Now, those Deutschers are confoundedly clever fellows; particularly at chemistry. Gun-cotton, which was discovered by one of them, is a substance they are at work on perfecting. No doubt they will soon make it available, so as to supersede powder, for naval gunnery. Gun-cotton goes off without smoke. In the happily almost impossible event of a war with them, our ships, enveloped in smoke of our own clumsy making, would blaze away at theirs in the dark, at random, with useless guns of precision, whilst they would fire with unerring aim at the flashes of our guns, and the end of our first sea-fight with them would be, that the British would be sent to the bottom by the German Fleet.

Death of Lord Derby

The same month witnessed the passing away of Lord Derby, "the Rupert of Debate," a statesman somewhat out of his element in a period of non-intervention; a great country-gentleman, sportsman, and scholar. Punch, whose memorial verses in these years did not err as a rule on the side of brevity, compressed his tribute within the compass of a sonnet, in which there is a happy reference to Lord Derby's love of Homer and of children, for he was the patron of Edward Lear, the laureate of the best, because the most unalloyed, nonsense: —

LORD DERBY

Born, 1799. Died, 1869

 
Withdrawing slow from those he loved so well,
Autumn's pale morning saw him pass away:
Leave them beside their sacred dead to pray,
Unmarked of strangers. Calmer memories tell
How nobly Stanley lived. No braver name
Glows in the golden roll of all his sires,
Or all their peers. His was the heart that fires
The eloquent tongue, and his the eye whose aim
Alone half quelled his foe. He struck for Power,
(And power in England is a hero's prize)
Yet he could throw it from him. Those whose eyes
See not for tears, remember in this hour
That he was oft from Homer's page beguiled
To frame some "wonder for a happy child."
 

The resignation by Lord Malmesbury, formerly Foreign Secretary, of the Conservative leadership of the House of Lords about the same time met with no such consideration. Lord Malmesbury had never been a favourite of Punch, who insinuated that the Tory leader had gone because he was obliged to, and quoted Artemus Ward's saying: "He told me to get out of the office – I pitied him and went."

The fateful year of 1870 opened with the attempt to establish a "Liberal" Empire in France with Ollivier as Prime Minister, a concession which Punch hailed as a "Magna Charta for France"; almost simultaneously Lord Clarendon, our Foreign Minister, with Gladstone's cordial approval, launched his suggestion of a partial simultaneous disarmament, a proposal rendered futile by the attitude of Bismarck. Lord Clarendon died on June 27, and his successor, Lord Granville, was informed by the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office that he "had never during his long experience known so great a lull in foreign affairs." Yet war had already been declared by France when Punch, on July 23, issued his somewhat cynical manifesto of neutrality under the heading: "Prussian Pot and French Kettle": —

In this unhappy event of a war between France and Prussia, we shall of course do all we can to preserve the most perfect neutrality. We certainly feel it. Our sympathies with the one side and the other are, strong as they are, exactly equal.

As regards the Prussians we take a warmly admiring interest in the course of aggrandisement which their King and his Bismarck have been pursuing of late years, but most chiefly do we applaud its first step – the attack on Denmark, and the forcible annexation therefrom of the two Duchies. The immense number of Danes slain by the Prussian needle-guns commands our approbation only less than our wonder; but what crowns the sentiments with which we regard the spoliation and destruction of the Danes is the piety wherewith the author of those achievements solemnly expressed his thankfulness for having been permitted to accomplish them. One brother once knelt with Mrs. Fry in Newgate. The other might have knelt with Mrs. Cole.

On the other hand, with respect to France, we cannot but feel how much we owe to the French Imperial Government for the improvement which, by the menacing armaments it has kept up now for so many years, it has occasioned us to make in our national defences. But we have higher reasons for sympathy with France than considerations which are merely insular and selfish. The great principles of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality have been professed by France more enthusiastically and more loudly than by any other European nation; and we behold their standing reduction to practice in the occupation of Rome, and the declaration that the chief of Italian cities shall never belong to Italy.

The foregoing reasons should satisfy any Prussian and any Frenchman of the perfect impartiality with which Englishmen must contemplate hostilities between their respective nations.

