Title: Mr. Punch's History of the Great War
Author: Charles L. Graves
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11571]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
| First | Impression | July 1919 |
| Second | " | July 1919 |
| Third | " | August 1919 |
| Fourth | " | August 1919 |
| Fifth | " | September 1919 |
| Sixth | " | October 1919 |
| Seventh | " | October 1919 |
For whatsoever worth or wit appears
In this mixed record of five hectic years,
This tale of heroes, heroines--and others--
Thank first "O. S." and then his band of brothers
Who took their cue, with pencil and with pen,
From the gay courage of our fighting men.
Theirs be the praise, not his, who here supplies
Merely the editorial hooks and eyes
And, rich by proxy, prodigally spends
The largess of his colleagues and his friends.
C. L. G.
Though a lover of peace, Mr. Punch from his earliest days has not been unfamiliar with war. He was born during the Afghan campaign; in his youth England fought side by side with the French in the Crimea; he saw the old Queen bestow the first Victoria Crosses in 1857; he was moved and stirred by the horrors and heroisms of the Indian Mutiny. A little later on, when our relations with France were strained by the Imperialism of Louis Napoleon, he had witnessed the rise of the volunteer movement and made merry with the activities of the citizen soldier of Brook Green. Later on again he had watched, not without grave misgiving, the growth of the great Prussian war machine which crushed Denmark, overthrew Austria, and having isolated France, overwhelmed her heroic resistance by superior numbers and science, and stripped her of Alsace-Lorraine.
In May, 1864, Mr. Punch presented the King of Prussia with the "Order of St. Gibbet" for his treatment of Denmark.
In August of the same year he portrayed the brigands dividing the spoil and Prussia grabbing the lion's share, thus foreshadowing the inevitable conflict with Austria.
In the war of 1870-1 he showed France on her knees but defying the new Caesar, and arraigned Bismarck before the altar of Justice for demanding exorbitant securities.
And in 1873, when the German occupation was ended by the payment of the indemnity, in a flash of prophetic vision Mr. Punch pictured France, vanquished but unsubdued, bidding her conqueror "Au revoir."
More than forty years followed, years of peace and prosperity for Great Britain, only broken by the South African war, the wounds of which were healed by a generous settlement. But all the time Germany was preparing for "The Day," steadily perfecting her war machine, enlarging her armies, creating a great fleet, and piling up colossal supplies of guns and munitions, while her professors and historians, harnessed to the car of militarism, inflamed the people against England as the jealous enemy of Germany's legitimate expansion. Abroad, like a great octopus, she was fastening the tentacles of permeation and penetration in every corner of the globe, honeycombing Russia and Belgium, France, England and America with secret agents, spying and intriguing and abusing our hospitality. For twenty-five years the Kaiser was our frequent and honoured, if somewhat embarrassing, guest, professing friendship for England and admiration of her ways, shooting at Sandringham, competing at Cowes, sending telegrams of congratulation to the University boat-race winners, ingratiating himself with all he met by his social gifts, his vivacious conversation, his prodigious versatility and energy.
Mr. Punch was no enemy of Germany. He remembered--none better--the debt we owe to her learning and her art; to Bach and Beethoven, to Handel, the "dear Saxon" who adopted our citizenship; to Mendelssohn, who regarded England as his second home; to her fairy tales and folk-lore; to the Brothers Grimm and the Struwwelpeter; to the old kindly Germany which has been driven mad by War Lords and Pan-Germans. If Mr. Punch's awakening was gradual he at least recognised the dangerous elements in the Kaiser's character as far back as October, 1888, when he underlined Bismarck's warning against Caesarism. In March, 1890, appeared Tenniel's famous cartoon "Dropping the Pilot"; in May of the same year the Kaiser appears as the Enfant Terrible of Europe, rocking the boat and alarming his fellow-rulers. In January, 1892, he is the Imperial Jack-in-the-Box with a finger in every pie; in March, 1892, the modern Alexander, who
Assumes the God,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres;
though unfortunately never nodding in the way that Homer did. (This cartoon, by the way, caused Punch to be excluded for a while from the Imperial Palace.)
In February, 1896, Mr. Punch drew the Kaiser as Fidgety Will. In January, 1897, he was the Imperial actor-manager casting himself for a leading part in Un Voyage en Chine; in October of the same year he was "Cook's Crusader," sympathising with the Turk at the time of the Cretan ultimatum; and in April, 1903, the famous visit to Tangier suggested the Moor of Potsdam wooing Morocco to the strains of
"Unter den Linden"--always at Home,
"Under the Limelight," wherever I roam.
