Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/302

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Epilogue


treatment of the Kaiser, and conscription so lavishly given by the Coalition Leaders caused no little misgiving at the time, and pledges, like curses, have an awkward way of coming home to roost. Mr. Punch's views on the Kaiser, expressed in his

Mr. Punch's history of the Great War p302
Mr. Punch's history of the Great War p302

"Don't you think we ought to hang the Kaiser, Mrs. 'Arris?"

"It ain't the Kaiser I'm worrying about—it's the bloke what interjuiced this war-bacon."

Christmas Epilogue, are worth recalling. Mr. Punch did not clamour for the death penalty, or wish to hand him over to the tender mercies of German Kultur. "The only fault he committed in German eyes is that he lost the War, and I wouldn't have him punished for the wrong offence—for something, indeed, which was our doing as much as his. No, I think I would just put him out of the way of doing further harm, in some distant penitentiary like the Devil's Island, and leave him to himself to think it all over; as Caponsacchi said of Guido in 'The Ring and the Book':

Not to die so much as slide out of life,
Pushed by the general horror and common hate
Low, lower—left o' the very edge of things."

Christmas, 1918, was more than "the Children's Truce."

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