Why does the British Press keep on and on so?
It cannot have enough of King Alfonso.
Kaiser, King, and Laureate
The mention of the Kaiser is ominous. Punch had, for reasons mentioned above, given him a brief respite, but one of his periodical outbursts at Königsberg in August, 1910, provoked a cartoon representing the Imperial Eagle re-entering his cage "Constitution" to the relief of his keeper, whom he reassures with the remark: "It's all right: I'm going back of my own accord. But (aside) I got pretty near the sky that time. Haven't had such a day out for two years." This was not exactly respectful treatment, but it was not so frank as Punch's heading "Thank Goodness!" prefixed ten years earlier to the statement made, by an American paper, that in a Boston Lunatic Asylum there were eleven patients, each of whom believed himself to be the German Emperor, but that they had no means of communicating with the outer world.
King George's coronation in 1911 gave Punch another occasion for mingling jest with earnest, loyalty to the Sovereign with chaff of notorieties. The King's serious concern with his country's welfare had already been illustrated in the cartoon in which he is seen, like his namesake saint, attacking a dragon—that of "Apathy." At the time of the coronation Punch lays stress on the heritage of sea-power that had fallen to him, a sailor prince. In July the Prince of Wales was welcomed in his Principality—this time, in Punch's picture, by a dragon the reverse of apathetic.
In June, 1913, the office of Laureate fell vacant by the death of Mr. Alfred Austin. After Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson, the anti-climax had been so painful that Punch may well be excused for the cartoon in which Pegasus appeals to Ringmaster Asquith to disestablish him: the Steed of the Muses was tired of being harnessed to the Royal Circus. There are some who think that, in the best interests of the distinguished author who was appointed, it would have been well if Punch's advice had been followed.