Uncle Sam is showing his sense by sending his liberal contributions in relief of Irish distress through all channels except the cruelly warped ones of Messrs. Parnell and Dillon. The arch-agitator has the impudence to accuse the Duchess of Marlborough's and all other relief agencies, except his own, of political bias. This is the Gracchi complaining of sedition with a vengeance! Pigs, we know, cut their own throats in trying to keep their heads above water. This Irish Mis-leader seems involuntarily to be imitating the short-sighted Irish animal. If any man could have frozen the current of charity – in New World and Old – it would be such a bitter and malignant advocate of mutual hate, civil strife, anarchy, and insecurity of life and property, as CHARLES STEWART PARNELL.

Ireland was only one of many embarrassments to the Beaconsfield administration in its closing years. Early in that year Punch published a cartoon on "Bull and his burdens" – John Bull as a patient ox carrying Russia; the Ameer; the Turk; a Glasgow Bank Director (commemorating a recent discreditable financial disaster); a striker; and last of all a Zulu jumping on behind. For this was the year of the unhappy Zulu war, which Punch described as "one of the costliest blunders of modern times" – it cost ten millions – and again as "alike unnecessary, costly, and disastrous." He saw in Isandhlwana not merely a tragedy but a lesson, and enforced it in a cartoon showing a Zulu warrior writing on a slate, "Despise not your enemy." The accompanying verses, while deprecating rashness, assert that the dead must be honoured and avenged. The heroes of Rorke's Drift, Chard and Bromhead, are duly acclaimed, but Punch, true to an old and honourable tradition, prints a letter on behalf of the non-combatant officers who gallantly took part in the defence. As the only rampart which they had was made of meal-bags, Punch ingeniously applies to them the phrase, "Couvert de gloire et de farine," which Voltaire had used of Frederick the Great, who spent his first battle sheltering in a mill behind sacks of flour. Cetewayo, the Zulu chieftain, was subsequently captured, brought to London and lionized, Punch observing that "the great Farini [the impresario who introduced Zazel, the acrobat who was shot from a cannon] suggests that he should be exhibited at the Aquarium."

Throughout the war and afterwards Punch was a harsh and ungenerous critic of the policy of Sir Bartle Frere, whom he regarded as a prancing proconsul and nothing more. Nor was Punch much happier in his treatment of the painful episode of the death of the Prince Imperial who, whether owing to his own rashness or the negligence or loss of nerve of his escort, fell to the assegais of the Zulus. Punch's inveterate anti-Imperialism is betrayed even in the memorial verses: —

Talk not of plots and plans that, ripening slow,
Are by this death struck down with blast and blight;
We have no thought but for that mother's woe,
The darkness of that childless widow's night.

Unfortunately, the raising of the question of a memorial to the Prince in Westminster Abbey induced Punch to abandon his resolve of reticence, and prompted other "thoughts," which he expressed with more vigour than good taste. There is no proof that the suggestion emanated from Dean Stanley, as Punch implies, though the Dean certainly favoured a proposal for which a strong precedent could be found in the burial in Henry VII's chapel of the Duc de Montpensier (the younger brother of Louis Philippe) who died an exile in England in 1807. Public opinion was divided, but democratic sentiment prevailed, and in deference to a hostile vote in the Commons the scheme was withdrawn.

Turnerelli's "Tribute"

The waning splendours of the Beaconsfield régime were not revived by the launching of one of the last of his phrases, "Imperium et Libertas." Punch only saw in it "the catchword of a self-seeking swaggerer." Great men suffer much at the hands of injudicious admirers, and the "People's Tribute" to Lord Beaconsfield organized by an amiable enthusiast, heavily weighted by the unpropitious name of Tracy Turnerelli, must have been a sore trial to the Premier, while it supplied Punch with food for mirth for the best part of a year. The subscriptions of the million were invited to purchase a gold wreath, but after a little while Mr. Turnerelli had to appeal for further funds to clear off a deficit. Later on, when the Tribute had been finally refused by Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Turnerelli offered to hand over the wreath to one of our great national museums, if a suitable case were provided. He also suggested that he might be reimbursed for his out-of-pocket expenses in getting up the Tribute. Punch recommended that he should pocket the affront and hand over the "Tribute" to Madame Tussaud's, where he had already appeared in wax. This is what actually happened, and in November, 1879, Punch sardonically records the fulfilment of his suggestion.

