And then die hehre Göttin, hof'ring in the aether blue,
Vill summon up her gunboats and her Pickelhauben too,
Her bearded brawny varriors, vot nefer knew no fear,
And troops of learned bureaucrats, all buttoned-up to here.
Then if the shtupit natifes don't attend to vot she said,
And makes themselves unpleasant, they must all be shooted dead;
For trifles in the vay of German culture must not shtand—
Hoch soll der Bismarck leben! I drinks, "Our Fatherland!"
Lord Randolph Churchill
When the Government was defeated in June "on the Budget Stakes," as Punch put it, he went so far as to accuse Gladstone of "riding to lose," and resented this action as not quite on the square. A month earlier he had shown Gladstone as the political Mrs. Gummidge, the "Old 'un" being Disraeli, whose portrait hangs on the wall. There was a rumour of Mr. Gladstone going to the Lords, and Punch had a picture of Tennyson, in his robes in the "gay garden of elegant earls," inviting W. E. G. to "come into the garden," but Mr. Gladstone declines, preferring to paddle his own canoe. Lord Randolph was included in the Salisbury administration, which held office for six months, as Secretary of State for India, but his elevation to Cabinet rank did not appease Punch's distrust—rather the reverse. He was not really an undersized man, but he invariably appears in Punch about this time as a boy, a mannikin or some diminutive pest, while the vehemence of his language is resented in bitter criticism of his "mud-spattering" abuse, vulgar invective, and "Billingsgate Babel." In particular a speech which he delivered at a Conservative gathering at Canford Manor, Wimborne, excited Punch's wrath, and prompted the picture of "Funny Little Randolph," as a "star comique" singing a topical song, "I don't care a rap," and exulting in his grimaces and bad manners. In the previous year Punch had fallen foul of the "windy ravings of Loyalist Speakers" in Ireland, "the Loyalist Cæsar, and the Nationalist Pompey seem 'very much alike' indeed—in the matter of noisy mischief.... One feels that the Orange Champions would not hate 'disloyalty' so much did they not hate their 'Green' fellow countrymen more."