How each man for joy saluted every other man as friend!
How we crowded to the city in an orgy of delight,
Tumbled out of bed for gladness, waving Union Jacks all night!
Even if we overdid it after deadening suspense,
Better this than anti-British Queen's Hall windbags' insolence!
Though we later coined a playful word, our soberer sense to show,
I would rather "maffick" daily than abet a treacherous foe!
In the controversies that arose over the treatment of various British generals, I may note that Punch supported the motion for an inquiry into the circumstances under which General Colvile was deprived of his command, which was negatived in the House by 262 votes to 248. Over the still more thorny question of General Buller's conduct of the Natal campaign he preserved an impartial attitude, while implying that the general would not exploit his grievance for political purposes. Early in the war Punch paid a rather left-handed compliment to the war correspondents; they are represented as welcoming war because it brought them remunerative employment. In the autumn of 1901 we find him pressing their claims for war medals, and observing that the Press had been shut out but not shut up.
The war, he also notes on the authority of a daily paper, had produced more poets than any similar crisis in English history. A more striking parallel with recent war-products is to be found in Punch's review of the depression, discontent and decline of trade which it had begun to cause before hostilities ceased. This is clearly shown in July, 1901, in the Preface to Vol. cxxi, where Punch rebukes John Bull, no longer in his Mark Tapley vein, for listening to pessimists, and encouraging a seditious and pernicious Press. In the opening stages of the war Punch had been none too friendly to Lord Methuen, but he was righteously indignant at the "Ghoul-like ecstasy" of the Irish Members who cheered the news of the defeat and capture of that gallant soldier in the spring of 1902. The end of the war came in June, and is chronicled in Punch's "Cease Fire" cartoon. The happiest incident of the surrender was the speech made by Lord Kitchener to the Boer delegates at Vereeniging when he said that "if he had been one of them, he would have been proud to have done so well in the field as they had done." Punch did well to record it, for it reflected the national respect felt for a stubborn foe. For confirmation we need only turn to the laconic entry in the National Register for August 16, 1902: "The Boer generals, Botha, De Wet and Delarey ... proceeded to London, and had an enthusiastic popular reception." Subsequent events have justified the somewhat complacent remark attributed to John Bull in the cartoon two months later, à propos of the grant of £3,000,000 to the Transvaal, and the Boers' "Appeal to the Civilized World": "Look here, my friend, stick that up, if you like; but I think you'll find that I talk less than the others and give more."