to the prosecution
of Herr Trojan, the editor of the _Kladderadatsch_, to whom _Punch_
offered his "Prosit," regretting that there was not also the companion
offence of _Humanitätsbeleidigung_ for which punishment could be
awarded to "the Imperial buffoon." This was the year in which the young
Tsar Nicholas put forward his proposal for general disarmament, but
_Punch's_ comments are very much on the lines of his satirical report
of an imaginary meeting of the Nations summoned by the Arbitration
League in 1894. Everybody was anxious to disarm so long as somebody
else set the example. This scepticism now finds vent in the cartoon
in which Peace suggests disarmament to Vulcan, understanding that the
Tsar's proposal had already seriously interfered with his trade. Vulcan
promptly undeceives her. He never was busier--and on orders for Russia.
The assassination of the Empress of Austria in September passed without
mention in _Punch_, an omission probably accidental rather than
deliberate, since she was popular in England as a great sportswoman. She
was also a generous and enlightened patron of the arts, unconventional
in her ways, blameless in her life, yet doomed by malign fate to
the supreme infelicity of grandeur.
[Sidenote: _Gladstone and "C.-B."_]
_Punch_ certainly missed a great opportunity for a chivalrous tribute
to a lady whose unhappiness was greater than her rank, to say nothing
of a text for a sermon on the notorious ineptitude of assassins in
the choice of victims. Still, it was a harder theme than that which
inspired _Punch's_ most notable memorial verses in 1898--the death of
Mr. Gladstone. The writer contrasts his end with that of those who
have died in their early prime or the ripeness of their manhood, and
continues:--
But you, O veteran of a thousand fights,
Whose toil had long attained its perfect end--
Death calls you not as one that claims his rights,
But gently as a friend.
For though that matchless energy of mind
Was firm to front the menace of decay,
Your bodily strength on such a loss declined
As only Death could stay.
So then with you 'tis well, who after pain,
After long pain, have reached your rest at last;
But we--ah, when shall England mould again
This type of splendour past?
Noble in triumph, noble in defeat,
Leader of hopes that others held forlorn,
Strong in the faith that looks afar to meet
The flush of Freedom's morn.
* * * * *
And now, with all your armour laid aside,
Swift eloquence your sword, and, for your shield,
The indomitable courage that defied
The fortune of the field--
As in the noontide of your high command,
So in the final hour when darkness fell,
Submissive still to that untiring Hand
That orders all things well--
We bear you to your resting-place apart
Between the ranks where ancient foe and friend,
Kin by a common sorrow at the heart
Silent together bend.
A new leader of the Liberal Party emerged in 1899 in Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman. Sir William Harcourt is shown wishing his successor
joy--rather ironically--and Mr. Balfour, in the cartoon of "The
Wrestlers," acknowledges the strength of his opponent after their
first round. "C.-B.'s" promotion to leadership coincided with the
discussion of the Tsar's disarmament proposals, which the Liberal
leader was destined to revive later on, and in May, representatives
of Great Britain attended the Hague Conference convened on the Tsar's
initiative. The enthusiasm which _Punch_ had displayed a generation
earlier over the Paris Conference had now evaporated, and his
contributions to the subject are marked by farcical scepticism. The
Tsar and the Kaiser are shown in one picture holding, at some uncertain
date in the future, an imaginary review of what remains of the Russian
Army, the soldiers resembling Stigginses armed with umbrellas.
_Punch's_ twelve suggestions are a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the Tsar's
idea, the first being a proposal to postpone the coming into operation
of the new rules for 1,000 years. The list of "Some Probable Agenda"
for the Hague Conference, published when it was already sitting, is
pure burlesque. For example: "Declarations of war shall in future be
abolished as being calculated to wound the feelings of opponents." In
the same number there is a large picture of Imperial Bruin drinking
to Peace, coupling the toast with the name of Victoria, Empress of
India (the Queen had just celebrated her eightieth birthday), with a
batch of papers, labelled "Further demands in China," behind his back.
The political atmosphere was not conducive to the calm discussion of
international peace. _Punch's_ espousal of the cause of Dreyfus became
increasingly vehement and provocative. In May, under the heading "_A
bas la Vérité_," Truth is shown saying "I must get out" (of her well),
while the French generals reply: "Not if we know it." A month later, in
"At Last," Tenniel depicts indignant Justice triumphing with the Sword
of Revision, and trampling Lies and Forgery under foot. The universal
preoccupation with the topic is illustrated in Phil May's picture
of the little street boy crying because his father "has got Drifus
fever." In September, Napoleon's shade is shown scornfully surveying
a group of degenerate generals eagerly discussing a "secret dossier",
and saying, "_Vive l'armée!_ Yes! But it was not with generals like
you that I won my campaigns!" In the face of death _Punch_ has always
shown restraint, and, whether from ignorance or of set purpose, wrote
of President Faure:--
He sought to serve his country's needs
And dying died with harness on.
[Sidenote: _The Verdict of Rennes_]
But the address to France "in memory of the verdict of Rennes" amounts
to an indictment of the whole nation:--
Who speaks of pardon? Nay, for France there's none,
Nor can be never till the damnèd blot
Be wiped away and expiation done.
Then, not till then,
May be renewed the bonds that once have been,
Since we, whatever else, are honest men.
Meanwhile, we know you not!
Go, hide your face until your heart is clean.
_Punch_, it is true, spoke with a different voice on the same page, but
it is doubtful whether his levity was calculated to heal the effect of
his self-righteous indignation:--
SOME FURTHER SELF-DENYING ORDINANCES
To be observed by those who wish to testify their righteous
indignation at the Rennes verdict by boycotting next year's Paris
Exposition, and in the most material and convincing manner to bring
about the complete rehabilitation of the unfortunate prisoner.
It is proposed--
That no more French leave shall be taken by individuals desirous of
absenting themselves from their duties or annexing other persons'
property. Undergraduates will faithfully attend every lecture,
city clerks will bury no more aunts, cooks will cease to entertain
policemen, and there will be a close time for burglary, kleptomania
and kissing under the mistletoe.
That the use of French chalk shall be abandoned in ballrooms, and
dancing given up altogether, except on village greens.
That "Frenchmen," alias red-legged partridges, shall be shot on sight,
and given to the retriever to eat.
That elbow-grease shall be substituted for French polish.
That French beans shall be cut and given the cold shoulder at table.
That the French language (which at the present moment chiefly consists
of the verb _conspuer_) shall be tabooed, except in the case of
solecisms like _nom de plume_, _double entendre_, _à l'outrance_,
and so forth. _Café_, _coupé_ and similar words shall be pronounced
"caif," "coop," etc., as in Canada. _Dépôt_ shall be "depott";
_sang froid_, _au revoir_, _tableaux vivants_ and the like shall be
similarly anglicized. Boulogne to be called "Boolong," if mentioned at
all, which is inadvisable. No more bull-fights to be attended.
That French grey shall in future mean, as circumstances demand, either
black or white.
Towards America _Punch_ shows a tempered benevolence in his open letter
to President McKinley, whom he warns against the new-fangled policy of
Imperial expansion. His welcome to Mr. Choate, on his appointment as
American Ambassador, is entirely cordial: "There are only two things
necessary to make your visit a success. Don't believe all you hear, and
read your _Punch_ regularly." I do not know whether Mr. Choate took the
second piece of advice or not; the first was quite unnecessary. He was
a huge success as an Ambassador, though his chief claim on the abiding
affection of England rests on his noble and self-sacrificing exertions,
in extreme old age and up to the day of his death, in furthering the
cause of the Allies and strengthening the brotherhood in arms of
America and Great Britain.
[Sidenote: _Lord Milner Censured_]
Meanwhile events in South Africa were rapidly approaching a critical
stage. At Mr. Chamberlain's request, a conference between Sir Alfred
Milner and President Krüger was held at Bloemfontein early in June
to adjust the conflicting claims of the Transvaal Boers and the
Uitlanders, whose position Sir Alfred Milner had compared to that of
"helots." _Punch_ summed up the conference in two cartoons. In the
first, headed "Moral Suasion," Milner is seen endeavouring to pacify
Krüger as a cow: "I will sit on the stile and continue to smile." In
the second, "The Smile that Failed," the High Commissioner remarks:--
I _have_ sat on this Stile
And continued to Smile,
But it's had no effect on the Cow.
[Illustration: THE SMILE THAT FAILED
SIR ALFR-D M-LN-R again sings:--
"There was a 'High Com.' who said, 'Now
I've conferred with this wily old cow!
I _have_ sat on this stile,
And continued to smile,
But it's had no effect on the Cow!'" (_Exit._)
]
[Illustration: "Yer know, them Boers 'as been storin' guns and
hambition for years!"]
A very different reading of the situation is given in the letter to
Sir Alfred Milner published a week later. Here the High Commissioner
is heavily censured not for the failure of the conference, but for the
"ridiculous" and "frothy" tone of his dispatch about "helots," and for
his rash, impetuous and overbearing temper. In July _Punch_ was still
inclined to make light of the whole business, apparently expecting
an amicable settlement, and in a burlesque "Story of a Crisis" in
"Nabothsland" reflected adversely if obliquely on the pretensions of
the Uitlanders. Yet early in September sympathy with the Uitlanders
underlies the verses condemning the inconsistency of Little Englanders,
who in theory espouse the cause of all oppressed nationalities but
their own. The damning blot on the Uitlanders' cause was that they were
English. If they had been Finns, for instance, the Little Englander
would have shed his last drop of ink in their defence. This was at
the lowest a good debating point, and at all points preferable to the
unfortunate picture ridiculing the unmilitary appearance of the Boers,
President Krüger being shown in the act of reviewing his veterans, a
number of fat, unwieldy farmers. The declaration of war came early
in October, and _Punch_ unhesitatingly declared his support of the
decision in the cartoon "Plain English," where John Bull says to the
Boers: "As you will fight, you shall have it. This time it is a fight
to a finish." So it was; but few, except Lord Wolseley, expected that
the finish would only be reached after a long, obstinate and costly
struggle. Lord Wolseley's warning in September, 1899, foreshadows the
more famous anticipation of the duration of the Great War made by Lord
Kitchener fifteen years later. Many other parallels and contrasts
are suggested in _Punch's_ pages as he reflects the varying moods of
England during the chequered progress of the campaign. The divisions of
opinion at home were more acute than in 1914. Moreover, we entered on
the Boer war in a spirit of confidence and complacency
[Sidenote: _The Boer War_]
which rendered the initial reverses more surprising and depressing.
Otherwise the alternations of despondency and elation; the criticisms
of mismanagement, laxity and indifference, want of intelligence and
imagination; and the charges against the enemy of disregarding the
rules of the game have a curiously familiar ring. _Punch_ reflected
popular opinion in resenting the "detachment" of Mr. Balfour in
describing our reverses as "inevitable," and in rebuking the optimism
of other Ministers; in his demand for the "facts"; in attributing to
President Krüger gratitude to the Opposition for their assistance;
in his cheering message to Baden-Powell for "keeping his end up" in
Mafeking. Yet he commented severely on the diamond speculators for
their "operations" during the war; he had a good word for Lord Morley
when he was attacked as a Little Englander; and a strong rebuke for the
agencies which announced tours to the South African battlefields as
early as April, 1900. Punch had shown John Bull as Mark Tapley--when
Kimberley had been relieved and Lord Roberts was advancing--but his
comments on the publication of the Spion Kop dispatches reveal grave
dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Natal campaign:--
SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED
Sir Redvers devised an impossible plan
Which he trusted to Warren, an obstinate man;
Lord Roberts sent home some dispatches, and there
He freely expressed what he thought of the pair.
The War Office published these documents plain,
To the joy of their foes, and the grief of the sane;
And while they were reading them, all the world wondered,
And promptly concluded that everyone blundered.
Humorous relief was provided by the report that Krüger had encouraged
his burghers by circulating the news that London had been captured by
the Russians, a method foreshadowing the imaginative exploits of the
Germans in the late war. It was based, however, on an incontestable
fact--our unpopularity in both hemispheres. The Boer delegates had
been welcomed in America, though _Punch_ sought to discount the effect
of their propaganda by a cartoon in which Columbia reassures John Bull:
"Don't mind those noisy boys of mine. You know, my dear, it's _Election
Time_."
The Anglophobe feeling was much more vocal in France, and _Punch_ gives
a curious account of the Transvaal section of the Paris Exhibition in
October, where signatures were invited and freely appended to addresses
to the two Presidents, the bust of Krüger was crowned with palm
branches, poetic eulogies were circulated, and the walls covered with
"_Mort aux Anglais_," "Chamberlain _est un vache_," etc. Meanwhile,
Mafeking had been relieved, and _Punch_ had defended the "loud extremes
of passionate joy" which added the now well-nigh forgotten verb "to
Maffick" to our current vocabulary. Lord Roberts's uninterrupted
advance to Pretoria had moved _Punch_, with many others, to declare
very prematurely on June 6th that the war was practically over, though
it lasted nearly two years longer, and the slow progress of "rounding
up" the Boers actually prompted the suggestion from a leading paper
that Lord Kitchener should be recalled and Lord Roberts sent out again.
President Krüger's flitting is illustrated in a cartoon in which "Oom
Paul" is seen in a small boat, with two millions of treasure, quitting
the sinking ship _Transvaal_; while in a set of verses, written after
reading of his triumphal progress through France, _Punch_ prophesies
for him a green old age in Grosvenor Square. The C.I.V.'s returned
in the autumn and were welcomed by the City of London; and shortly
afterwards "a Mr. Williams offered respectful apologies to Satan for
mentioning him in the same breath with Lord Kitchener." _Punch_, even
in his most Chauvinistic mood, never indulged in such abuse of the Boer
generals, and at the end of 1900 paid a well-deserved compliment to the
elusive De Wet in his cartoon of "De Wet o' de Wisp."
[Sidenote: _China and Australia_]
Before dealing with the subsequent progress of the "guerrilla war,"
we may turn aside for a moment to other developments overseas. In an
epigram on "The Millennium" in August, 1900, _Punch_ writes:--
In some problematic day
Strife and wrath shall fade away,
Crews no longer blessing pouring
On the coxes who have cox'd,
When the Boers shall cease from boring
And the Boxers shall be boxed.
The revolt of the Boxers in China and the joint expedition of the
European Powers assisted by Japan to relieve the Legations in Peking
are treated in two cartoons. In the first, in which the Chinese Dragon
is seen in the background, Japan expresses her readiness to help the
European Powers. She is glad to join them, "but permit me to remark
that if some of you hadn't interfered when I had him down, it would
have saved all this trouble"--a legitimate comment on the intervention
of Germany and Russia after the Chino-Japanese war. In the second, "The
Closed Door," Europa is seen armed with an axe, preparing to break her
way in to the relief of the Legations. Apocryphal reports of what was
happening in China reached a high-water mark of mendacity this summer,
and the English Press did not escape the charge of credulity, to put
it mildly. Reports of the death of the Dowager Empress were so common
as to inspire _Punch_ with a poetic homage to the "lady of the charmed
life," and when she shifted her capital, he showed Krüger looking over
a wall at her exodus with the remark: "My idea!"
It was in 1900 also that the Australian Commonwealth Bill was
introduced by Mr. Chamberlain. _Punch_ in his first reference to the
measure, animated by a recognition of Australia's loyalty in the
Boer war, assumed that Clause 74, abolishing the appeal to the Privy
Council, would be passed. Australia is seen showing the new latchkey
she has had made, as she wanted a little more freedom, and Britannia
declares her readiness to trust her. This proved premature, and a
little later on _Punch_, in a letter to the Australian delegates, waxes
sarcastic over the "niggling, pedantic and pettifogging inquisition
which it was proposed to institute into the demand for Federation"--_à
propos_ of the Privy Council Appeals. As a matter of fact, the clause
was amended, because the States were not at one on the point, and all
seven Chief Justices favoured the maintenance of the right of Appeal.
Lord Roberts returned to England at the close of the year, and _Punch_
saluted his arrival in "The Home-coming of the Chief." His great
services are acknowledged, not least his self-sacrifice in the hour of
bitter personal loss:--
Ah! but while a nation's cries
Storm against our sullen skies
'Midst the madness and the mirth
Flung about your victor's way,
If behind the brave array
All the hidden heart were known,
Save for love of England's name
Gladly would you yield the prize,
Glory, triumph, wealth and fame,
Could you win one grace alone,
Could you have your boy again
Home from where he takes his rest
Lying under alien earth
By Colenso's dreadful plain,
With the Cross above his breast.
