As loud a cheer give, England, to the Navvies' gallant band,
Who have gone to lend our warriors a stalwart helping hand.
These to their work with shovel and crowbar as true will stand
As those to theirs with bayonet, with rifle and with brand.
Combatants and Non-Combatants
The Charge of the Light Brigade[10] prompts Leech's picture of "A Trump Card(igan)"; but, rather than with the officers, Punch, throughout the war, was more concerned with the rank and file, and with instances of unfair differentiation between officers and men, notably in regard to the sale of promotions and the grants of leave, satirized in the cartoon, "The New Game of Follow my Leader," in which a very diminutive bugler, advancing in front of a long file of soldiers, addresses the commander-in-chief: "Please, General, may me and these other chaps have leave to go home on urgent Private affairs?"
The efforts of the Peace Party are a constant source of derisive criticism, as in the bitter stanzas, "Mr. Gladstone's Peace Song." Even more bitter is the onslaught in the year 1856 on John Bright:—
Merrily danced the Quaker Bright,
And merrily danced that Quaker,
When he heard that Kars was in hopeless plight,