THE CZAR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS
The contrasted outlook in Russia and Japan is shown in "Peace and After"—gloom and storm in the one country, general rejoicing in the other. The signing of the Peace in October brought mutiny and insurrection in Russia, repressed for the moment by grape-shot and concessions. Punch distrusted the former method, and warned the Tsar through the mouth of Louis XVI: "Side with the people, Sire, while there is yet time. I was too late." The instalment of constitutional government granted was shorn of its grace by the antecedent display of ruthlessness. Punch typified this situation in his cartoon of the Tsar armed with a sword and leaning on a cannon, with corpses strewn around, and saying: "Now I think the way is clear for universal suffrage." But Punch was premature in saluting the first Duma—opened by the Tsar in person in May, 1906—as the Infant Hercules strangling the twin snakes of Bureaucracy and Despotism. It was the Duma which was strangled by these forces, of which the first was the more potent and malign.
Belgium and Germany
Another foreign monarch who came in for severe criticism in these years was King Leopold II of the Belgians. Quite recently he had been treated by Punch with a benevolence that bordered on fulsomeness. But 1904 was the year of the "Congo Atrocities," and Punch, in a cartoon modelled on the ancient Egyptian lines, compared him with the Pharaoh Rameses II whose scribes counted over the hands cut from his vanquished enemies. This was suggested by the stories of the similar treatment of the natives in the rubber plantations vouched for by the British Consul at Boma. The value of this evidence has since been impaired by the fact that the Consul in question was none other than Roger Casement. From Belgium to Germany the transition is easy. In the last two years of the Unionist administration, German aggressiveness is a constant theme of comment, mainly inspired by misgiving, occasionally enlivened by burlesque belittlement of scaremongers. To the latter category belongs the forecast, at the close of 1904, of the invasion of London, seized during a week-end exodus of its inhabitants. Nor should we fail to note the series of appreciative articles on life in Berlin in 1905, in which "Tom the Tourist" finds the German capital "one of the liveliest, pleasantest and handsomest of cities," and descants on its good beer, pleasant company, genial hospitality, and the absence of any sign of hatred of the British. The writer even goes so far as to compare the Sieges-Allée favourably with some of the statuary of London. But a different note is struck in the lines on the vicarious patriotism of those who objected to conscription; in the references to the inadequacy of our coast defences; in the satisfaction expressed in the appointment of Sir John Fisher as First Sea Lord, and the improvement in naval gunnery; and in the satire directed against the new German Chancellor, Count von Bülow, for his cynical "blague." As "Der Taubadler," he reproves President Roosevelt for Jingoism, and declares:—
Our passion for ruling the brine
Is based on a single and pure design—
To serve as a sort of Marine Police,