The rout of the Government at the General Election of 1906 was a veritable _débâcle_. Liberal candidates were returned who never got in before or after: there is a story of one so overwhelmed by his wholly unexpected success that he fainted on the declaration of the poll. Ministers went down like ninepins, and on the meeting of the new Parliament _Punch_ descants on the disappearance of the "old familiar faces"--Mr. Arthur Balfour and his brother Gerald, Alfred Lyttelton and St. John Brodrick, Bonar Law, Sir John Gorst, Sir Albert Rollit, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Gibson Bowles, and, "saddest fate of all and most lamented," Mr. Henry Chaplin. The emergence of a new, formidable, but uncertain factor was at once recognized in the cartoon in which John Bull looks over the wall at a bull labelled Labour Vote. The Trade Disputes Bill, the first and most notable concession to the demands of Trade Unionism, is discussed in the next section. [Illustration: AN UNDER-RATED MONSTER BRITANNIA: "That's a nasty-looking object, Mr. Boatman!" LORD TW-DM-TH: "Bless your 'eart, mum, 'e won't 'urt you. I've been here, man an' boy, for the last six months, an' we don't take no account o' them things!"] _Punch_ was more preoccupied with Lord Haldane's new army scheme, and when the War Minister, in introducing it, declared that the country would not be "dragooned into conscription," interpreted his statement "in other and less conventional terms" as indicating a conviction that "it is the inalienable right of the free-born British citizen to decline to lift a finger in his country's defence." Lord Haldane's proposals for retrenchment are symbolized in his efforts to make big toy soldiers fit his box, instead of making the box fit the soldiers. Wasters and loafers who had cheered "Bobs" on his return from South Africa are shown expressing indignation at his wanting to enforce universal military service. _Punch's_ reluctant admission of our national lethargy finds vent in a dialogue emphasizing the predominance of the _Panem et Circenses_ spirit--devotion to the Big Loaf and spectacular games--coupled with a loss of our supremacy in games. The pageant mania became acute in 1907, when _Punch_ satirically asks, "Can you cite any other country where it is impossible to walk out of doors without colliding with an historical pageant?" Lord Haldane's visit to Germany in 1906 is burlesqued in a diary professing to reveal his paramount interest in German philosophy and literature; and a picture, in which he appears in a _Pickelhaube_, expresses the misgivings of two British soldiers who had overheard him "talking to himself in German--something horrible." This attitude of critical distrust is maintained throughout the next four years. In March, 1908, the new gun designed for the Territorial Force prompts a dialogue between the War Minister and Field-Marshal _Punch_:--