Punch (59.1870)

98

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [September 3, 1870.

WHAT NEXT INDEED!

Grateful Recipient. " Bless you, my Lady ! May we Meet in Heaven !"
Haughty Donor. " Good Gracious ! ! Drive on, Jarvis ! !! "

[She had evidently read Dr. Johnson, who "didn't wxnt to meet certain people anywhere."

IN ACCOUNT WITH WAR.

How stands France in account with Napoleon, and Germany with
Bismarck P

Of whom who shall say that either on this age has not left his mark ?

Debtors both for hundreds of thousands of lives, and hundreds of thou-
sands of treasure,

Slaughtered and spent for sovereigns" sciiemes, and at sovereigns' will
and pleasure!
******

Debtor, L. N. to France, for the agony of invasion,
The cost of the requisitions of an army of occupation ;
For her capital in a state of siege, her trade in a state of stagnation,
Her agriculture paralysed, and ner credit in prostration ;
Her suburban crops given to the flames, her suburban villas demolished,
Her Paris mobiliers in the way, to be Prussian—not French—polished.
Debtor, besides, for armies ill-generalled and worse provided,
For citizens eating their hearts out, and France to the Devil mis-
guided.

A heavy balance on the wrong side, when accounts come to be squared,
And the creditors not in nice temper, and the debtor ill-prepared !

Debtor Bismarck to Germany, for the best blood ia her veins,
Drawn off on a score of battle-fields, through a myriad crimson drains ;
Debtor for triumph in her streets, and mourning in her homes,
Flags hung in her churches, and wounded laid beneath her palace
domes :

And the saddest of all set-offs, against Victory's glorious rage,
| In the shape of decimation of youth, and bereavement of old age.
Debtor L. N. and B. to Europe, for general apprehension,
For stocks with a tendency downwards, and nerves in a state of
tension:

For commerce disturbed, and trade destroyed, except the newspaper
writer's.

And the crippling of all kinds of industry but those that supply the
fighters.

For an unnatural flight of canards, and great waste of time in shooting
them,

And more lies, diplomatic and other, than there are means of confuting
them.

******

Rut against this heavy debtor account a per contra may be stated,
Even by France invaded, and Germany decimated.
Prance finds rer per contra in this strength of sudden self-devotion,
These linked hearts and armed hands that rise, like the rise of an angry
ocean,

To sweep the invaders from their gates, or in those gates to die,
While the enemy's haughty summons as haughtily they defy.

And Germany her per contra finds in the unity of will,
And strength of stern self-sacrifice, that bears her onward still;
In the brotherhood that from end to end doth through her empire run,
In the love that steels her softest, and binds high and low in one;
In the strength sublime of a common heart, and the tie of a common
cause,

That links for defence of Fatherland, its homes, and fields, and laws!

And the World has her per contra in the protest 'gainst faith in gold,
The proof that men will give their lives for what cannot be bought and
sold.

Ye?, heavy may be the account of loss that War's bloody book contains,
But not less, on the per contra side, write off these mighty gaius!

The Threads op our Discourse.—Lint.