[Illustration: "REQUIESCAT!"]
That is truly and finely said, and yet how strangely the epithet
"dreadful" sounds to those who have found all the vocabulary of horror
beggared by the experiences of the Great War! The opening of the New
Year was clouded by the passing of Queen Victoria. In all the sixty
years of _Punch's_ existence, even in the moods when his comments on
Court and Crown had been frank to the verge of audacity, loyalty to the
person of the Sovereign had never failed. His adverse criticism was
seldom malicious, and was almost always animated by a desire that the
Sovereign should never fall below the standard of _noblesse oblige_.
The days of resentment against the Queen's prolonged seclusion had long
passed. She had ceased to be "the Royal Recluse," and was unsparing of
herself in the discharge of her duties up to within a few weeks of her
death. When she spoke in one of her messages of "her beloved people,"
there could be no question of her sincerity, or of the devotion with
which her love was returned.
As Mr. Balfour said significantly of her: "Even those who loved not
England loved her," and in later years those who came to scoff at her
memory remained to praise:--
THE QUEEN
Born May 24, 1819. Died January 22, 1901.
The tears we disallow to lesser ill
Here is no shame for English eyes to shed,
Because the noblest heart of all is still--
Because the Queen lies dead.
Grief asks for words, yet silent grief were well;
Vain is desire, as passionate prayer was vain;
Not all our love can bring, by any spell,
Breath to those lips again.
Ah! had but Death forgone his royal claim,
Demanding ransom, life for life the price,
How loyalty had leaped to kiss the flame
Of such a sacrifice!
God knows, in many a need this thing has been--
Light hearts for her have dared the desolate grave;
From other hurt their blood has saved the Queen,
From Death it could not save.
And of the dregs to drink from sorrow's cup
This is most bitter, that with life's release
She might not leave her children folded up
Between the wings of Peace.
Yet, for a solace in that darkest hour,
When even Kings have found themselves alone,
Over a people's love she kept her power
Firm as her fathers' throne.
[Sidenote: _Candid Friends and Hostile Critics_]
The "Khaki" election of the previous autumn, at which the Government
had appealed to the country to decide the issue of fighting the war to
a finish, had resulted in the return of the Unionists by a majority of
134, but did not abate the activities of the "Stop the War" party. They
were stimulated to further and more vehement protests by the policy of
the Concentration Camps, and the loss of life through epidemics caused
by the compulsory herding together of those who were interned. Between
the denunciations of British "brutalities" by the German Press and the
talk of "hecatombs of slaughtered babes" by British Liberals--between
"candid friends" and hostile critics--there was not much to choose.
_Punch_ invoked the shade of Bismarck to rebuke the excesses of the
German journalists; he ridiculed Miss Emily Hobhouse's descriptions of
Concentration Camp horrors by giving a list of the luxuries which were
not provided there--hairpins, curling-tongs, etc.--and in a cartoon at
the close of the year represented the "Stop the War" group as making
such a noise that Peace's voice could not be heard. Cleavage was shown
in the ranks of the Opposition, and _Punch_ did not fail to emphasize
the divergences between Mr. Asquith and the Imperialist Liberals on the
one side, and "C.-B." and Sir William Harcourt on the other. General
Baden-Powell arrived in England in July, and _Punch's_ greeting aptly
describes his mood and that of the man in the street:--
Time has flown; but not forgotten is the tale of Mafeking!
Who that lived that Day in London could forget its echoing ring?
How the Town broke into bunting, Piccadilly to Mile End!
How each man for joy saluted every other man as friend!
How we crowded to the city in an orgy of delight,
Tumbled out of bed for gladness, waving Union Jacks all night!
Even if we overdid it after deadening suspense,
Better this than anti-British Queen's Hall windbags' insolence!
Though we later coined a playful word, our soberer sense to show,
I would rather "maffick" daily than abet a treacherous foe!
In the controversies that arose over the treatment of various British
generals, I may note that _Punch_ supported the motion for an inquiry
into the circumstances under which General Colvile was deprived of his
command, which was negatived in the House by 262 votes to 248. Over
the still more thorny question of General Buller's conduct of the
Natal campaign he preserved an impartial attitude, while implying that
the general would not exploit his grievance for political purposes.
Early in the war _Punch_ paid a rather left-handed compliment to the
war correspondents; they are represented as welcoming war because it
brought them remunerative employment. In the autumn of 1901 we find him
pressing their claims for war medals, and observing that the Press had
been shut out but not shut up.
The war, he also notes on the authority of a daily paper, had produced
more poets than any similar crisis in English history. A more striking
parallel with recent war-products is to be found in _Punch's_ review
of the depression, discontent and decline of trade which it had begun
to cause before hostilities ceased. This is clearly shown in July,
1901, in the Preface to Vol. cxxi, where _Punch_ rebukes John Bull,
no longer in his Mark Tapley vein, for listening to pessimists, and
encouraging a seditious and pernicious Press. In the opening stages
of the war _Punch_ had been none too friendly to Lord Methuen, but he
was righteously indignant at the "Ghoul-like ecstasy" of the Irish
Members who cheered the news of the defeat and capture of that gallant
soldier in the spring of 1902. The end of the war came in June, and is
chronicled in _Punch's_ "Cease Fire" cartoon. The happiest incident
of the surrender was the speech made by Lord Kitchener to the Boer
delegates at Vereeniging when he said that "if he had been one of them,
he would have been proud to have done so well in the field as they had
done." _Punch_ did well to record it, for it reflected the national
respect felt for a stubborn foe. For confirmation we need only turn
to the laconic entry in the _National Register_ for August 16, 1902:
"The Boer generals, Botha, De Wet and Delarey ... proceeded to London,
and had an enthusiastic popular reception." Subsequent events have
justified the somewhat complacent remark attributed to John Bull in the
cartoon two months later, _à propos_ of the grant of £3,000,000 to the
Transvaal, and the Boers' "Appeal to the Civilized World": "Look here,
my friend, stick that up, if you like; but I think you'll find that _I_
talk less than the others and give more."
[Sidenote: _Lord Kitchener's Return_]
Lord Kitchener had returned in July, and _Punch's_ welcome ends on a
prophetic note:--
You're a worker from of old,
K. of K.
Pomps and pæans leave you cold,
K. of K.
You would like to land in mufti,
You would hurry down the dock
Not in trappings, plumed and tufty,
But in checks and billycock!
And you haven't, now It's over,
Come to stay;
Nor to lie at length in clover,
But to change your train for Dover,
K. of K.
For, although the work's appalling
Which should have you here at hand,
Yet you've heard the East a-calling
Out of India's coral strand;
And, as soon as time and place
Let our feelings find release,
And we've called you, to your face,
First in War and first in Peace;--
Thither where the Empire needs you,
K. of K.,
And your own "Ubique" leads you,
Lies your way!
Mr. Roosevelt had succeeded to the Presidency of the United States on
the assassination of Mr. McKinley, and _Punch_, after condoling with
Columbia, saluted the "Rough-Rider."
Our closer relations with Japan and their effect on Russia are
symbolized in the cartoon in which she remarks as a _tertia_ anything
but _gaudens_: "H'm--I don't like these confidences." In Europe the
subject that provoked _Punch's_ closest attention was the treatment
of the Poles by Germany. There is an amusing story in "Charivaria,"
probably apocryphal, but not beyond the possibilities of Prussian
pedantry:--
Fifty Prussian schoolgirls have been arrested at Gnesen on a charge of
high treason, and the police are said to have their eyes on several
Kindergartens, where it is reported that the children have been
playing "I'm the king of the Castle" and other games suggestive of
Majestätsbeleidigung.
But the whole essence of "Prussification" is summed up in the last
quatrain of a brilliant adaptation of the "Pied Piper of Hamelin" to
the situation in Posen:--
You can take a Pole, as I understand,
And play on his nerves with a German Band;
But you can't convert his natural temper, or
Get him to jig for a German Emperor.
Lord Salisbury had resigned in the summer of 1902, and Mr. Balfour had
succeeded to the Premiership. It was not exactly a case of "Amurath
to Amurath," but with nephew succeeding to uncle, and the presence of
another nephew and a son-in-law in the Cabinet, there was some ground
for the once familiar gibes against the "Hotel Cecil." _Punch_ was
not unfriendly to the new Premier, and applauded his handling of the
negotiations initiated by Germany to secure a British subsidy to the
German-controlled Baghdad railway. In "The Trap that Failed," the
British Lion "doesn't like the look of it and resolves to go round the
other way"; and the verses (after Omar Khayyám) indicate the surprise
of "the Potter of Potsdam" at the unexpected firmness of Mr. Balfour.
The gradual improvement of our relations with other foreign Powers is
symbolized in "The Chain of Friendship," showing King Edward joining
in a dance with France, Italy and Portugal; while the strengthening
of the Anglo-French _Entente_ is illustrated in the cartoon in which
King Edward, presenting the British Lion, says to the French President:
"See, M. Loubet, he offers you his paw." An element of reserve,
however, is shown in a dialogue in French, mildly satirizing the new
Anglomania; and in the burlesque sketch foreshadowing the ludicrous
and disastrous influence on both countries of the _Entente_--e.g. the
re-introduction of the duel on the initiative of the _Daily Mail_; the
presentation of Waterloo Station to the French and, as a set-off, the
presentation of the Keys of Calais to the Lord Mayor of London by the
Paris Municipal Council. To turn from gay to grave, this was the year
of the assassination of the King and Queen of Serbia, recorded in the
cartoon of "Murder as the King Maker."
[Sidenote: _Ireland, Army Reform, and India_]
Home politics fill a larger space in 1903 in _Punch's_ pages than
for some years previously. Remedial legislation in Ireland inspires
the cartoon of Mr. Balfour as St. Patrick--a saint invaluable to the
harassed cartoonist--driving out the snakes of sedition. The basis
of Mr. Wyndham's Land Purchase Act is well shown in the cartoon
illustrating the financial relations of the two countries. Tenant and
landlord both present money-boxes labelled "Land Purchase" to John
Bull, asking him to "put a thrifle in them"; John Bull scratches his
head, but he pays all the same. The difficulties of Mr. Brodrick in
securing national support for Army Reform are set forth in the verses
on "The Unhappy Warrior" (after Wordsworth), and the cartoon "Ready,
aye unready," with John Bull asleep on sentry duty--_à propos_ of the
Report of the Royal Commission on the South African war. A little
later, John Bull's short memory is satirized in his protest against
the size of his new watch-dog. Forgetting that he had clamoured for
increase, he now declares that he cannot afford him.
At the opening of the year _Punch_ had lavishly chronicled the glories
of the Delhi Durbar. "The Pilgrims to the East" included three members
of his staff, who did justice to the occasion both with pen and pencil,
and Sambourne's fine cartoon, "_Vivat Imperator_," forms an instructive
pendant and palinode to _Punch's_ anti-imperialist misgivings of 1876,
when he regarded the assumption of the new title as a piece of shoddy
Disraelian Orientalism.
Lord Salisbury's death in 1903 removed a great figure, whose prestige
has grown with the knowledge available in later years. We have learned
to revise the old view of his political stature as compared with
that of Lord Beaconsfield, and to reject the often-quoted but quite
erroneous saying attributed to Bismarck that he was "a lath painted
to resemble iron." _Punch's_ memorial tribute admits that he "nothing
common did or mean":--
When Lord Salisbury, resigning the Premiership, practically retired
from public life, a gap was made in the House of Lords no living
man might fill. Only once has he returned to the scene of memorable
labour. He came with the rest of the cloaked Peers to pay homage to
King Edward the Seventh when first he seated himself on the throne
which he had long regarded from the point of view of the Cross
Benches. There was hope that the ex-Premier would, from time to time,
still give the House and the country the advantage of his sagacious
counsel, the pleasure of listening to his brilliant speech. But, like
the other tall man in another chair, "his heart was worn with work."
He was sick of the sometimes mean rivalry of political life, and felt
he had earned his leisure.
In a manner unique Lord Salisbury had the faculty of standing apart
from his fellow men, regarding them and appraising them as if he
himself did not belong to the _genus_. It was as if a man from Mars
had visited our planet, studying its pygmy population with amused,
on the whole scornful interest. With one exception he was the only
statesman who never bent the knee to the Baal known in political
chatter as The Man in the Street. The exception is, of course, the
Duke of Devonshire, who had further kinship with the Marquis in
respect of absolute freedom from desire to get anything for himself
out of the game of politics. Intellectually and morally--this
latter more precious because more rare--Lord Salisbury uplifted and
maintained at high level the standard of English public life. He was
a man whom foreigners, equally with his own countrymen, unreservedly
trusted, because of a personal quality worth the whole armoury of
diplomacy.
With his withdrawal from the stage, the House of Lords as a debating
assembly lost its chief attraction. It was worth sitting through a
dreary couple of hours for the chance reward of hearing him speak.
Whilst others discoursed he sat impassive, taking no note, making no
sign of hearing, or caring about, what the noble lord on his legs said
or left unspoken. Only a curious rapid movement of the crossed leg
betokened cogitation, betrayed closest attention, and the framing of
some sentences that would presently play about the adversary's head
like forked lightning.
[Sidenote: _The Fiscal Fray_]
An event of greater immediate interest which coincided with the passing
of Lord Salisbury was the resignation of Mr. Chamberlain. On his return
from a strenuous and exhausting tour in South Africa, he had thrown
himself with immense energy into the Tariff Reform campaign, and
withdrew from the Cabinet in order to devote his entire energies to the
prosecution of the cause. _Punch's_ pages throughout the second half
of 1903 furnish a lively chronicle of the progress of Mr. Chamberlain's
crusade and the wonderful egg-dance of Mr. Balfour. Early in September
the situation is portrayed in "The Parting of the Ways." Mr. Balfour,
"long troubled by philosophic doubt," is shown on the road with a
knapsack labelled "Treasury Returns" and "Board of Trade Returns,"
looking at a sign-post, one arm pointing to Chatsworth, the other to
Highbury, and saying: "Well, now, I suppose I must really make up my
mind."
A week later we have the Fiscal Hamlet in "The Unready Reckoner."
Prince Arthur remarks: "O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I
have not the art to reckon," while on the wall hangs a portrait of Mr.
Chamberlain as Ophelia. In November, under the heading "An Eye for
Effect," _Punch_ exhibits "Foreign Competition" as a Guy on a barrow,
with Mr. Chamberlain in charge and conversing with Mr. Balfour:--
ARTHUR: "Ain't you made 'im too 'orrible?"
JOE: "No fear! You _can't_ make 'em too 'orrible!"
Simultaneously, _Punch_ published a burlesque on the _Daily Mail's_
canvass, with expressions of opinion from Henry James, Rudyard Kipling
and Mr. A. B. Walkley. The _Daily Express_, not to be outdone, offered
a prize of £25 to the owner of the first parrot taught to speak
distinctly the phrase: "Your food will cost you more." The "folly of
the fray" was not overlooked, but _Punch_ did not misread its essential
significance in his cartoon of Mr. Chamberlain in the guise of the
political Ancient Mariner who had slain the albatross of Conservative
unity.
Foreign politics once more dominated the scene in 1904, when the
legacy of friction, bequeathed by Russia's intervention at the close
of the Chino-Japanese war and her Manchurian policy after the "Boxer"
outbreak, bore its inevitable fruit in the Russo-Japanese war. The
sympathy of England with Japan is reflected in the pages of _Punch_.
He rebuked the hissing of Russian performers at a performance in the
provinces; but satirized the indignation generally expressed in Russia
that Japan should have begun hostilities without a formal declaration,
or, as _Punch_ put it, without consulting Russia as to whether the date
was convenient to her. The fervent patriotism of the Japanese army is
cordially applauded: John Bull is shown in a mood of envy, thinking he
must try to introduce it at home. The unfortunate Dogger Bank incident,
when Admiral Rozhdestvensky's fleet, on their way out to the Far East,
fired on a fleet of British trawlers, aroused great indignation, mixed
with bitter satire of Russian nerves and thrasonical satisfaction.
