Mr. Punch's History of the Great War Part 28

February, a month of comparative anti-climax, witnessed the rea.s.sembling of Parliament, fuller than ever of members if not of wisdom. As none of the Sinn Feiners were present, nor indeed any representative of Irish Nationalism, the proceedings were as orderly as a Quaker's funeral, save for the arrival of one member on a motor-scooter. Perhaps the most interesting information elicited during the debates was this--that every question put down costs the tax-payer a guinea. On February 20th there were 282 on the Order Paper, and Mr. Punch was moved to wonder whether this cascade of curiosity might be abated if every questionist were obliged to contribute half the cost, the amount to be deducted from his official salary. The Speaker, the greatest of living Parliamentarians, was re-elected by acclamation. Though human and humorous, he has grown into something almost more like an inst.i.tution than a man, like Big Ben, that great patriot and public servant who never struck during the war. The best news in February was that of M. Clemenceau's escape, though wounded, from the Anarchist a.s.sa.s.sin who had attempted to translate Trotsky's threat into action. But it did not help on the proposed Conference with the Russians at Prinkipo or encourage the prospect of any tangible results from the deliberation of the Prinkipotentiaries. The plain man could see no third choice beyond supporting Bolshevism or anti-Bolshevism. But according to our Prime Minister, we were committed to a compromise. The Allies were not prepared to intervene in force, and they could not leave Russia to stew in her own h.e.l.l-broth. Meanwhile the chief criminal, Germany, had begun to utter _ad misericordiam_ appeals for the relaxation of the Armistice terms on the score of their cruelty; and Count Brockdorff-Rantzau gave us a foretaste of his quality by declaring that "Germany cannot be treated as a second-rate nation."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "How was it you never let your mother know you'd won the V.C.?"

"It wasna ma turrn tae write."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENGLAND EXPECTS

(With Mr. Punch's best hopes for the success of the National Industrial Conference.)

BOTH LIONS (together): "Unaccustomed as I am to lie down with anything but a lamb, still, for the sake of the public good ... "]

At home, though the rays of "sweet unrationed revelry" were still to come, and _Dulce Domum_ could not yet be sung in every sense, February brought us some relief in the demobilisation of the pivotal pig. And the decision to hold a National Industrial Conference was of encouraging augury for the settlement of industrial strife on the basis of a full inquiry and frank statement of facts. In other walks of life reticence still has its charms, and even in February people had begun to ask who the General was who had threatened not to write a book about the War.

March, the mad month, remained true to type. Even Mr. Punch found it hard to preserve his equanimity:

O Month, before your final moon is set Much may have happened--anything, in fact; More than in any March that I have met, (Last year excepted) fearful nerves are racked; Anarchy does with Russia what it likes; Paris is put conundrums very knotty; And here in England, with its talk of strikes, Men, like your own March hares, seem going dotty.

Abroad the ex-Kaiser was very busy sawing trees, possibly owing to an hallucination that they were German Generals.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

THE EASTER OFFERING

MR. LLOYD GEORGE (fresh from Paris): "I don't say it's a perfect egg, but parts of it, as the saying is, are excellent."]

At home the Government decided to release such of the Sinn Fein prisoners as had not already saved them the trouble, and a Coal Industry Commission was appointed on which no representative of the general public was invited to sit--that is to say, the patient, much enduring consumer, not the public which has all along sought to discount peace by premature whooping, jubilating, and Jazzing. For the Dove of Peace, though in strict training, seemed in danger of collapsing under the weight of the League of Nations'

olive bough, to say nothing of other perils, notably the Bolshy-bird, a most obscene brand of vulture.

Mr. Wilson was once more on the Atlantic, and Mr. Lloyd George, distracted between his duties in Paris and the demands of Labour, recalled Sir Boyle Roche's bird, or the circus performer riding two horses at once. In Parliament the interpretation of election pledges occupied a good deal of time, and Mr. Bonar Law twice declared the policy of the Government in regard to indemnities as being to demand the largest amount that Germany could pay, but not to demand what we knew she couldn't pay. It would have saved him a great deal of trouble if at the General Election the Government spokesmen had insisted as much upon the second half of the policy as they did on the first. Earnest appeals for economy were made from the Treasury Bench on the occasion of the debate on the Civil Service Estimates, now swollen to five times their pre-war magnitude, and were heartily applauded by the House. To show how thoroughly they had gone home, Mr. Adamson, the Labour Leader, immediately pressed for an increase in the salaries of Members of Parliament.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

OVERWEIGHTED

PRESIDENT WILSON: "Here's your olive branch. Now get busy."

DOVE OF PEACE: "Of course, I want to please everybody, but isn't this a bit thick?"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW TO BRIGHTEN THE PERIOD OF REACTION

MOTHER (to son who has fought on most of the Fronts): "Don't you know what to do with yourself, George? Why don't you 'ave a walk down the road, dear?"

