Need fear—or hope—no dagger save its own.
The Kaiser's visit to attend the Naval Review at Spithead is treated in a somewhat jocular and cavalier spirit in the cartoon, "Visiting Grandmamma":—
Grandma Victoria: "Now, Willie dear, you've plenty of soldiers at home; look at these pretty ships—I'm sure you'll be pleased with them!"
Mistrust of the Kaiser
The Kaiser is shown with a toy spade making sand castles for his soldiers. Yet these soldiers were giving ground for anxiety—witness the cartoon in January on the armed peace of Europe with Peace holding out the olive in one hand, with the other on a sword hilt. The inevitable verses allude to the "truculent Kaiser" and evince mistrust of one who comes in such equivocal guise. Punch credited Bismarck with exerting a restraining influence on the warlike activities of the Triple Alliance. He showed him in the spring playing Orpheus to this Cerberus, and lulling it to sleep. But the Kaiser inspired no such confidence, and at the close of the year he is shown posing as a peacemaker but preparing for war—fondling the dove on his hand, while behind is the eagle, with bayonets for feathers, feeding on the Army estimates.
THE RIVAL PETS; OR, FONDLING AND FEEDING
Another sovereign whom Punch failed to read with the same penetration was King Leopold II of the Belgians. On the occasion of the International Anti-Slavery Congress at Brussels in November, 1889, Punch, while very properly applauding the occasion as tending to the overthrow of "the demon of the shackle and the scourge," acclaimed Leopold II as a "magnanimous King." Cecil Rhodes, some years later, after an interview with the same monarch, said that he felt just as if he had been spending the morning in the company of the Devil.
Punch, like other critics, was happier in dealing with the dead than the living, and the death of John Bright in March inspired a generous though discriminating tribute to the memory and achievements of "Mercy's sworn militant, great Paladin of Peace":—
For Peace, and Freedom, and the People's right,