In early Victorian days the Duke of Wellington was commonly alluded to as "the Duke" _par excellence_. In the opening years of the present century, in political circles at any rate, when people spoke of "the Duke" they always meant the Duke of Devonshire, and for reasons which are tersely and correctly given in _Punch's_ brief memorial verses when he died in March, 1908:-- If to have held his way with steadfast will, Unspoiled of Fortune, deaf to praise or blame, Asking no favour but to follow still The patriot's single aim:-- If, in contempt of other pride of race, By honesty that chose the nobler part, Careless of fame's reward, to win a place Near to the common heart:-- If these be virtues large, heroic, rare, Then is it well with him, the dead, to-day, Who leaves a public record clean and fair, That Time shall not gainsay. The tribute is one which, we think, would have appealed to the dead statesman, a man of few words, but who in the words of another Duke, the Duke of Argyll, was "firm as the rock, and clear as the crystal that adorns the rock." A few weeks later Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, broken in health, resigned the Premiership, dying so soon afterwards that he virtually died in harness. _Punch_ did not overstate things in describing his death as "a common grief" to Liberals and Unionists, for he had outlived the obloquy of party bitterness and revealed as Premier qualities which his successor, Mr. Asquith, fittingly described when he spoke of him as "our revered and trusted chief." By a strange and happy irony of fate, the statesman who had opposed the Boer war was responsible for the policy of reconciliation which might have been much harder if that war had not been waged. Germany loomed large on the political horizon in 1908. This was the year of Mr. Lloyd George's visit to inquire into the working of the scheme of national insurance, a visit which _Punch_ treated with undisguised irony as a belated afterthought. It was also the year of the Kaiser's famous interview, published in the _Daily Telegraph_, in which he claimed credit for magnanimity to England during the Boer war, with the result of annoying his Chancellor and having to consent to a revision of his conception of the Imperial prerogative. _Punch's_ open letter to "The Great Misunderstood" exhibits considerable scepticism of his friendliness, and a set of verses, in the same spirit, are inspired by the activities of the German Women's Navy League. An English M.P. had been exhibiting a toy model of a German gunboat used by this organization as a collecting box, and it was alleged that these toys were handed about in German schools with the request: "Give us your pence, so that we can thrash the English." [Sidenote: _The Kaiser's Soliloquy_]