Yet listen, conqueror, while the shade, That should sit near thee in thy car, Whispers how quickly laurels fade, How swiftly shift the sands of war; How, sixty-five years since, there came A mightier Emperor than thou, Upon Berlin to put the shame Which thy hand puts on Paris now.
Even as thy heel is on their head, That on thy folks' head set their heel, So, ere threescore more years have sped, The woe thou work'st thy sons may feel. "Who smite with sword by sword shall fall," Holds for kings as for subjects true; God's mills grind slow, but they grind small, And he that grinds gives all their due.
The courtesy of Germany in coming to an amicable settlement over the loss of some British colliers sunk in the Thames is acknowledged; but anxiety as to her further aggressions was not allayed by her desire to possess Heligoland, and was undoubtedly enhanced by the publication of that brilliant realistic romance, _The Battle of Dorking_, while the fratricidal tragedy of the Commune, and the ruthless measures of suppression employed, augured ill for the recovery of France from the abasement of defeat. These events and the lessons they conveyed to England were not overlooked by _Punch_; they served to temper his light-heartedness with moods of misgiving. Yet the wonderful elasticity--due, as even official Republican historians admit, to the industrial prosperity created under the Second Empire--which enabled France to pay off what in those days seemed a crushing war indemnity long before the time fixed, emboldened _Punch_ in the spring of 1873 to indulge once more in a prophecy of the reversal of the verdict of 1870. When the German occupation ended, France is shown undauntedly confronting Germany with the words: "Ha! We shall meet again."
Germany was not the only foreign power that caused anxiety during the Gladstone administration of 1868-1874. Russia availed herself of the troubles of 1870 to revive the Near Eastern question by refusing to recognize her treaty obligations in the Black Sea; but the friction thus created was allayed by the compromise effected by the Black Sea Conference. And Russia's expedition to, and occupation of, Khiva in 1873 gave rise to further uneasiness. But non-intervention remained the order of the day throughout. The Ashanti expedition of 1873, whether in respect of its aim or its scale could not be regarded as forming an exception. But it furnished _Punch_ with occasion for much plain-spoken criticism of War Office red tape and mismanagement. He saw in Sir Garnet Wolseley "the right man in the wrong place":--