LITMIR.BIZ

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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."

      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,

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