Abstract
This article analyses the wartime cartoons of the News of the World’s J.M.Staniforth, whose work reached substantial audiences at the time and in republications. The cartoons tell us about the cartoonist’s views and also suggest the attitudes of his readership, particularly in respect of the approach and outbreak of war; responses to British military reverses; the welfare of servicemen and their families; the controversy surrounding the ‘scorched earth’ policy. Even patriotic supporters of imperial expansion were unable to conceal their doubts and unease over both the causes of the war and the methods by which it was pursued.
I. Calibrating Public Opinion towards the South African War
The South African War was the most expensive war Britain fought between 1815 and 1914. 1 It involved the deployment of 450,000 men, the largest overseas army the world had seen, and cost £200m. It sparked domestic debate that dominated the political landscape from its outbreak in 1899 down to the Liberal Party’s victory at the general election of 1906, and its putative lessons were central to discussions about defence and empire until 1914.
Since at least the early 1970s historians have debated both the enthusiasm with which the British public backed the war and the extent to which such support spanned the social spectrum. 2 The level of interest in the subject may partly be ascribed to the fact that the war has been seen as offering insight into the depth of popular imperialism at the turn of the century, with Richard Price suggesting that the war ‘synthesized all the prevailing emotions and arguments about imperial expansion’. 3 However, although it is appealing to see the war as a ‘test case’, whether support for or opposition to the war may be equated more broadly with support for or opposition to empire as a whole seems doubtful, not least because the Boers, as white Protestants, did not fit the usual stereotype of imperial enemies. 4
Even on its own terms, however, the war can be understood as a contest for popular support, both international and domestic. Donal Lowry has observed that the conflict for the allegiance of public opinion was fought between Joseph Chamberlain, Alfred Milner, and Lord Roberts, on the one hand, and the Boers, appealing to supporters in Europe and elsewhere, on the other. 5
In attempting an evaluation of public opinion towards the war it must be stressed that such opinion was not fixed at any one point but was instead fluid and volatile. As Andrew Thompson has noted, ‘the chronology of the conflict is central to our understanding of the domestic repercussions’. 6 Precisely because popular responses altered according to the changing contexts of the state of the conflict and the debate of the moment, the ‘test case’ cannot be carried out under laboratory conditions.
We may distinguish six phases through which popular responses to the war passed. Initially there was the build-up to the outbreak of hostilities. During the summer of 1899 the diplomatic struggle between Britain and the Boer republics raged, characterized by extreme brinkmanship, semantic quibbles over the interpretation of British suzerainty as established by the London Convention of 1884, and tactical deployment by Milner of the putative rights of the Uitlanders. At home there was no great public appetite for war but rather an expectation that the Boers would surely back down.
By issuing its ultimatum on 9 October 1899 the Transvaal did the British government an enormous favour: the war could henceforward be presented as a war of imperial defence, a legitimate response to the aggression of the Boer republics. 7 It was in this next phase, to early December 1899, that the war was at its most popular and uncomplicated, as ‘pro-war activists succeeded in harnessing the imperial enthusiasms of the British public to their cause’. 8 But when the military setbacks of ‘Black Week’ in December 1899 and of Spion Kop in January 1900 revealed that the Boers would be no pushovers, criticism erupted of government unpreparedness and incompetent generalship – criticism that refused to subside throughout the remaining hostilities. Britain’s embarrassment was international, and serious worries were expressed over the stability of the empire were further reverses to be suffered. That said, ‘even if the war was wrong, it could not be lost’, 9 and there was a closing of ranks as Britons determined to avenge a series of humiliating defeats.
It is in the light of the anxieties generated in the two most difficult months of the conflict that we may best understand the eruption of popular release and fervid celebration that marked news of there liefs of Ladysmith (February 1900) and Mafeking (May) as British superiority in men and materiel finally told. With the fall of Pretoria to Lord Roberts in June, the conventional military campaign appeared to be complete. It might be conceded that Britain had suffered some unpleasant shocks in the course of another short imperial war, but ultimately it had emerged once more triumphant.
At this point Lord Salisbury’s government decided to call a general election. The results of the khaki election of September–October 1900 offer the only available nationwide sample of wartime public opinion. And, if we concur with Winston Churchill’s contemporary view that a democratic government cannot go to war unless the country is behind it, then, even allowing for some doubt over whether the British political system at the time was democratic (all women and approximately 40 per cent of adult males being denied the parliamentary franchise), the significance of the battle for the allegiance of the electorate should not be underestimated. 10 Calling the election at that juncture in the conflict, when British achievements were at their height, proved to be the Unionists’ political masterstroke. They extended their pre-dissolution majority by two seats and could look forward with confidence to another full term in office.
