Charles L. Graves, ed.
Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1919
(Current reprints available)
David F. Beer, Reviewer
(Current reprints available)
David F. Beer, Reviewer
26 April 1916 Cover, Featuring Mr. Punch |
Punch flourished during the Great War, and the magazine was more than ready to cover the conflict:
Though a lover of peace, Mr. Punch from his earliest days has not been unfamiliar with war. He was born during the Afghan campaign; in his youth England fought side by side with the French in the Crimea; he saw the old Queen bestow the first Victoria Crosses in 1857. . .Later on again he had watched, not without grave misgiving, the growth of the great Prussian war machine which crushed Denmark, overthrew Austria, and having isolated France, overwhelmed her heroic resistance by superior numbers and science, and stripped her of Alsace- Lorraine (vii).
This prologue introduces almost 300 pages of month-by-month commentary, including cartoons and poetry, summing up events for each month in Punch's unique and patriotic style. August 1914 opens thus:
Four weeks ago we stood on the verge of the great upheaval and knew it not. We were thinking of holidays; of cricket and golf and bathing, and then were plunged in the deep waters of the greatest of all Wars (1).
Each month through November 1918 is similarly dealt with in four or five pages, with some three to five cartoons plus verse, and the book concludes with a retrospective epilogue that also looks forward to the year ahead. You could get a lot of enjoyment just browsing through the cartoons,but be warned that some of them contain a distinctly British sense of humor.
Typical of Punch's commentary as it follows the war's events is that of December 1915:
Things have not been going well in the East. The Allies have been unable to save Serbia, Monastir has fallen, and our lines have been withdrawn to Salonika. The experts are now divided into two camps, the Westerners and the Easterners, and the former, pointing to the evacuation of Gallipoli, are loud in their denunciations of costly "side-shows"(66).
Yet the fortitude of the British soldier must also be emphasized, or in the words of Mr. Punch "The 'philosophy of Thomas' is inscrutable…and he derives satisfaction from comparisons:"
If we're standin' in two feet o' water, you see
Quite likely the Boches are standin' in three;
An' though the keen frost may be ticklin' our toes,
'Oo doubts that the Boches' 'ole bodies is froze? (66)
. . . July has brought us a new experience-the sound fifty or sixty miles inland in peaceful, rural England, amid glorious midsummer weather, of the continual throbbing night and day of the great guns on the Somme, where our first great offensive opened on the 1st, and has continued with solid and substantial gains, some set-backs, heavy losses for the Allies, still heavier for the enemy (97).
A full-page cartoon for the same month shows a laughing Tommy bandaging his own wrist wound with his rifle in the crook of his arm and a German helmet pinned on the bayonet, the caption below stating in all capitals: WELL DONE, THE NEW ARMY. The following month, August, includes a short poem "from an R.F.C. man":
Returning from my morning fly
I met a Fokker in the sky,
And, judging from its swift descent,
It had a nasty accident.
On thinking further on the same
I rather fear I was to blame (104).
Back
in August 1915 the magazine had complained that “The war of Notes goes on with
unabated energy between Germany and the U.S.A.” and also recorded that “Mr.
Winston Churchill, the greatest of our quick-change political artists, is said
to be devoting his leisure to landscape painting. The school that he favors is
not publicly stated.” (50). However, April 1917 finds Mr. Punch less
tongue-in-cheek when he reports that
Once
more the rulers of Germany have failed to read the soul of another nation. They
thought there was no limit to America’s forbearance, and they thought wrong.
America is now ‘all in’ on the side of the Allies. The Stars and Stripes and
the Union Jack are flying side by side over the Houses of Parliament. On the
motion introduced in both Houses to welcome our new ally, Mr. Bonar
Law…declared that the New World had stepped in to redress the balance of the
old; Mr. Asquith…lauded the patience which had enabled President Wilson to
carry with him a untied nation; and Lord Curzon quoted Bret Harte (145).
A
drawing of a huge eagle, talons outstretched and swooping away from the Statue
of Liberty, accompanies this month’s entry.
David F. Beer
Thank you, David. That sounds fascinating.
ReplyDelete("overwhelmed [France's] heroic resistance by superior numbers and science" - that's a very charitable and unusually pro-French view of that war.)
I look forward to delving into this book. Thank you for the introduction. Cheers
ReplyDelete