As a matter of fact, public opinion in England at the outbreak of the war was in the main inclined to favour Germany; the publication of the Draft Secret Treaty submitted to Bismarck by Louis Napoleon in 1867, providing in certain contingencies for the occupation of Belgium by France, and now communicated by Bismarck to The Times went a long way to sterilize sympathy with France; and it was not until after Sedan that compassion for France overwhelmed and obliterated the old distrust of the Emperor's intriguing ambitions. When the cry, "nous sommes trahis" was raised, Punch blamed the French nation more than the Emperor, whom he had portrayed in a famous cartoon with the ghost of Napoleon appearing to him as he set out for the front. As the wheels of war drove more heavily on French soil and Paris was threatened with famine, one notices the growing desire that Germany should grant generous terms, mingled with a sense of impotence. This mood is well shown in the verses, "Between the Hosts," printed in the number of December 17: —

 
Like him of old, when the plague's arrows sped,
And life sank blighted by that scathing rain,
We stand between the living and the dead,
Lifting our hands and prayers to Heaven in vain.
While those that faint upbraid us from dim eyes,
And those that fight arraign us as they fall,
And French and German curses 'gainst us rise,
And, hating none, we rest unloved of all.
 
 
And so we stand with a divided soul,
Our sympathies for both at war within,
Now eager for the strong, to reach his goal,
More often wishing that the weak could win.
Only one feeling will not leave our minds,
Hate of this hate, and anguish of this woe;
And still war's scythe-set car rolls on and grinds
Guilty and guiltless, blent in overthrow.
 
 
And first we interpose a useless hand,
And then we lift an unavailing voice,
While still Death holds his way with sword and brand,
Still the Valkyrier make their fatal choice.
Still stormed on by ill-will from either side,
Be we content to do the best we can —
Give all that wealth, peace, goodwill can provide,
For war's poor victims who their helpers ban.
 
 
We have no right to wait for men's good word,
No right to pause before men's unearned hate:
No right to turn the ear, when threats are heard
Of what will, some day, be the neutral's fate.
"Do right and fear not" must be England's stay,
As it has been, let wrath say what it will.
So with love's unthanked labour let us pray,
And do our best to ease war's weight of ill!
 

1871 – and its Sequel

In the autumn the consideration shown by some German troops in Champagne is welcomed; by the end of the year the reply of Göttingen University to an appeal protesting against the threatened destruction of the scientific and art treasures of Paris – a document breathing the familiar spirit of unctuous rectitude – roused Punch to indignant satire in "A Deutscher Dove-Coo," the name of the principal signatory being Dove. So a month later the pseudo-Walpolian letters issued as "Strawberry Leaves" reflect the popular disgust with which German brutality was viewed, but at the same time the popular dislike of England's participating in the war. When the siege of Paris ended at the close of the month, Punch congratulated Thiers on his statesmanship, but rebuked the Parisians for their fickleness in heaping insult on their fallen Emperor. The Germans entered Paris, but in the cartoon of March 11, and the accompanying verses "Vae Victis" a warning was addressed to Germany which has turned out to be a true prophecy. The triumph is admitted, but the sequel is clearly foreshadowed: —

 
Yet listen, conqueror, while the shade,
That should sit near thee in thy car,
Whispers how quickly laurels fade,
How swiftly shift the sands of war;
How, sixty-five years since, there came
A mightier Emperor than thou,
Upon Berlin to put the shame
Which thy hand puts on Paris now.
 
 
Even as thy heel is on their head,
That on thy folks' head set their heel,
So, ere threescore more years have sped,
The woe thou work'st thy sons may feel.
"Who smite with sword by sword shall fall,"
Holds for kings as for subjects true;
God's mills grind slow, but they grind small,
And he that grinds gives all their due.
 

The courtesy of Germany in coming to an amicable settlement over the loss of some British colliers sunk in the Thames is acknowledged; but anxiety as to her further aggressions was not allayed by her desire to possess Heligoland, and was undoubtedly enhanced by the publication of that brilliant realistic romance, The Battle of Dorking, while the fratricidal tragedy of the Commune, and the ruthless measures of suppression employed, augured ill for the recovery of France from the abasement of defeat. These events and the lessons they conveyed to England were not overlooked by Punch; they served to temper his light-heartedness with moods of misgiving. Yet the wonderful elasticity – due, as even official Republican historians admit, to the industrial prosperity created under the Second Empire – which enabled France to pay off what in those days seemed a crushing war indemnity long before the time fixed, emboldened Punch in the spring of 1873 to indulge once more in a prophecy of the reversal of the verdict of 1870. When the German occupation ended, France is shown undauntedly confronting Germany with the words: "Ha! We shall meet again."

