The Press: Punch at War

As Britons last week chuckled over Punch Almanack for 1945, they saw nothing amiss: Punch, survivor of four wars and a score of Prime Ministers, was still a grinning replica of themselves. Founded in 1841 in imitation of the French Le Charivari, Punch or the London Charivari is less a funny magazine than a gently distorted mirror for Britons. Seeing his idiosyncrasies pleasantly caricatured in it, John Bull can laugh and feel satisfied—whether or not the world laughs with him.

Most of Punch’s cartoons during World War II have dealt with wartime nuisances on the home front. In the Almanack, the liquor shortage is epitomized by a gloomy Saint Bernard dog whose barrel bears the sign, “No Whisky.” The endless rationing and shortages inspired a cartoon of a fish vendor offering a huge fresh sea serpent for sale (see cut).

A favorite theme is the Briton’s refusal to let even catastrophe disturb his stout routine. In a club a testy gentleman behind whose favorite armchair a bomb has just torn a gaping hole in floor and ceiling reproves an anxious flunkey: “I’m perfectly aware of that.” A lady, calmly knitting in the shelter of the two walls of her house that still stand, replies to a curious passerby: “Yes, since 1940. I wasn’t going to let Hitler crow that he’d put ME out.”

“Not to be Laughed At.” An institution itself, housed in offices as gloomy, well polished, and oak-paneled as any at Whitehall, Punch is in a position to laugh at other Empire institutions. Its personal concession to the war consists of a well-stacked pile of sandbags behind a wall of corrugated iron to protect its handsome entrance at 10 Bouverie St. But behind the door Editor Edmund George Valpy Knox, 63, with a staff of three, supervises the production of his magazine with little change from his peacetime routine. Paper rationing has cut Punch’s pages to 28 an issue, has limited its circulation to about 100,000. The staff can no longer hold its weekly meetings with favored contributors around the plain deal table that Thackeray called “the mahogany tree,” for the old table is safely hidden in the country and the contributors are scattered over the world’s battlefronts.

A forgotten Tory once remarked in defense of his favorite magazine: “British humor is not to be laughed at.” Punch’s readers still resent any newfangled notions in their magazine, like it to keep a little behind the times. It still appears (except for its semiannual specials, the Summer Number and the Almanack) in the cover drawn in 1849 by Richard Doyle. Nevertheless Punch has made some perceptible changes in late years. Almost all of its cartoons now bear the modern single-line caption, and it has sponsored several brilliant new cartooning talents.

Like his readers, Mr. Punch refuses to admit that the rigors of a last-ditch war are anything more than necessary nuisances. His attitude is typified by the recent cartoon in which two men watch a new secret weapon—a buzzbomb with a loud speaker—flying over their heads. Says one: “I’m told that five seconds after the whirring sound stops it shouts a rude remark by Goebbels.”