The disquieting news from the Afghan frontier led to a serious attack on the Government early in 1880, an attack in which Punch vigorously joined, publishing a list of questions all animated by misgiving and by distrust of Lord Beaconsfield's phrases and Lord Lytton's policy and silence. The tension was relieved by Lord Roberts' famous march to Kandahar, and on his return to England in the autumn Punch represented him as snowed under by invitations to complimentary banquets, and invoked the shade of Wellington to congratulate him on his celerity. Meanwhile, however, Parliament had been dissolved in March, and the verdict of 1874 completely reversed at the General Election. Punch hailed Gladstone triumphing with his axe over Lord Dalkeith, and borne aloft on a shield by Harcourt, Hartington, and Bright, under the heading, "Hail to the Chief." As a pendant we have the cartoons in which Lord Beaconsfield is eclipsed by the sun of Liberalism or watches the sinking of the sun of Popularity, and the verses in which the parting Sphinx soliloquizes on his methods of leadership – appeals to sentiment and passion and the deft use and reiteration of phrases which intoxicate the masses.

When the House reassembled, it was to find the Irish Question still further complicated by the activities of the Land League and the No Rent Campaign. There was also another burning question – that of the Parliamentary Oath – which the return of Mr. Bradlaugh made a matter of urgency. Punch, as the "sturdiest of Protestants, was perforce the staunch supporter of the right of private judgment which is the corner-stone of Protestantism." Also he frankly admitted that he had no desire to see Mr. Bradlaugh made a martyr. His point of view is developed with refreshing common sense in the following argument: —

The House has swallowed such a succession of camels, Quakers and Separatists, Moravians and Jews, Latitudinarians and Platitudinarians, Unitarians and Humanitarians, Anythingarians and Nothingarians, and now it is straining over such a gnat as poor Mr. Bradlaugh, natural representative of the Northampton Shoemakers, who object to the immortality of the Sole, and spell the word indifferently with or without a "u" and an "e."

Irish Troubles

The time has surely passed when the House should seek shelter against objectionable beliefs or unbeliefs, behind such delusive defences as oaths and tests. "Let the Swearers swear, and the Sayers say," the Law has proclaimed, in all Courts. Why, then, not in the High Court of Parliament – the Court of Courts – the very conduit and fountain-head of Law?

Unluckily the collective wisdom of the House was slow to accept this view, and the inevitable conclusion was only arrived at after a great expenditure of time and a great loss of temper. Bradlaugh was ejected and finally admitted; but the pacification of Ireland seemed farther off than ever. Gladstone was anxious to proceed with the further instalment of his policy of conciliation inaugurated by the Disestablishment of the Irish Church in his previous administration, but Punch summed up his difficulties pretty accurately in the cartoon of November 20, 1880, in which Law tells Liberty to wait until Ireland first learned to respect her. Punch regarded the Land League as sheer anarchy; it was the League and not the Government who practised Coercion. He summoned up the shade of Dan O'Connell to condemn outrages and the tyranny of "Captain Moonlight." But posthumous evocations are seldom of any avail; and O'Connell's was no longer a name to conjure with. In the year 1880, "Boycott" ceased to be a surname, and became an engine of political intimidation, while in the House obstructionist methods continued, culminating in the suspension of some thirty Irish M.P.s en masse early in 1881. Irish "scenes" were frequent and only excited Punch's disgust. At the same time he administered a severe rap over the knuckles to the "Honourable the Irish Society of London" for maladministering their funds, pauperizing prosperous towns and neglecting to subsidize deserving poverty or encourage Irish industries. The appeal to the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke of Connaught to visit Ireland, signed, "Larry Doolan of the Irish Jaunting Car," is shorn of all its cogency by the Transpontine Donnybrook Fair language in which it is couched. Punch has been a frequent offender in this respect; and also in his representations of the Irish peasant. It did not really help the cause of Unionism to portray Fenians and Land Leaguers with baboon-like faces. Dan O'Connell, whom Punch again evoked from the shades, this time to play Virgil to Gladstone's Dante in the Irish "Inferno," though he was a potato-faced Irishman, would have resented this method of criticism. As a matter of fact, Punch was so seriously remonstrated with for his Irish cartoons that he published a long article in self-defence and justification of his methods, maintaining that he never hit the weaker side because it was the weaker side, but because that side at the time appeared to be in the wrong: —

"Death, violent death, and painful wounds upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes, by devastation, pillage, and the flames, his substance." – Dante, Canto XI.