However, although in autumn 1900 the electorate’s verdict on the war was overwhelmingly positive, this was not sustained during the war’s final ‘guerrilla’ phase, which ran to the peace of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. The fact that the Boers did not retire gracefully but proved to be a persistent thorn in the empire’s side provoked awkward questions about the handling of the war and the methods deployed in its waging. It was one thing to celebrate the steadfastness of the defenders of Mafeking, or the battlefield heroism displayed at Paardeberg, but quite another to remain comfortable with the burning of Boer farms and the herding of Boer civilians into squalid and disease-ridden ‘concentration camps’. Public enthusiasm waned, opposition grew more confident, and the newspaper press played its part in articulating a mounting reaction against the war. 11
An awareness of the shifting terrain on which the public debate about the war was conducted suggests that no single measure, be it of voting patterns, ‘Mafficking’ celebrations, volunteering for the armed forces, or the lyrics of music-hall songs, is likely to provide all the answers as to how the British public comprehended and reacted to the South African War. This article contributes to the debate about public opinion and the war by investigating the wartime cartoons of arguably the most popular British newspaper cartoonist of the era.
In generating a great deal of press coverage the South African War has been regarded as one of the first ‘media wars’. 12 The British public was fed a sizeable diet of information about the conflict, its origins, its progress, and the lessons that should be drawn from it. The newspaper press is a particularly valuable source for discerning the ‘world view’ of contemporary citizens. Unlike letters, diaries, or private papers which tend to reflect elite opinion, newspapers are a regular source, chronologically specific, with no eye to posterity, their success dependent on the interest they stimulated and satisfied in their audience. 13 They lived and died by their relevance.
Newspapers were not only columns of newsprint. For through newspapers and popular magazines this war became one of the most illustrated conflicts to date. Insufficient attention has been paid to the visual aspects of the press, to ‘the deployment and potential deconstruction of illustrations and cartoons’.
14
In respect of grass-roots imperialism, John Springhall has speculated that ‘popular art was just as important as war reporting or popular fiction in helping to provide confirmation and support for the imperialist policies of statesmen like Milner or Chamberlain’.
15
As Jane Carruthers has pointed out: the many thousands of illustrations relating to the war provide a slice of life during the period, and a study of them immeasurably enriches our understanding of the society which produced them. These artworks are not merely decorative or peripheral adjuncts to the printed word, but form an inextricable part of the social, military and political fabric of the time and are integral to any evaluation of it.
16
If we agree with David Cannadine that ‘Empire was always an imaginative construct, existing as much (or more) inside the minds of men and women as it existed on the ground and on the map’, then comprehending the visual imagination of the war, as well as its printed expression, is vital. 17
II. J.M. Staniforth – ‘The Doyen of British Cartoonists’
Joseph Morewood Staniforth, born in Gloucester in 1863, son of a saw-repairer, came to Cardiff as a boy and remained there for most of his life (Figure 1). 18 Having left school aged 15 he served a printer’s apprenticeship with the Cardiff daily the Western Mail. In 1885 he transferred to its editorial team and was soon drawing sketches, cartoons, and caricatures for it and its sister paper, the Evening Express. From his earliest cartoons he enjoyed the status of a signed contributor – ‘JMS’ – working mainly from home.
Joseph Morewood Staniforth, self-portrait, from Cartoons (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1908).
The Western Mail claimed to be the first newspaper to illustrate its columns by half-tone blocks, and the first in the provinces to use a zincograph. 19 From 1892 Staniforth was cartooning on an almost daily basis for the Express (see Table 1). In 1893, after his employers had taken over the Sunday News of the World, they began placing Staniforth cartoons on the front page of each issue (Figure 2). The following year saw almost 800 Staniforth cartoons appear, spread across the three titles. Staniforth remained a prolific producer for the next 27 years until his death in 1921. Considered by a modern historian ‘the most important visual commentator on Welsh affairs ever to work in the country’, and labelled ‘the Welsh Tenniel’ after the Punch cartoonist Sir John Tenniel (1820–1914), Staniforth is estimated to have drawn 15,000 cartoons in his career. 20 Over 1,200 Staniforth cartoons appeared in the News of the World, over 6,000 in the Western Mail, and over 3,000 in the Evening Express. Almost 1,000 cartoons were reprinted in stand-alone volumes, 13 of which appeared between 1895 and 1915.
Publication of J.M. Staniforth cartoons, by newspaper, 1889–1902.
