LITMIR.BIZ

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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!

      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."

Both (together): "Peep-bo! I see you!"After the proposed "Federalization" of the British Isles

      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."

      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.

      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."

      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.

      The German Menace

      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.

      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.)

      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,

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