17-10-2015, 09:52 AM
413
Re: The Pages of Punch
1935: Not Knowing What to Do at the Seaside
This is just my opinion but I suggest that this cartoon is about people who don’t know how to enjoy a trip to the seaside. This would be in contrast to the readers of Punch who are well versed on this subject. The boy’s father has no better idea about benefiting from the visit. (To be fair to the lad a miniature bucket and spade are of no use on a shingle beach.)
18-10-2015, 09:44 AM
414
Re: The Pages of Punch
1935: The Extremely Well Rewarded Poet
I instantly recognised this as a tongue in cheek suggestion that some poets become very rich from their poems. I then felt encouraged in this interpretation when I spoke out loud the name of this mythical Asiatic country.
19-10-2015, 09:54 AM
415
Re: The Pages of Punch
1935: Give Peace a Chance
This drawing is of some historical significance. Occasionally Punch showed a serious cartoon which was intended to reflect the mood of a large proportion of the population. This certainly belongs to that category.
Hitler had already been in power for more than two years. As yet he had not threatened any of Germany’s neighbours but his bellicose speeches and rapid rearmament caused people to realise that another war had become a real possibility. With bitter memories of the previous conflict many people in Britain clung to the hope that it would be possible to avert such a catastrophe.
This cartoon accurately reflects how most people felt at the time. A meeting of former enemies was seen as an excellent way of emphasising the unwillingness of both populations to renew the slaughter.
Only a few years later such sentiments were dismissed as appeasement. For the most part this was not the case. It was simply a deep reluctance to undergo again the well-remembered horrors.
The cartoonist stressed how similar both lots of veterans by omitting uniforms and flags. This was not the case when the British old soldiers actually arrived in Berlin. Goebbels saw to it that that the swastika was extremely well in evidence and he tried to demonstrate this as a British endorsement of the Nazi regime.
Eventually even Chamberlain had to admit that war was unavoidable and no doubt regretted that Britain’s reluctance to rearm had put the country in an extremely dangerous situation. One of the objections to rearming had been that we didn’t want to provoke Hitler!
It is of course true that there were genuine Nazi sympathisers in pre war Britain but they were a small minority though they did include the then Prince of Wales.
21-10-2015, 09:48 AM
417
Re: The Pages of Punch
1935: ‘The White Man’s Burden’
It is not often that the British Empire gets noticed in the pages of Punch in 1935. This cartoon is a typical example of those that did appear. Utterly politically incorrect today this kind of thing was considered quite acceptable at the time. Here the ‘natives’ are shown to be simple but well meaning. The man behind the desk is (of course) white and trying to cope. In fact, he doesn’t seem to be making too good a job of it.
I imagine that the drawing is based on actual colonial experience. I have just a slight hesitation on this point because I don’t see a ceiling fan in the office – something that was standard during my days in Singapore just 20 years after this cartoon appeared. On the other hand, this scene may be taking place at high altitude in which case ceiling fans aren’t needed.
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