LITMIR.BIZ

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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."

      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.

      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.

The Three Witches: "Double, double, toil and trouble!" Macbeth, act IV, scene 1.

      Wait and See

      In 1910 two general elections,

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