Part 11

_Punch's_ comments foreshadowed the conflict that raged over the Education Bill of 1896, which had been framed to redeem the pledge given by the Government to aid voluntary schools. Denounced by the Opposition as a deliberate attempt to shatter the school-board system and promote the interest of a particular sect, while, on the other hand, all sects were agreed that the proposed aid was inadequate; swamped by amendments--1,238, to be precise, had been placed on the paper when the House met in June after the Whitsuntide Recess--the Bill was abandoned in Committee without exciting any real regret from any party. _Punch_ chronicles its withdrawal without any comment, but his silence cannot be interpreted as expressing satisfaction with the existing _régime_. In 1899 he falls foul of Sir John Gorst, then the

## acting head of the Board of Education, for his alleged intention of

entrusting the teaching of all other children to half-educated pupil teachers.

The progress and passage of the much-discussed Education Act of 1902 revived _Punch's_ distrust of the so-called "friends" of the human child. He shows Mr. Balfour on a bicycle steering a perilous and devious course beset with obstacles, and develops the theme in a fable, based on that of the Old Woman going to Market, in which Lord Hugh Cecil, Mr. Bryce, Archbishop Temple, Mr. Lloyd George and Sir William Harcourt are brought in to represent the various and conflicting elements in the struggle. _Punch's_ moral is that "if you don't all hurt each others' feelings a good deal, there's no chance of getting the Education Bill through Parliament." The truth of this comment was abundantly shown by the vehement controversy which arose over the famous Kenyon-Slaney amendment, limiting the right of an incumbent to give religious instruction in a Church School--a provision which infuriated the High Anglicans and was reluctantly acquiesced in by moderate Churchmen. _Per contra_ Dr. Percival, the Bishop of Hereford, who voted with the Opposition, declared that the Bill had given great strength to the Opposition to the Church in the country and tended to destroy its spiritual influence. And Lord Rosebery, while not in favour of the refusal of Nonconformists to pay rates, confessed that if they submitted tamely to the enactments of the Bill they would cease to exist politically.

[Sidenote: _A Stepping-Stone Ministry_]

_Punch_ had no sympathy with the "passive resistance" movement, and when Mr. Lloyd George in 1904 advocated the closing of all the elementary schools in Wales as a protest against the Education Act, he regarded him as more desirous to serve party ends than to save the souls of the young. In 1906 it was the turn of the Liberals to redeem _their_ pledges, and Mr. Birrell was in charge of the measure. _Punch_ accordingly depicted him as a schoolmaster saying to the Act of 1902, "My boy, this [the cane he is holding] can't hurt you more than it's going to hurt me." _Punch_ evidently had no love for the new Bill, but his satire is impartially levelled at the irreconcilable sectarian differences of the supporters and antagonists of the measure. All this wrangling had nothing to do with the education of children. The gradual and inevitable transformation of the measure by the end of the year is happily hit off in an adaptation from "Alice in Wonderland," with Mr. Balfour as the Cheshire Cat and Mr. Birrell as Alice carrying what _had_ been a baby, but was now a pig, as the Cheshire Cat expected.

[Illustration: "I am glad to see you come so regularly to our evening services, Mrs. Brown."

"Yus. Yer see, me 'usband 'ates me goin' hout of a hevening, so I does it to spite 'im."]

The Education Office in these years was the great jumping-off ground for aspirants to higher Ministerial office, and was occupied by a succession of "transient and (sometimes) embarrassed phantoms." Mr. Birrell quitted Whitehall to govern Ireland from Overstrand, and in 1908 _Punch_, in his cartoon on the tardy compromise achieved by the Church and Nonconformity, showed "Master Runciman," with his Bill, being carried safely through the waters of strife by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr. Clifford.

[Illustration: MOTHER (visiting son at preparatory school): "Well, my darling!"

SON: "I say, Mother, don't look so ghastly pleased before all these fellows."]

