(_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.
[Illustration: 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 nobly transmogrified,
though women are increasingly occupied in war work and entering with
devotion and self-sacrifice on their new duties as substitutes 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
competition 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 God from Whom all blessings flow.
_February, 1915_.
January ended with a knock for the Germans off the Dogger Bank, when the
_Blücher_ was sunk by our Battle-Cruiser Squadron:
They say the _Lion_ and the _Tiger_ sweep
Where once the Huns shelled babies from the deep,
And _Blücher_, 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 Canal, and failed to solve the _Riddle of the Sands_ under
German guidance. Having safely locked up his High Seas Fleet in the Kiel
Canal, 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 Casement.
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.
[Illustration: 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 classes 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 attitude 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 entitled "_Unser Hass gegen England_" constantly appear in
the German Press, and people are beginning to wonder whether the
_Hass_ 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 "Hänsel
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.
[Illustration: STUDY OF A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD HAVING ITS MORNING HATE]
_March, 1915._
A new and possibly momentous chapter has opened in the history of the War
by the attempt to force the Dardanelles. At the end of February the Allied
Fleet bombarded the forts at the entrance, and landed a party of
bluejackets. Since then these naval operations have been resumed, and our
new crack battleship _Queen Elizabeth_ has joined in the attack. We
have not got through the Narrows, and some sceptical critics are asking
what we should do if we got through to Constantinople, without a land
force. It is a great scheme, if it comes off; and the "only begetter" of
it, if report is true, is Mr. Winston Churchill, the strategist of the
Antwerp expedition, who now aspires to be the Dardanelson of our age.
Anyhow, the Sultan, lured on by the Imperial William o' the Wisp, is
already capable of envying even his predecessor:
Abdul! I would that I had shared your plight,
Or Europe seen my heels,
Before the hour when Allah bound me tight
To WILLIAM'S chariot-wheels!
Germany, always generous with other people's property, has begun to hint to
Italy possibilities of compensation in the shape of certain portions of
Austro-Hungarian territory. She has also declared that she is "fighting for
the independence of the small nations," including, of course, Belgium. In
further evidence of her humanity she has taken to spraying our soldiers in
the West with flaming petrol and squirting boiling pitch over our Russian
allies. It is positively a desecration of the word devil to apply it to the
Germans whether on land, on or under water, or in the air.
We have begun to "push" on the Western front, and Neuve Chapelle has been
captured, after a fierce battle and at terrible cost. Air raids are
becoming common in East Anglia and U-boats unpleasantly active in the North
Sea. Let us take off our hats to the mine-sweepers and trawlers, the new
and splendid auxiliaries of the Royal Navy. Grimsby is indeed a "name to
resound for ages" for what its fishermen have done and are doing in the war
against mine and submarine:
Soles in the Silver Pit--an' there we'll let 'em lie;
Cod on the Dogger--oh, we'll fetch 'em by an' by;
War on the water--an' it's time to serve an' die,
For there's wild work doin' on the North Sea ground.
An' it's "Wake up, Johnnie!" they want you at the trawlin'
(With your long sea-boots and your tarry old tarpaulin);
All across the bitter seas duty comes a-callin'
In the Winter's weather off the North Sea ground.
It's well we've learned to laugh at fear--the sea has taught us how;
It's well we've shaken hands with death--we'll not be strangers now,
With death in every climbin' wave before the trawler's bow,
An' the black spawn swimmin' on the North Sea ground.
[Illustration: WILLIAM O' THE WISP]
These brave men and their heroic brothers in the trenches are true
sportsmen as well as patriots, not those who interpret the need of
lightheartedness by the cult of "sport as usual" on the football field and
the racecourse. And the example of the Universities shines with the same
splendour. Of the scanty remnant that remain at Oxford and Cambridge all
the physically fit have joined the O.T.C. Boat-race day has passed, but the
crews are gone to "keep it long" and "pull it through" elsewhere:
Not here their hour of great emprise;
No mounting cheer towards Mortlake roars;
Lulled to full tide the river lies
Unfretted by the fighting oars;
The long high toil of strenuous play
Serves England elsewhere well to-day.
London changes daily. The sight of the female Jehu is becoming familiar;
the lake in St. James's Park has been drained and the water-fowl driven to
form a concentration camp by the sorry pool that remains beside the
Whitehall Gate.
Spy-hunting is prevalent in East Anglia, but the amateurs have not achieved
any convincing results. Spring poets are suffering from suspended
animation; there is a slump in crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils and lambkins.
Their "musings always turn away to men who're arming for the fray." The
clarion and the fife have ousted the pastoral ode. And our military and
naval experts, harassed by the Censor, take refuge in psychology.
The _Kölnische Zeitung_ has published a whole article on "Mr. Punch."
The writer, a Herr Professor, finds our cartoons lacking in "modest
refinement." Indeed, he goes so far as to say that the treatment of the
Kaiser savours of blasphemy. One is so apt to forget that the Kaiser is a
divinity, so prone to remember that Luther wrote, "We Germans are Germans,
and Germans we will remain--that is to say, pigs and brutish animals." This
was written in 1528: but "the example of the Middle Ages" is held up to-day
by German leaders as the true fount of inspiration.
[Illustration: THE WAR SPIRIT AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
ARDENT EGYPTOLOGIST (who has lately joined the Civic Guard): "No, I seem to
have lost my enthusiasm for this group since I noticed Bes-Hathor-Horus was
out of step with the other two."]
_April_, 1915.
A hundred years ago Bismarck was born on April 1, the man who built with
blood and iron, but now only the blood remains. Yet one may doubt whether
even that strong and ruthless pilot would have commended the submarine crew
who sank the liner _Falaba_ and laughed at the cries and struggles of
drowning men and women. Sooner or later these crews are doomed to die the
death of rats:
But you, who sent them out to do this shame;
From whom they take their orders and their pay;
For you--avenging wrath defers its claim,
And Justice bides her day.
The tide of "frightfulness" rolls strong on land as on sea. The second
battle of Ypres has begun and the enemy has resorted to the use of a new
weapon--poison gas. He had already poisoned wells in South West Africa, but
this is an uglier outcome of the harnessing of science to the Powers of
Darkness. Italy grows restive in spite of the blandishments of Prince
Bülow, and as the month closes we hear of the landing of the Allies in
Gallipoli, just two months after the unsupported naval attempt to force the
Dardanelles. British and Australian and New Zealand troops have achieved
the impossible by incredible valour in face of murderous fire, and a
foothold has been won at tremendous cost of heroic lives. Letters from the
Western front continue cheerful, but it does not need much reading between
the lines to realise the odds with which our officers and men have to
contend, the endless discomfort and unending din. They are masters of a
gallant art of metaphor which belittles the most appalling horrors of
trench warfare; masters, too, of the art of extracting humorous relief from
the most trivial incidents.
On the home front we have to contend with a dangerous ally of the enemy in
Drink, and with the self-advertising politicians who do their bit by asking
unnecessary questions. Sometimes, but rarely, they succeed in eliciting
valuable information, as in Mr. Lloyd George's statement on the situation
at the front. We have now six times as many men in the field as formed the
original Expeditionary Force, and in the few days fighting round Neuve
Chapelle almost as much ammunition was expended by our guns as in the whole
of the two and three-quarter years of the Boer War.
[Illustration: THE HAUNTED SHIP