08-03-2016, 10:48 AM
561
Re: The Pages of Punch
1938: Why Don’t We Beat the Patriotic Drum?
Here is another recognition that storm clouds are massing over Europe. This cartoon doesn’t, for once, try to ignore the signs. Here John Bull is pursuing a vague hunch. He has come into Prime Minister Chamberlain’s music shop in search of a half remembered patriotic song.
The song itself dates from the days of Britain’s pre-eminence in all things including the military. Then patriotic patrons of the music halls would cheerfully bellow out the refrain:
We don’t want the fight
but by Jingo if we do
we’ve got the ships
we’ve got the men
and we’ve got the money too.
While Salisbury was Prime Minister that was all it took to pursue a successful war. By Chamberlain’s time ships were not enough in the way of military hardware. By this date Hitler’s armaments industry was turning out tanks, planes and artillery pieces in immense numbers. For Britain the money was not there. It would have to be borrowed.
Here is one cartoonist who is wondering whether appeasement is going to work and suggests that the alternative will indeed be expensive but also necessary.
13-03-2016, 10:52 AM
566
Re: The Pages of Punch
1938: How Dare He Express an Opinion?
How hilarious! A mere porter employed at the gallery dares to express an opinion about attribution. He hasn’t studied Art History like a proper expert. He just talked about something that he was looking at every day.
The taste for this sort of humour has vanished some time ago. I remember the Monty Python team ran a piece in which someone began a paraphrase of Proust. He did so – wait for it! – in a north country accent!!! Everyone fell about laughing. How could a north countryman be expected to know anything at all about the arts?
Not all political correctness is absurd.
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