_Punch_ published a scarifying parody of Campbell's "Battle of the
Baltic" on this "famous victory" over a "hostile trawling fleet"
engaged in "gutting plaice." Later on in "Admirals All" there is an
equally sarcastic comment on the Report of the North Sea Court of
Inquiry, at which the Russians were exculpated by an Austrian Admiral.
Nor was _Punch's_ indignation expressed against Russia alone. The
acceptance of Russian orders by British coal exporters is chastised in
a cartoon with the legend as under:--
Old King Coal
Was a sordid old soul,
And a sordid old soul was he:
He sold to the Russ,
And he didn't care a cuss,
And the Baltic fleet crossed the sea.
On the fall of Port Arthur, however, _Punch_ did not forget to
acknowledge the heroism of the defence: here, at least, "the honour
of the Russian eagle was untarnished." The war ended in May, 1905,
but before its close Russian internal unrest had become menacing and
hampered the prosecution of hostilities. _Punch_ read the signs of the
times truly in his cartoon of Death as the Czar of all the Russias,
with a figure holding a "Petition" lying slain at his feet; and again
in his rather cruel verses to "The Little Father":--
THE LITTLE FATHER
Nichol, Nichol, little Czar,
How I wonder where you are!
You who thought it best to fly,
Being so afraid to die.
Now the sullen crowds are gone,
Now there's nought to fire upon;
Sweet your sleigh bells ring afar,
Tinkle, tinkle, little Czar.
Little Czar, with soul so small,
How are you a Czar at all?
Yours had been a happier lot
In some peasant's humble cot.
Yet to you was given a day
With a noble part to play,
As an Emperor and a Man;
When it came--"then Nicky ran."
Little Czar, beware the hour
When the people strikes at Power;
Soul and body held in thrall,
They are human after all.
Thrones that reek of blood and tears
Fall before the avenging years.
While you watch your sinking star,
Tremble, tremble, little Czar!
[Illustration: THE CZAR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS]
The contrasted outlook in Russia and Japan is shown in "Peace and
After"--gloom and storm in the one country, general rejoicing in
the other. The signing of the Peace in October brought mutiny and
insurrection in Russia, repressed for the moment by grape-shot and
concessions. _Punch_ distrusted the former method, and warned the Tsar
through the mouth of Louis XVI: "Side with the people, Sire, while
there is yet time. _I_ was too late." The instalment of constitutional
government granted was shorn of its grace by the antecedent display
of ruthlessness. _Punch_ typified this situation in his cartoon of
the Tsar armed with a sword and leaning on a cannon, with corpses
strewn around, and saying: "Now I think the way is clear for universal
suffrage." But _Punch_ was premature in saluting the first Duma--opened
by the Tsar in person in May, 1906--as the Infant Hercules strangling
the twin snakes of Bureaucracy and Despotism. It was the Duma which was
strangled by these forces, of which the first was the more potent and
malign.
[Sidenote: _Belgium and Germany_]
Another foreign monarch who came in for severe criticism in these
years was King Leopold II of the Belgians. Quite recently he had been
treated by _Punch_ with a benevolence that bordered on fulsomeness. But
1904 was the year of the "Congo Atrocities," and _Punch_, in a cartoon
modelled on the ancient Egyptian lines, compared him with the Pharaoh
Rameses II whose scribes counted over the hands cut from his vanquished
enemies. This was suggested by the stories of the similar treatment of
the natives in the rubber plantations vouched for by the British Consul
at Boma. The value of this evidence has since been impaired by the fact
that the Consul in question was none other than Roger Casement. From
Belgium to Germany the transition is easy. In the last two years of
the Unionist administration, German aggressiveness is a constant theme
of comment, mainly inspired by misgiving, occasionally enlivened by
burlesque belittlement of scaremongers. To the latter category belongs
the forecast, at the close of 1904, of the invasion of London, seized
during a week-end exodus of its inhabitants. Nor should we fail to
note the series of appreciative articles on life in Berlin in 1905, in
which "Tom the Tourist" finds the German capital "one of the liveliest,
pleasantest and handsomest of cities," and descants on its good beer,
pleasant company, genial hospitality, and the absence of any sign of
hatred of the British. The writer even goes so far as to compare the
Sieges-Allée favourably with some of the statuary of London. But a
different note is struck in the lines on the vicarious patriotism of
those who objected to conscription; in the references to the inadequacy
of our coast defences; in the satisfaction expressed in the appointment
of Sir John Fisher as First Sea Lord, and the improvement in naval
gunnery; and in the satire directed against the new German Chancellor,
Count von Bülow, for his cynical "_blague_." As "_Der Taubadler_," he
reproves President Roosevelt for Jingoism, and declares:--
Our passion for ruling the brine
Is based on a single and pure design--
To serve as a sort of Marine Police,
Patrons of Universal Peace.
Lord Roberts's warning speech at the London Chamber of Commerce in the
late summer of 1902 had prompted the cartoon "The Call to Arms." John
Bull, aroused from slumber and only half-awake, asks "What's wrong?"
Lord Roberts, the warning warder, replies: "You are absolutely unfitted
and unprepared for war!" whereon John Bull rejoins drowsily: "Am I?
You _do_ surprise me," and goes to bed again. Growing distrust of the
Kaiser is shown in the cartoon in which he figures as "The Sower of
Tares" after Millais's picture, while _Punch_ simultaneously manifests
his satisfaction at the strengthening of the Anglo-French _Entente_.
The British working man, if _Punch_ is to be believed, disliked all
foreigners, but his pet aversion was "them blooming Germans." There
was, at any rate, a legitimate grievance in the fact that fifty-nine
foreign pilots were employed on our coasts, whereas abroad our ships
were compelled to take native pilots; and the Nelson Centenary on
October 21, 1905, impelled _Punch_, in an address to the hero of
Trafalgar, to deplore the decay of national patriotism in a vein of
pessimism happily falsified ten years later:--
Much you would have to marvel at
Could you return this autumn-tide;
You'd find the Fleet--thank God for that--
Staunch and alert as when you died;
But, elsewhere, few to play your part,
Ready at need and ripe for action;
The rest--in idle ease of heart
Smiling an unctuous satisfaction.
I doubt if you could well endure
These new ideals (so changed we are),
Undreamed, Horatio, in your
Philosophy of Trafalgar;
And, should you still "expect" to see
The standard reached which you erected,
Nothing just now would seem to be
So certain as the unexpected.
[Illustration: THE CALL TO ARMS!
JOHN BULL (aroused from slumber and only half awake): "What's
wrong?"
LORD ROBERTS (the warning Warder): "You are absolutely
unfitted and unprepared for war!"
JOHN BULL (drowsily): "Am I? You _do_ surprise me!" (_Goes to
bed again._)
(Vide speech by Lord Roberts at meeting of London Chamber of Commerce,
Mansion House.)]
The "decline and fall" of the Unionist administration are symbolized
and explained in two cartoons in the late summer of 1905. In one Mr.
Balfour is seen, a lonely swimmer, wallowing in the sea of Public
Opinion. A voice from the Tug (Tory Organization) hails him, urging him
to keep afloat and he'll "drift in to the shore" (Session 1906). He
replies that he "can't do much against a tide like this." The sources
of weakness are even better diagnosed in the cartoon of August 30,
"Shelved," showing the group of statesmen who had resigned--the Duke of
Devonshire, Mr. Ritchie, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Lord George Hamilton
and Mr. George Wyndham.
The rout of the Government at the General Election of 1906 was a
veritable _débâcle_. Liberal candidates were returned who never got
in before or after: there is a story of one so overwhelmed by his
wholly unexpected success that he fainted on the declaration of the
poll. Ministers went down like ninepins, and on the meeting of the new
Parliament _Punch_ descants on the disappearance of the "old familiar
faces"--Mr. Arthur Balfour and his brother Gerald, Alfred Lyttelton and
St. John Brodrick, Bonar Law, Sir John Gorst, Sir Albert Rollit, Sir W.
Hart Dyke, Gibson Bowles, and, "saddest fate of all and most lamented,"
Mr. Henry Chaplin. The emergence of a new, formidable, but uncertain
factor was at once recognized in the cartoon in which John Bull looks
over the wall at a bull labelled Labour Vote. The Trade Disputes Bill,
the first and most notable concession to the demands of Trade Unionism,
is discussed in the next section.
[Illustration: AN UNDER-RATED MONSTER
BRITANNIA: "That's a nasty-looking object, Mr. Boatman!"
LORD TW-DM-TH: "Bless your 'eart, mum, 'e won't 'urt you. I've
been here, man an' boy, for the last six months, an' we don't take no
account o' them things!"]
_Punch_ was more preoccupied with Lord Haldane's new army scheme,
and when the War Minister, in introducing it, declared that the
country would not be "dragooned into conscription," interpreted his
statement "in other and less conventional terms" as indicating a
conviction that "it is the inalienable right of the free-born British
citizen to decline to lift a finger in his country's defence." Lord
Haldane's proposals for retrenchment are symbolized in his efforts to
make big toy soldiers fit his box, instead of making the box fit the
soldiers. Wasters and loafers who had cheered "Bobs" on his return
from South Africa are shown expressing indignation at his wanting to
enforce universal military service. _Punch's_ reluctant admission
of our national lethargy finds vent in a dialogue emphasizing the
predominance of the _Panem et Circenses_ spirit--devotion to the Big
Loaf and spectacular games--coupled with a loss of our supremacy in
games. The pageant mania became acute in 1907, when _Punch_ satirically
asks, "Can you cite any other country where it is impossible to walk
out of doors without colliding with an historical pageant?"
Lord Haldane's visit to Germany in 1906 is burlesqued in a diary
professing to reveal his paramount interest in German philosophy and
literature; and a picture, in which he appears in a _Pickelhaube_,
expresses the misgivings of two British soldiers who had overheard
him "talking to himself in German--something horrible." This attitude
of critical distrust is maintained throughout the next four years. In
March, 1908, the new gun designed for the Territorial Force prompts a
dialogue between the War Minister and Field-Marshal _Punch_:--
MR. HALDANE: "In the event of invasion, I shall depend
upon my brave Territorial force to manipulate this magnificent and
complicated weapon."
F.-M. _Punch_: "Going to give them any training?"
MR. H.: "Oh, perhaps a fortnight or so a year."
F.-M. _Punch_: "Ah! Then they'll need to be pretty brave, won't they?"
Further satire is expended in August of the same year on "A Skeleton
Army; or, The Charge of the Very Light Brigade":--
HALDANE (at Cavalry Manoeuvres): "You see those three men?
Well, they're pretending to be one hundred. Isn't that imaginative?"
MR. _Punch_: "Realistic, you mean. That's about what it will
come to with us in real warfare."
[Illustration: HISTORY DEFEATS ITSELF
SHADE OF PAUL KRÜGER: "What! Botha _Premier_? Well, these
English _do_ 'stagger humanity'!"]
_Punch_ was not happy about our Navy either, and in 1906 he had rallied
Lord Tweedmouth, then at the Admiralty, for reassuring Britannia
against the German menace. It was no use to say, "We don't take no
account of them things"; the monster was there, and could not be
belittled. By the end of the year, however, _Punch's_ complacency
was restored by the advance in our naval gunnery, and Britannia is
seen proudly showing the impressive tabulated results of our big gun
practice. The Germans are the only modern people who have a single word
to express delight in the misfortunes of others--_Schadenfreude_. It
is not a noble sentiment, but a suspicion of it mingles with _Punch's_
comments on Germany's internal troubles. In 1878 he had shown Bismarck
squeezing down the Socialist Jack-in-the-Box, and nearly thirty years
later repeats the formula at the expense of Count von Bülow; but the
Socialist Jack-in-the-Box was now a much more formidable figure: it was
"a bigger task for a smaller man."
The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Triple Alliance fell in 1907, and
_Punch_ indicated that Italy's allegiance was already wearing thin.
In performing the trio "We are a happy Family," Austria's "We are" is
marked _piano_, and that of Italy _dubioso_.
In the domain of high politics, Imperial and International, 1907 was
marked by two notable events. The grant of autonomy to the Transvaal
undoubtedly contained an element of risk, but the sequel showed
that magnanimity was the best policy. General Botha's Premiership
proved a symbol of reconciliation destined in time to bear "rare
and refreshing fruit," and _Punch_ was fairly entitled to invoke
the reluctant testimony of Krüger's shade: "What! Botha _Premier_?
Well, these English _do_ 'stagger humanity'!" Secondly, there was
the Hague Conference, over which _Punch_ maintained his attitude of
scepticism, on the ground that each Power was unwilling to lead the
way in disarmament. In his cartoon of the various nations at the door
of the Conference everybody says, "After you, Sir," to everybody else.
The Government's extensive programme of legislation for the following
session is shown in the picture of "C.-B." at the piano accompanying
the Infant Prodigy, 1908. The programme includes the "Twilight of the
Lords," "_Etudes Pacifiques_"; "_Danse anti-Bacchanale_" and "Irish
Rhapsody" with Campobello, McKenna, Asquith and Birrell as soloists.
The campaign against the Lords, opened at Edinburgh by "C.-B." in
October, 1907, suggested the cartoon of the "Fiery Cross" with the
Premier as a kilted warrior shouting, "Doon wi' the Lords!" while
the accompanying verses, in the ballad manner of Scott, describe
the passing on of the fiery cross by Lord Crewe, John Morley, Mr.
Sinclair (now Lord Pentland), Lord Tweedmouth, Mr. Runciman, and "Lloyd
McGeorge."
[Sidenote: _Naval Misgivings_]
The mention of Lord Tweedmouth reminds one that the question of our
naval supremacy had entered on a new phase. As _Punch_ put it in his
"Charivaria" in November, 1907, "There seems to be a difference of
opinion between the Prince of Wales and Sir John Fisher. Some little
time ago His Royal Highness, speaking at the Guildhall, cried: 'Wake
up, England!' Sir John, speaking in the same place, has now issued the
advice: 'Sleep quietly in your beds.'"
In the spring of 1908 occurred the awkward incident of the Kaiser's
letter to Lord Tweedmouth on Naval Retrenchment. _Punch_, in his
"Essence of Parliament," benevolently minimizes the First Lord's
indiscretion, which, along with other causes, led to his withdrawal
from the Admiralty; at the same time there appeared some highly
ironical reflections on the attitude of the advocates of the
Two-Power-Standard. In an ingenious adaptation of Tennyson's ballad of
"The Revenge," Sir Thomas Howard refuses to fight because he is one
ship short of the Two-Power-Standard.
In early Victorian days the Duke of Wellington was commonly alluded to
as "the Duke" _par excellence_. In the opening years of the present
century, in political circles at any rate, when people spoke of "the
Duke" they always meant the Duke of Devonshire, and for reasons which
are tersely and correctly given in _Punch's_ brief memorial verses when
he died in March, 1908:--
If to have held his way with steadfast will,
Unspoiled of Fortune, deaf to praise or blame,
Asking no favour but to follow still
The patriot's single aim:--
If, in contempt of other pride of race,
By honesty that chose the nobler part,
Careless of fame's reward, to win a place
Near to the common heart:--
If these be virtues large, heroic, rare,
Then is it well with him, the dead, to-day,
Who leaves a public record clean and fair,
That Time shall not gainsay.
The tribute is one which, we think, would have appealed to the dead
statesman, a man of few words, but who in the words of another Duke,
the Duke of Argyll, was "firm as the rock, and clear as the crystal
that adorns the rock."
A few weeks later Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, broken in health,
resigned the Premiership, dying so soon afterwards that he virtually
died in harness. _Punch_ did not overstate things in describing his
death as "a common grief" to Liberals and Unionists, for he had
outlived the obloquy of party bitterness and revealed as Premier
qualities which his successor, Mr. Asquith, fittingly described when
he spoke of him as "our revered and trusted chief." By a strange and
happy irony of fate, the statesman who had opposed the Boer war was
responsible for the policy of reconciliation which might have been much
harder if that war had not been waged.
