Mr. Punch's History of the Great War Part 9

Letters from second-lieutenants seldom go beyond a gentle reminder that their life is not an Elysium. They offer a strange contrast to the activities of Parliamentary grousers and scapegoat hunters. If the Germans were in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily sh.e.l.led as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull rumble of the bombardment as Paris can, one wonders if Members would still be enc.u.mbering the Order-paper with the vexatious trivialities that now find place there, or emitting what a patriotic Labour Member picturesquely described as "the croakings and bleatings of the fatted lambs who have besmirched their country." _Per contra_ we welcome the optimism of Mr.

Asquith in discussing new Votes of Credit, though he reminds us of Micawber calculating his indebtedness for the benefit of Traddles. It will be remembered that when the famous IOU had been handed over, Copperfield remarked, "I am persuaded not only that this was quite the same to Mr.

Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it." Then we have had the surprising but welcome experience of Mr. Tim Healy championing the Government against Sir John Simon's attack on the Military Service Bill; and have listened to Lord Montagu of Beaulieu's urgent plea in the Lords for unity of air control, a proposal which Lord Haldane declared could not be adopted without some "violent thinking." Most remarkable of all has been Mr. Churchill's intervention in the debate on the Naval Estimates, his gloomy review of the situation--Mr. Churchill is always a pessimist when out of office--and the marvellous magnanimity of his suggestion that Lord Fisher should be reinstated at the Admiralty, on the ground that his former antagonist was the only possible First Sea Lord. Mr. Balfour dealt so faithfully with these criticisms and suggestions that there seems to be no truth in the report that Mr. Churchill has been asked to join the Government as Minister of Admonitions. A new and coruscating star has swum into our Parliamentary ken in the shape of the Member for Mid-Herts, and astronomers have labelled it "Pegasus [Greek: pi beta]." When the House of Commons pa.s.sed the Bill prohibiting duels it ought to have made an exception in favour of its own Members. Nothing would have done more to raise the tone of debate, for offenders against decorum would gradually have eliminated one another. Yet Parliament has its merits, not the least of them being the scope it still affords for hereditary talent. Lord Derby, at the moment the most prominent man on the Home Front after the Premier, is the grandson of the "Rupert of Debate," and the new Minister of Blockade enters on his duties close on fifty years after another Lord Robert Cecil entered the Cabinet of Lord Derby. So history repeats itself with a difference. In spite of the Coalition, or perhaps because of it, the old strife of Whigs and Tories has revived, though the lines of cleavage are quite different from what they were. Thus the new Tories are the men who believe that the War is going to be decided by battles in Flanders and the North Sea, and would sacrifice everything for victory, even the privilege of abusing the Government. The new Whigs are the men who consider that the House of Commons is the decisive arena, and that even the defeat of the Germans would be dearly purchased at the cost of the individual's right to say and do what he pleased.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He's kicked the Corporal!"

"He's kicked the Vet.!!"

"He's kicked the Transport Officer!!!"

"He's kicked the Colonel!!!!"

MULE HUMOUR]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VICAR: "These Salonikans, Mrs. Stubbs, are, of course, the Thessalonians to whom St. Paul wrote his celebrated letters."

MRS. STUBBS: "Well, I 'ope 'e'd better luck with 'is than I 'ave. I sent my boy out there three letters and two parcels, and I ain't got no answer to 'em yet."]

After the exhibition of Mr. Augustus John's portrait of Mr. Lloyd George, the most startling personal event of the month has been the dismissal of Grand Admiral Tirpitz. According to one account, he resigned because he could not take the German Fleet out. According to another, it was because he could no longer take the German people in.

At Oxford the Hebdomadal Council have suspended the filling of the Professorship of Modern Greek for six months. Apparently there is no one about just now who understands the modern Greek. A French correspondent puts it somewhat differently: "_La Grece Antique_: h.e.l.las. _La Grece Moderne_: Helas!"

_April, 1916_.

Who would have thought when the month opened that at its close a new front within the Four Seas would be added to our far-flung line, Dublin's finest street half ruined, Ireland placed under martial law? Certainly not Mr.

Birrell or Mr. Redmond or the Irish Nationalist Members. The staunchest Unionist would acquit Mr. William O'Brien of any menace when in the Budget Debate, three weeks before the Rebellion of Easter Week, he gave it as his opinion that Ireland ought to be omitted from the Budget altogether. So, too, with Mr. Tim Healy, whose princ.i.p.al complaint was that the tax on railway tickets would put a premium on foreign travel; that people would go to Paris instead of Dublin, and Switzerland instead of Killarney. No, so far as the Government and Ireland's Parliamentary representatives went, it was a bolt from the blue--or the green. Mr. Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland for nine years, a longer period than any of his predecessors, has shown himself conspicuous at once by his absence and his innocence, and England in her hour of need, with the submarine peril daily growing and all but starved out after a heroic defence, stands to pay dearly for the privilege of entrusting the administration of Ireland to an absentee humorist.

On the Western front Verdun still rivets all eyes. The German hordes are closing in on the fortress, but at a heavier cost for each mile gained than they have ever paid before.