In 1905 the Kaiser was "The Sower of Tares," the enemy of Europe.
In 1910 he was Teutonising and Prussifying Turkey; in 1911 discovering to his discomfort that the Triple Entente was a solid fact.
And in September, 1913, he was shown as unable to dissemble his disappointment at the defeat of the German-trained Turkish army by the Balkan League.
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.
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 m 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.
Four weeks ago we stood on the verge of the great upheaval and knew it not. We were thinking of holidays; of cricket and golf and bathing, and then were suddenly plunged in the deep waters of the greatest of all Wars. It has been a month of rude awakening, of revelation, of discovery--of many moods varying from confidence to deep misgiving, yet dominated by a sense of relief that England has chosen the right course. Sir Edward Grey's statement that we meant to stand by France and fulfil our obligations to Belgium rallied all parties. "Thrice armed is he that hath his quarrel just." The Fleet "stands fast" and the vigil of the North Sea has begun. Lord Kitchener has gone to the War Office, and in twelve days from the declaration of War our Expeditionary Force, the best trained and equipped army that England has ever put into the field, landed in France. The Dominions and India are staunch. Every able-bodied public school boy and under-graduate of military age has joined the colours. The Admiralty is crowded with living counterparts of Captain Kettle, offering their services in any capacity, linking up the Merchant Marine with the Royal Navy in one great solidarity of the sea.
The Empire is sound and united. So far the omens are good. But as the days pass the colossal task of the Allies becomes increasingly apparent. Peace-loving nations are confronted by a Power which has prepared for war for forty years, equipped in every detail as no Power has ever been equipped before, with a docile and well-disciplined people trained to arms, fortified by a well-founded belief in their invincibility, reinforced by armies of spies in every country, hostile or neutral. We are up against the mightiest War-machine of all time, wonderful in organisation, joining the savagery of the barbarian to the deadliest resources of modern science. The revelation of the black soul of Germany is the greatest and the most hideous surprise of this month of months, crowning long years of treachery and the abuse of hospitality with an orgy of butchery and devastation--the torture and massacre of old men, women and children, the shooting of hostages, the sack and burning of towns and the destruction of ancient seats of learning. Yet we feel that in trampling upon heroic Belgium, who dared to bar the gate, Germany has outraged the conscience of the world and sealed her ultimate doom.
The month closes in gloom, the fall of Liége, Namur and Brussels, the sack of Louvain, and the repulse of the Russian raid into East Prussia at Tannenberg following in rapid succession. Against these disasters we have to set the brilliant engagement in the Heligoland Bight. But the onrush of the Germans on the Western front is not stayed, though their time-table has been thrown out by the self-sacrifice of the Belgians, the steadfast courage of French's "contemptible little army" in the retreat from Mons, and the bold decision of Smith-Dorrien, who saved the situation at Le Cateau. In these days of apprehension and misgiving, clouded by alarming rumours of a broken and annihilated army, it sometimes seems as though we should never smile again. Where, in a world of blood and tears, can Punch exercise his function without outraging the fitness of things? These doubts have been with us from the beginning, but they are already being resolved by the discovery--another of the wonders of the time--that on the very fringes of tragedy there is room for cheerfulness. When our fighting men refuse to be downhearted in the direst peril, we at home should follow their high example, note where we can the humours of the fray, and "bear in silence though our hearts may bleed."
Germany in one brief month has given us a wonderful exhibition of conscienceless strength, of disciplined ferocity. She has shown an equally amazing failure to read the character of her foes aright. We now know what German Kultur means: but of the soul and spirit of England she knows nothing. Least of all does she understand that formidable and incorrigible levity which refuses to take hard knocks seriously. It will be our privilege to assist in educating our enemies on these and other points, even though, as Lord Kitchener thinks, it takes three years to do it. The Mad Dog of Europe is loose, but we remember the fate of the dog who "to serve some private ends went mad and bit the man." "The man recovered from his bite, the dog it was that died." Meanwhile the Official Press Bureau has begun its operations, the Prince of Wales's Relief Fund for the relief of those who may suffer distress through the war is started, and in the City
Because beneath grey Northern Skies
Some grey hulls heave and fall,
The merchants sell their merchandise
All just as usual.