Germany loomed large on the political horizon in 1908. This was the
year of Mr. Lloyd George's visit to inquire into the working of the
scheme of national insurance, a visit which _Punch_ treated with
undisguised irony as a belated afterthought. It was also the year of
the Kaiser's famous interview, published in the _Daily Telegraph_, in
which he claimed credit for magnanimity to England during the Boer war,
with the result of annoying his Chancellor and having to consent to a
revision of his conception of the Imperial prerogative. _Punch's_ open
letter to "The Great Misunderstood" exhibits considerable scepticism of
his friendliness, and a set of verses, in the same spirit, are inspired
by the activities of the German Women's Navy League. An English M.P.
had been exhibiting a toy model of a German gunboat used by this
organization as a collecting box, and it was alleged that these toys
were handed about in German schools with the request: "Give us your
pence, so that we can thrash the English."
[Sidenote: _The Kaiser's Soliloquy_]
The Kaiser's fiftieth birthday is commemorated in a "Soliloquy in
Berlin," in which the Emperor boasts of having swept aside Bismarck
and repressed the "too clamorous people" by police, prison or exile,
and defends his impulsive loquacity against his critics. The King must
know best, and "while all the discontented loose their tongues and rave
against him, shall the King be still?" Moreover, he claims to have kept
the world from war:--
And I have kept the peace. Was that well done?
I know not, but I know I kept the peace,
I, whose blood boiled to hear the clash of swords,
At whose command a million men would spring
Obedient to the conflict; I, whose soul
was made for glorious battle, who could lead
Ten thousand thundering horsemen to the charge,
Have kept the peace, while others urged to war.
[Illustration: "MUMMY, WHAT'S THAT MAN FOR?"]
Simultaneously _Punch_ illustrates the growing patriotic fervour at
home. Golfers are becoming shy of being detected on their way to or
from the links by men in uniform. And _Punch_ praises _An Englishman's
Home_ as a "wonderful play," in which the case for national service
is presented "with rare tact, and void of offence even to the most
violent anti-militarist." Indeed, he goes so far as to admit that
the author's advocacy is impaired by his making the vulgar cheerful
young "slacker" delightfully human, while the good young patriot is
too stagey and talkative. German aggressiveness is illustrated in
the cartoon showing the German sailor adopting our "Jingo" song, the
copyright having expired. Editorially, though obliquely, _Punch_
deplores the subservience of vital questions of foreign policy to party
questions, and gives special praise to Sir Edward Grey. "Prenderby,"
who impersonates a detached view, pleads for a Coalition Cabinet--a
Ministry of all the patriots. In the spring of 1909 Mr. Asquith
figures as the Night Watchman who cries "All's well," but John Bull
from his window replies: "So you say. All the same, I shall sit up
for a bit." This was the time of the cry for more _Dreadnoughts_: "We
want Eight and we won't wait." The vote of censure on the Government
for their inadequate naval preparations was rejected by 353 votes to
135, and _Punch_ satirized the Labour Party's idea of battleships in
a pictorial representation of H.M.S. _Inoffensive_, _Innocuous_, etc.
It is curious to find in another of _Punch's_ editorial dialogues one
of the speakers constantly harping on what might happen in 1914 when
_Dreadnoughts_ would be obsolete; while the happy-go-lucky attitude of
the average subaltern towards a possible war is expressed in the wish
attributed to one of them: "Let's hope it will come between the polo
and the huntin'." Lord Roberts's National Service Bill was thrown out
in the Lords in July by a narrow majority. _Punch's_ artist is most
frankly honorific to Lord Roberts; but the summary of the debate given
by his Parliamentary representative is not even non-committal, for it
contrives to disparage Lord Milner while emphasizing the opposition of
the Duke of Northumberland and the caution of Lord Lansdowne.
[Sidenote: _Mr. Birrell as Chief Secretary_]
At the close of the year the impenitence of the Belgian administrators
of the Congo is held up to execration in the cartoon of the
slave-driver outside the European Hall of Deliberation, armed with a
whip, and saying, "I'm all right. They're still talking"; while a
naked slave lies helpless and prostrate in the foreground.
After a brief and ineffectual tenure of office at the Board of
Education, Mr. Birrell had, whether out of heroic self-sacrifice
or ignorance, accepted the most thankless and arduous of all
portfolios--that of the Irish Chief Secretaryship. For the sequel, one
has to turn to the Report of the Hardinge Committee of Inquiry into the
Dublin revolution of Easter, 1916--one of the most lacerating public
documents ever devoted to the dissection of Ministerial incompetence.
But in 1909 there was, no doubt, much that appealed to _Punch_ in the
notion of setting a professional humorist to govern a quick-witted
people. There never was a greater mistake. Much was and is forgiven to
a Minister who amuses the House, but the legacy of hatred, faithfully
cherished by those who forgot nothing but benefits received, was not
to be cancelled by epigrams which provoked the facile laughter of St.
Stephen's. There was, however, a probably quite unintended though extra
appropriateness in the title of the verses to him as "The Right Man in
the Wrong Place," for the chief ground of complaint against the Chief
Secretary was that he was conspicuous by his absence from Ireland at
all critical moments, and eclipsed the "Absentee landlords" at their
own game. In 1909 _Punch_ contented himself with showing Mr. Birrell
as a Lecturer on Old Age Pensions as a means of allaying discontent,
and reducing the method to absurdity. The boon was naturally popular,
since, as _Punch_ noted on good authority, it had been claimed and
received by more than 50,000 people not qualified under the Act.
[Illustration: THE CONSTITUTION IN THE MELTING POT
THE THREE WITCHES: "Double, double, toil and trouble!"
_Macbeth_, act IV, scene 1.
]
[Sidenote: _Wait and See_]
In 1910 two general elections, fought on questions of internal policy,
and the conflict over the Parliament Bill diverted attention from
foreign politics. Lord Rosebery's scheme for the reform of the Upper
Chamber is treated in light-hearted fashion in the cartoon of the
Selection Committee of the Peers' Royal Academy. Lord Curzon and Lord
Lansdowne criticize Lord Rosebery's "problem picture": Lord Halsbury
bluntly ejaculates, "Take it away." _Punch_, however, recognized the
serious intentions of the Government in "The Constitution in the
Melting Pot," where Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd
George are the three witches bending over the cauldron. The Unionists
had gained some ground in the January elections, but not nearly enough;
in December, when party feeling ran much higher, they failed to improve
their position, in spite of the offer of a Referendum to determine the
question of Tariff Reform, and of their insistent warnings as to the
danger of single-chamber Government. _Punch_, with some reserves, was
decidedly opposed to the Government programme, and a hostile critic
alike of the platform exuberance of Mr. Lloyd George and the "wait and
see" policy of Mr. Asquith:--
Schemes are shattered, plots are changed,
Plans arranged and re-arranged!
Words are eaten; every day
Broken pledges thrown away;
Here the riddle--where the key?
Wait and see!
Does his wandering course reveal
Only love of Britain's weal?
Does he toil through heavy sand
Seeking how to keep his land
Clean and prosperous and free?
Wait and see!
Is it that he turns his eyes
To a goal that needs disguise?
Just a paltry party score,
Checked by some about him, more--
More particular than he?
Wait and see!
Is he one whose wavering mind
Lightly veers to every wind,
Hither pitched and thither tossed,
While the country pays the cost
Of his flaccid vertebræ?
Wait and see!
Be it not that he has sold
All the faith that men should hold
Sacred; that he walks his ways,
Flogged by those whom he obeys,
At whose word he bows the knee--
Wait and see!
Wait and see, and wait again:
But the country waits in vain.
Waits for order--finding none;
Sees but duty left undone.
* * *
What will Britain's verdict be?
Wait and see!
[Illustration: THE NEW JOHN BULL
After the proposed "Federalization" of the British Isles.]
[Illustration: THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME
OUR MR. ASQUITH: "Five hundred coronets, dirt cheap! This line
of goods ought to make business a bit brisker, what?"
OUR MR. LLOYD GEORGE: "Not half; bound to go like hot cakes."]
[Illustration: "I SPY!"
_Both_ (together): "Peep-bo! I see you!"]
The proposed "federalization" of the British Isles is burlesqued
in the figure of John Bull, looking very much ashamed of himself,
arrayed in top-boots, with a kilt, a shamrock-sprigged waistcoat, a
Welsh steeple-crowned hat, and a shillelagh. The "People's Budget" is
disparaged in a picture showing the general apathy of those whom it was
intended to benefit. And as for the threatened creation of 500 Liberal
Peers to outvote the recalcitrant "backwoodsmen," _Punch_ satirized the
plan as a mere piece of window-dressing. In "The Chance of a Lifetime"
Mr. Asquith is seen arraying his shop-front with 500 coronets "dirt
cheap," Mr. Lloyd George as his assistant handing up the hat-boxes with
the comment, "Bound to go like hot cakes."
[Sidenote: _Death of King Edward_]
Perhaps the shrewdest comment on international politics made by _Punch_
in this year is to be found in his "Charivaria" column for November 9:--
Sir Edward Grey declared at Darlington that he saw no need for war.
Unfortunately, however, this is a great age for luxuries.
Here _Punch_ added a gloss to a wise truism. A remark in the Isle of
Man _Weekly Times_ at the beginning of the year touched the nadir of
sordid parochialism. Discussing the "inevitableness" of a war with
Germany, the writer observed: "It would mean the ruination of the
Island. It would kill all chances of a successful season, upon which
the Island depends." _Punch_ "lifted" the quotation, but here the text
beggared any comment.
By the assassination of the King and Crown Prince of Portugal in the
autumn, monarchy was ended in the country of our "Oldest Ally." _Punch_
denounced murder whether as the maker or unmaker of kings; and on
this occasion added to his condolences with the survivors a caustic
reference to France, who is shown briefly congratulating Portugal on
becoming a Republic; but she is "too busy to talk, having just escaped
another revolution at home"--an allusion to the railway strike and its
suppression by the drastic measures of M. Briand's Ministry. The death
of King Edward in May, at the height of his popularity and prestige,
was happily unattended by violence or upheaval, and left the position
of the Crown unshaken. _Punch_ was not one of those who regarded
King Edward as the initiator of our foreign policy, but gratefully
acknowledged his services in smoothing the path of his Ministers:--
At midnight came the Majesty of Death--
Kings of the earth abide this King's decree--
Sudden, and kindlier so, to seal the breath
And set the spirit free.
And now the Peace he held most near his heart,
That Peace to which his country's steps he led--
So well for us he played his royal part--
Broods o'er him lying dead.
[Illustration: TOWARDS THE RAPPROCHEMENT
CROWN PRINCE OF GERMANY (in India, writing home): "Dear Papa,
I am doing myself proud. These English aren't half bad fellows when you
get to know them."]
[Sidenote: _The German Menace_]
Thus passes Britain's crown from King to King,
Yet leaves secure a nation's deathless love,
Dearer than Empire, yea, a precious thing
All earthly crowns above.
In the winter of 1910 the German Crown Prince visited India, and was
welcomed and fêted wherever he went. _Punch_ regarded the tour as
making for _rapprochement_ and represented the Prince as an amiable
young sportsman writing home to "dear Papa" to say that he was "doing
himself proud and finding the English not half such bad fellows when
you get to know them." A more critical view of Germany's intentions is
revealed in the cartoon "The Blind Side," in which a German officer
applauds a Dutchman for the resolve to fortify his sea-front against
England as a true economy. It might be costly, but "see what you save
on the Eastern Frontier where there's nobody but us." A similar element
of misgiving is betrayed in "the New Haroun Al Raschid"--a dream of
Baghdad, "Made in Germany"--with the Kaiser in Oriental costume seated
on the engine of a "non-stop" express to the Persian Gulf.
[Illustration: A LITTLE-NAVY EXHIBIT
Design for a figure of Britannia, as certain people would like to see
her. (See reports of debate on the proposal to reduce expenditure on
the Navy.)]
[Sidenote: _The War in Tripoli_]
In the spring of 1911 the proposed reduction of expenditure on the Navy
inspired _Punch's_ "Little-Navy Exhibit"--a design for a figure of
Britannia, "as certain people would like to see her, "with a pointless
trident, diminutive shield and helmet, in spectacles and elastic-sided
boots, leading a starveling lion with its tail between its legs.
Simultaneously Germany's idea of the _Pax Germanica_ is satirized in
a picture of the Teuton Dovecote, with cannons pointing from each
door, surmounted by the German Eagle warning the Arbitration bird: "No
foreign doves required; we hatch our own, thank you." Our relations
with the U.S.A. are symbolized in "Dis-armageddon," President Taft
and Sir Edward Grey shaking hands over a grave with the notice, "All
hatchets may be buried here." Hostility to the "Declaration of London"
had grown throughout the year. It had been described as "a sword for
the Unionist Party"; picture posters represented the destruction under
it of neutral ships carrying food to Great Britain, and _Punch_,
without going the lengths of the _Morning Post_, the Imperial Maritime
League, or Mr. T. Gibson Bowles, was far from enthusiastic over its
ratification. "I'm sure," his Britannia remarks, looking at herself in
the glass, "my costumiers want me to look my best. But I have a sort
of feeling that this thing may rather hamper my sea-legs." Germany's
complaints against the policy of "isolating" or "surrounding" her
were now frequently heard, and are unsympathetically treated in the
portrait of the German officer in full uniform, with his knuckles to
his eyes, dolorously protesting, "Nobody loves me--and they all want
to trample on me!" Nor was _Punch_ inclined to look more favourably
on Italy's policy of aggrandisement in North Africa. The inglorious
war with Turkey in Cyrenaica brought no credit to the combatants or
to the Concert of Europe. _Punch_ summed up the situation by showing
Dame Europa (of the Hague Academy for Young Gentlemen) looking sourly
with folded arms at two boys "scrapping" in a corner, and observing,
"I thoroughly disapprove of this, and as soon as ever it's over I
shall interfere to put a stop to it." The conduct of the war led to
ugly charges against the Italians, and in "The Euphemisms of Massacre"
Turkey, surveying a scene of carnage at Tripoli, sarcastically remarks:
"When _I_ was charged with this kind of thing in Bulgaria, nobody
excused _me_ on the ground of 'military exigencies'!"
The Anglo-Russian agreement in regard to Persia was defended by Sir
Edward Grey in November, 1911, as having ended friction between the
two Powers. _Punch_ thought otherwise, and in December he showed the
Bear cheerfully sitting on the tail of the Persian Cat while the
British Lion remarks: "If we hadn't such a thorough understanding
I might almost be tempted to ask what you're doing there with our
little play-fellow." Yet Sir Edward Grey's explanations satisfied the
Unionists better than the advanced Liberals and the Labour Party.
Already the Government were being attacked for seeing events through
French spectacles, and in a memorable cartoon _Punch_ recorded
the emergence of the demand for "The New Diplomacy." An "Advanced
Democrat," having made his way into a room with "Private. Members Only"
on the door, remarks to the Foreign Secretary: "Look here, we've
decided that this isn't to be a private room any more; and you're to
put your cards on the table and then we can all take a hand." Whereon
Sir Edward Grey replies: "What, and let my opponents see them too?" In
this context one may be permitted to recall a picture, published about
the same time, of a constable applying a familiar test to a belated
reveller protesting his sobriety:--
CONSTABLE: "Can you say 'British Constitution'?"
BELATED ONE (_with strongest "Die-Hard" convictions_): "There
ishn't one now!"
_Punch's_ Almanack for 1912 treats of current events in a light-hearted
spirit. There is one picture, however, with an ominous and prophetic
heading, "Period--The War of 1914," in which an irate M.F.H. abuses the
invaders--unmistakable Germans--for heading the fox. The artist, Mr. J.
L. C. Booth, a very gallant gentleman, fell in Gallipoli in 1915. But
there were other and more unmistakable omens at the opening of the New
Year, when M. Caillaux, before resigning, had attempted to reconstruct
his Cabinet with M. Delcassé as Foreign Minister--a situation typified
by _Punch_ in his cartoon of "The return of the scapegoat." M. Caillaux
resigned under a cloud; M. Delcassé failed to form a Government,
but remained on as Minister of Marine under M. Poincaré. For the
moment Germany's troubles at home diverted attention from her foreign
relations. The demands of the Socialists are illustrated in the
dialogue between the Kaiser on the summit of a rocky peak and a figure
climbing up to the summit. "What business have you here?" asks the
Kaiser, and the Socialist answers: "I, too, want 'a place in the sun.'"
