_Punch_ was not wholly blind to the peril of Serbia. In his second cartoon, "The Power Behind," we see the Austrian Eagle threatening the little Serbian bird and suspecting that someone must be backing him--the someone being the Russian Bear hidden behind a rock. The immediate situation was not misread, but _Punch_, in his own words, was in an "irrepressible holiday mood," and little thought that on the day on which his cartoon appeared Austria would declare war on Serbia. Yet even this warning did not bring home to _Punch_ the imminence of the "Grand Smash." The makers of wars have no consideration for the producers of weekly papers. The issue, dated August 5, had gone to press before Germany declared war on Russia and France, and was published only a few hours before Great Britain was at war with Germany. The cartoon of the week shows Britannia appealing to Peace to do the best for her in _Ireland_, having done her best for Peace in Europe.[3] The "Essence of Parliament" is more concerned with gun-running at Clontarf than the prospect of a European convulsion, and the verses on the "Logic of Ententes: composed on what looks like the eve of a general European War," and intended to reflect the views of an average British patriot, are governed by the feeling that the whole thing is "an awful bore." Britons "never can be Slavs," and the last couplet runs thus:-- "Well, if I must, I shall have to fight For the love of a bounding Balkanite." An even more detached and ironical note is sounded in the fantasy headed "Armageddon"--a satire on Porkins, a blatant young golfing "nut" who thinks that England needs a war to cure her of flabbiness. The granting of his desire is traced to the cynical intervention of the Gods of Olympus in promoting a little scrap over a love affair in an obscure corner of the Balkans:-- And when a year later the hundred-thousandth English mother woke up to read that her boy had been shot, I am afraid she shed foolish tears and thought that the world had come to an end. Poor shortsighted creature! She didn't realize that Porkins, who had marched round the links in ninety-six the day before, was now thoroughly braced up. [Footnote 3: The present writer was at Bayreuth in the week before the War. After the declaration of war on Serbia by Austria and in view of its inevitable consequences, the Germans, in conversation and in their Press, were unanimous in "banking on" the neutrality of England on the ground of her domestic embarrassments in Ulster and the friendliness of the Liberal Government.] These two utterances may show that _Punch_ had failed in reading the signs of the times, and did not render justice to the youth of the country. I prefer to regard them as proofs that _Punch_, like the vast majority of his fellow-countrymen, neither expected nor desired war. CAPITAL AND LABOUR