Mr. Punch's History of the Great War Part 3

Full-armed she stands in shining mail, Erect, serene, unfaltering still, Shod with a strength that cannot fail, Strong with a fierce o'ermastering will.

Where shattered homes and ruins be She fights through dark and desperate days; Beside the watchers on the sea She guards the Channel's narrow ways.

Through iron hail and shattering sh.e.l.l, Where the dull earth is stained with red, Fearless she fronts the gates of h.e.l.l And shields the unforgotten dead.

So stands she, with her all at stake, And battles for her own dear life, That by one victory she may make For evermore an end of strife.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHILDREN'S PEACE

PEACE: "I'm glad that they, at least, have their Christmas unspoiled."]

Yet we have our minor war gains in the temporary disappearance of cranks and faddists, some of whom have sunk without a ripple. And though the Press Censor's suppressions and delays and inconsistencies provoke discontent in the House and out of it, food for mirth turns up constantly in unexpected quarters. The Crown Prince tells an American interviewer that there is no War Party in Germany, nor has there ever been. The German General Staff have begun to disguise set-backs under the convenient euphemism that the situation has developed "according to expectation." An English village worthy, discussing the prospects of invasion, comes to the rea.s.suring conclusion that "there can't be no battle in these parts, Jarge, for there bain't no field suitable, as you may say; an' Squire, 'e won't lend 'em the use of 'is park." The troubles of neutrality are neatly summed up in a paper in a recent geography examination. "Holland is a low country, in fact it is such a very low country that it is no wonder that it is dammed all round."

The trials of mistresses on the home front are happily described in the reply of a child to a small visitor who inquired after her mother. "Thank you, poor mummie's a bit below herself this morning--what with the cook and the Kaiser."

[Ill.u.s.tration:

POMPOUS LADY: "I shall descend at Knightsbridge."

TOMMY (aside): "Takes 'erself for a bloomin' Zeppelin!"]

We have to thank an ingenious correspondent for drawing up the following "credibility index" for the guidance of perplexed newspaper readers:

London, Paris, or Petrograd (official) 100 " " " (semi-official) 50 Berlin (official) 25 It is believed in military circles here that-- 24 A correspondent that has just returned from the firing-line tells me that-- 18 Our correspondent at Rome announces that-- 11 Berlin (unofficial) 10 I learn from a neutral merchant that-- 7 A story is current in Venice to the effect that-- 5 It is rumoured that-- 4 I have heard to-day from a reliable source that-- 3 I learn on una.s.sailable authority that-- 2 It is rumoured in Rotterdam that-- 1 Wolff's Bureau states that-- 0

_January, 1915_.

General von Kluck "never got round on the right." Calais is Calais still, and the Kaiser, if he still wishes to give it a new name, may call it the "Never, Never Land." "General Janvier" is doing his worst, but our men are sticking it out through slush and slime. As for the Christmas truce and fraternisation, the British officer who ended a situation that was proving impossible by presenting a dingy Saxon with a copy of _Punch_ in exchange for a packet of cigarettes, acted with a wise candour:

For there he found, our dingy friend, Amid the trench's sobering slosh, What must have left him, by the end, A wiser, if a sadder, Boche, Seeing himself, with chastened mien, In that pellucid well of Truth serene.

There can be no "fraternising" with Fritz until he realises that he has been fooled by his War Lords; and his awakening is a long way off. Lord Kitchener has been charged with being "very economical in his information"

vouchsafed to the Lords, but it is well to be rid of illusions. This has not been a month of great events. General Joffre is content with this ceaseless "nibbling." The Kaiser, nourished by the flattery of his tame professors, encourages the war on non-combatants.

The Turks are beginning to show a gift for euphemism in disguising their reverses in the Caucasus, which shows that they have nothing to learn from their masters; Austria, badly mauled by the Serbians, addresses awful threats to Roumania; and the United States has issued a warning Note on neutral trading. But the American Eagle is not the Eagle that we are up against.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FLIGHT THAT FAILED

THE EMPEROR: "What! No babes, Sirrah?"

THE MURDERER: "Alas, Sire, none."

THE EMPEROR: "Well, then, no babes, no iron crosses."

(_Exit murderer, discouraged_.)]

The number of Mr. Punch's correspondents on active service steadily grows.

Some of them are at the Western front; others are still straining at the leash at home; another of the _Punch_ brigade, with the very first battalion of Territorials to land in India, has begun to send his impressions of the shiny land; of friendly natives and unfriendly ants; of the disappointment of being relegated to clerical duties instead of going to the front; of the evaporation of visions of military glory in the routine of typing, telephoning and telegraphing; of leisurely Oriental methods. Being a soldier clerk in India is very different from being a civilian clerk in England. Patience, good Territorials in India, your time will come.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHIRKERS' WAR NEWS

"There! What did I tell you? Northdown Lambs beaten--two to nothing."]

