DOVE OF PEACE: "Of course, I want to please everybody, but isn't this a bit
thick?"]
[Illustration: HOW TO BRIGHTEN THE PERIOD OF REACTION
MOTHER (to son who has fought on most of the Fronts): "Don't you know what
to do with yourself, George? Why don't you 'ave a walk down the road,
dear?"
FATHER: "Ah, 'e ain't seen the corner where they pulled down Simmondses'
fish-shop, 'as 'e. Ma?"]
On the Rhine the efforts of our army of occupation to present the stern and
forbidding air supposed to mark our dealings with the inhabitants were
proving a lamentable failure. You can't produce a really good imitation of
a Hun without lots of practice. Gloating is entirely foreign to the nature
of Thomas Atkins, and he could not pass a child yelling in the gutter
without stooping to comfort it. At home his education was proceeding on
different lines. The period of reaction had set in, and unwonted exertions
were necessary to stimulate his interest. Such artless devices were,
however, preferable to the pastime, already fashionable in more exalted
circles, of kicking a total stranger round the room to the accompaniment of
cymbals, a motor siren, and a frying pan.
After a month of madness it was not to be wondered at that we should have a
month of muzzling, though the enforcement of the order might have been
profitably extended from dogs to journalists. The secrecy maintained by the
Big Four--a phrase invented by America--the conflict of the idealists with
the realists, and the temporary break-away of the Italian wrestler,
Orlando, were bound to excite comment. But a shattered world could not be
rebuilt in a day, with Bolshevist wolves prowling about the Temple of
Peace, and the Dove at sea between the Ark and Archangel. The Covenant of
the League of Nations, though in a diluted form, had at last taken shape,
the Peace Machine had got a move on, and the Premier's spirited, if not
very dignified, retaliation on the newspaper snipers led to an abatement of
unnecessary hostilities, though the pastime of shooting policemen with
comparative impunity still flourished in Ireland, and the numbers and cost
of our "army of inoccupation" still continued to increase. Innumerable
queries were made in Parliament on the subject of the unemployment dole,
but the announcement that the Admiralty did not propose to perpetuate the
title "Grand Fleet" for the principal squadron of His Majesty's Navy passed
without comment. The Grand Fleet is now a part of the History that it did
so much to make.
May and June were "hectic" months, in which the reaction from the fatigues
and restraints of War found vent in an increased disinclination for work,
encouraged by a tropical sun. These were the months of the resumption of
cricket, the Victory Derby, the flood of honours, and the flying of the
Atlantic, with a greater display of popular enthusiasm over the gallant
airmen who failed in that feat than over the generals who had won the War.
They were also the months of the duel between Mr. Smillie and the Dukes,
the discovery of oil in Derbyshire, the privileged excursion into War
polemics of Lord French, unrest in Egypt, renewed trouble with the police,
and a shortage of beer, boots and clothes.
[Illustration: "END OF A PERFECT 'TAG'"]
But though the Big Four had been temporarily reduced to a Big Three by
Italy's withdrawal, and though M. Clemenceau, Mr. Lloyd George, and
President Wilson had all suffered in prestige by the slow progress of the
negotiations, Versailles, with the advent of the German delegates, more
than ever riveted the gaze of an expectant world. To sign or not to sign,
or, in the words of Wilhelm Shakespeare, _Sein oder nicht sein: hier ist
die Frage_--that was the problem which from the moment of his famous
opening speech Count Brockdorff-Rantzau was up against. But, as the days
wore on, in spite of official impenitence and the double breach of the
Armistice terms by the scuttling of the German war-ships at Scapa and the
burning of the French flags at Berlin, the force of "fierce reluctant
truculent delay" was spent against the steadily growing volume of national
acquiescence, culminating in the decision of the Weimar Assembly, the tardy
choice of new delegates, and the final scene in the Hall of Mirrors,
haunted by the ghosts of 1871.
Writing at the moment of the Signature of Peace and in deep thankfulness
for the relief it brings to a stricken world, Mr. Punch is too old to jazz
for joy, but he is young enough to face the future with a reasoned
optimism, born of a belief in his race and their heroic achievements in
these great and terrible years. Victory took us by surprise; and we were
less prepared for Peace at that moment than we had ever been for War. And
just as in the first days of the fighting we went astray, running after the
cry "Business as usual," so to-day we are making as bad a mistake when we
run after "Pleasure as usual"--or rather more than usual. But we soon
revised that early error, and we shall not waste much time about revising
this. For though we lacked imagination then, and still lack it, we have the
gift, perhaps even more useful if less showy, of commonsense. And when
commonsense is found in natures that are honest and hearts that are clean,
it may make mistakes, but not for long. No, the spirit which won the War is
not going to fail us at this second call. Perhaps we have only been waiting
for the actual coming of Peace to settle down to our new and greater task.
But let us never forget the debt, unpaid and unpayable, to our immortal
dead and to the valiant survivors of the great conflict, to whom we owe
freedom and security and the possibility of a better and cleaner world.
[Illustration: GHOSTS AT VERSAILLES]