Read Ebook: Mr. Punch's History of the Great War by Graves Charles L Charles Larcom

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Ebook has 547 lines and 71474 words, and 11 pages

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 , But quietly conquer again and again.

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:

ON EARTH--PEACE

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."

We have to thank an ingenious correspondent for drawing up the following "credibility index" for the guidance of perplexed newspaper readers:

London, Paris, or Petrograd 100 " " " 50 Berlin 25 It is believed in military circles here that-- 24 A correspondent that has just returned from the firing-line tells me that-- 18 Our correspondent at Rome announces that-- 11 Berlin 10 I learn from a neutral merchant that-- 7 A story is current in Venice to the effect that-- 5 It is rumoured that-- 4 I have heard to-day from a reliable source that-- 3 I learn on unassailable authority that-- 2 It is rumoured in Rotterdam that-- 1 Wolff's Bureau states that-- 0

For there he found, our dingy friend, Amid the trench's sobering slosh, What must have left him, by the end, A wiser, if a sadder, Boche, Seeing himself, with chastened mien, In that pellucid well of Truth serene.

There can be no "fraternising" with Fritz until he realises that he has been fooled by his War Lords; and his awakening is a long way off. Lord Kitchener has been charged with being "very economical in his information" vouchsafed to the Lords, but it is well to be rid of illusions. This has not been a month of great events. General Joffre is content with this ceaseless "nibbling." The Kaiser, nourished by the flattery of his tame professors, encourages the war on non-combatants.

The Turks are beginning to show a gift for euphemism in disguising their reverses in the Caucasus, which shows that they have nothing to learn from their masters; Austria, badly mauled by the Serbians, addresses awful threats to Roumania; and the United States has issued a warning Note on neutral trading. But the American Eagle is not the Eagle that we are up against.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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' ; 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.

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.

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 B?low, 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.

The Kaiser has been presented with another grandson, but it has not been broken to the poor little fellow who he is. It is also reported that the Kaiser has bestowed an Iron Cross on a learned pig--one of a very numerous class.

In silence you have looked on felon blows, On butcher's work of which the waste lands reek! Now in God's name, from Whom your greatness flows, Sister, will you not speak?

Many unofficial voices have been raised in horror, indignation, and even in loud calls for intervention. The leaven works, but President Wilson, though not unmoved, gives little sign of abandoning his philosophic neutrality.

In Europe it is otherwise. Italy has declared war on Austria; her people have driven the Government to take the path of freedom and honour and break the shackles of Germanism in finance, commerce and politics.

Italy has not declared war on Germany yet, but the fury of the German Press is unbounded, and for the moment Germany's overworked Professors of Hate have focused their energies on the new enemy, and its army of "vagabonds, convicts, ruffians and mandolin-players," conveniently forgetting that the spirit of Garibaldi is still an animating force, and that the King inherits the determination of his grandfather and namesake.

On the Western front the enemy has been repulsed at Ypres. Lord Kitchener has asked for another 300,000 men, and speaks confidently of our soon being able to make good the shortage of ammunition.

At home the great event has been the formation of a Coalition Government--a two-handed sword, as we hope, to smite the enemy; while practical people regard it rather as a "Coal and Ammunition Government." The cost of the War is now Two Millions a day, and a new campaign of Posters and Publicity has been inaugurated to promote recruiting. Volunteers, with scant official recognition, continue their training on foot; the Hurst Park brigade continue their activities, mainly on rubber wheels. An evening paper announces:

LATE WIRE FROM CHESTER.

Mr. Punch is prompted to comment:

For these our Army does its bit, While they in turn peruse Death's honour-roll After the Betting News.

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