Germany: "Farewell, Madame, and if – "

France: "Ha! We shall meet again!"

Germany was not the only foreign power that caused anxiety during the Gladstone administration of 1868-1874. Russia availed herself of the troubles of 1870 to revive the Near Eastern question by refusing to recognize her treaty obligations in the Black Sea; but the friction thus created was allayed by the compromise effected by the Black Sea Conference. And Russia's expedition to, and occupation of, Khiva in 1873 gave rise to further uneasiness. But non-intervention remained the order of the day throughout. The Ashanti expedition of 1873, whether in respect of its aim or its scale could not be regarded as forming an exception. But it furnished Punch with occasion for much plain-spoken criticism of War Office red tape and mismanagement. He saw in Sir Garnet Wolseley "the right man in the wrong place": —

 
In our deep penny wisdom, and horror of waste,
We shipped off the General minus his men,
So that if in a fix he should find himself placed,
He might merely lose time writing home back again.
 

Gladstonian Legislation

Happily these misgivings were falsified in the sequel, and early in 1874 Punch was able to record, amongst other evidences of the satisfactory conclusion of the campaign, the arrival in England of King Coffee's State umbrella. The Gladstone administration may not have been efficient in the conduct of military operations, but in the sphere of Army Reform it deserved well of the country for the abolition of purchase, in the teeth of strong opposition from the Horse Guards' element, and the reorganization of the service on lines which substantially endured for a generation or more. For these improvements we have to thank a civilian, Cardwell, whose name is indissolubly associated with the changes brought about in 1870. The second instalment of Gladstone's scheme for the pacification of Ireland – the Land Act of 1870 – was supported by Punch, but did not achieve its purpose, since it left the vexed question of dual ownership unsettled; and it was another Irish measure – the University Bill – that brought the Government down. The legislative achievements of the Gladstone Administration had been immense and salutary in many directions, but the universality of its activities undoubtedly contributed to its growing unpopularity and lent force to Disraeli's famous electioneering cry of "plundering and blundering." Punch, who had in the main supported Gladstone, advised the Cabinet to resign after their defeat, but the Prime Minister resumed office temporarily and did not dissolve till January 1874.

Dr. Punch: "My dear young friends, you have done next to nothing this half. Therefore, a little task during the vacation will be good for you. You, Master Benjamin, must get up a 'definite policy.' You, Lowe, will write a paper on the 'Application of the Screw.' Ayrton, you will have to get by heart the whole 'Book of Etiquette.' Miall, you must attend Church regularly. Whalley, you're going to America – stay there! Plimsoll, you must learn to – ahem – moderate your transports. And as for you, William Ewart, the idler you are the better!"

England 2,000 Years Hence

Much had been done in this, the central mid-Victorian age, to abate the evils and abuses which kept the "Two Nations" apart in earlier days. Yet at the opening of the new Disraelian régime, with its imperial aspirations, it may not be amiss to reproduce the verses, somewhat in the vein of Thackeray's musings on Vanitas Vanitatum, in which Punch bade farewell to the Comet of 1858: —

ADIEU TO THE COMET

 
Dare a bold atom ask, with brain half dizzy,
What you will see two thousand years to come,
This planet still an ant's nest, black and busy,
Or an extinct volcano, white and dumb?
 
 
Will you behold, if keeping that appointment,
(Made for you, Sir, by Airy and by Hind)
Men still anointing Kings with holy ointment,
And Priests still leading, as the blind the blind.
 
 
Earth's choicest youth fierce rushing to the slaughter
That two crowned Fools may wreak their idiot pet;
Or wiser Christians' blood poured out like water,
That Jews may gamble with a nation's debt.
 
 
Will that day's Patriot be a mouthing truckler,
Setting proud Freedom's hymn to Freedom's dirge;
Will Law be still the rich man's shield and buckler,
The good man's terror, and the poor man's scourge?
 
 
Will you find Life a hot and blindfold scrimmage,
Men straining, struggling, scrambling, for red gold;
And Faith still worshipping the Golden Image
Reared by King Beelzebub in days of old?
 
 
Will all that world, with coronet and plaudit,
Reward Success, while Merit's scorned and passed;
Will man ignore that great and dreadful Audit,
When Lies shall fail – the first time, and the last?
 
 
Who knows? Off, glorious Star-horse, clothed with thunder —
Thou hast no right to make a light strain sad;
Yet he wrote well, who wrote in awe and wonder —
"An undevout Astronomer is mad."