In 1905, according to the _Scotsman_ (quoted by _Punch_), the prospective Unionist candidate for Berwick maintained before a meeting of electors that "the only way to deal with the religious question was to allow each denomination to provide religious teaching in school hours _for the parents of such children as desired it_." The italics are provided by _Punch_, who threw further light on the need for this "vicarious religion" in an illustrated dialogue published in 1911:--

SCHOOLMISTRESS: "And am I to give the child religious instruction?"

MOTHER: "I don't care wot yer do so long as yer don't bash 'er abaht the 'ead."

[Sidenote: _John Bull, Junior_]

Throughout this period _Punch_ was perhaps more concerned with the youngest than with the younger generation--with the progress of the child than with that of the ingenuous youth. Yet he was not neglectful of the changes going on in public and preparatory schools. The picture of "John Bull, Junior," in 1905 represents the human boy of the public-school type as still primarily interested in pastime:--

For instance, his industry's tireless In getting his _Wisden_ by rote; But of Signor Marconi (the wireless) He takes the most negligent note. That the primary use of the cable Is cricket, he's free to maintain-- He associates cricket with Abel, And bats with the mention of Cain.

He can't tell the whereabouts clearly Of Constantinople or Prague, But he'll talk by the hour about Brearley, He'll tell you the birthplace of Haigh. He cannot be sure if the Hooghly's A river, a town, or a hill; But then upon Bosanquet's "googlies" A volume he'd easily fill.

This was before the aeroplane and the motor had infected schoolboys with a passion for mechanics, and the view expressed is borne out by a suggestion made in 1907 by Sir J. J. Thomson, and duly noted in _Punch_, that boys should go to school in holiday time and during term time should "stay at home and learn something." A year earlier _Punch_ had very properly laid his finger on a blot in the school system--the inadequate salaries of assistant masters. In "The Worm Turns" he had enlarged on the protest which one of the number had registered in the _Westminster Gazette_. It was all very well, as "Kappa" had done in the columns of that paper, to abuse schoolmasters, but what could you expect at the price when, at the best preparatory schools, £120 a year, resident, was considered adequate pay for a first-class man, and things were not much better in the public schools. Hence _Punch's_ versified gloss, in which the much-maligned assistant master sums up the matter thus:--

Ah, well, it may be we are all past praying for, But in this world one gets what one is paying for, (That seems a fairly obvious remark);

And I for one, although exposed so crushingly, Still mean to draw my salary unblushingly-- That of a third-rate clerk.

[Illustration: UNANSWERABLE

YOUNG HOPEFUL: "'Shamefully ignorant'! Of course I'm ignorant, Father. But then why did you send me to a Public School? I always look upon a fellow who's learnt anything at a Public School as a _self-educated man_!"]

_Punch_ clearly admitted that all was not well with a system in which undue prominence was attached to the athletic prowess, and in 1909 he pilloried an advertisement for a schoolmaster which had appeared in the _Spectator_: "Rugby Blue required. Football is the chief subject, but elementary Latin, English and Mathematics are also looked for." On the other hand, _Punch_ was no believer in the commercializing of our public schools. When Lord Rosebery in 1896 had said that "an inquiry by Chambers of Commerce into the progress of technical and commercial education in Germany would make our hair stand on end," _Punch_ showed him as the Fat Boy in _Pickwick_ saying, "I wants to make yer flesh creep." And when, in the fateful year 1914, a "Commercial Side," on lines already laid down in many secondary schools of a different type, was started at Bradfield College, _Punch_ sought to reduce the plan to an absurdity by an imaginative account of its working.

[Sidenote: _School Diet_]

[Illustration: The Headmaster of Rugby is reported to have said at the recent Conference on School Diet that "while adults should rise from the table hungry, children should reach a sense of repletion before rising."

HOUSE-MASTER (with pride, to Parent): "Then with regard to food: we feed our boys to repletion five times a day, and our chef's puddings have no equal in any school in the kingdom."]

