Evening star., 1940-07-29
Punch Carries On
In Customary Role
. London Comic Weekly
Neurs Hundredth Birthday
UnspoiIed by War
BY James Waldo Fa,Cceff.

Dy SN"cS ~ "2O bbtCts
Everything has changed and when my
copies of Punch arrive-a fortnight late
i hesitate moment before opening
them. 1t may be natural to wonder how
comic paper can carry on in time
so bitterly tragic.
But Punch is less drastically altered
than might be supposed. A weekly pub
lication nearly hundred years old has
had abundant experience with war.
Copies trailed the troops to the Crimea,
South Africa, the Dardanelles, Siberia.
They were scattered over France by
thousands between 1914 and 1918. More
than a decade later American tourists
found them in taverns on the road from
Cherbourg to Paris. They had become
part of the picture presented by those
little inns. Doubtless they still were
there when the Germans came back.
Meanwhile the men who made Punch
were faithful to their tradition. They
are loyal to it even now, though it Is
painful to laugh and people apologize
for smiling openly.
The latest issue received is that for
July 3. 1t is labeled: mo. $3.50, Volume
CXCIX." At the end of 26 pages of
illustrations and text a warning is
printed to the effect that "the entire
copyright in all articles, sketches, draw
lngs, ETC., published in Punch is specific
ally reserved to the proprietors through
out the countries signatory to the Berne
convention, the United States of Amer
lea and the Argentine. Reproductions
or limitations Of any of these are there
fore expressly forbidden"
Yet there does not seem to be any law
to pronibit subscriber from commu-
nicating to his friends some slight hint
concerning the contents of this printed
symbol of the Age of Confusion from
which it has emerged. I do not expect
that I am liable to be sent to the Tower
for telling the half dozen friends who
may happen to read these lines that the
FIRST page of the London Charivari, dated
July 3, shows a drawing of wounded
soldier cheering forward a comrade who
in another moment himself may fall.
With this drawing there is printed
FONhA VI oih ood4lLdo ICE uliB lilOSC
internal flies" called ''clegs which raise
Jumps as large as eggs" The identity of
the bard is hidden under the pseuodnym,
'Dum-Dum." SO, too, the real name of
"Evoe' is concealed-a person who car
rles with him from his little fat to
his "commodious and beautifully fur
niShed AFRAID shelter" the current issue
Of
which is incorporated the Reptilian Re-
view, "the sort of publication that, if
he could see it, would drive Hitler to
despair Fifty copies experimentally
might be sent to him at once. "Evoe" for
this, presumably, and other reasons
prays may nothing, neither paper short
age, nor want of waterpower, nor enemy
activity, nor any disease amongst gold
fish and guppies" trouble the keeper of
the pond-aquarist who with kind Of
Teutonic acquisitiveness" has absorbed
the aforesaid Review Reptilian.
1t is silly, probably, to write or read
about amateur aquariumism in the sum-
mer of 1910, but Englishmen do. They
likewise both write and read about gals
on farms" who "dolled up" scarecrow
''in a f1owery at and a skirt"
Then comes a full-page drawing en-
titled "Gangways of Empire" signed
Shepard. People not altogether hard
boiled had best pass it by. 1t shows nine
colonial soldiers coming ashore from a
transport-and a dozen children going
on board the same ship from the same
pier. The infants carry tiny flags. One
of them, the eldest, little girl, perhaps
5 or 6. shakes hands with a grinning
rookie from Canada.
Another sketch is captioned "In
Town Today" There are Is figures in it,
all in uniform, all saluting. Even a tai
lor's dummy in shop window has
Joined" The picture says as plain as
anything: There are no civilians now"
Eric is next in the procession, re-
viewing the movies, particularly Nous
Les Jeunes," lone of the last films to
escape from Neuilly before Goebbels
cast his nauseous shadow upon the de-
lightful suburb" Those who report the
cinema probably are privileged to drama
tie themselves. Be that as it may,
Eric" does not ask to be excused when
he opens his column with the complaint:
"It is an almost unbearable thought that
heavy-booted OATS, gross in body and
pulverized in mind, are slogging in beS-
tial droves through the France we love"
There is nothing funny about these
words. Nobody is supposed to giggle
over them; probably nobody will at
tempt such an acrobatic contradiction of
natural resentment. Neither will any
reader pause to remember that not all
Germans are OATS. That is one of the
penalties that Hitler must pay for his
title of fuehrer. His intolerance breeds
intolerance of a sort.
But it is permissible to guffaw out
right at drawing in which John G..
Walter depicts an African jungle with
a settlers hut in the right foreground.
The settler himself is sketched at work
over pile of papers. One native to the
left says to a second native slightly
letter: THE white man is preparing sac
rifices for the gods he calls Commission
ers of Inland Revenue" Without bene-
fit of translation or blueprint, we know
what that means, don't we? If not
currently, then next year sure enough.
Overleaf we discover a poem with the
initials A. P. H., which conceivably might
indicoto tho poveliSt D Herbert If