Punch and Ireland

The Ogreish character is the embodiment of the spirit of Lawlessness, of Anarchy, and of that Communism which, by its recent No Rent manifesto, has now drawn down upon itself the just condemnation of such men as the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel. Houghing and mutilating dumb animals, maiming men and women, and shooting defenceless victims, are ugly crimes, and the embodiment of them in one single figure cannot be made too hideous or too repulsive. On the other hand, Punch has consistently and persistently kept before the public his ideal classic figure of Hibernia, graceful, gentle, tender, loving but "distressful," as being more or less in fear of that Ogre, her evil genius, from whose bondage may she soon be free; and then, mistress of herself, with peace and plenty in her land, blessed with wise Administration and Local Government, in happy and unbroken union with her sister, England, with a regal residence in her midst, may she see the emerald gem of the Western World set glittering in the crown of one who will be no longer a stranger.

Punch was moved to return to the subject in September, 1882, in order to repel the attacks made on him by the Spectator and the Nineteenth Century. The latter had not been sparing of rebuke: —

"No savages have ever been so mercilessly held up to loathing mockery as the Irish peasants by the one comic paper in Europe which has been most honourably distinguished for its restraint and decorum and good nature."

Here the defence takes the form of an imaginary trial before L.J. Public Opinion, in which Hibernia gives evidence in Punch's favour on the strength of cartoons published from 1844 onwards. Of course, Punch is acquitted and pronounced to have triumphantly refuted a calumnious attack. This much, however, must be admitted to Punch's credit, that he did not regard the campaign of outrage and defiance of the Law in Ireland as a reason for withholding remedial legislation, but supported Gladstone's measures designed to promote a settlement of the Land question.

Over the war with the Transvaal in 1881 Punch found it hard to find the justum medium. The true estimate of the situation was no more to be found in the view of the "excellent law-abiding people who would send off a British army of 15,000 men to crush out a rebellious enterprise," than in the demands of the enthusiastic humanitarians who would give "a struggling community their legitimate liberty." Punch frankly admitted that the Boers had been brutal to the natives, had shown an inability to govern themselves, and by their unfitness either to establish or extend civilization had almost jeopardized the hold of the white man on South Africa altogether. Yet he supported the Boers in their contention that the Proclamation of Sir Theophilus Shepstone in 1877 was invalid. There was wrong and right upon both sides. Writing in January, 1881, he expressed the hope that a pacific settlement might be arrived at by a Cabinet "not deficient either in the ready pluck which deals with pressing danger or the quieter courage that is not afraid of timely compromise." These hopes were not fulfilled, and Punch's confidence in the pluck and courage of the Gladstone Cabinet was severely shaken in 1884 and 1885. In 1881 he was hardly a true interpreter of public opinion in his comments on the disaster of Majuba, when he excused the British defeat by the valour of the Boers. The cartoon, "Fas est et ab Hoste," and the verses on the inadequacy of our military training, rubbed in the lessons of the war with more point than consideration. The sequel of Majuba humiliated the majority of Englishmen: and the policy of compromise and concession failed to achieve a lasting settlement.

Lord Beaconsfield died in the spring, but Punch, though respectful and appreciative, added little in his memorial tribute to what he had said on many previous occasions in the way of criticism and eulogy. The insecurity of Russian rule had a year previously been recognized in a cartoon representing Nihilism lighting a torch in a cavern beneath the throne. The assassination of the Tsar Alexander II prompts an appeal to the "Northern Terror." Ordered Liberty must disown such fiendish methods. Punch, no lover of autocracy, admits that the Tsar was "the gentlest of his line," and implores the Russians to put manhood in their wrath, and "not foul the work they call divine with demon ruthlessness," an appeal that still remains unanswered. This was the year in which another, but an uncrowned Head, was laid low in President Garfield, and the loss of the United States is recognized as a common sorrow.

Boer (to F. – M. H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief): "I say, Dook! You don't happen to want a practical 'musketry instructor,' do you?"