Another month of revelations and reticences, of carnage and destruction, loss and gain, with the miracle of the Marne as the first great sign of the turning of the tide. On September 3 the Paris Government moved to Bordeaux, on the 5th the retreat from Mons ended, on the 13th Joffre, always unboastful and laconic, announced the rolling back of the invaders, on the 15th the battle of the Aisne had begun. What an Iliad of agony, endurance and heroism lies behind these dates--the ordeal and deliverance of Paris, the steadfastness of the "Contemptibles," the martyrdom of Belgium!
Day by day Germany unmasks herself more clearly in her true colours from highest to lowest. The Kaiser reveals himself as a blasphemer and hypocrite, the Imperial crocodile with the bleeding heart, the Crown Prince as a common brigand, the High Command as chief instigators to ferocity, the rank and file as docile instruments of butchery and torture, content to use Belgium women as a screen when going into action.
THE TWO GERMANIES
Marvellous the utter transformation
Of the spirit of the German nation!
Once the land of poets, seers and sages,
Who enchant us in their deathless pages,
Holding high the torch of Truth, and earning
Endless honour by their zeal for learning.
Such the land that in an age uncouther
Bred the soul-emancipating LUTHER.
Such the land that made our debt the greater
By the gift of Faust and Struwwelpeter.
Now the creed of Nietzsche, base, unholy,
Guides the nation's brain and guides it solely.
Now Mozart's serene and joyous magic
Yields to RICHARD STRAUSS, the haemorrhagic.[A]
Now the eagle changing to the vulture
Preaches rapine in the name of culture.
Now the Prussian Junker, blind with fury,
Claims to be God's counsel, judge and jury,
While the authentic German genius slumbers,
Cast into the limbo of back numbers.
The campaign of lies goes on with immense energy in all neutral countries, for the Kaiser is evidently of opinion that the pen is perhaps mightier than the sword.
At home the great improvisation of the New Armies, undertaken by Lord Kitchener in the teeth of much expert criticism, goes steadily on. Lord Kitchener asked for 500,000 men, and he has got them. On September 10 the House voted another half million. The open spaces in Hyde Park are given over to training; women are beginning to take the place of men. Already the spirit of the new soldiers is growing akin to that of the regulars. One of Mr. Punch's brigade, who has begun to send his impressions of the mobilised Territorials, sums it up very well when he says that, amateurs or professionals, they are all very much alike. "Feed them like princes and pamper them like babies, and they'll complain all the time. But stand them up to be shot at and they'll take it as a joke, and rather a good joke, too." Lord Roberts maintains a dignified reticence, but that is "Bobs' way":
He knew, none better, how 'twould be,
And spoke his warning far and wide:
He worked to save us ceaselessly,
Setting his well-earned ease aside.
We smiled and shrugged and went our way,
Blind to the swift approaching blow:
His every word proves true to-day,
But no man hears, "I told you so!"
Meanwhile General Botha, Boer and Briton too, is on the war-path, and we can, without an undue stretch of imagination, picture him composing a telegram to the Kaiser in these terms: "Just off to repel another raid. Your customary wire of congratulations should be addressed, 'British Headquarters, German South-West Africa.'"
The rigours of the Censorship are pressing hard on war correspondents. Official news of importance trickles in in driblets: for the rest, newspaper men, miles from the front, are driven to eke out their dispatches with negligible trivialities. We know that Rheims Cathedral is suffering wanton bombardment. And a great many of us believe that at least a quarter of a million Russians have passed through England on their way to France. The number of people who have seen them is large: that of those who have seen people who have seen them is enormous.
We gather that the Press Bureau has no notion whether the rumour is true or not, and cannot think of any way of finding out. But it consents to its publication in the hope that it will frighten the Kaiser. Apropos of the Russians we learn that they have won a pronounced victory (though not by us) at Przemysl.
Motto for the month: Grattez le Prusse et vous trouverez le barbare.
Antwerp has fallen and the Belgian Government removed to Havre. But the spirit of the King and his army is unshaken.
Unshaken, too, is the courage of Burgomaster Max of Brussels, "who faced the German bullies with the stiffest of stiff backs." The Kaiser has been foiled in his hope of witnessing the fall of Nancy, the drive for the Channel ports has begun at Ypres, and German submarines have retorted to Mr. Churchill's threat to "dig out" the German Fleet "like rats" by torpedoing three battleships. Trench warfare is in full and deadly swing, but "Thomas of the light heart" refuses to be downhearted:
He takes to fighting as a game,
He does no talking through his hat
Of holy missions: all the same
He has his faith--be sure of that:
He'll not disgrace his sporting breed
Nor play what isn't cricket. There's his creed.