[Illustration: THE NEW DIPLOMACY
ADVANCED DEMOCRAT (to Foreign Secretary): "Look here, we've
decided that this isn't to be a private room any more and you're to put
your cards on the table and then we can all take a hand." FOREIGN
SECRETARY: "What, and let my opponents see them too?"]
In March the Navy estimates issued by Mr. Churchill as First Lord were
expressly stated to be conditional upon the naval programmes of other
nations: _Punch_ accordingly showed him as the Plain Dealer hoisting
as his signal "England expects that every nation will do its duty--by
not increasing its armaments." The rival views on naval concentration
are shown a little later in the "Geography Lesson" given by "Dr."
Kitchener--Lord Kitchener had gone to Egypt as Agent-General in the
previous year--to Master Churchill and Master Asquith. "What do you
know about the Mediterranean?" he asks, and Master Churchill replies:
"Well, it looks a nice place for ships; but, to tell you the truth,
we've been concentrating our attention on the North Sea lately, haven't
we, Herbert?" and Master Asquith replies: "That is so."
The appointment of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein as German Ambassador
in London was well received. He was Germany's strongest diplomatist.
He had raised the prestige of his country to an unexampled pitch at
Constantinople without losing the respect of his British colleagues,
and was credited with the desire to promote a better understanding with
England. Unfortunately he died suddenly before _Punch's_ expectations
could be realized. Meanwhile Mr. Haldane at the War Office had "turned
turtle (dove)" to such an extent that in _Punch's_ view his occupation
was nearly gone. Yet the travesty of Dicksee's "Harmony," with the
Kaiser playing on a Krupp organ to a stout and adoring Germany, is
by no means reassuring. Consols were steadily "slumping," and the
organized resistance of Ulster was already regarded as serious.
_Punch's_ views in the course of the next few years underwent a good
deal of modification, but he was never sympathetic to Sir Edward
Carson. When the old cry, "Ulster will fight," was raised to discredit
the son of the statesman who had invented the phrase, _Punch_ called it
"a silly game. If Ulster fights against free speech, then Ulster will
be wrong." When the "Covenant" of Resistance to Home Rule was signed
by the Ulster Loyalists in September, 1912, _Punch_ satirized their
action under the heading "Ulster will write," with General Carson on
horseback, waving a pen and crying, "Up, nibs, and at 'em!"
[Illustration: THE BOILING POINT]
_Punch_, it is to be feared, did not credit the Balkan League with
exalted ideals in entering on the conflict with Turkey in 1912.
Bulgaria, in his cartoon of August 28, challenges Turkey, at grips with
Italy, to mortal combat, and Turkey replies: "Certainly," adding to
Italy, "I hope you won't think me discourteous if I cannot continue
to give you my undivided attention." Two months later we are shown
the Great Powers all sitting on the seething pot of "Balkan troubles"
but unable to keep the lid down. By November a "New Eagle" with four
heads--Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece--is seen approaching the
door of the Council of Europe. More acute in its reading of the signs
of the times is the picture of Turkey, a sinister figure, rubbing his
hands as he reads the placard: "Austria threatens Serbia. European
Crisis," and saying, "Good! If only all those other Christian nations
get at one another's throats, I may have a dog's chance yet"--a
situation realized by the launching of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia
in July, 1914. Early in December an armistice was agreed to, and by
the middle of the month a conference of Balkan delegates assembled in
London. The deliberations of the Peace Conference continued till the
end of the year, but in the Christmas cartoon of "Prince Charming and
the Sleeping Beauty," Sir Edward Grey has not yet succeeded in inducing
Peace to wake up. As a matter of fact, the Conference was suspended on
January 6, 1913, on the 26th the Balkan delegates broke off further
negotiations with the Porte, and on February 3 war was resumed.
_Punch's_ comment on the threatened intervention of Roumania was
severe but not unmerited; the "Bayard of Bukharest" observes politely
to Bulgaria, "I am sure, dear old friend, you will wish to recompense
me for not stabbing you in the back from behind in the previous bout,
and I am therefore proposing to anticipate your kindness by making off
with your coat (Silistria)." Sir Edward Grey's hope, expressed in the
House of Commons in March, that Turkey would now confine its energies
to "consolidating" itself in Asia Minor, met with ironical approval
from _Punch_, who in the following month represented Turkey responding
to Europa's complacent assurance that the war was "practically over"
with the still more complacent comment: "My felicitations, Madam.
Everything seems to point to the outbreak of a sanguinary peace." And
unfortunately the cynical anticipation was only too well verified in
the sequel. King Nicholas's defiance marked the opening stages of the
new conflict--typified in the Montenegrin bantam blocking the road
for the great Powers, but getting out of the way at the last moment.
Skutari was occupied by troops of the Powers on May 14, and on May
30 the Treaty of Peace between the Allies and the Porte was signed
at St. James's Palace. But _Punch_, in his cartoon of "Peace comes
to Town," was not unfair in making Sir Edward Grey adjure the fair
damsel riding behind him to sit close and not slip off as on the last
occasion they fared that way together. So many outstanding questions
remained unsettled that a pacific solution was impossible; the Balkan
war was resumed on June 30. Bulgaria put up a great fight against the
Serbians and Greeks, but the advance of the fresh Roumanian army into
her territory rendered her position desperate. _Punch_ had already
shown Turkey offering its services as benevolent mediator to the Balkan
"allies." Before the end of the month the Turks had re-entered the
field and re-occupied Adrianople only three months after they had been
driven out. "Quite like old times, being back here," the Turk says to
Dame Europa in _Punch's_ cartoon, and when Europa replies, "Ah! but
you'll be kicked out, you know," he retorts calmly, "Well, that'll
be like old times too." An armistice was signed on July 31, and the
second Treaty of Peace was signed by Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro
and Serbia on August 10. Bulgaria, whose losses in the two wars had
been very heavy, was seriously penalized by the new adjustment of
boundaries and the consequent loss of territory. Roumania was cordially
congratulated by the Kaiser for her "wise and statesmanlike policy,"
and Greece, who gained a vast acquisition of territory around Salonika,
expressed through the mouth of King Constantine--King George had been
assassinated at Salonika in March--her indebtedness to Germany for
the war training of her officers. _Punch's_ comment was sardonic. In
"_Deutschland über Alles_" the King of the Hellenes observes to the
Kaiser, "Our success, as you know, was entirely due to you," and the
Kaiser replies: "Thanks, thanks," adding, aside, "I suppose he can't be
referring to our organization of the Turkish army."
[Sidenote: _The Balkan Cockpit_]
The attitude of the Concert of Powers over the question of Adrianople
is indicated in the cartoon in which Sir Edward Grey tells the Turk,
the man in possession, that he will have to go, but that the Powers
haven't decided who was to turn him out. European intervention proving
hopeless, the matter was left for direct negotiations between Bulgaria
and Turkey, with the result that the new frontier gave Turkey about one
hundred square miles more territory together with Adrianople. _Punch_,
on the eve of the signature of the treaty, anticipated the triumph of
Turkey, who is seen pasting up, on the door of the Hotel Adrianople,
a notice, "Under the same old management," over a previous notice,
"Under entirely new management," and expressing regret at being unable
to oblige Europa by retiring. Europa, with the Treaty of London in her
hand, saves her face by replying with dignity: "Not at all. You may
remember that at the very start I strongly insisted on the _status
quo_." The Powers had decided at the close of 1912 that Albania was
to receive autonomy, but the International Commission of Control was
unable to check guerrilla fighting between Serbians and Albanians.
Europa found it, in _Punch's_ phrase, a very difficult task to hush
the infant Albania; and Prince William of Wied, chosen by the Powers
as sovereign, or "Mpret" of Albania in November, 1913, excited more
ridicule than sympathy during his brief and troubled tenure of office.
The Balkan wars, which began in an organized attempt to liberate
Christians from the Turkish yoke, developed into an internecine
struggle for aggrandisement amongst the members of the League. The
Balkan Peninsula unhappily justified its description as "the cockpit of
Europe," or, to quote the words of a traveller who visited it between
the first and second wars: "one vast madhouse, where sanity seems
ridiculous and folly wisdom." The Treaty of Bukharest, so far from
allaying discord, only fomented the ambitions which precipitated the
world conflict.
[Sidenote: _Ulster Bars the Way_]
France's reversion to three years' service--applauded by _Punch_ in
his cartoon "_Pour la Patrie_"--had been countered by the German Army
Bill introduced by the new German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, in a
somewhat ominous speech in April. _Punch_ had already symbolized the
acceleration of the armament race in his picture of Hans and Jacques,
each bowed down under a tremendous burden of warlike equipment,
exclaiming in rueful unison: "And I hear there's more to come."
Mr. Churchill's scheme of a naval holiday inspired hopes which were
partially shared by _Punch_, but damped by the German Chancellor's
speech on the ground that the idea had not been taken up as practical
in England either by Parliament or public opinion. The renewal of
Mr. Churchill's suggestion later in the year met with an even more
unfavourable reception. Admiral Tirpitz makes his _début_ in _Punch_ as
an apostle of German naval expansion; General Bernhardi had followed up
his notorious book on _Germany and the Next War_ with articles pointing
to Ireland as an ally of Germany in the enemy's camp; and the outrages
on Alsatian civilians by German officers at Zabern and Metz emphasized
the danger of militarism at home as well as abroad. The incident was
historic because it was the first notable example of the cleavage
between the army and the people in Germany, the Radicals and Socialists
having carried a vote of censure in the Reichstag against the Imperial
Chancellor. The war closed all ranks for a time; but Zabern was a straw
which showed how the wind was beginning to blow--the wind which became
a tempest in the autumn of 1918.
If Great Britain in 1913 was not exactly a cockpit or a madhouse, she
was not without her domestic troubles. One of the earliest cartoons
of the year exhibits the Home Rule Bill advancing under the shield of
the Parliament Act. The advance was barred by Ulster, for this was the
year of the formation of the Provisional Government, the enrolment of
the Ulster volunteers, proclamations against the importation of arms,
the emergence of "King Carson," and a general recrudescence of party
acrimony. _Punch_, in a laudable desire to see ourselves as others see
us, depicted in "A Nation of Fire-Eaters" a peaceful Teuton horrified
by a placard enumerating all the "armies" in Great Britain--the Ulster
Volunteer army, Miss Sylvia Pankhurst's army, Mr. Devlin's army,
etc. The spirit of the picture is ironical, but it throws a light on
Bernhardi's reading of the signs of the times in Ireland. In July Mr.
Asquith is seen endeavouring to cajole the Orange Girl, who looks
at him sullenly; and another picture in the same number shows Sir
Edward Carson arming "Loyal Ulster." In October the possibility of
a settlement on the basis of the exclusion of North-East Ulster is
indicated in "Second Thoughts"; Mr. John Redmond is shown driving four
pigs--Connaught, Munster, Leinster and S.W. Ulster--through the gate
of Home Rule. N.E. Ulster is heading in a contrary direction, and Mr.
Redmond wonders whether he should "lave this contrairy little divil
loose the way he'd come back by himself aftherwards." A month or so
later Mr. Birrell warns Carson not to tempt him or "on my honour and
conscience I shall have to put you through this." _This_ being the
"ever open door" of a prison with the inscription "All fear abandon ye
who enter here"--a reference to the speedy release of Mr. Jim Larkin,
the turbulent leader of the Dublin strike. Here the satire is aimed at
the futile leniency of the Chief Secretary to all disturbers of the
peace. Three weeks later, alluding to the prohibited importation of
arms into Ireland, _Punch_ ridicules the inconsistency of Sir Edward
Carson, who, armed himself to the teeth, is warning Customs Officer
Birrell to search Mr. Redmond, a harmless-looking passenger, carrying a
small dispatch-case: "That's just the sort of bag he'd have a couple of
howitzers concealed in." Mr. Bonar Law's support of Sir Edward Carson's
campaign is ingeniously shown in "The New Brunswicker"--after Millais'
well-known picture--deserting the Tariff Reform lady, "but only for a
time," in order to go to the Ulster Wars.
[Illustration: "OLIVER ASKS FOR" LESS
JOHN BULL (fed up): "Please, sir, need I have quite so many
good things?"
MR. LLOYD GEORGE: "Yes, you must; and there's more to come."]
The last cartoon of the year, "The Third Stage," exhibits the main
legislative preoccupations of the year in the form of a coach with
the three Bills--Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment and Plural
Voting--seated abreast under the hood of the Parliament Act with 1914
as postilion. _Punch's_ view was that the electorate as a whole were
somewhat weary of the legislative activities of the Government. In 1912
he had represented John Bull as Oliver asking not for more but less;
in the summer of 1913 he showed John Bull disappointed with Mr. Lloyd
George's "rare and refreshing fruit" on the ground that it contained
"too many pips," _à propos_ of Mr. Asquith's promise to amend the
Insurance Act. The conscientious M.P., in the cartoon of a few weeks
later, who presents himself at the Pay Office expressing his fear
that he won't "really be earning his salary this year with no autumn
session," is bluntly told by Paymaster Bull, "sick with legislation,"
not to worry about that. "You go and take a nice long holiday; the
country needs it." There were other causes of weariness besides
excessive legislation. The Marconi scandal was an incubus which lay
heavily on the Government throughout the year. In the early stages of
the inquiry, _Punch_ showed Rumour presenting her season-ticket, and
disgusted at being denied admittance, as the Committee were about to
"get to business." The amount of space devoted to the question in the
Press is satirized by the announcement of the forthcoming publication
of "The Marconi Affair in a Nut-shell," by Messrs. Garvin and Maxse, in
968 pages. When the Report appeared, _Punch_ thought the whitewash had
been laid on too thick:
"More Whitewash!" said the Falconer,[2]
Doing the Party trick;
"Throw it about in bucketfuls;
Some of it's bound to stick."
"Very poor art!" the public cried;
"You've laid it on too thick!"
Even more hostile is the cartoon "Blameless Telegraphy," in which
John Bull addresses Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs, dressed as
telegraph boys with "Marconi, U.S.A.," on their caps: "My boys, you
leave the court without a stain--except, perhaps, for the whitewash."
There was no whitewash in Lord Robert Cecil's minority Report; and the
reverberations of the Marconi affair did not die down for many months,
nor did _Punch_ wish that they should--witness his ironic cartoon of
the Master of Elibank, luxuriating in a hammock in tropical Bogota, and
expressing his keen disappointment that the inquiry had been closed.
[Footnote 2: Mr. James Falconer, the Liberal Member for Forfarshire,
1909-1918.]
[Illustration: THE WINGS OF VICTORY
BRITANNIA: "These things seem all the rage in Paris and
Berlin; and I really can't afford to be out of it!"]
_A propos_ of the theft of the "Mona Lisa" portrait from the Louvre,
_Punch_ portrayed Mr. Asquith as "Il Giocondo" with an inscrutable and
enigmatic smile. The internal embarrassments of the Cabinet certainly
must have taxed the smiling capacities of the Premier to the utmost,
to say nothing of Ulster and the militant suffragists. Yet when Dame
Curzon is depicted tempting Master Asquith to take a joy-ride on a
donkey labelled "General Election," Master Asquith replies that he is
not taking any violent exercise this season, but thinks of waiting till
1915. There are not a few people who in the interests of the country
are very thankful that the Liberals were still in power and not in
opposition when the great decision had to be made a year later. There
is a touch of unconscious and complacent prophecy in the picture of
Britannia girding on "The Wings of Victory"--the new rage in Paris and
Berlin--"because she can't afford to be out of it." It took us four
years to make good the title, but it was done in the end.
The gap that separates us from pre-war years is illustrated in many
curious ways. For example, in March, 1913, _Punch_ has a picture of a
lady asking to have a cheque for £15 cashed all in gold "if you've got
it." In those golden days of peace such a question was simply a mark of
feminine ignorance; two years later it would have argued insanity.