As regards the feeding of boys at school, the change from the Spartan _régime_ of the previous generation can be vividly illustrated from the pages of _Punch_. Down to the close of the Victorian age, hampers were, if not an absolute necessity, at any rate a welcome supplement to the frugal diet provided at most schools. In 1899 _Punch_ supported the continuance of hampers in some ironical verses inspired by a letter in the _Daily Chronicle_ from a schoolmaster's wife. The good lady had complained of the effect of Tuck upon the ethics of schoolboys, and advocated ordinary school diet. _Punch_ at the time regarded this as a counsel of stoical perfection utterly wasted on the ordinary human boy. A very different note was sounded by the Headmaster of Rugby in 1912, who was reported to have said at the Conference on School Diet that "while adults should rise from the table hungry, children should reach a sense of repletion before rising." Accordingly _Punch_ published a picture of a mother with an alarmingly obese small boy interviewing a house-master who proudly remarks: "Then as to food, we feed our boys to repletion five times a day, and our chef's puddings have no equal in any school in the Kingdom." This was an exaggeration so far as the public schools were concerned, but it was fair satire of the sumptuousness of the fashionable and expensive preparatory school of pre-war days. _There_ the pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme from the meagre diet of the 'seventies, when there was no luxury at preparatory schools and at many of the public schools the feeding was a scandal.

On the new relations that had sprung up between boys and masters--the "elder brother" theory--I do not find any notable mention in _Punch_. I suspect him of adhering to the old view that it was a far higher compliment to a master to describe him as a "just beast" than "popular." The decline of the classical side is touched on, while the continued inefficiency of instruction in modern languages is delightfully satirized in the late Mr. F. H. Townsend's picture of a young lord of creation, the centre of an adoring group of small sisters. "Now Guy," says his mother, "tell us about the school. Is everything all right?" "Oh, yes, Mother--except one thing." "My darling! What is it?" "Well, I wish you hadn't got us that French nurse to teach us the right pronunciation; it makes the other fellows laugh so." _Punch's_ picture was true of a time now rapidly passing away, and furnishes a valuable comment on the solution of a century-old problem. The French master, generally a refugee in the old days, was never accorded a proper status and very seldom recognized as one of themselves by his colleagues. He was generally poor, and he was a standing proof of the saying of the Latin satirist that there is nothing more cruel about poverty than the fact that it makes people ridiculous. Also nine times out of ten he was unable to keep order; so that in the fullness of time headmasters found themselves confronted by this dilemma. They had to choose between foreigners with a correct accent who could not maintain discipline, and natives with a bad accent who could. And in pre-war days they often decided in favour of the latter.

[Sidenote: _Commerce at the Universities_]

[Illustration: SMITHSON JUNIOR (as the homily ends and the real business is about to start): "Please, sir, is it sterilized?"]

_Punch_ viewed the multiplication of universities with acquiescence rather than enthusiasm. He had been, as we have seen, a severe critic of academic obstructives at Oxford and Cambridge, but he was entirely opposed to their reconstruction on purely utilitarian lines. In his view there was room for universities of different types; to standardize them would be a blunder, almost a crime. So when a school of brewing was established at Birmingham, he gave a forecast of Oxford in the year 2000 A.D., completely commercialized, with the Ashmolean transformed into the University Co-operative Stores. In 1901 a daily paper had said that, compared with the University of Birmingham, Oxford must seem hopelessly out of date. _Punch_ rejoined in a masque in which the claims of the old and new universities are reviewed and contrasted, but the last word is left to the Oxford chorus:--

Out of date and useless we, Commerce is beyond our ken-- Let us thank the gods we be Twenty Oxford men.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie's gift of £2,000,000 to the Scottish universities in the same year is eulogized in the cartoon of "The Macmillion," but the prose comment, in which the extensions of the scheme are foreshadowed, is not lacking in an element of irony.

Mr. Rhodes's historic bequest to Oxford is discussed in an imaginary letter from a Cambridge to an Oxford don. The Cambridge don ridicules the notion that it would revolutionize Oxford, convert it into the University of the Empire, or transform the hoary old home of lost causes into a realization of the ideals of young barbarians from the bounding prairie or of the pipe-sucking beer-nurtured students of the Fatherland. The new-comers would find their level and, if really decent fellows, would do well enough. "Oxford will still remain Oxford, and that, at any rate, we may be thankful for." Nor did the Cambridge man anticipate any serious change in inter-'Varsity relations:--

As to ourselves at Cambridge, why, I fancy we shall be able to rub along quite comfortably, thank you. If I may use a commercial expression, we've got our own line of Australians and Canadians and Americans, and even of Afrikanders, and I think we shall be able to continue business at the old shop in the old style without any of the new-fangled additions that Mr. Rhodes has conferred upon Oxford. I'll wager that when fifty years are past we shall still be able to meet you on the river, at cricket, at football, nay, even at chess and billiards, on the same terms of average equality. And in after life we shall still manage to compete.