In Home politics no one is more frequently or unflatteringly referred to than Lord Randolph Churchill. Sambourne's "Fancy Portrait" represents him as a midge: in verse, bitter and derisive, he is dubbed "the coming mannikin." On the other hand, Mr. Balfour is welcomed as an accession of strength to his party, and his wit is commended as being no less pretty than his uncle's, though less explosive in its flashing forth. To this year also belongs the reaction of "Fair" against "Free" Trade; and the adoption of the new cry by Lord Randolph and Mr. James Lowther, amongst others, is alluded to in a parody of a once popular drawing-room song, "O Fair Dove, O Fond Dove." But these amenities and trivialities were soon forgotten. In May, 1882, came the terrible tragedy of the Phœnix Park murders – the first deliberate political assassinations that had stained our history for centuries – and if Punch's references in prose and verse seem perfunctory and laboured, it may be pleaded in the words of the classic aphorism: "small cares are vocal, mighty woes are dumb." Better justice was rendered to the event in the cartoon of the "Irish Frankenstein" in which Parnell crouches horrified before the monster of his own creation. Punch did not, however, despair of conciliation, and a fortnight later supported the Arrears of Rent Bill as "a gift badly wanted," though his support was tempered by the observation that "Ireland is to have a clean slate, and, as usual, at the expense chiefly of the British taxpayer. That patient Jackass is to be saddled with another burden."

In the latter half of 1882 Ireland gave place to Egypt as a storm-centre. Arabi's revolt, which involved us in another of our small wars, was speedily suppressed, after Alexandria had been bombarded by Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour, and the rebel forces on land had been routed at Tel-el-Kebir by Sir Garnet Wolseley, "our only General," as he was then called. Punch celebrated his success and his peerage in an "Idyll of the Queen," beginning, "Garnet the brave, Garnet the fortunate." But he also recognized the strained relations with France which the campaign brought about, and uncompromisingly maintained our position in his cartoon, "The Lion's Just Share." Here the claims of all the other Powers are made ridiculous in comparison with those of Britain, France figuring as a poodle, Turkey as a fox, Spain as a mule, and Italy as a toy greyhound. It is not a conciliatory picture; Punch was on safer ground in emphasizing the intrigues of Abdul Hamid and the unpatriotic sympathies of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt.

Parnell and his Monster

"The baneful and blood-stained Monster … yet was it not my Master to the very extent that it was my Creature?.. Had I not breathed into it my spirit?" … (Extract from the Works of C. S. P-rn-ll, M.P.)

Ireland resumed the first place as a preoccupying factor in British politics in 1883, when the capture of Monaghan by the Parnellites inspired Punch to depict him as cutting a bit off a coat labelled Ulster. Another cartoon, "Crowning the O'Caliban," prompted by the Irish leader's talk of the "moderation" of the Land League, shows him crowning a hideous figure, sitting on a barrel labelled Anarchy, Rebellion and Murder, and receiving from him a bag containing £40,000 – in reference to the "Parnell Tribute" presented to the Irish leader in that year.

Lord Randolph is easily the chief butt of the year. He is the "bumptious boy," the 'Arry of the hunting field, disregarding the old whip, Stafford Northcote. Yet amid all this derision there is an uneasy consciousness that this aggressive and ill-mannered young man may yet "arrive." In another cartoon Lord Randolph is drawn as a small boy looking at Lord Beaconsfield's statue and saying, "Ah! They'll have to give me a statue – some day." The twenty-fifth anniversary of John Bright's election for Birmingham, which fell in June, 1883, is treated in a very different spirit. Punch disagreed with Bright over the Egyptian war, but strikes no jarring note in the verses on his political silver wedding: —

Mellower voice has never rung
Round the lists of Party fray:
Sharper scorn has seldom stung.
Yet your Silver Wedding Day
Wakes good wishes near and far
E'en from fighters who have gone
Dead against you in the war.
Here's a health to you, Friend John.

That "annual blister, Marriage with deceased Wife's sister," as Gilbert called it, found Punch still faithful to the cause of relief, and exceedingly and impartially wroth against clerical obstructors, Anglican or Roman Catholic, to the extent of depicting Cardinal Manning and Archbishop Benson in the guise of old women. Where the Liquor Laws were concerned, however, Punch was frankly reactionary. In a "Look into Limbo" in July, 1883, he forecasts a general revolt against crotcheteers and faddists, his pet aversion being Local Option, which he defines as "a scheme for giving the six, who love spouting, supreme control over the liberty of the sixty or six hundred who dislike noise, and so hold their tongues until, in self-defence, they are compelled to use them."