Last month Lord Kitchener paid a high tribute to the growing efficiency of the "Terriers" and their readiness to go anywhere. Punch's representative with the "Watch Dogs" fully bears out this praise. They have been inoculated and are ready to move on. Some suggest India, others Egypt. "But what tempted the majority was the thought of a season's shooting without having to pay for so much as a gun licence, and so we decided for the Continent."
News from the front continues scanty, and Joffre's laconic communiqués might in sum be versified as follows:
On our left wing the state of things remains
Unaltered on a general review,
Our losses in the centre match our gains,
And on our right wing there is nothing new.
Nor do we gain much enlightenment from the "Eyewitness" with G.H.Q., though his literary skill in elegantly describing the things that do not matter moves our admiration.
The Kaiser's sons continue to distinguish themselves as first-class looters, and the ban laid on the English language, including very properly the word "gentleman," has been lifted in favour of Wilhelm Shakespeare.
The prophets are no longer so optimistic in predicting when the War will end. One of Mr. Punch's young men suggests Christmas, 1918. But 500 German prisoners have arrived at Templemore, co. Tipperary. It's a long, long way, but they've got there at last.
The miracle of the Marne has been followed by another miracle--that of Ypres. Outgunned and outnumbered, our thin line has stemmed the rush to the sea.
The road to Calais has been blocked like that to Paris. Heartening news comes from afar of the fall of Tsing-tau before our redoubtable Japanese allies, and with it the crumbling of Germany's scheme of an Oriental Empire; of the British occupation of Basra; and of the sinking of the Emden, thanks to the "good hunting" of the Sydney--the first fruits of Australian aid. A new enemy has appeared in Turkey, but her defection has its consolations. It is something to be rid of an "unspeakable" incubus full of promises of reform never fulfilled, "sick" but unrepentant, always turning European discord to bloody account at the expense of her subject nationalities: in all respects a fitting partner for her ally and master.
At sea our pain at the loss of the Good Hope and Monmouth off Coronel is less than our pride in the spirit of the heroic Cradock, true descendant of Grenville and Nelson, prompt to give battle against overwhelming odds. The soul of the "Navy Eternal" draws fresh strength from his example. So, too, does the Army from the death of Lord Roberts, the "happy warrior," who passed away while visiting the Western front. The best homage we can pay him is not grief or
Vain regret for counsel given in vain,
But service of our lives to keep her free
The land he served: a pledge above his grave
To give her even such a gift as he,
The soul of loyalty, gave.
Even the Germans have paid reluctant tribute to one who, as Bonar Law said in the House, "was in real life all, and more than all, that Colonel Newcome was in fiction." He was the exemplar in excelsis of those "bantams," "little and good," who, after being rejected for their diminutive stature, are now joining up under the new regulations:
Apparently he's just as small,
But since his size no more impedes him
In spirit he is six foot tall--
Because his country needs him.
We have begun to think in millions. The war is costing a million a day. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has launched a war loan of 230 millions and doubled our income tax. The Prime Minister asks for an addition of a million men to the Regular Army. But the country has not yet fully awakened to the realities of war. Football clubs are concerned with the "jostling of the ordinary patrons" by men in uniform. "Business as usual" is interpreted as "pleasure as usual" in some quarters. Rumour is busy with stories of mysterious prisoners in the Tower, with tales of huge guns which are to shell us from Calais when the Germans get there; with reports (from neutral sources) of the speedy advent of scores of Zeppelins and hundreds of aeroplanes over London. But though
Old England's dark o' nights and short
Of 'buses: still she's much the sort
Of place we always used to know.
It is otherwise with Belgium, with its shattered homes and wrecked towns. The great Russian legend is still going strong, in spite of the statements of the Under-Secretary for War, and, after all, why should the Germans do all the story telling? By the way, a "German Truth Society" has been founded. It is pleasant to know that it is realised over there at last that there is a difference between Truth and German Truth. The British Navy, we learn from the Kölnische Zeitung, "is in hiding." But our fragrant contemporary need not worry. In due course the Germans shall have the hiding.
