Mr. Punch's History of the Great War Part 18

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INSEPARABLE

THE KAISER (to his people): "Do not listen to those who would sow dissension between us. _I will never desert you_."]

The weather has been so persistently wet that it looks as if this year the Channel had decided to swim Great Britain. A correspondent, in a list of improbable events on an "extraordinary day" at the front, gives as the culminating entry, "It did not rain on the day of the offensive."

[Ill.u.s.tration:

C.O. (to sentry): "Do you know the Defence Scheme for this sector of the line, my man?"

TOMMY: "Yes, sir."

C.O.: "Well, what is it, then?"

TOMMY. "To stay 'ere an' fight like 'ell."]

When Parliament is not sitting and trying to make us "sit up," and when war news is scant, old people at home sometimes fall into a mood of wistful reverie, and contrast the Germany they once knew with the Germany of to-day.

A LOST LAND

A childhood land of mountain ways, Where earthy gnomes and forest fays, Kind, foolish giants, gentle bears, Sport with the peasant as he fares Affrighted through the forest glades, And lead sweet, wistful little maids Lost in the woods, forlorn, alone, To princely lovers and a throne.

Dear haunted land of gorge and glen, Ah me! the dreams, the dreams of men!

A learned law of wise old books And men with meditative looks, Who move in quaint red-gabled towns, And sit in gravely-folded gowns, Divining in deep-laden speech The world's supreme arcana--each A homely G.o.d to listening youth, Eager to tear the veil of Truth;

Mild votaries of book and pen-- Alas, the dreams, the dreams of men!

A music land whose life is wrought In movements of melodious thought; In symphony, great wave on wave-- Or fugue elusive, swift and grave; A singing land, whose lyric rhymes Float on the air like village chimes; Music and verse--the deepest part Of a whole nation's thinking heart!

Oh land of Now, oh land of Then!

Dear G.o.d! the dreams, the dreams of men!

Slave nation in a land of hate, Where are the things that made you great?

Child-hearted once--oh, deep defiled, Dare you look now upon a child?

Your lore--a hideous mask wherein Self-wors.h.i.+p hides its monstrous sin-- Music and verse, divinely wed-- How can these live where love is dead?

Oh depths beneath sweet human ken, G.o.d help the dreams, the dreams of men!

The Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, is preparing for a trip to the North Pole in 1918. Additional interest now attaches to this spot as being the only territory whose neutrality the Germans have omitted to violate.

Apropos of neutrals, the crew of the U-boat interned at Cadiz has been allowed to land on giving their word of honour not to leave Spain during the continuance of the War. The mystery of how the word "honour" came into their possession is not explained. It is easier to explain that the Second Division, in which Mr. E.D. Morel is now serving, is not the one which fought at the battle of Mons.

_October, 1917_.

Another month of losses and gains. Against the breakthrough at Caporetto on the Isonzo we have to set the steady advance of Allenby on the Palestine front, and the decision arrived at by an extraordinary meeting of German Reichstag members that the Germans cannot hope for victory in the field. We see nothing extraordinary in this. The Reichstag may not yet be able to influence policy, but it is not blind to facts--to the terribly heavy losses involved in our enemy's desperate efforts to prevent us from occupying the ridges above the Ypres-Menin road, and so forcing him to face the winter on the low ground. Then, too, there has been the ominous mutiny of the German sailors at Kiel. The ringleaders have been executed, but they may have preferred death to another speech from the Kaiser. Dr. Michaelis, that "transient embarra.s.sed phantom," has joined the ranks of the dismissed. No sooner had the _Berliner Tageblatt_ pointed out that "Dr. Michaelis was a good Chancellor as Chancellors go" than he went.

Another of the German doctor politicians has been delivering his soul on the failure of Pro-German propaganda in memorable fas.h.i.+on. Dr. Dernburg, in _Deutsche Politik_, tells us that "steadfastness and righteousness are the qualities which the German people value in the highest degree, and which have brought it a good and honourable reputation in the whole world.

When we make experiments in lies and deceptions, intrigue and low cunning, we suffer hopeless and brutal failure. Our lies are coa.r.s.e and improbable, our ambiguity is pitiful simplicity. The history of the War proves this by a hundred examples. When our enemies poured all these things upon us like a hailstorm, and we convinced ourselves of the effectiveness of such tactics, we tried to imitate them. But these tactics will not fit the German. We are rough but moral, we are credulous but honest." Before this touching picture of the German Innocents very much abroad, the Machiavellian Briton can only take refuge in silent amazement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DANCE OF DEATH

THE KAISER: "Stop! I'm tired."

