The war, he also notes on the authority of a daily paper, had produced more poets than any similar crisis in English history. A more striking parallel with recent war-products is to be found in _Punch's_ review of the depression, discontent and decline of trade which it had begun to cause before hostilities ceased. This is clearly shown in July, 1901, in the Preface to Vol. cxxi, where _Punch_ rebukes John Bull, no longer in his Mark Tapley vein, for listening to pessimists, and encouraging a seditious and pernicious Press. In the opening stages of the war _Punch_ had been none too friendly to Lord Methuen, but he was righteously indignant at the "Ghoul-like ecstasy" of the Irish Members who cheered the news of the defeat and capture of that gallant soldier in the spring of 1902. The end of the war came in June, and is chronicled in _Punch's_ "Cease Fire" cartoon. The happiest incident of the surrender was the speech made by Lord Kitchener to the Boer delegates at Vereeniging when he said that "if he had been one of them, he would have been proud to have done so well in the field as they had done." _Punch_ did well to record it, for it reflected the national respect felt for a stubborn foe. For confirmation we need only turn to the laconic entry in the _National Register_ for August 16, 1902: "The Boer generals, Botha, De Wet and Delarey ... proceeded to London, and had an enthusiastic popular reception." Subsequent events have justified the somewhat complacent remark attributed to John Bull in the cartoon two months later, _à propos_ of the grant of £3,000,000 to the Transvaal, and the Boers' "Appeal to the Civilized World": "Look here, my friend, stick that up, if you like; but I think you'll find that _I_ talk less than the others and give more." [Sidenote: _Lord Kitchener's Return_] Lord Kitchener had returned in July, and _Punch's_ welcome ends on a prophetic note:-- You're a worker from of old, K. of K. Pomps and pæans leave you cold, K. of K. You would like to land in mufti, You would hurry down the dock Not in trappings, plumed and tufty, But in checks and billycock! And you haven't, now It's over, Come to stay; Nor to lie at length in clover, But to change your train for Dover, K. of K. For, although the work's appalling Which should have you here at hand, Yet you've heard the East a-calling Out of India's coral strand; And, as soon as time and place Let our feelings find release, And we've called you, to your face, First in War and first in Peace;-- Thither where the Empire needs you, K. of K., And your own "Ubique" leads you, Lies your way!