German Militarism

Foreign politics do not obtrude themselves much on Punch's vision during the Gladstonian administration. But he was alive to the menace of militarism contained in a characteristic speech by Marshal von Manteuffel, the sentiment of which curiously resembles some of the utterances of the ex-Crown Prince William: —

THE PSALM OF DEATH

"Gentlemen, I am a soldier, and war is the soldier's element; and well I should like again to experience the elevated feeling of commanding in a pitched battle, knowing that the balls of the enemy are every instant summoning men before the judgment seat of God." – Marshal von Manteuffel to the Provincial Committee of Alsace-Lorraine.

What the heart of the young Teuton said to the old Marshal is summed up as follows: —

Tell me not in mournful numbers
Death is shocking. Not at all!
Death clears off the scum that cumbers
This o'er-populated ball.

Death is stirring, Death is splendid,
(Death of other men, not mine)
And its spreading is attended
By a feeling great – divine.

Let us then be up and fighting
(A la Marshal von Manteuffel)
Set the Mob to mutual smiting,
While we sing Death's O be joyful!

Gambetta's brief and stormy career had closed at the beginning of the year, and Punch acknowledged the debt which France owed to his passionate patriotism and "wild strength" in a cartoon showing the Republic leaning sadly against his memorial bust while Bismarck, with arms folded, stands in the background.

Punch had for some twenty years been, on the whole, a consistent supporter of Mr. Gladstone, but his loyalty was more severely tested in the years 1884 and 1885 than at any other time in the Liberal leader's career. Indeed, there were moments when it might be said to have broken down, and respect gave place to something like contempt. This mood was revealed in the very first of the Gordon cartoons early in 1884. Gordon is seen ploughing along through Egyptian difficulties with Gladstone, "The Grand Old Man of the (Red) Sea," complacently smirking on his back. In February Punch demands instant action. An angry John Bull bids Gladstone unmuzzle the British Lion at once, and Punch comments severely on the Premier's word-jugglery and sophistry. Later on we see Gladstone in the desert "after the Simoom," leading a camel. "Mirage" shows Gordon looking anxiously for relief from the battlements of Khartoum. A burlesque correspondence between a British Hero and the British Government pours satire on the cheap sympathy and lax opportunism of the Government, who are only concerned with saving their skin and their faces. The Premier's preoccupation with trivial home legislation comes in for indignant rebuke, and the Trelawny quatrain is adapted for the benefit of Gordon. The two cartoons in May are especially bitter. Mr. Gladstone, on the Treasury Bench, as Micawber, declares, "I am delighted to add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up. I am not at liberty to say in what direction." A fortnight later the Liberal Majority (or Mrs. Micawber) protests she will never desert Mr. Micawber – referring to the result of the Vote of Censure.

Punch, however, had no intention of crossing the floor of the House. The Conservative opposition to the Franchise Bill rekindled his Liberalism. Lord Salisbury's attitude in particular excited his hostility. He figures in verse as "The Losing Leader" (after Browning), and in a cartoon as the bell-wether followed into the pit by a flock of coroneted sheep. It was "no Curtius leap, but mutton madness," and the hotheads are compared to the Gadarene swine. Punch heaped laboured ridicule on the great Hyde Park Demonstration, printed burlesque advertisements suggesting employment for peers after the abolition of the House of Lords, and indulged in prophetic forecasts of "What it may come to."

The Franchise Bill

The Opposition suffered from the defection or lukewarmness of some of the wiser peers – Cranbrook, Cairns and Wemyss – and finally withdrew on the unofficial but opportune publication in the Standard of the outline of the Government's Redistribution Scheme. Punch gives his own account of the incident, according to which the whole Cabinet was mesmerized into revealing the Government plans, and summed up the whole business in his cartoon, "'Bill' the Giant-killer." The little Franchise Bill is seen blowing his horn before a castle (the House of Lords) with Lord Salisbury, as a huge Ogre, looking over the battlements and dismayed to find that his castle is not impregnable against Truth. In this context we may note that the payment of members was foreseen by Punch in a burlesque "Thumb-nail Summary for 1884," printed in the first issue of that year. Under July we read: —

Newly elected Parliament meets for the first time, and commences a campaign of active legislative reform by abolishing the Speaker.

