Part 5
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.
[Illustration: AN UNDER-RATED MONSTER
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."
[Illustration: HISTORY DEFEATS ITSELF
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.
[Illustration: "MUMMY, WHAT'S THAT MAN FOR?"]
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.
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.
[Illustration: THE CONSTITUTION IN THE MELTING POT
THE THREE WITCHES: "Double, double, toil and trouble!"
_Macbeth_, act IV, scene 1.
]
[Sidenote: _Wait and See_]
In 1910 two general elections, fought on questions of internal 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!
[Illustration: THE NEW JOHN BULL
After the proposed "Federalization" of the British Isles.]
[Illustration: THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME
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."]
[Illustration: "I SPY!"
_Both_ (together): "Peep-bo! I see you!"]
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."
[Sidenote: _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.
[Illustration: TOWARDS THE RAPPROCHEMENT
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."]
[Sidenote: _The German Menace_]
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.
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.
[Illustration: A LITTLE-NAVY EXHIBIT
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.)]
[Sidenote: _The War in Tripoli_]