At home, though the "knut" has been commandeered and n.o.bly transmogrified, though women are increasingly occupied in war work and entering with devotion and self-sacrifice on their new duties as subst.i.tutes for men, we have not yet been wholly purged of levity and selfishness. Football news has not receded into its true perspective; shirkers are more pre-occupied with the defeat or victory of "Lambs" or "Wolves" in Lancashire than with the stubborn defence, the infinite discomfort and the heavy losses of their brothers in Flanders.

Overdressed fashionables pester wounded officers and men with their unreasonable visits and futile queries. The enemies in our midst are not all aliens; there are not a few natives we should like to see interned.

The Kaiser has had his first War birthday and, as the Prussian Government has ordered that there shall be no public celebrations, this confirms the rumours that he now wishes he had never been born.

Germany, says the _Cologne Gazette_ in an article on the food question, "has still at hand a very large supply of pigs"--even after the enormous number she has exported to Belgium. Germany, however, does not only export pigs; her trade in "canards" with neutrals grows and grows, chiefly with the United States, thanks to the untiring mendacity of Bernstorff and Wolff. Compared with these efforts, the revelations of English governesses at German courts, which are now finding their way into print, make but a poor show.

As the British armies increase, the moustache of the British officer, one of the most astonishing products of these astonishing times, grows "small by degrees and beautifully less." Waxed ends, fashionable in a previous generation, are now only worn by policemen, taxi-drivers and labour leaders. The Kaiser remains faithful to the Mephistophelean form. But in proof of his desire to make the best of both worlds, nether and celestial, he continues to commandeer "Gott" on every occasion as his second in command. Out-Heroding Herod as a murderer of innocents, he enters into a compet.i.tion of piety with his grandfather. For we should not forget that the first German Emperor's messages to his wife in the Franco-Prussian War were once summed up by Mr. Punch:

Ten thousand French have gone below; Praise G.o.d from Whom all blessings flow.

_February, 1915_.

January ended with a knock for the Germans off the Dogger Bank, when the _Blucher_ was sunk by our Battle-Cruiser Squadron:

They say the _Lion_ and the _Tiger_ sweep Where once the Huns sh.e.l.led babies from the deep, And _Blucher_, that great cruiser--12-inch guns Roar o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep.

And now it is the turn of "Johnny Turk," who has had _his_ knock on the Suez Ca.n.a.l, and failed to solve the _Riddle of the Sands_ under German guidance. Having safely locked up his High Seas Fleet in the Kiel Ca.n.a.l, the Kaiser has ordered the U-boat blockade of England to begin by the torpedoing of neutral as well as enemy merchant ships.

You may know a man by the company he keeps, and the Kaiser's friends are now the Jolly Roger and Sir Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt.

Valentine's Day has come and gone. Here are some lines from a damp but undefeated lover in the trenches:

Though the glittering knight whose charger Bore him on his lady's quest With an infinitely larger Share of warfare's pomp was blest, Yet he offered love no higher, No more difficult to quench, Than the filthy occupier Of this unromantic trench.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUNNING AMOK

GERMAN BULL: "I know I'm making a rotten exhibition of myself; but I shall tell everybody I was goaded into it."]

The fusion of cla.s.ses in the camps of the New Armies outdoes the mixture of "cook's son and duke's son" fifteen years ago. The old Universities are now given up to a handful of coloured students, Rhodes' scholars and reluctant crocks. As a set-off, however, a Swansea clergyman and football enthusiast has held a "thanksgiving service for their good fortune against Newcastle United." Meanwhile, the Under-Secretary for War has stated that the army costs more in a week than the total estimates for the Waterloo campaign, and that our casualties on the Western front alone have amounted to over 100,000. So what with submarine losses, ubiquitous German spies, the German propaganda in America, and complaints of Government inactivity, the pessimists are having a fine time. Tommy grouses of course, but then he complains far more of the loss of a packet of cigarettes or a tin of peppermints or a mouth-organ than of the loss of a limb.

Germany's att.i.tude towards the United States tempers the blandishments of the serenader with the occasional discharge of half-bricks. There is no such inconsistency in the expression of her feelings about England.

Articles ent.i.tled "_Unser Ha.s.s gegen England_" constantly appear in the German Press, and people are beginning to wonder whether the _Ha.s.s_ is not the Kaiser. Apropos of newspapers, we are beginning to harbour a certain envy of the Americans. Even their provincial organs often contain important and cheering news of the doings of the British Army many days before the Censor releases the information in England. Daylight saving is again being talked of, and it would surely be an enormous boon to rush the measure through now so that the Germans may have less darkness of which to take advantage. And there is a general and reasonable feeling that more use should be made of bands for recruiting. The ways of German musicians are perplexing. Here is the amiable Herr Humperdinck, composer of "Hansel and Gretel," the very embodiment of the old German kindliness, signing the Manifesto of patriotic artists and professors who execrate England, while Strauss, the truculent "Mad Mullah" of the Art, holds aloof. Dr. Hans Richter, who enjoyed English hospitality so long, now clamours for our extinction; it is even said that he has asked to be allowed to conduct a _Parsifal_ airship to this country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY OF A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD HAVING ITS MORNING HATE]