FATHER: "Ah, 'e ain't seen the corner where they pulled down Simmondses'

fish-shop, 'as 'e. Ma?"]

On the Rhine the efforts of our army of occupation to present the stern and forbidding air supposed to mark our dealings with the inhabitants were proving a lamentable failure. You can't produce a really good imitation of a Hun without lots of practice. Gloating is entirely foreign to the nature of Thomas Atkins, and he could not pa.s.s a child yelling in the gutter without stooping to comfort it. At home his education was proceeding on different lines. The period of reaction had set in, and unwonted exertions were necessary to stimulate his interest. Such artless devices were, however, preferable to the pastime, already fas.h.i.+onable in more exalted circles, of kicking a total stranger round the room to the accompaniment of cymbals, a motor siren, and a frying pan.

After a month of madness it was not to be wondered at that we should have a month of muzzling, though the enforcement of the order might have been profitably extended from dogs to journalists. The secrecy maintained by the Big Four--a phrase invented by America--the conflict of the idealists with the realists, and the temporary break-away of the Italian wrestler, Orlando, were bound to excite comment. But a shattered world could not be rebuilt in a day, with Bolshevist wolves prowling about the Temple of Peace, and the Dove at sea between the Ark and Archangel. The Covenant of the League of Nations, though in a diluted form, had at last taken shape, the Peace Machine had got a move on, and the Premier's spirited, if not very dignified, retaliation on the newspaper snipers led to an abatement of unnecessary hostilities, though the pastime of shooting policemen with comparative impunity still flourished in Ireland, and the numbers and cost of our "army of inoccupation" still continued to increase. Innumerable queries were made in Parliament on the subject of the unemployment dole, but the announcement that the Admiralty did not propose to perpetuate the t.i.tle "Grand Fleet" for the princ.i.p.al squadron of His Majesty's Navy pa.s.sed without comment. The Grand Fleet is now a part of the History that it did so much to make.

May and June were "hectic" months, in which the reaction from the fatigues and restraints of War found vent in an increased disinclination for work, encouraged by a tropical sun. These were the months of the resumption of cricket, the Victory Derby, the flood of honours, and the flying of the Atlantic, with a greater display of popular enthusiasm over the gallant airmen who failed in that feat than over the generals who had won the War.

They were also the months of the duel between Mr. Smillie and the Dukes, the discovery of oil in Derbys.h.i.+re, the privileged excursion into War polemics of Lord French, unrest in Egypt, renewed trouble with the police, and a shortage of beer, boots and clothes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "END OF A PERFECT 'TAG'"]

But though the Big Four had been temporarily reduced to a Big Three by Italy's withdrawal, and though M. Clemenceau, Mr. Lloyd George, and President Wilson had all suffered in prestige by the slow progress of the negotiations, Versailles, with the advent of the German delegates, more than ever riveted the gaze of an expectant world. To sign or not to sign, or, in the words of Wilhelm Shakespeare, _Sein oder nicht sein: hier ist die Frage_--that was the problem which from the moment of his famous opening speech Count Brockdorff-Rantzau was up against. But, as the days wore on, in spite of official impenitence and the double breach of the Armistice terms by the scuttling of the German war-s.h.i.+ps at Scapa and the burning of the French flags at Berlin, the force of "fierce reluctant truculent delay" was spent against the steadily growing volume of national acquiescence, culminating in the decision of the Weimar a.s.sembly, the tardy choice of new delegates, and the final scene in the Hall of Mirrors, haunted by the ghosts of 1871.

Writing at the moment of the Signature of Peace and in deep thankfulness for the relief it brings to a stricken world, Mr. Punch is too old to jazz for joy, but he is young enough to face the future with a reasoned optimism, born of a belief in his race and their heroic achievements in these great and terrible years. Victory took us by surprise; and we were less prepared for Peace at that moment than we had ever been for War. And just as in the first days of the fighting we went astray, running after the cry "Business as usual," so to-day we are making as bad a mistake when we run after "Pleasure as usual"--or rather more than usual. But we soon revised that early error, and we shall not waste much time about revising this. For though we lacked imagination then, and still lack it, we have the gift, perhaps even more useful if less showy, of commonsense. And when commonsense is found in natures that are honest and hearts that are clean, it may make mistakes, but not for long. No, the spirit which won the War is not going to fail us at this second call. Perhaps we have only been waiting for the actual coming of Peace to settle down to our new and greater task.

But let us never forget the debt, unpaid and unpayable, to our immortal dead and to the valiant survivors of the great conflict, to whom we owe freedom and security and the possibility of a better and cleaner world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GHOSTS AT VERSAILLES]