DEATH: "I started at your bidding; I stop when I choose."]

Parliament has rea.s.sembled, and Mr. Punch has been moved to ask Why?

Various reasons would no doubt be returned by various members. The Chancellor of the Exchequer wants to obtain a further Vote of Credit. The new National Party wish to justify their existence; and those incarnate notes of interrogation--Messrs. King, Hogge and Pemberton Billing--would like Parliament to be in permanent session in order that the world might have the daily benefit of their searching investigations. There has been a certain liveliness on the Hibernian front, but we hope that Mr. Asquith was justified in a.s.suming that the Sinn Fein excesses were only an expression of the "rhetorical and contingent belligerency" always present in Ireland, and that in spite of them the Convention would make all things right.

Meanwhile, the Sinn Feiners have refused to take part in it. And not a single Nationalist member has denounced them for their dereliction; indeed, Mr. T.M. Healy has even given them his blessing, for what it is worth. Of more immediate importance has been Mr. Bonar Law's announcement of the Government's intention to set up a new Air Ministry, and "to employ our machines over German towns so far as military needs render us free to take such action."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PLACE IN THE MOON

HANS: "How beautiful a moon, my love, for showing up England to our gallant airmen!"

GRETCHEN: "Yes, dearest, but may it not show up the Fatherland to the brutal enemy one of these nights?"]

In the earlier stages of the War we looked on the moon as our friend. Now that inconstant orb has become our enemy, and the only German opera that we look forward to seeing is _Die Gothadammerung_. A circular has been issued by the Feline Defence League appealing to owners of cats to bring them inside the house during air-raids. When they are left on the roof it would seem that their agility causes them to be mistaken for aerial torpedoes. We note that the practice of giving air-raid warnings by notice published in the following morning's papers has been abandoned only after the most exhaustive tests. The advocates of "darkness and composure" have not been very happy in their arguments, but they are at least preferable to the members of Parliament deservedly trounced by Mr. Bonar Law, who declared that if their craven squealings were typical he should despair of victory. Meanwhile, we have to congratulate our gallant French allies on their splendid bag of Zepps. But the s.p.a.ce which our Press allots to air raids moves Mr. Punch to wonder and scorn. Our casualties from that source are never one-tenth so heavy as those in France on days when G.H.Q. reports "everything quiet on the Western front." Still worse is the temper of some of our society weeklies, which have set their faces like flint against any serious reference to the War, and go imperturbably along the old ante-bellum lines, "snapping" smart people at the races or in the Row, or reproducing the devastating beauty of a revue chorus, and this at a time when every day brings the tidings of irreparable loss to hundreds of families.

MISSING

"He was last seen going over the parapet into the German trenches."

What did you find after war's fierce alarms, When the kind earth gave you a resting-place, And comforting night gathered you in her arms, With light dew falling on your upturned face?

Did your heart beat, remembering what had been?

Did you still hear around you, as you lay, The wings of airmen sweeping by unseen, The thunder of the guns at close of day?

All nature stoops to guard your lonely bed; Suns.h.i.+ne and rain fall with their calming breath; You need no pall, so young and newly dead, Where the Lost Legion triumphs over death.

When with the morrow's dawn the bugle blew, For the first time it summoned you in vain, The Last Post does not sound for such as you, But G.o.d's Reveille wakens you again.

The discomforts of railway travelling do not diminish. But impatient pa.s.sengers may find comfort in a maxim of R. L. Stevenson: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." And further solace is forthcoming in the fact that our enemies are even worse off than we are.

Railway fares in Germany have been doubled; but it is doubtful if this transparent artifice will prevent the Kaiser from going about the place making speeches to his troops on all the fronts. Here all cla.s.ses are united by the solidarity of inconvenience. And they all have different ways of meeting it. But we really think more care should be taken by the authorities to see that while waging war on the Continent they do not forget the defence of those at home. The fact that Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Horatio Bottomley were away in France at the same time looks like gross carelessness. In this context we may note the report that the Eskimos had not until quite recently heard of war, which seems to argue slackness on the part of the circulation manager of the _Daily Mail_.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

STOUT LADY (discussing the best thing to do in an air-raid): "Well, I always runs about meself. You see, as my 'usband sez, an' very reasonable too, a movin' targit is more difficult to 'it."]

_November, 1917_.