Chapter II: Part I: The Passing of the Old Order (2)

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.

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._)

]

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.

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!

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.