In some ways the unchanged spirit of our people is rather disconcerting. One of Mr. Punch's young men, happening to meet a music-hall acquaintance, asked him how he thought the war was going, and met with the answer: "Oh, I think the managers will have to give in." And the proposal to change the name of Berlin Road at Lewisham has been rejected by the residents.
In less than six weeks Coronel has been avenged at the battle of the Falkland Islands:
Hardened steel are our ships;
Gallant tars are our men;
We never are wordy
(STURDEE, boys, STURDEE!),
But quietly conquer again and again.
Here at least we can salute the vanquished. Admiral von Spee, who went down with his doomed squadron, was a gallant and chivalrous antagonist, like Captain Müller, of the Emden. Germany's retort, eight days later, by bombarding Scarborough and Whitby, reveals the normal Hun:
Come where you will--the seas are wide;
And choose your Day--they're all alike;
You'll find us ready when we ride
In calm or storm and wait to strike;
But--if of shame your shameless Huns
Can yet retrieve some casual traces--
Please fight our men and ships and guns,
Not womenfolk and watering places.
Austria's "punitive expedition" has ended in disaster for the Austrians. They entered Belgrade on the 2nd, and were driven out twelve days later by the Serbs. King George has paid his first visit to the front, and made General Foch a G.C.B. We know that the General is a great authority on strategy, and that his name, correctly pronounced, rhymes with Boche, as hero with Nero. He is evidently a man likely to be heard of again. Another hitherto unfamiliar name that has cropped up is that of Herr Lissauer, who, for writing a "Hymn of Hate" against England, has been decorated by the Kaiser. This shows true magnanimity on the part of the Kaiser, in his capacity of King of Prussia, since the "Hymn of Hate" turns out to be a close adaptation of a poem composed by a Saxon patriot, in which Prussia, not England, was held up to execration.
Kitchener's great improvisation is already bearing fruit, and the New Armies are flocking to the support of the old. Indian troops are fighting gallantly in three continents. King Albert "the unconquerable," in the narrow strip of his country that still belongs to him, waits in unshaken faith for the coming of the dawn. And as Christmas draws on the thoughts of officers and men in the waterlogged trenches turn fondly homeward to mothers, wives and sweethearts:
Cheer up! I'm calling far away;
And wireless you can hear.
Cheer up! You know you'd have me stay
And keep on trying day by day;
We're winning, never fear.
Christmas at least brings the children's truce, and that is something to be thankful for, but it is not the Christmas that we knew and long for:
No stir of wings sweeps softly by;
No angel comes with blinding light;
Beneath the wild and wintry sky
No shepherds watch their flocks to-night.
In the dull thunder of the wind
We hear the cruel guns afar,
But in the glowering heavens we find
No guiding, solitary star.
But lo! on this our Lord's birthday,
Lit by the glory whence she came,
Peace, like a warrior, stands at bay,
A swift, defiant, living flame!
Full-armed she stands in shining mail,
Erect, serene, unfaltering still,
Shod with a strength that cannot fail,
Strong with a fierce o'ermastering will.
Where shattered homes and ruins be
She fights through dark and desperate days;
Beside the watchers on the sea
She guards the Channel's narrow ways.
Through iron hail and shattering shell,
Where the dull earth is stained with red,
Fearless she fronts the gates of Hell
And shields the unforgotten dead.
So stands she, with her all at stake,
And battles for her own dear life,
That by one victory she may make
For evermore an end of strife.
Yet we have our minor war gains in the temporary disappearance of cranks and faddists, some of whom have sunk without a ripple. And though the Press Censor's suppressions and delays and inconsistencies provoke discontent in the House and out of it, food for mirth turns up constantly in unexpected quarters. The Crown Prince tells an American interviewer that there is no War Party in Germany, nor has there ever been. The German General Staff have begun to disguise set-backs under the convenient euphemism that the situation has developed "according to expectation." An English village worthy, discussing the prospects of invasion, comes to the reassuring conclusion that "there can't be no battle in these parts, Jarge, for there bain't no field suitable, as you may say; an' Squire, 'e won't lend 'em the use of 'is park." The troubles of neutrality are neatly summed up in a paper in a recent geography examination. "Holland is a low country, in fact it is such a very low country that it is no wonder that it is dammed all round."
The trials of mistresses on the home front are happily described in the reply of a child to a small visitor who inquired after her mother. "Thank you, poor mummie's a bit below herself this morning--what with the cook and the Kaiser."