Mr. F. E. Smith: "Master of epigram like me!"
Mr. Winston Churchill: "Wrote a novel in his youth like me!"
Together: "Travelled in the East like us. How does it end?"
(Mr. W. F. Monypenny's official "Life of Disraeli" has just been published.)
Foes and Friends
Great Britain's warlike operations throughout this period were intra-Imperial, and the scale of the South African campaign, in which from first to last we put 250,000 men into the field, dwarfed the troubles in Ashanti and on the Indian frontier into insignificance. That we kept out of all the other wars which convulsed the world between 1892 and 1914 must be put down to good management as well as good luck. It is remarkable to notice the steady if gradual convergence of the war clouds on Europe, the drawing in of the war zone from the circumference to the centre, beginning with the conflict between China and Japan. The brief and inglorious Greco-Turkish war hardly counts, and Europe was not physically engaged in the Spanish-American war, where all the fighting was done in the New World. Politically its significance was far-reaching, as revising the Monroe Doctrine and enlarging the Imperial horizons of the United States. Politically, again, the "Boxer" rising in China affected the European Powers, whose competing interests in the "integrity of China" were not reconciled by their joint expedition for the relief of the Legations in 1900. Here again the fighting was in the Far East, as it was in the Russo-Japanese war, if we except the "regrettable incident" of the Dogger Bank; and Russia has always been as much an Oriental as a Western Power. But the Russo-Japanese war shook Tsardom to its foundations, promoted Japan to the status of a Great Power, and compensated her largely for the intervention of Russia, Germany and France in robbing her of the spoils of her victory over China. The European conflagration broke out in 1912 with
the war of the Balkan League on Turkey. Victory crowned the efforts of a righteous cause the relief of oppressed nationalities from the oppressions and exactions of a corrupt and tyrannous rule but was wasted by the internecine quarrels and irreconcilable demands of the victors. Serbia, who had lived down much of the odium excited by the barbarous murders of Alexander and Draga, and had borne more than her share of the war against Turkey, was isolated, partly by her own intransigence, mainly by the greed, the diplomatic manoeuvres and the treachery of her allies, and in her isolation fell a victim to the dynastic ambitions of Austria. The assassination of the Crown Prince Ferdinand at Sarajevo was the excuse for Austria's ultimatum to Serbia, the proximate cause of the Great War of 1914. Whether engineered in Vienna or not, the murder secured the removal of an heir whose succession to the throne of Austria-Hungary was looked upon with grave suspicion by a powerful group in Austria who had no desire to upset the House of Hapsburg but profoundly distrusted the Crown Prince. In the homely phrase Sarajevo killed two birds with one stone. It eliminated an uncertain and unpopular prince, and furnished Austria with an opportunity for gratifying her long-standing hostility to Serbia. But there was a third and bigger bird; for the complicity of Germany in dispatching the Ultimatum is no matter for surmise. Without her support and pressure it would never have been sent.
Punch on World PoliticsPunch Punch Entente Punch Punch's Punch's Punch's
On National Defence and the maintenance of our naval supremacy Punch continued to speak with no uncertain voice. He applauded Lord Roberts's patriotic but neglected warnings and his advocacy of universal military service, and lent a friendly but not uncritical approval to the Territorial Army scheme.
John Bull: "Recruits coming in nicely, Sergeant?"
Recruiting Sergeant Punch: "No, Sir. The fact is, Mr. Bull, if you can't make it better worth their while to enlist, you'll have to shoulder a rifle yourself!"
Gladstonian Home RulePunch's Punch Punch's
To turn from outlines to details, one is confronted in 1893 with Mr. Gladstone's second attempt to solve a problem which Giraldus Cambrensis pronounced insoluble seven centuries ago. Punch's earlier cartoons on the Home Rule Bill are negligible, but the difficulties of the Premier's position are aptly shown in the picture of Gladstone as a knight in armour on a perilous pathway between the Irish Nationalist bog and the "last ditch" of Ulster. The accompanying text, modelled on Bunyan, represents Mr. Gladstone as a Pilgrim relying as much on tactics as the sword. The most genial reference to Ulster is that in which she figures as the Widow Wadman asking Uncle Toby, "Now, Mr. Bull, do you see any 'green' in my eye?" and Uncle Toby protests he "can see nothing whatever of the sort." Otherwise Punch's attitude is unsympathetic, witness the use of the term "Ulsteria" and the epigram on the second reading of the Bill, put, it is true, into the mouth of "A rebellious Rad":