1. That a Magistrate speaking from the Bench should have thought proper to inform a Recruit that to join the Army was to take a false step in life, which might possibly entail the breaking of his parents' hearts.
2. That a Non-Commissioned Officer should be refused admission to the best seats in a place of public entertainment because he (the Non-Commissioned Officer in question) happened at the time of purchasing his ticket to be wearing the should-be honoured uniform of Her Majesty the Queen.
Field-Marshal Punch consequently feels it to be his duty to issue the following orders:—
1. In future, City Aldermen, in their official capacities, will refrain from making remarks calculated to bring the Army into ridicule, hatred, or contempt.
2. If any regulation exists preventing soldiers in uniform from appearing in the better seats of places of entertainment, the rule in question must be immediately abolished.
In conclusion, Field-Marshal Punch is strongly of opinion that recruiting will continue to remain slack until the difference existing between the social conditions of the British Soldier in the present, and the Negro Slave in the past, is thoroughly understood and admitted by the public in general, and the people to whom this circular is addressed in particular. It must be remembered in future that the Livery of Her Majesty is worn by warriors, and not by flunkeys.
Mismanagement at Reviews
The remonstrance was well needed, though many years were to elapse before the second of these orders was acted on. Yet if Punch had little mercy on those who imagined that all soldiers were "brutal and licentious," he had no compassion on those who disgraced their uniform. In the controversy which arose in 1880 between Dr. W. H. Russell and Sir Garnet Wolseley over alleged breaches of discipline among our troops during the Zulu campaign, Punch held that the war correspondent's was a "true bill," and actually advocated the reintroduction of flogging in the Army for "exceptional cases of brutality which degrade the soldier to the level of the garrotter or the wife-beater."
The allusions to the Volunteer Review in the Great Park at Windsor in July, 1881, dwell chiefly on the habitual neglect and lack of consideration meted out to the Army on these occasions:—
HOW TO TREAT THE ARMY
Select the hottest day you can possibly find for a perfectly useless sham fight and send the men out with the heaviest, clumsiest, most antiquated, and unseasonable headgear. When a few of them perish, as a matter of course, of sunstroke, express the utmost astonishment that anybody can die from such a cause in such perfect uniform in a temperate climate.
HOW TO TREAT THE VOLUNTEERS
Encourage fifty thousand men to attend a Review, and then tell them coolly that your military organization is quite unequal to the task of giving them a day's food.... As they are nearly all respectable middle-class members of Society, give them a shilling apiece to take care of themselves, and trust to their decency not to abuse such extraordinary liberality.
Punch gave credit to the Duke of Cambridge for his efforts to improve the amenities of barrack life, but came down heavily on him for opposing the introduction, when the late Duke of Devonshire was at the War Office, of neutral-tinted uniforms on active service. The Duke of Cambridge thought it a good thing for a soldier that, when in action, he should be visible, and Punch dealt faithfully with this ducal ineptitude:—
"THE THIN RED LINE"
(Horse Guards Duo.)
Pro.
Who says a soldier's a thing ready made
Of a suit of grey and a service-spade?—
That there's pluck in picking a 'vantage ground,
Then digging a hole and heaping a mound?
The notion's preposterous, laughable, quizzible!
By Jove, Sir, a soldier—he ought to be visible!
Con.
I grant you all that; but when Six-foot Guards
Like ninepins go down at a thousand yards,
'Tis time to note that, if work's to be done,
A field to be saved, a day to be won,
It won't be by speeches as firework as fizzible,
But by getting well home with movement invisible.
Pro.
Pooh! Stuff, Sir! What served us at Waterloo?
Your neutral tint, or your washed-out blue?
Digging and dodging?—I rather opine
A rush with a cheer of a "thin red line,"
In the midst of a hailstorm of all things whizzible!
Don't talk, Sir, to me of a coat that's not visible!
Con.
No use, my good friend; for though you may bless
The days that departed with Old Brown Bess,
If you make that "red line," that never will yield,
A target for every shot in the field,
Of your foemen you'll stir the faculties risible—
For neither your troops nor your brains will be visible!
Heroes, Charlatans and Criminals