[Sidenote: _England's Detachment_]
In the seven months that remained before the outbreak of the Great
War you may search the pages of _Punch_ in vain for evidences of
a provocative attitude towards Germany or of anything indicating
national preparedness for the conflict. _Punch_, as a mirror of
middle-class public opinion, faithfully reflected our domestic troubles
and preoccupations. International politics are conspicuously absent
from the Almanack of Christmas, 1913, except for a picture of Sir
Edward Grey producing doves from a hat labelled Balkan Crisis, and
portraits of Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the Sultan of Turkey and the
King of Montenegro, offering tickets of admission to the Concert of
Europe. Comment, criticism and satire are monopolized by Ulster,
labour troubles, Marconi and oil scandals, the dancing mania, social
extravagance and the spread of the cinema habit. The first cartoon of
the New Year of 1914 is devoted to Mr. Lloyd George's land campaign;
there is nothing aggressive in the picture of Mr. Churchill as a
sailor surrounded by a Tory chorus singing, "You've made me love you;
I didn't want to do it"--_à propos_ of the Navy Estimates; nothing
provocative in "The Price of Admiralty," where Britannia, outside a
door marked "Cabinet Council (Private and Controversial)," is seen
waiting to know whether she is to lay down the ships she wants, on
which _Mr. Punch_ adds "or lay down your trident." No serious misgiving
is aroused by Turkey's purchase of a _Dreadnought_, and _Punch's_
comment on General Leonard Wood's pessimistic report on the practically
unarmed condition of the U.S.A. army, if not exactly unsympathetic, is
light-hearted and detached.
Home Rule and the attitude of Ulster diverted the eyes of England
from the Continent. The Zabern incident did not escape _Punch's_ eye,
but his comment, which suggests an imaginary interchange of garrisons
between Germany and England, was too fantastic to be really pointed;
and the announcement that Sir Edward Grey would accompany the King
on his visit to Paris in April passes with a brief compliment to the
Foreign Minister on his well-earned little treat.
There is an excellent burlesque account of a Cabinet Council in
February, illustrating the temperaments of the different Ministers--the
imperturbable and irrepressible equanimity of Mr. Lloyd George; the
inarticulate disapproval of Lord Crewe; the egotism of Mr. Burns; the
bland ignorance of Mr. Birrell. But foreign politics are not once
mentioned: the Premier and his Cabinet are chiefly concerned with
discussing their detractors in the Press and the Ulster problem.
Incidentally Mr. Lloyd George scouts the proposal to revive the
Heptarchy because it was a Saxon, not a Celtic institution. This is
all irresponsible burlesque, but it was highly intelligent burlesque.
In Parliament, members were not worrying about the German menace.
They were more interested in Lord Murray's statement about the
Marconi business, the debate on contributions to the Party funds and
the distribution of honours; above all, in the Government's plan of
amending Home Rule so as to conciliate Ulster. _Punch_, still inclined
to be critical of the Northern loyalists, begs Miss Ulster not to turn
up her nose at the pretty bouquet of concessions offered her by the
Premier, but to have a good look at them first.
The Government certainly did not expect war, but whether by lucky
chance or in a moment of wise prevision, a momentous decision was taken
by the Admiralty in March:--
"The Admiralty has decided that, in the place of the grand
manoeuvres this year, there shall be a surprise mobilisation. Last
year's manoeuvres were, we believe, something of a fiasco, but to
ensure the success of the surprise mobilisation, five months' previous
notice is given."
_Punch's_ comment, at any rate, is free from any bellicose imputations.
He, at least, had no inkling of the larger surprise which was to be
sprung on us from another quarter. The Supplementary Naval Estimates,
raising the total to 48 millions, and providing for reserves of oil
fuel and the very modest new aircraft programme, were passed by a six
to one majority. Labour members registered a protest, but nothing
was said about Germany. Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment and Plural
Voting still were the burning questions of the hour. As for Home Rule,
it is strange to read how, in the debate on the second reading in
March, Mr. William O'Brien referred to Ulster as "the new 'Orange'
Free State, which has just received official recognition." _Punch_
records the phrase; also the vote of censure brought against Mr. Lloyd
George "on grounds of repeated inaccuracy, particularly on account of
his ineradicable tendency to speak disrespectfully of dukes"--a vote
negatived by none too large a majority. Mr. Balfour meanwhile was
disporting himself at Nice, and his absence was much commented on:
it was not exactly a case of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning;
but _Punch_, under the heading of "Mr. Balfour's Mixed Double Life,"
made fair game of his giving up to lawn tennis what was meant for his
country. Another conspicuous absentee from England at this period of
storm and stress was Lord Northcliffe. A notice appeared in the _Daily
Mail_ in the following words:--
Lord Northcliffe rarely sees and never reads a letter, being mainly
nowadays engaged in golf and travel.
_Punch_ treated the announcement with a sad want of respect, as who
should say, "_O si sic semper!_" The most curious thing in _Punch's_
pages for March is the picture of the Recruiting Sergeant addressing a
rather loutish-looking youth: "Now I can tell character when I see it,
so mark my words. If you join now, you'll be a swankin' general in five
years." Thus not for the first time did _Punch_, writing as a jester,
prove an unconscious prophet.
[Sidenote: _An Unconscious Prophecy_]
[Illustration: "THERE'S MANY A SLIP ..."]
Credit is assigned to Mr. Churchill for "calling in a new element to
redress the balance of the old"--Neptune emerging from the deep to
gaze at his new allies, the aeroplane and airship. But attention was
abruptly switched off from the Admiralty to the War Office by the
troubles at the Curragh Camp, the threatened resignations of General
Gough and other officers as a protest against the coercion of Ulster,
and by the blunder and resignation of Mr. Seely. _Punch_ applauded the
spirit both of Ulster and the Army: in his cartoon, "Many a slip,"
he showed Mr. Asquith, while offering the cup to Mr. John Redmond,
confronted by a hand with a sword marked "Army Resignations." _Punch_
recognized the promptitude with which Mr. Asquith came to the rescue
by doubling the functions of Premier and War Minister, but was less
benevolent in his gloss on the comment of a faithful supporter who
declared that "the best we can do is to keep our eye on Mr. Asquith":--
BALLAD OF THE WATCHFUL EYE
O keep your eye on David,
The demigod of Wales,
Before whose furious onset
Dukes turn their timid tails;
Whom Merioneth mystics
Praise in delirious distichs
And, matched with whose statistics,
Munchausen's glory pales.
O keep your eye on Winston,
And mind you keep it tight,
For nearly every Saturday
You'll find he takes to flight;
Now eloquent and thrilling,
Now simply cheap or filling,
And now bent on distilling
The purest Party spite.
O keep your eye on Haldane,
Ex-Minister of War,
The sleek and supple-minded
And suave Lord Chancellor;
Whose brain, so keen and subtle,
Moves swifter than a shuttle,
Obscuring, like the cuttle,
Things that were plain before.
* * *
O keep your eye on Birrell,
So wholly free from guile,
Conspicuous by his absence
From Erin's peaceful isle;
Who wakes from floor to rafter
The House to heedless laughter,
Careless of what comes after
Can he but raise a smile.
O keep your eye on Masterman,
Dear David's henchman leal,
Whose piety and "uplift"
Makes ribald Tories squeal;
In every public function
Displaying the conjunction
Of perfect moral unction
With perfect Party zeal.
Last, keep your eye on Asquith
And he will bring you through,
No matter what his colleagues
May say or think or do;
For in the dirtiest weather,
He moulted not a feather
And safely kept together
His variegated crew.
_Mr. Punch_ certainly kept his eye on Lord Haldane to good
purpose--witness the stanzas "To the Cabinet (suggested by a recent
doctoring of Hansard)":--
The judgment of the People's "Yea" or "Nay"
Wherefore should virtuous men like _you_ shun?
You are--or so you confidently say--
Prepared for Dissolution.
Then snatch a hint from Haldane's little fake,
Who glanced with eye alert and beady at
His speech in proof, and, for appearance' sake
Added the word "_immediate_."
To persons with short memories it may be needful to recall the fact
that, when challenged in the House of Lords, Lord Haldane had said on
March 23:--
"No orders were issued, no orders are likely to be issued, and no
orders will be issued for the coercion of Ulster."
[Illustration: THE ULSTER KING-AT-ARMS]
But when his speech was printed in the weekly record, it was found that
the word "immediate" had been added before "coercion," thus showing
that self-protection is often the most dangerous and damaging policy.
[Sidenote: _Ulster and the "Plot"_]
_Punch_ had applauded the spirit of Ulster, but he did not approve of
the uncompromising policy of her leader. In "The Fight for the Banner,"
Mr. John Redmond and Sir Edward Carson are shown pulling the flag of
"Peace for Ireland" asunder, while John Bull remarks: "This tires
me. Why can't you carry it between you? Neither of you can carry it
alone." By way of contrast, one may note the cartoon "After Ten Years,"
with France and Britannia clasping hands in celebration of the solidity
and endurance of the _Entente_.
"For the third time in the course of three successive Sessions the
Home Rule Bill passes the second reading stage." So _Punch_ wrote of
the "business done" in Parliament on April 6. But the arbitrament of
the vote did not allay the suspicions of the Opposition. April and
May were given over to acrimonious discussions of the alleged "Plot"
by the Government to overawe Ulster by armed occupation. _Punch_
admired the imperturbability of Mr. Asquith, who is shown combining
in his own person the _rôles_ of prisoner, judge and jury. Mr. Austen
Chamberlain demanded a judicial inquiry into the "Plot," but was beaten
by eighty votes in a House of 608 members. Simultaneously _Punch_
depicted Sir Edward Carson as the Ulster King-at-Arms, armed and
defiant, and declared through the mouth of John Bull that "he was not
going to have Civil War to please either Radical Extremists or Tory
Die-Hards." Simultaneously, too, _Punch_ printed a most eulogistic
notice of Mr. Norman Angell's _Foundations of International Policy_,
in which the reviewer declared that if he were a politician he would
"move for a further supplementary Naval Estimate to expend the price
of a _Dreadnought_ in distributing this fighting pacificist's book to
all journalists, attachés, clergymen, bazaar-openers, club oracles,
professors, headmasters, and other obvious people in both Germany and
Britain."
Mr. Lloyd George's last Budget topped two hundred millions, but showed
a small surplus. _Punch_ portrayed the income-tax payer as an old cow
complaining that "it isn't milking, it's murder." The enhancement of
the death duties _Punch_ regarded as a raising of the fares to Styx,
which would cost the Plutocratic Shades more.
The debates on the Home Rule Bill suggested to _Punch_ a contrast
between 1906 and 1914, the efforts of the Liberals to improve the
situation having only resulted in turmoil, discontent and bitter
recrimination. The third reading was carried on May 25 by 351 votes to
274, Mr. William O'Brien having cheerfully remarked that the Bill,
if it became an Act, would be born with a rope round its neck. Heated
discussions took place over the refusal of the Government to disclose
the details of the Amending Bill. The Speaker had invited Mr. Asquith
to supply further particulars, as the Opposition had insistently
demanded, but, according to _Punch_, the Premier's luminous and
courteous response did not add a syllable to the information already
vouchsafed, whereupon Mr. Bonar Law had asked the Speaker to "let the
curtain be rung down on a contemptible farce." The third reading of the
Welsh Disestablishment Bill had been carried a week earlier; the Plural
Voters Bill passed the same stage three weeks later. For the rest, the
main topics which engaged attention in the House were gun-running,
Suffragist outrages, and the latest amendment of the much-amended
Insurance Act. "Scenes" were not infrequent, and _Punch_ deplores the
"pot-house manners" displayed by members on both sides. The emergence
of the National Volunteers, a counterblast to the force enrolled by
the Ulster Loyalists, added to the general disquiet, but there were no
public signs of any general awakening to the impending catastrophe. Sir
Percy Scott's letter on the submarine menace created a considerable
stir, but _Punch_, like the majority of his readers, refused to treat
it seriously. The efficiency of the Territorial Army as seen from the
inside is illustrated in the _cri de coeur_ ascribed to one of the
rank and file during the course of the manoeuvres: "Thank 'Evin we've
got a Nivy!" There is a jocular reference in mid-June to the toast
"Der Tag" in German war vessels, and an unconscious prophecy in the
warning of an old Lancashire lady to a young friend intending to go
by an excursion to London: "Doan't thee goà to London: thee stop in
owd England." On June 10, it may be added, a "Peace Centenary Costume
Ball" was held in the Albert Hall in honour of the 100th anniversary
of peace between Great Britain and the United States, and the lady who
represented Britannia carried a palm branch instead of the customary
trident.
[Sidenote: _Midsummer Madness_]
With the opening of July the London season was in full fling; the
pleasure-hunt had never been so unbridled; midsummer madness was at
its height. Society, bejewelled as never before, was given up to the
cult of the Russian Ballet and the worship of Chaliapine. _Punch's_
"Holiday Pages" make strange reading, emphasizing, as they do, the
passion for amusement, freak and fancy costumes, the cinema craze and
"full joy days." _Punch's_ staff did not escape the infection, and one
of them writes from a golfing resort:--
"_Carpe diem_"--yes, that's the motto.
"Work be jiggered!" and likewise "What ho!"
_I'm not going back till I've jolly well got to!_
Strauss's _Joseph_ had been produced in June by the Russian Ballet, and
lent point to "Blanche's" letter on the "Friendship Fête," an imaginary
entertainment organized "to celebrate our not having had any scraps
with any foreign country for some little time" by the performance of a
Kamschatkan opera-ballet. The satire is effective, but it is largely
unconscious or subconscious. The Smith-Carpentier fight made a greater
impression on the man in the street than the murder of the Crown Prince
Ferdinand at Sarajevo.
The death of Mr. Chamberlain, who, after long enforced absence from the
political arena, passed away on July 2, hushed political strife for a
moment. All sections were united in deploring the tragic eclipse of a
great fighter and a great man who, in _Punch's_ words, "loved his Party
well but loved his country more."
Turkey appears early in the month as unready to fight Greece before the
autumn, "when the ships come home." The cartoons until the last issue
in July deal with the Budget and Home Rule. Mr. Asquith on July 13
announced the winding up of business; there would be no autumn session,
but Parliament would reassemble early in the winter. On July 29 the
chief cartoon, "What of the Dawn?" deals with the anxieties of Ireland,
and the most important event chronicled in the "Essence of Parliament"
was the Premier's announcement that, on the initiative of the King,
a conference on the Ulster question between the British and Irish
parties had been arranged to meet at Buckingham Palace.
[Illustration: THE POWER BEHIND
AUSTRIA (at the ultimatum stage): "I don't quite like his
attitude. Somebody must be backing him."]
[Sidenote: _On the Eve_]
[Illustration: MUTUAL SERVICE
BRITANNIA (to Peace): "I've been doing my best for you in
Europe. Please do your best for me in Ireland."]
_Punch_ was not wholly blind to the peril of Serbia. In his second
cartoon, "The Power Behind," we see the Austrian Eagle threatening
the little Serbian bird and suspecting that someone must be backing
him--the someone being the Russian Bear hidden behind a rock. The
immediate situation was not misread, but _Punch_, in his own words,
was in an "irrepressible holiday mood," and little thought that on the
day on which his cartoon appeared Austria would declare war on Serbia.
Yet even this warning did not bring home to _Punch_ the imminence
of the "Grand Smash." The makers of wars have no consideration for
the producers of weekly papers. The issue, dated August 5, had gone
to press before Germany declared war on Russia and France, and was
published only a few hours before Great Britain was at war with
Germany. The cartoon of the week shows Britannia appealing to Peace
to do the best for her in _Ireland_, having done her best for Peace
in Europe.[3] The "Essence of Parliament" is more concerned with
gun-running at Clontarf than the prospect of a European convulsion,
and the verses on the "Logic of Ententes: composed on what looks like
the eve of a general European War," and intended to reflect the views
of an average British patriot, are governed by the feeling that the
whole thing is "an awful bore." Britons "never can be Slavs," and the
last couplet runs thus:--
"Well, if I must, I shall have to fight
For the love of a bounding Balkanite."
An even more detached and ironical note is sounded in the fantasy
headed "Armageddon"--a satire on Porkins, a blatant young golfing "nut"
who thinks that England needs a war to cure her of flabbiness. The
granting of his desire is traced to the cynical intervention of the
Gods of Olympus in promoting a little scrap over a love affair in an
obscure corner of the Balkans:--
And when a year later the hundred-thousandth English mother woke up to
read that her boy had been shot, I am afraid she shed foolish tears
and thought that the world had come to an end. Poor shortsighted
creature! She didn't realize that Porkins, who had marched round the
links in ninety-six the day before, was now thoroughly braced up.