This letter, by the way, was virtually a rejoinder to a set of verses, published a few weeks earlier, in which _Punch_ indulged in a fantastic forecast of the results of the invasion of the Rhodes scholars--including an entire revision of the system of examinations in accordance with the terms of Mr. Rhodes's will. The Craven would be awarded for manliness and the Ireland for muscle:--

Then at last shall Oxford Greats men Really be Imperial statesmen.

The sequel has shown that the views ascribed to the Cambridge don were much nearer the mark.

[Sidenote: _The Awakening of Oxford_]

[Illustration: THE BREAKING OF THE CHARM

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY Oxford University. THE FAIRY PRINCE Lord Curzon.

THE CHANCELLOR (after reading aloud his "Memorandum"): "Awake, adorable dreamer!"]

In 1904 _Punch_ ranged himself unfalteringly on the side of compulsory Greek. Oxford had decided to retain it, and _Punch_, garbed as a Hellenic sage, appeals to Cambridge not to be outdone in loyalty to the old faith by her sister. It is hard to avoid reading into the cartoon "Breaking the Charm" in 1909 more than _Punch_ meant to express. Lord Curzon, as the Fairy Prince, is seen, with his Memorandum on University Reform, appealing to the Sleeping Beauty in Matthew Arnold's phrase, "Awake, adorable dreamer!" Of course, the "adorable dreamer" was bound to be pictorially represented by a woman, but recent concessions have lent a special significance to the awakening. Strange to say, the most powerful and eloquent impeachment of the intrusion of women into Oxford comes from the New World; from the pen of the most brilliant of American essayists--Mr. Paul Elmer More. "With petticoats," he writes of Oxford, "came the world and the conventions of the world; manners were softened, the tongue was filed, angles of originality were ironed out; the drawing-room conquered the cloister."

_Punch's_ practical abandonment of the _rôle_ of religious controversialist was noticed in the previous volume. In the period under review references to the churches are for the most part confined to the part they played in connexion with the Education Bills already mentioned. The echoes of the "No Popery" campaign had so far died down that, on the publication in 1898 of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's review of Cardinal Wiseman's life, _Punch's_ notice was not merely sympathetic but laudatory. "The storm that arose in England on his return from Rome to England with the rank of Cardinal was sufficient to have blown a punier man clean off the island. The Cardinal stood four square to it and lived it down." This is a notable tribute from _Punch_, who had blown and stormed with the best of the Cardinal's assailants. As for the now forgotten but once notorious "Kensitite" demonstrations, _Punch's_ attitude is seen in his advertisement printed in the same year:--

_To Prize-Fighters and others._--Wanted, MUSCULAR CHRISTIANS to act as sidesmen; used to _mêlées_ and capable of using their fists. Liberal terms. Free doctor. Pensions in case of personal injury. Apply, stating qualifications, to High Church Clerical Agency, Kensiton, W.

_A propos_ of muscular Christians, in 1900 _Punch_ mentions that a country curate had recently received notice to quit because though unexceptionable in other respects, his vicar declared that "what this parish really needs is a good fast bowler with a break from the off." Modern clerical methods of acquiring popularity were satirized in 1905. A Congregational minister had taken part in a theatrical performance, and _Punch_ gave a burlesque account of a bishop appearing at a music-hall in a travesty of _Hamlet_ for the benefit of a Decayed Curates' Fund.