The "Payment of Members Bill," involving a State income of £2,000 a year, the right to a stall at West End Theatres on first nights, family railway tourist-tickets during the summer season, and free dining for self and friend at the Holborn Restaurant while Parliament is in Session, carried without a division.

The "Payment of Members Bill," being thrown out by the Peers, the House of Lords is abolished by a short comprehensive Act, framed for the purpose, in one sitting.

Much aristocratic distress prevails towards the end of the month, and gangs of hungry Peers infesting the public thoroughfares are prosecuted daily by the Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, and ultimately shipped to a Coral Island in the Pacific.

Mr. Gladstone's seventy-fifth birthday on December 29, 1884, was welcomed in a set of verses in which the eulogy is only tempered by a faint reserve as to his lack of youthful resolution and his excess of caution. Had the anniversary fallen a few weeks later, Punch might have found it harder to pay such generous homage, for on February 7 appeared the unlucky cartoon which assumed that Gordon had been relieved. Yet even then, when the truth became known and while raising the cry of "Too late," Punch, though condemning delay and caution, deprecated party rancour: —

Not this the hour to echo faction's cry
Of half-exultant chiding, or to ply
The Party-phraser's venomed word-lash. No!
But laggard wills, counsels confused and slow
Should need no sharper spur, no keener goad
Than this to urge them on plain Honour's road.

The Tragedy of Khartoum

Punch's contribution to the Gordon "Memorial" was an ode from which we may quote one stanza: —

Gordon! A name to gild our island story,
Opulent yet in many a noble name,
With lustre brighter than mere statecraft's fame,
More radiant than the warrior's glittering glory.
Such lesser lights eclipse them in the fine
Sun-glow of selfless valour such as thine,
Soldier whose sword, like Galahad's, was not used
To hew out honour, but to champion right;
Plan-shaper who, in council as in fight,
Wast endlessly resourceful, yet refused,
Death-snared, an easy flight!

Other pens were busy over this episode, which inspired perhaps the most scarifying epigram of our times: —

Judas despairing died, his guilt confessed,
But had he lived in this our age and city,
He surely would have figured with the best
Upon a Christ Memorial Committee.

The disaster, however, had one heartening result in the offer of military assistance from Canada, Victoria and New South Wales, duly recorded by Punch in his cartoon of the Lion and the Colonial cubs. The year 1885 had opened with a sinister display of activity by dynamiters, and Punch rebuked Sir William Harcourt for his alleged apathy and imperious resentment of criticism by calling him the "Not-at-Home Secretary." America promptly took legislative action, refusing sanctuary to dynamiters, and was loudly applauded, while Mr. Parnell, in Punch's opinion, missed a golden opportunity for disavowing and condemning these outrages. In "What Mr. Parnell might have said" Punch printed the speech which he did not make but ought to have made, "as a man, an Irishman and a Christian."

Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone: "I ain't what I could wish myself to be. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I make the house uncomfortable. I don't wonder at it!!!"

John Peggotty-Bull (deeply sympathizing aside): "She's been thinking of the old 'un!" —David Copperfield.

The days of the Gladstone administration were numbered, and the motion in favour of Proportional Representation excited but a languid and academic interest. Punch thought the system far too complicated, and sought to reduce it to absurdity by a practical illustration. He was much more serious in his resentment at the hectoring attitude of Bismarck à propos of a recent speech of the Imperial Chancellor. In "Lecturing a Lecturer – a Friendly Tip to the Teuton Titan," he showed Bismarck standing in a truculent pose before a map of Europe while Punch looks on in amusement. The point of the accompanying verses is that Britain was not to be scared or scolded into submission: —

Orbilian Colossus,
You'd chide us and spank us and goad us and toss us,
But when Polyphemus world-wigging would try
He may – pardon the argot– get "one in the eye."
And Punch, Herr Professor, whose point seldom misses,
Is ready if needful to play the Ulysses.

The attempt to represent Bismarck as a professor might not seem to show a very acute reading of the facts were it not that German professors proved the chief inflamers of militarism. It must be added that, as a set off to this expostulation, Punch indited a remarkably genial poem to Bismarck a couple of weeks later on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. But this can hardly have atoned for the extremely acid and acute satire on the Spirit of German Colonization published about the same time. Here Germania declares her intentions to the native races in language which the treatment of the Herreros in German South-West Africa proved to be well within the mark: —