[Footnote 3: The present writer was at Bayreuth in the week before the
War. After the declaration of war on Serbia by Austria and in view of
its inevitable consequences, the Germans, in conversation and in their
Press, were unanimous in "banking on" the neutrality of England on the
ground of her domestic embarrassments in Ulster and the friendliness of
the Liberal Government.]
These two utterances may show that _Punch_ had failed in reading the
signs of the times, and did not render justice to the youth of the
country. I prefer to regard them as proofs that _Punch_, like the vast
majority of his fellow-countrymen, neither expected nor desired war.
CAPITAL AND LABOUR
The fervid Radicalism of _Punch's_ earlier years had always been
tempered by a distrust of "agitators" and socialistic experiments. It
is impossible to deny that, in the period under review in this volume,
this distrust gained in force if not in vehemence. There is nothing
so bitter as the sketch of the delegate which appeared in the days of
Douglas Jerrold (see Vol. I, p. 50), but the general attitude of the
paper to the working man is decidedly less sympathetic. This change can
be illustrated negatively as well as positively; less space is devoted
to "the people," and more to "Society"--though in many cases it is
suburban society--and to the middle classes. The references to Labour
exhibit an increasing tendency to criticize and denounce trade union
tyranny, socialistic legislation, the improvidence and extravagance of
highly paid workmen, and "ergophobia" (as _Punch_ academically calls
work-shyness)--a habit which he describes as early as 1892 as "the new
employment of being 'unemployed.'" Yet if _Punch_ was increasingly
critical of Labour--organized Labour--he was very far from being a
thick-and-thin champion of Capital. Greedy employers and directors are
never spared. The agricultural depression in 1892 furnishes him with
the occasion for a vigorous onslaught on railway rates. Agriculture is
shown as a female figure, bound hand and foot by Foreign Competition,
lying prostrate on the track and about to be run down by an engine
labelled Railway Rates. In 1895 the verses and cartoon inspired by
lock-outs on the Clyde are equally severe on the employers. _Punch_
condemns the action of "crass and unpatriotic capital," and shows
Britannia rebuking the shipbuilders who are playing into Germany's
hands by assisting the growth of her navy. In 1896, under the heading
of "The Millions to the Millionaires," _Punch_ takes for his text
an actual appeal made by the working men of Walworth on the death
of Baron Hirsch, _à propos_ of his munificent bequests to _his_
countrymen, and holds up the example for imitation. The continuance
of the habit of "slumming," out of curiosity rather than good will,
prompts in 1897 a satirical inversion of the organized visits to the
East End. _Punch's_ "West End Exploration Agency, Ltd.," provided
"Night Tours through Belgravia and Lightest London" with the purpose
of proving "the depressing monotony and triviality of the existence to
which Fashion's merciless decree condemns her countless thousands of
white slaves."
The debate in the Commons in the same year over Lord Penrhyn's dispute
with his quarrymen found _Punch_ decidedly hostile to the young Tory
lions who supported that inflexible peer. When in 1900 the Coal Mining
Companies in Fife declared a dividend of 50 per cent., and the price of
coal was still rising, _Punch_ castigated the greed of the owners. In
1907 the miners are exempted from any share of the responsibility for
the high cost of coal. The triple Cerberus who dominates the situation
is made up of the colliery owner, the coal merchant and the railway
company. But as the price this joint monster exacted was only 30s. a
ton--exorbitant for the time, no doubt--it is hard for this generation
to share _Punch's_ sympathy for the consumer. As late as 1912, when the
coal crisis again became acute, _Punch_, though resenting the increased
resort to the strike weapon, represents the merchant profiteer as in
clover while Britannia is the victim of his avarice.
[Sidenote: _Underpaid Women Workers_]
On behalf of _unorganized_ labour, when it was unfairly exploited by
the employer, _Punch_ continued to lift up his voice in the old strain.
In 1893 the hard case of the shopgirls, slave-driven by exacting
masters, always standing, too tired at the end of the week to profit
by Sunday, prompts him to a plea for a true Day of Rest. The verses,
like the "Cry of the City Clerk," are vitiated by their sentimentality.
There is more vigour in the lines "'Arriet on Labour" in the same year,
which show that the new type of woman was not confined to the upper
classes. 'Arriet is a workgirl who works hard, loves her freedom and
nights off, has no respect for spouting Labour candidates, and no envy
of married drudges:--
Labour? Well, yus, the best of hus must work; yer carn't git quit
of it;
And you and me, Poll, like the rest, must do our little bit of it.
But oh, I loves my _freedom_, Poll, my hevenings hoff is 'eaven;
But wives and slavies ain't allowed even one day in seven.
Jigger the men! Sam spouts and shouts about the 'Onest Worker.
That always means a Man, of course--_he's a smart Man, the shirker.
But when a Man lives upon his wife, and skulks around his diggings,
Who is the "'Onest Worker" then? Yours truly,_
'ARRIET 'IGGINGS.
Another "hard case" exposed by _Punch_ in the following year was that
of the rural schoolmistress, contrasted unfavourably with Crabbe's
version. _Punch_ took his cue from a paper read by Dr. Macnamara at
a meeting of the N.U.T. and drew a lamentable picture of the weary,
overworked and miserably underpaid teacher, "passing _poor_ on £40 a
year." The picture was obviously drawn at second-hand, but the line in
which the schoolmistress is described as "a lonely, tired, certificated
slave" was an excellent summary of a real hardship. Women workers were
not only slave-driven by employers and underpaid by the State; they
were also handicapped by the competition of their sisters who only
worked for pocket-money. This, at least, was the burden of a complaint
made by an old-fashioned woman in the _Daily Chronicle_ in the autumn
of 1895:--
"In every branch of work we see well-to-do women crowding into the
ranks of competition, in consequence of which wages are lowered, and
women who really want work are left to starve."
This letter inspired _Punch_ to deliver a fierce homily in verse on
the wickedness of well-to-do women "playing at work," to the detriment
of their poor sisters. As a set-off, however, we may note that in 1897
_Punch_ condemns mistresses for exploiting "Lady servants," getting
them to do double the work for half the ordinary wages because of their
inability to stand up for themselves. Sweated women workers were still
to be found in the tailoring trade, and _Punch_ did well in 1896 to
retell in his columns the story of the tailoress, Mary Ould of Peckham,
as unfolded before the Lambeth County Court. She had to buy her own
materials and pay her fare for fetching and carrying work; she toiled
till 10 p.m. from Saturday till Thursday and, at 3/4d. per coat, earned
3s. The pillorying of these abuses did credit to _Punch's_ humanity,
but as they were nearly always chosen from unorganized trades, they
became increasingly difficult to reconcile with his increasing
hostility to trade union organization, and his distrust of legislation
expressly designed to satisfy the demands of Labour. Philanthropic
efforts to relieve the squalor of the home life of the poor were
another matter. To the appeals of the Children's Country Holiday Fund
_Punch_ always lent a ready ear, and when Canon Barnett arranged an
exhibition of Watts's pictures in Whitechapel, _Punch_ vigorously
applauded the scheme. Pictures were as good as sermons, and better than
many:--
Where Whitechapel's darkness the weary eyes of the dreary worker dims,
It may be found that Watts's pictures do better than Watts's hymns.
[Sidenote: _The Children's Champion_]
[Illustration: ART IN WHITECHAPEL
"Well, that's what I calls a himpossible persition to get yerself
into!"]
At the same time the Philistine attitude of the East End matron is not
overlooked in Phil May's picture. Much depended on the spirit in which
this campaign of enlightenment was conducted, and _Punch_ continued to
rebuke and satirize the lack of sympathy and comprehension shown by the
fashionable "slummer." He had "no use" for people like "Mrs. Slumley
Smirk," the District Visitor, who asked to be warned if any illness was
about, as then she wouldn't wish to come near; and he was even more
satirical at the expense of Socialism as conceived by certain members
of the aristocracy--_vide_ the imaginary interview with "Lady Yorick"
in 1905--who sought to have it both ways, and, as I notice elsewhere,
represented a new and inverted type of snobbery.
For the scandal of the insurance of poor children's lives he held not
the parents, but the "Bogus Insurance sneak," mainly responsible. He
is at least half in sympathy with the soliloquy in St. James's Park of
the Socialist loafer who deprecates the amount of food wasted on the
ducks and swans. He applauds the revival of Folk Dancing in 1903; in
1905 there is a long and charming sketch of an old Cambridge bedmaker
who had recently died at an advanced age; and in the following year
_Punch_ published a delightful imaginary description of a socialistic
experiment, by which poor children were sent on visits to "upper-class"
families, and treated as guests and equals, to the mutual profit of
both classes. The scheme is suggested as an improvement on bazaars
and similar activities. On the other hand, _Punch_ indulges in ironic
comment on the result of well-meant efforts to teach poor children to
"think imperially"--a subject on which he spoke with more than one
voice. In an Empire Day Essay a London school-child wrote in 1908:--
"There are a lot of Empires like Chinese Empire, Hackney Empire,
Stratford Empire, and Russian Empire. Hackney Empire is different to
ours because they sing there, and ours is places."
[Illustration: THE CAPTURE OF WINDSOR CASTLE
by the Boy Scouts.]
[Sidenote: _The Boy Scout Movement_]
The best-inspired and most fruitful of all movements for the uplifting
of the children of the people which belongs to this period was that
of the Boy Scouts. It was entirely independent of State or official
encouragement, and sprang from the ingenious brain of one man, General
Sir Robert Baden-Powell, and _Punch_, as an Individualist, was not
inclined to think worse of it on that account. As a matter of fact, he
greeted the Boy Scouts with the utmost cordiality from the very outset.
In 1909 his cartoon on "Our Youngest Line of Defence" shows the Boy
Scout reassuring Mrs. Britannia: "Fear not, Grandma; no danger can
befall you now. Remember _I_ am with you." Later on in 1911 came the
delightful cartoon of the Boy Scouts capturing Windsor Castle, and, on
the very eve of the war, in _Punch's_ Holiday Pages we encounter the
late Mr. F. H. Townsend's admirable picture of our "dear old friend the
foreign spy (cunningly disguised as a golfer) visiting our youngest
suburb on a Saturday afternoon in quest of further evidence of our
lethargy, general decadence and falling birth-rate." As a result of
observing the activity and numbers of the Boy Scouts, he gets a serious
shock, and at once telegraphs to his Commander-in-Chief "urging that
the conquest of the British Isles be undertaken before the present
generation is many years older." This oblique and imaginative tribute
was happily conceived and well deserved. The spirit of the Boy Scout
movement was at least a contributory factor in helping us to win the
War. What was even more important was the conversion of a great many
Pacificists from their mistrust of the alleged "militarism" of the
movement, and their recognition of its essential value as an instrument
in fostering self-respect, truthfulness, altruistic kindliness and
cleanliness of mind and body.
[Illustration: OUR DEAR OLD FRIEND THE FOREIGN SPY]
[Sidenote: _Strikes and Unemployment_]
This record--and it is by no means exhaustive--of _Punch's_
humanitarian activities must not blind us to the fact that throughout
these years the principal object of his sympathy and compassion was
not the working man but the middle-class tax-and rate-payer. In 1893
_Punch_ depicts him bound to a post and in danger of being drowned by
the rising tide of rates--L.C.C., Asylums, Libraries, Baths, Vestries.
_Punch_, as we have seen, did not acquit the coal owners and coal
merchants of rapacity, but he was not any more sympathetic to the
miners--witness the following dialogue printed in the same year:--
THE STRIKER'S VADE MECUM
_Question._ You think it is a good thing to strike?
_Answer._ Yes, when there is no other remedy.
_Q._ Is there ever any other remedy?
_A._ Never. At least, so say the secretaries.
_Q._ Then you stand by the opinions of the officials?
_A._ Why, of course; because they are paid to give them.
_Q._ But have not the employers any interests?
_A._ Lots, but they are not worthy the working man's consideration.
_Q._ But are not their interests yours?
_A._ Yes, and that is the way we guard over them.
_Q._ But surely it is the case of cutting off the nose to spite the
mouth?
_A._ And why not, if the mouth is too well fed.
_Q._ But are not arguments better than bludgeons?
_A._ No. And bludgeons are less effective than revolvers.
_Q._ But may not the use of revolvers produce the military?
_A._ Yes, but they can do nothing without a magistrate reading the
Riot Act.
_Q._ But, the Riot Act read, does not the work become serious?
_A._ Probably. But at any rate the work is lawful, because
unremunerative.
_Q._ But how are the wives and children of strikers to live if their
husbands and fathers earn no wages?
_A._ On strike money.
_Q._ But does all the strike money go to the maintenance of the hearth
and home?
_A._ Of course not, for a good share of it is wanted for the
baccy-shop and the public-house.
_Q._ But if strikes continue will not trade suffer?
_A._ Very likely, but trade represents the masters.
_Q._ And if trade is driven away from the country, will it come back?
_A._ Most likely not, but that is a matter for the future.
_Q._ But is not the future of equal importance to the present?
_A._ Not at all, for a day's thought is quite enough for a day's work.
_Q._ Then a strike represents either nothing or idleness?
_A._ Yes, bludgeons or beer.
_Q._ And what is the value of reason?
_A._ Why, something less than smoke.
Simultaneously _Punch_ published a cartoon (rather prematurely) in
which Mars, expressing his readiness to arbitrate, appeals to Vulcan to
do the same. Lord Rosebery's successful intervention as a mediator in
the coal strike in December, 1893, is handsomely acknowledged in the
cartoon in which he figures as the "G.O.M.'s handy boy." Lord Rosebery
was still at the height of his personal popularity; it was not until
1905 that _Punch_ described him as "unemployable." Unemployment had
reached formidable dimensions, and then, as now, proved serviceable
material to the political agitator. Mr. Asquith, as Home Secretary,
had allowed political meetings in Trafalgar Square "so long as the
proceedings were orderly," and _Punch_ represented the disappointment
of the extremists at having the ground cut from under their feet by
this condition. A year later _Punch_ depicted the Trafalgar Square of
the future, with anarchy rampant in every corner, and early in 1894
the verses "The Devil's Latest Walk (after Coleridge and Southey),"
fiercely attacking Socialist agitators as animated by sheer malice, are
accompanied by a picture of a fiendish figure with horns and tail.
[Illustration: THE UNEMPLOYABLE
(Dedicated to Lord R-s-b-ry)]
[Sidenote: _Gambling and Improvidence_]
It was about this time that, as we read in the _Annual Register_, "a
large body of the unemployed attended service at St. Paul's Cathedral
in response to an invitation from Canon Scott Holland, whose sermon
was frequently interrupted by the applause of those present." _Punch_,
in his then mood, would have probably explained this episode on the
principle of "the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be." _Punch_
was no admirer of the art of Mr. George Moore, but he had paid him
reluctant homage as a moralist in 1894, under the head of "All the
Winners":--
Boycotted or not boycotted, if _Esther Waters_ calls general and
effectual attention to the growth of gambling, which is the real
"curse of the country" in these days, it will do more good than all
the _Dodos_ and _Marcellas_ and _Barabbases_ and _Heavenly Twins_ in
all the Libraries in the land.
It was in the same spirit that a few years later _Punch_ applauded
the idea of establishing a Bureau of Common-sense to combat the
extravagance and improvidence of the working classes. The suggestion
was made by Judge Emden, the well-known County Court Judge, in dealing
with the case of a man who, on wages of from 25s. to 30s. a week,
committed himself to a twenty-five-guinea piano on the hire-purchase
system.
"Agricultural Depression" bulks largely in _Punch's_ pages in the
'nineties, but it is the farmer, not the farm labourer, who is singled
out for commiseration. In 1893 he is shown as Buridan's Ass between two
piles of sapless chaff--Tory and Liberal--overburdened by the triple
load of Rents, Rates and Foreign Competition:--
What choice between the chaff of arid Rad
And that of equally dry-and-dusty Tory?
Chaplin would feed you on preposterous fad,
And Gardner[4] on--postponement! The old story!
While the grass grows the horse may starve. Poor ass!
Party would bring you to a similar pass!
[Footnote 4: Mr. Herbert Gardner, President of the Board of
Agriculture, afterwards Lord Burghclere.]