Germany's colossal effort would inspire admiration as well as respect if she would only fight clean. The ugly stories of her treatment of prisoners have now culminated in the terrible record of the typhus-stricken camp at Wittenberg, where the German doctors deserted their post.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE REPUDIATION

Martin Luther (to Shakespeare): "I see my countrymen claim you as one of them. You may thank G.o.d that you're not that. They have made my Wittenberg--ay, and all Germany--to stink in my nostrils."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GRAPES OF VERDUN

THE OLD FOX: "You don't seem to be getting much nearer them?"

THE CUB: "No, Father. Hadn't we better give it out that they're sour?"]

The report of Mr. Justice Younger's Committee, in which the tale of this atrocity is fully told, is being circulated in neutral countries, and Mr.

Will Thorne has suggested that it should also be sent to our conscientious objectors. It is well to administer some sort of corrective to the information diffused by the neutral newsmonger:

Who cheers us when we're in the blues, With rea.s.suring German news, Of starving Berliners in queues?

The Neutral.

And then, soon after, tells us they Are feeding nicely all the day, And in the old familiar way?

The Neutral.

Who sees the Kaiser in Berlin, Dejected, haggard, old as sin, And shaking in his h.o.a.ry skin?

The Neutral.

Then says he's quite a Sunny Jim, That buoyant health and youthful vim Are sticking out all over him?

The Neutral.

Who tells us tales of Krupp's new guns, Much larger than the other ones, And endless trains chock-full of Huns?

The Neutral.

And then, when our last hope has fled, Declares the Huns are either dead Or hopelessly dispirited?

The Neutral.

In short, who seems to be a blend Of Balaam's a.s.s, the bore's G.o.dsend, And _Mrs. Gamp's_ elusive friend?

The Neutral.

In Parliament we have had the biggest Budget ever known introduced in the shortest Budget speech of the last half-century, at any rate. Mr. Pemberton Billing is doing his best every Tuesday to bring the atmosphere of the aerodrome into the House. Mr. Tennant has promised his sympathetic consideration to Mr. Billing's offer personally to organise raids on the enemy's aircraft bases, and the House is bearing up as well as can be expected under the shadow of this impending bereavement. Mr. Swift MacNeill is busy with his patriotic effort to purge the roll of the Lords of the peerages now held by enemy dukes. For the rest, up to Easter Week, the Parliamentary situation has been described as "a cabal every afternoon and a crisis every second day."

It is one of the strange outcomes of this wonderful time that there is more gaiety as well as more suffering in hospitals during the War than in peace.

Certainly such a request would never have been heard in normal years as that recently made by a nurse to a roomful of irrepressible Tommies at a private hospital:

"A message has just come in to ask if the hospital will make a little less noise as the lady next door has a touch of headache."

For shouting "The Zepps are coming!" a Grimsby girl has been fined 1. It was urged in defence that the girl suffered from hallucinations, one being that she was a daily newspaper proprietor. But the recent Zeppelin raids have not been without their advantages. In a spirit of emulation an ambitious hen at Acton has laid an egg weighing 5-1/4 oz.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

VISITOR (at Private Hospital): "Can I see Lieutenant Barker, please?"

MATRON: "We do not allow ordinary visiting. May I ask if you are a relative?"

VISITOR (boldly): "Oh, yes! I'm his sister."

MATRON: "Dear me! I'm very glad to meet you. _I'm his mother_."]

_May, 1916_.

Verdun still holds out: that is the best news of the month. The French with inexorable logic continue to exact the highest price for the smallest gain of ground. If the Germans are ready to give 100,000 men for a hill or part of a hill they may have it. If they will give a million men they may perhaps have Verdun itself. But so far their Pyrrhic victories have stopped short of this limit, and Verdun, like Ypres, battered, ruined and evacuated by civilians, remains a symbol of Allied tenacity and the will to resist.

The months in war-time sometimes belie their traditions, but it is fitting that in May we should have enlisted a new Ally--the Sun. The Daylight Saving Bill became Law on May 17. Here is a true economy, and our only regret is that Mr. Willett, the chief promoter of a scheme complacently discussed during his lifetime as ingenious but impracticable, should not have lived to witness its swift and unmurmuring acceptance under stress of war.

The official _communiques_ from the Irish Front in the earlier stages of the Dublin rebellion did not long maintain their roseate complexion.

Even before the end of April a Secret Session--the second in a week--was held to discuss the Irish situation. By a strange coincidence this Secret Session immediately followed the grant by the Commons of a Return relating to Irish Lunacy accounts. From the meagre official summary we gather that the absence of reporters has at least the negative advantage of shortening speeches. In a very few days, however, the Prime Minister discarded reticence, admitting the gravity of the situation, the prevalence of street fighting, the spread of the insurrection in the West, the appointment of Sir John Maxwell to the supreme command, and the placing of the Irish Government under his orders. The inevitable sequel--the execution of the responsible insurrectionist leaders--has led to vehement protests from Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien against militarist brutality. The House of Commons is a strange place. When Mr. Birrell rose on May 3 to give an account of his nine years' stewardship, the Unionists, and not the Unionists alone, were thinking of a lamp-post in Whitehall. When he had concluded his pathetic apologia and confessed his failure to estimate accurately the strength of Sinn Fein, members were almost ready to fall on his neck, but they no longer wanted his head.