[Sidenote: _Anti-Clericalism in France_]

Bishops and deans have done wonderful things of late years, but this

## particular forecast remains fortunately unfulfilled hitherto. To 1906

belongs one of the few cartoons in this period in which the relations of Church and State are directly referred to. For this was the year in which the French Government cancelled the Concordat and laid an interdict on the Religious Orders. The policy found no favour from _Punch_. In "The Triumph of Democracy" he showed a French priest, a dignified figure, standing outside a doorway guarded by a French soldier, and bearing the notice: "République Française. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Entrée interdite au Clergé."

[Illustration: HOSTESS: "And do you really believe in Christian Science?"

VISITOR: "Well, you see, I've been getting rather stouter lately, and it's such a comfort to know that I _really_ have _no body_!"]

Sabbatarianism gave _Punch_ little or no chance, save for a mild protest against the action of the L.C.C. with regard to the Queen's Hall Concerts in 1898. The change is accurately reflected in the opening lines:--

Ah! County C., why stop our glee? For bigotry is dead; The broader mind can nowhere find Remotest cause to dread An instant fall of scruples all If Sunday's gloom should flee; We're all agreed in word and deed, Except the County C.

_Punch's_ occupation as an anti-Sabbatarian was practically gone by the end of the last century. Bishops had ceased to provoke his satire by their opulence, though the balance-sheet, issued by the Bishop of London in 1905 to prove how hard it was to make both ends meet, excited some good-humoured raillery. Christian Science _Punch_ left severely alone, save for an occasional negligible or oblique reference. His last and most forcible intervention in religious controversy was provoked by the action of the Bishop of Zanzibar in protesting against the administration of the Holy Communion to non-Anglican members. In the cartoon "The Black Man's Burden" in January, 1914, _Punch_ drew two negroes singing as a duet "Why do de Christians rage?" and this scathing comment undoubtedly reflected the views of the great majority of moderate Churchmen at home as well as missionaries and colonial administrators abroad.

I have spoken elsewhere of _Punch's_ share in the Dreyfus controversy, and may add that while laudably free from anti-Semitic partisanship, he did not refrain from satirizing the ostrich-like attitude of the Jews in transition who thought that the signs of race could be obliterated by a change of name.

Reverence and admiration in full measure inspire the tribute to the wise and sagacious Leo XIII, when he died in 1903:--

The long day closes and the strife is dumb, Thither he goes where temporal loss is gain, Where he that asks to enter must become A little child again.

And since in perfect humbleness of heart He sought his Church's honour, not his own, All faiths are one to share the mourner's part Beside the empty throne.

[Illustration: THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN

Refrain by natives of South Africa and Kikuyu.]

The _amende_ to Cardinal Wiseman has been already noted, and I like to end this section with an even more striking palinode--the most notable that had appeared in _Punch_ since his posthumous tribute to Lincoln. _Punch_ had assailed the Salvation Army and its founder with all the weapons at his command in the early days of that movement. Happily he did not wait till General Booth's death to acknowledge his error. In the autumn of 1908 General Booth and Mr. John Burns had both been subjected to severe criticism at the Trade Union Congress, and are shown in a cartoon standing outside the door of the meeting saying to _Mr. Punch_: "You see before you two condemned criminals." _Punch_ replies: "Well, I shouldn't worry about that," and they rejoin in unison: "We don't." This was indirect commendation; there were no reserves in the memorial verses on General Booth's death in August, 1912. _Punch_ compares him with the warrior saints of old time and continues:--

Nay, his the nobler warfare, since his hands Set free the thralls of misery and her brood-- Hunger and haunting shame and sin that brands-- And gave them hope renewed.

Bruised souls, and bodies broken by despair, He healed their heartache, and their wounds he dressed, And drew them, so redeemed, his task to share, Sworn to the same high quest.

Armed with the Spirit's wisdom for his sword, His feet with tidings of salvation shod, He knew no foes save only such as warred Against the peace of God.

Scorned or acclaimed, he kept his harness bright, Still, through the darkest hour, untaught to yield, And at the last, his face toward the light, Fell on the victor's field.

No laurelled blazon rests above his bier, Yet a great people bows its stricken head Where he, who fought without reproach or fear, Soldier of Christ, lies dead.

THE ADVANCE OF WOMEN