(_A Foreword_)
[Illustration: FANCY AND----
The kind of figure you see on posters inviting you to French
seaside resorts.
]
Nothing is more calculated to give Englishmen a good conceit of
themselves in the matter of international courtesy than a careful
examination of the archives of Mr. Punch, such as was necessary in
the preparation of the present volume. To anyone familiar with the
anti-British attitude of the French comic press before these happier
days of the _Entente Cordiale_, and of the German press at all times,
the complete absence of all manner of ill-feeling from Mr. Punch's
jokes about our neighbours across the Channel is little short of
wonderful. Even in the days when the English people were the unfailing
subject for every French satirist when he suffered from an unusual
attack of spleen, our national jester seems never to have lost
the good-humour with which he has usually surveyed the life of the
Continent. Indeed, as the pages here brought together will readily
prove, Mr. Punch has seldom, if ever, laid himself open to the charge
of insularity in his point of view. Instead of showing a tendency to
ridicule our neighbours on the Continent, he has been more inclined
to pillory the follies of his own countrymen, and to contrast their
behaviour on the Continent rather unfavourably with that of the
natives. But, even so, there is nothing in these humorous chronicles
of "Mr. Punch on the Continong" which will not amuse equally the
travelling or the stay-at-home Briton and the foreigner, since each
will find many of his national characteristics "touched off" in a
way that is no less kindly than amusing. The fact that a considerable
proportion of these pages are from the pen of George Du Maurier,
himself a Frenchman by birth, is a reminder that long before the
Governments of France and Great Britain had come into their present
relationship of intimate friendliness, Mr. Punch had maintained his
own _Entente Cordiale!_
[Illustration: FACT!
The kind of figure which comes nearest to the ideal you have
formed.
]
[Illustration: WHERE SECOND THOUGHTS ARE BETTER