(_After Millais, Aug. 23, 1905_)]
So, too, with Turkey. From 1876 to 1913 Mr. Punch's cartoons on the Near
East are one continuous and illuminating commentary on Lord Salisbury's
historic admission that we had "backed the wrong horse," culminating in the
cartoon "Armageddon: a Diversion" in December, 1912, when Turkey says
"Good! If only all these other Christian nations get at one another's
throats I may have a dog's chance yet." Throughout the entire series the
Sick Man remains cynical and impenitent, blowing endless bubble-promises of
reform from his hookah, bullying and massacring his subject races whenever
he had the chance, playing off the jealousies of the Powers, one against
the other, to further his own sinister ends.
[Illustration: SOLID
GERMANY: "Donnerwetter! It's rock. I thought it was going to be paper."
(_Aug. 2, 1911_)]
Yet Mr. Punch does not wish to lay claim to any special prescience or
wisdom, for, in spite of lucid intervals of foresight, we were all deceived
by Germany. Nearly fifty years of peace had blinded us to fifty years of
relentless preparation for war. But if we were deceived by the treachery of
Germany's false professions, we had no monopoly of illusion. Germany made
the huge mistake of believing that we would stand out--that we dared not
support France in face of our troubles and divisions at home. She counted
on the pacific influences in a Liberal Cabinet, on the looseness of the
ties which bound us to our Dominions, on the "contemptible" numbers of our
Expeditionary Force, on the surrender of Belgium. She had willed the War;
the tragedy of Sarajevo gave her the excuse. There is no longer any need to
fix the responsibility. The roots of the world conflict which seemed
obscure to a neutral statesman have long been laid bare by the avowals of
the chief criminal. The story is told in the Memoir of Prince Lichnowsky,
in the revelations of Dr. Muehlon of Krupp's, in the official
correspondence that has come to light since the Revolution of Berlin.
Germany stands before the bar of civilisation as the _reus confitens_
in the cause of light against darkness, freedom against world enslavement.
So the War began, and if "when war begins then hell opens," the saying
gained a tenfold truth in the greatest War of all, when the aggressor at
once began to wage it on non-combatants, on the helpless and innocent, on
women and children, with a cold and deliberate ferocity unparalleled in
history. Let it now be frankly owned that in the shock of this discovery
Mr. Punch thought seriously of putting up his shutters. How could he carry
on in a shattered and mourning world? The chronicle that follows shows how
it became possible, thanks to the temper of all our people in all parts of
the Empire, above all to the unwavering confidence of our sailors and
soldiers, to that "wonderful spirit of light-heartedness, that perpetual
sense of the ridiculous" which, in the words of one of Mr. Punch's many
contributors from the front, "even under the most appalling conditions
never seemed to desert them, and which indeed seemed to flourish more
freely in the mud and rain of the front line trenches than in the
comparative comfort of billets or 'cushy jobs.'" Tommy gave Mr. Punch his
cue, and his high example was not thrown away on those at home, where, when
all allowance is made for shirkers and slackers and scaremongers, callous
pleasure-seekers, faint-hearted pacificists, rebels and traitors, the great
majority so bore themselves as to convince Mr. Punch that it was not only a
privilege but a duty to minister to mirth even at times when one hastened
to laugh for fear of being obliged to weep. In this resolve he was
fortified and encouraged, week after week, by the generous recognition of
his efforts which came from all parts of our far-flung line.
This is no formal History of the War in the strict or scientific sense of
the phrase; no detailed record of naval and military operations. There have
been many occasions on which silence or reticence seemed the only way to
maintain the national composure. It is _Mr. Punch's_ History of the
Great War, a mirror of varying moods, month by month, but reflecting in the
main how England remained steadfastly true to her best traditions; how all
sorts and conditions of men and women comported themselves throughout the
greatest ordeal that had ever befallen their race.