In the summer of 1894 the verses "A Good Time Coming" foreshadow the
end of the agricultural depression, but a few weeks later the farmer
was bitterly disappointed. His crops had been plentiful, but the plenty
had brought down the price of wheat in some cases to 16s. and 19s. a
quarter. In short, there had been a golden harvest, but he couldn't
get gold for it. Let it be noted, in parenthesis, that if _Punch_
espoused the cause of the farmer, he was not wholly wedded to the
old rural _régime_ of the Squire and the Parson. In 1894 there is a
humorously ironic lament by a lover of the "Good Old Times" in the form
of a new version of "The Village Blacksmith," suggested by the actual
return of a blacksmith to one of the new parish councils at the head
of the poll. When the Conservatives came back to power in 1895, Lord
Salisbury, in a new fable of Hercules and the Farmer, is represented
as adroitly ascribing agricultural depression to Providence, and
exculpating the Government which had done its best; but the farmer is
unconvinced by this pious explanation. The remedy which the Government
sought to apply in the Agricultural Land Rating Bill of 1896 failed
to satisfy _Punch_. Mr. Chaplin is seen, in an adaptation of Æsop,
shifting the burden of rural rates from the horse (country) to the
ass (town). But the latter was _Punch's_ special _protégé_, and the
verses in May express accurately enough the cry of the poor townsman,
the rate-crushed cockney, protesting against Mr. Chaplin's remedy when
the income-tax was already 8d. in the pound! The income-tax payer this
time is the patient ass, hoping that some at least of the surplus of
six millions may be devoted to the relief of his gigantic burden.
To return to Agriculture, a sidelight is thrown on the shortage of
farm hands in 1901, in the picture of an elderly farmer rebuking a
very small boy for slacking, only to be met by the retort "Chaps is
scarce." The parallel to the Great War is obvious, but one would hardly
have thought that the Boer war was on a large enough scale to affect
the labour market in this way. In 1903 voluntary labour bureaus were
started, but the results were disappointing, and _Punch_ quotes an
account of an experiment in Wiltshire. Fifteen men had been sent down
from London; two returned in three days "because it rained"; and twelve
more were back in a fortnight. Our increasing reliance on imported food
had already prompted _Punch_ to indulge in a forecast of the Stores
of the Future, at which Tierra-del-Fuego Devonshire cream and similar
products are offered for sale because it had become impossible to get
any home-grown produce. The exodus from the land to the cities was
already in full swing, and we find _Punch_ as early as 1896 commending
a clergyman who had started dancing classes in his village near Stroud
as a counter-attraction to the lure of the towns. In this context it
is worthy of note that in 1900 _Punch_ suggested that, as a result of
socialistic legislation in Australia and elsewhere, and the growing
struggle for the good things of life, no one was willing "to do the
washing up." Yet prices and taxes were low enough to excite the envy of
the harassed post-war householder. Eggs were advertised at 16 for 1s.,
but even this did not satisfy Phil May's broken-down tragedian in 1900,
who exclaims as he reads the announcement in a shop-window: "Cheap!
Ha! Ha! Why, in my time they _threw_ them at us."
[Sidenote: _Town v. Country_]
[Illustration: JOE THE VENTRILOQUIST
PROFESSOR CH-MB-RL-N: "You see, ladies and gentlemen, he talks
just as well even when I go right away!"]
If all was not well with those who lived on or by the land, the town
exodus of week-enders and the demand for small country residences had
already created a cult of "rural felicity," the artificiality of which
did not escape _Punch_ when he satirized in 1904 the platitudinous
appreciation of Nature and country life distilled in the halfpenny
Press. At the same time the drastic legislation dealing with the
land problem introduced by the Liberals on their return to power in
1906 found little or no sympathy from _Punch_. The cross-currents
revealed in the Unionist Party by the great Tariff Reform controversy,
the resignation of Mr. Chamberlain, the secession of the Free Trade
Ministers, and the inability of the plain person to cope with the
transcendental fiscal dialectics of Mr. Balfour, had made it difficult
for _Punch_, born and bred in the principles of Free Trade, to accord
a whole-hearted support to the Unionist administration in its later
years. There was, however, no perplexity in his attitude towards
the land policy of their successors. At all their stages _Punch_
was hostile to the new "Lloyd Georgics." We may specially single
out the cartoon in August, 1910, presenting a "study of a free-born
Briton who, within the period usually allotted to his holidays,
is required under threat of a penalty of £50 to answer a mass of
obscure conundrums relating to land values, to facilitate his future
taxation." The miseries of this inquisitorial process are further
developed in an imaginary extract from a specimen return showing how
some of the questions in the historic "Form IV" were to be answered.
The sequel to this laborious and costly preliminary investigation
falls outside the scope of this volume. Nor is it necessary to dwell
at length on the movement, doubtless animated by a noble sympathy
with the rural population, initiated by the _Daily Mail_ in 1911 on
behalf of the revival of windmills and standard bread. The new-found
interest in the yokel is satirized in the song of the "Merry Hind"
(after Masefield's _Daffodil Fields_), and the cartoon "The Return
of the Golden Age" in February, 1913, where Mr. Lloyd George is seen
emptying a cornucopia of "rare and refreshing fruit" into the lap of
the ecstatic farm labourer. Hodge was at last fairly in the limelight,
for both parties had their land policy, and the opening of Mr. Lloyd
George's Land Campaign in October is symbolized by a picture of him as
an irresponsible music-hall comedian with "Songs Without Wurzels. No.
1, Land of Hope (as arranged by the Cabinet)" in his hand. Mr. Asquith
is seen as his accompanist, waiting for the "patter" to finish, and
observing, "This is the part that makes me nervous." But the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, then edited by the great Mr. Garvin, declared in December
that "whatever can be done to improve the lot of the agriculturist will
have the Opposition's cordial support," and, on the strength of this
assurance, the Premier's anxiety, in _Punch's_ view, was allayed. When
Scout George reports to his chief "the enemy is on our side, sir,"
Scoutmaster Asquith replies, "Then let the battle begin."
[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE GOLDEN AGE
(Vide The Lloyd-Georgics--passim)]
[Sidenote: _Work, Wages, Pensions, and Doles_]
Farmers and farm labourers were regarded in _Punch's_ survey as
not much more than pawns in the game of party politics. The claims
of organized labour in the other great industries and the general
tendency of legislation in their interests found him a more vigilant
and a more hostile critic. Even so mild a measure as the Early Closing
Bill of 1896--with the principle of which he had been in agreement
in earlier years--excited his misgivings and prompted a forecast
of increasingly intimate interference with the private life of
householders: the outline of his "Household Regulations Act" contains
provisions for hours of rising, cleaning, meals, bills and rent. It
is a burlesque, but none the less indicates resentment of patriarchal
State interference. Yet _Punch's_ general individualism admitted of
exceptions. He noted the failure of the Voluntary Labour Bureau system,
and was frivolously critical of the amateur attempt of a vicar to start
Trust Houses to supersede Public Houses--a movement which later on came
to stay and to achieve solid results. Here, however, allowance must
be made for _Punch's_ inveterate distrust of temperance agitators.
State interference on behalf of minorities did not always meet with
_Punch's_ approval, and in 1898 we find him vehemently protesting
against the recognition of "Conscientious Objectors" to vaccination. In
a striking picture headed "The Triumph of De-Jenner-ation" he shows
a grisly skeleton waving as his banner the Vaccination Bill, which
_Punch_ calls "the Bill for the encouragement of Small Pox." But the
burden of his criticisms of Labour is concerned with the artificial
restriction of output, the conversion of the trade unions from an
industrial to a political organization, and the increasing tendency of
State intervention to encourage a reluctance either to work or save.
The picture of Hyde Park on "Labour Day" in 1898 with the grass strewn
with recumbent sleeping figures is, if I read it aright, designed less
in compassion for the unemployed than as a satire on the unemployable.
Wages were high in the bricklaying trade, but a shortage of labour
was complained of; as for the skill required, a surveyor had written
to the _Daily Telegraph_ stating that "any ordinary man could learn
bricklaying in a fortnight," and _Punch_ ironically foreshadows the
invasion of the trade by underpaid clerks, barristers, etc. Ruskin
College--opened at Oxford in 1899--is described as "a College for
Labour Leaders" by _Punch_, who rather unnecessarily prophesied that
it might become the scene of "strikes"; but the friction which arose
between those who conceived that the function of the college was purely
educational, and those who wished to make it a school of political
thought, went far to justify _Punch's_ misgivings. The plan of Old
Age Pensions had long been in the air. The committee which reported
in 1892 showed considerable divergence of opinion. Mr. Chamberlain,
the chairman, condemned Mr. Charles Booth's proposal of the general
endowment of old age as a gigantic system of outdoor relief for every
one, good and bad, thrifty and unthrifty. The majority of the Royal
Commission of 1893 were adverse to State pensions. The Rothschild
Committee in 1896 found themselves unable to devise any satisfactory
proposal. The Select Committee over which Mr. Chaplin presided put
forward a scheme substantially on Mr. Charles Booth's lines, but
in view of the cost and the hostility of the Government the matter
rested till the passing of the Act by the Liberals in 1908. _Punch_,
it may be noted, was no enthusiast for the scheme formulated by the
Chaplin Committee; his cartoon of "Old Gaffer" and "Little Chappelin"
(modelled on Southey's ballad) is undoubtedly hostile, and the
accompanying verses end up on a cynical note when the "Old Gaffer" asks
"Little Chappelin" what is the bag he is carrying, and is told:
"Only another dole," said he;
"It _is_ a famous Ministry."
The Trade Union Congress at Plymouth in the same year censured Lord
Mount Edgcumbe because, in throwing open his grounds to them, he
had reserved the privacy of his lawn for a garden party. _Punch_
accordingly indulged in some sarcastic verses, supposed to be written
by a Trade Unionist, and ironically applauding the action of Mr. Ben
Tillett, who had distinguished himself by his attack on Lord Mount
Edgcumbe. This was fair game enough, though to-day it would probably
have been passed over in silence. _Punch_ no doubt was thinking of the
saying that an Englishman's house is his castle; and hardly anticipated
the time when an Englishman's or an English nobleman's castle
would cease to be his home. To-day we read with an amused surprise
_Punch's_ comment in 1900 on the introduction of an eight-hours'
day for domestics in Australia, and his forecast of a similar state
of affairs in England under a new Patriarchal Statute. Nor is there
anything wildly extravagant in his ironical anticipation of the cook
of the future demanding £100 wages, though unable to guarantee more in
return than "chop one day and steak the next." The higher education of
servants, according to _Punch_, was tending to produce a type which
knew everything except the things which really mattered. He tells us in
1902 of a lady who was delighted to get a cook who could develop her
photographs, and gives us, in the same year, an excellent study (after
Gilbert) of the "Up-to-date Cook-General":--
I am the very pattern of an up-to-date cook-general,
I've information vegetable, animal and mineral;
I've passed the seventh standard, and I vary the monotony
Of flirting with the butcher's boy by writing books on botany.
I know the chemistry of zinc, tin, potash and ammonium;
I practise on the fiddle, flute, piano and harmonium;
I understand minutely the formation of an icicle,
And in the season round the Park I like to ride my bicycle.
I've studied Herbert Spencer and I've views on sociology,
And as a mere _parergon_ I have taken up conchology--
In short, in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of an up-to-date cook-general.
In fact, when I have learnt to tell a turnip from an artichoke,
Or grill a steak that will not make my mistress's dinner-party choke;
When I can cook a mutton chop or any plain comestible
In such a way that it becomes not wholly indigestible;
When I can wash a cup without inevitably breaking it,
Or make a bed where folk can sleep at ease without remaking it;
In short, when I've an inkling of economy domestical,
You'll say, "Of all cook-generals this girl the very best I call."
For my culinary ignorance and all-round imbecility
Is only to be equalled by my housewifely futility--
But still, in learning vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very pattern of an up-to-date cook-general.
[Sidenote: _The Aristocrats of Labour_]
The plethora of processions in 1901 moved _Punch_ to make various
suggestions for the better conduct of such spectacles, mostly in the
shape of fantastic and satirical concessions to the greatest happiness
of the greatest number of sightseers. Warnings against the _panem
et circenses_ habit were legitimate enough, but _Punch_ took a more
aggressive line in his attack on the miners in 1901:--
A BLACK LOOK-OUT
(A paper picked up near the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
Pity the sorrows of a poor collier, who, if a shilling export duty is
imposed upon coal, will have (possibly) to see--
1. His wife giving up her music and riding lessons.
2. His children not able to go to the seaside for a month or two.
3. His favourite licensed victualler unable to supply him with that
extra quart he enjoys so much after he has drunk the others.
4. His dogs unable to compete for prizes because their upkeep will be
too expensive.
5. His tailor sending in his account and respectfully requesting
immediate payment.
6. His wine merchant writing to ask him why he has given up ordering
champagne.
7. Worst (and, fortunately, most improbable) of all, himself having to
work four days a week instead of three.
In earlier years _Punch_ would have given chapter and verse for such
charges; the later method, though it makes easier reading, carries
less weight. _Punch_ did not, however, wholly abandon the practice of
"documenting" his criticism, and he turned it to excellent account in
a discussion of the much-abused German clerk in 1898, when he quoted
the following passage from the official Consular Report from Stettin,
issued by the Foreign Office:--
Much of the commercial knowledge of Germany has been supplied by young
Germans who have been employed as clerks in Great Britain, mostly
as foreign correspondents. British clerks cannot be used as foreign
correspondents, because not one in a thousand can correspond correctly
in any foreign language.
For the effective German competition which threatened to oust British
trade from the markets of the world, _Punch_ did not hold any one class
responsible. The fault was our national complacency, symbolized in 1901
by a lethargic John Bull priding himself on the superior excellence of
his goods, but declining to take the trouble to make foreign customers
understand it. The contrast between the German and the Briton in regard
to practical business capacity is brought out in the papers headed,
"Pashley's Opinions." "Efficiency" was the motto of the hour, yet
_Punch_ found it hard to reconcile the cry with the "Catchwords for
the Million," especially the "Equal Rights of Man" as interpreted by
trade union rules, especially those affecting bricklaying, which in his
view sterilized competition and ambition. Another side of the subject
is dealt with in the series of papers entitled, "How to get on," one
of which satirizes the almost hysterical worship of "efficiency"
by those who in the same breath declared that we were the greatest
race on earth and also the greatest slackers, but confined their own
energies to mere talk. The underlying principles, however, which
govern _Punch's_ contributions to the "Efficiency" controversy could
not be better summed up than in the dictum of Mr. J. M. Beck,[5] the
Solicitor-General of the United States: "The great evil of the world
to-day is the aversion to work."
[Footnote 5: "The Revolt against Authority." _Fortnightly Review_,
November, 1921.]
[Sidenote: _Sport and Crime_]
[Illustration: MR. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND THE PEOPLE
"Wot d'y' fink o' this 'ere G. B. S.?"
"Never tried it! I smokes V.B.D."]
What troubled _Punch_, to borrow an epigram from another American
anonymous writer, was "not so much the unemployment of the idle as
the idleness of the employed." He is increasingly concerned with the
popular pre-occupation with sport and criminal celebrities, combined
with a corresponding apathy on important questions. Foreign politics
were only brought home to the masses when they lent themselves to
sensational or spectacular treatment, and, in 1903, _Punch_ gibbets an
announcement in the _Scotsman_: "Scenes resulting from the Macedonian
Atrocities displayed by the Modern Marvel Cinematograph, at 3 and 8
(see Amusement Column)." The sentimental interest in criminals is
bluntly rebuked as a perversion of the philanthropic maxim that "to
know all is to forgive all"; the blame for this was attributed to the
journals which catered for the million, but the avidity with which
this pabulum was devoured, and the absence of any protest from those
affected, was a disquieting symptom; and _Punch_ was within his rights
in making game of the _Clarion_ when it scented class distinction in
the abortive movement to introduce knee-breeches for evening wear.
[Sidenote: _Liberals and Labour_]
In the Unionist defeat at the election of 1906, _Punch_ recognized not
merely the return to power of the Liberals, but the coming of the "New
Demos," the growing importance of the Labour Party, and the increasing
impetus lent to its demands. His "farewell to the beaten side" is
animated by no enthusiasm for the victors:--
You leave a record which shall bear the light
When History delves for Truth in after days,
Not as the sudden mob condemns at sight,
Or stints its grudging praise.
Meanwhile the hear
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