On National Defence and the maintenance of our naval supremacy _Punch_ continued to speak with no uncertain voice. He applauded Lord Roberts's patriotic but neglected warnings and his advocacy of universal military service, and lent a friendly but not uncritical approval to the Territorial Army scheme.
JOHN BULL: "Recruits coming in nicely, Sergeant?"
RECRUITING SERGEANT PUNCH: "No, Sir. The fact is, Mr. Bull, if you can't make it better worth their while to enlist, you'll have to shoulder a rifle yourself!"]
In regard to Ireland and Home Rule, after the rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1893 _Punch's_ independent support of the Liberals gave place to a general support of the Unionist policy, tempered by a more or less critical attitude towards Ulster. He cannot be blamed for neglecting to note the obscure and academic beginnings of the Sinn Fein movement, or for failing to forecast that triple alliance of Sinn Fein with the old physical force party and the Labour extremists under Larkin which led to the rebellion of Easter, 1916. The Government expert, who devoted seven years to the neglect of his duties, was sunk in unholy ignorance of all that was going on until the explosion took place. For the rest, _Punch_ became increasingly critical of the demands of Labour and the parochial outlook of its leaders; increasingly antagonistic to the measures passed in satisfaction of those demands. At the same time he devoted more space than ever to satirizing, ridiculing, and castigating the excesses, extravagances and eccentricities of "smart" society, the week-end pleasure hunt of the idle rich, and all the other features which may be summed up in the phrase, "England de Luxe." Pictorially his record reveals perhaps more amusement than disgust at the carnival of frivolity which reached its climax in the years before the war. The note of misgiving is not lacking, but it is sounded less vehemently than in the 'eighties of the last century. In the main _Punch's_ temper may be expressed, to borrow from Bagehot, as an "animated moderation."
To turn from outlines to details, one is confronted in 1893 with Mr. Gladstone's second attempt to solve a problem which Giraldus Cambrensis pronounced insoluble seven centuries ago. _Punch's_ earlier cartoons on the Home Rule Bill are negligible, but the difficulties of the Premier's position are aptly shown in the picture of Gladstone as a knight in armour on a perilous pathway between the Irish Nationalist bog and the "last ditch" of Ulster. The accompanying text, modelled on Bunyan, represents Mr. Gladstone as a Pilgrim relying as much on tactics as the sword. The most genial reference to Ulster is that in which she figures as the Widow Wadman asking Uncle Toby, "Now, Mr. Bull, do you see any 'green' in my eye?" and Uncle Toby protests he "can see nothing whatever of the sort." Otherwise _Punch's_ attitude is unsympathetic, witness the use of the term "Ulsteria" and the epigram on the second reading of the Bill, put, it is true, into the mouth of "A rebellious Rad":--