News of the World, 13 July 1902, front cover, showing cartoon ‘Watching for Tommy’ and banner advertisement ‘Our War History in Cartoons Is Unique’.
The newspapers for which Staniforth drew were Conservative and Unionist in their politics. The circulation of the News of the World was estimated at over 1 million copies per week by the early 1900s. It was one of the top three British Sunday newspapers, and went on to claim the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world. 21 Sitting on the front page the cartoons formed ‘a major part of the visual layout of the most important page of each issue’. 22
Cardiff’s Western Mail had been established in 1869 to bolster the Conservative cause in Wales. The oldest, most successful daily in the principality, it was one of the leading provincial newspapers in Britain, wide in scope, reporting on all major British national and imperial topics. Its audience was larger than its politics might have suggested in predominantly Liberal-voting Wales. In 1895 up-and-coming radical David Lloyd George suggested that the Mail was preferred by ‘thousands of staunch Liberals and ardent Nonconformists’ to its Liberal rival the South Wales Daily News. In the same year J. O. Jones, editor of the Merthyr Times, argued that, ‘in spite of its allegiance to the Conservative Party and the Anglican Church’, the Mail was ‘far and away the strongest nationalising agency’ in Wales: ‘[i]t makes Welshmen better and more intelligent Welshmen, and it Celticises the Englishmen who come to live in our midst.’ As one historian has observed, ‘whether they loved it or loathed it, Welsh people read the Western Mail’. 23 Staniforth’s cartoons usually appeared on page six, amid the international and national news. There they formed ‘an essential ingredient of the Western Mail’s political coverage’. 24
Francis Carruthers Gould (‘FCG’) is regarded as the first staff cartoonist on a British daily newspaper, having drawn for the Pall Mall Gazette from 1888 (later for the Westminster Gazette). Staniforth, working for the first mass-market newspapers to use editorial cartooning (cartoons commenting on the issues of the day rather than offering humorous reflections on life in general), was but four years behind FCG. His work probably reached a much larger and more geographically dispersed audience. 25 Despite their political differences, Lloyd George thought Staniforth ‘one of the best political caricaturists of the day’, his work being ‘the product of real genius’. 26 William Pegg suggested that Staniforth’s cartoons ‘form one of the most popular features in British journalism’, and Emsley Carr wrote of him that ‘[h]is initials are known not only in Wales, but wherever the English language is spoken’. 27
This significant popular artist and political commentator has more recently enjoyed some recognition, his work being sampled or referred to in a number of volumes which utilize cartoons to illustrate the major events or themes of the period. 28 There has been specific discussion by Ryno Greenwall, Bill Nasson, and Matthew Cragoe of selected Staniforth cartoons relating to the South African War, and by Glenn Wilkinson of his depiction of war at this time in the News of the World. 29 Nevertheless, this article represents the first attempt to analyse the corpus of Staniforth’s war cartoons.
This body of work constitutes a remarkable commentary on the war. The cartoons are a visual diary – a unique and compelling daily record of one man’s preoccupations, prejudices, and prescriptions. Whereas leader-writers come and go, their editorial columns unsigned, Staniforth’s cartoons allow us to trace his evolving responses to the progress of the war. Such analysis proceeds from the evidence contained within those very cartoons. The cartoonist himself left virtually no personal papers. Surviving business records tell of his salary, and offer clues as to how his cartoons were handled in the newspaper offices, but do not illuminate responses to his work. The cartoons are the primary mechanism by which we may understand not only the worldview of the cartoonist himself, but also (perhaps?) that of his readers. 30
Cartoons were often the only non-advertising visual element in a newspaper. Most of the newspaper’s readers would have glanced at the cartoons, and studied them as much if not more than the editorials. 31 Peter Burke has suggested that a good cartoon can be a vivid, sharp commentary on the key issues of the moment, reminding the historian of the immediacy of questions which otherwise might easily be overlooked. 32 Roy Douglas has argued that a cartoon tells the modern reader ‘a great deal about the ideas and assumptions of the people for whom it was drawn: what they took for granted and what they questioned’. 33 Cartoons demand investigation in their own right, and should not be relegated to the status of mere illustrations of episodes and themes.
If we accept a high degree of independence on the part of the cartoonist (addressed below), then first and foremost a cartoon tells us his views: what he thought important, what stimulated him to comment. But there is more than this to a cartoon. As Staniforth’s obituarist recognized, to be successful a cartoonist ‘has to be much more than an artist; he must have his finger on the public pulse and interpret events and happenings of all kinds and reflect or sometimes lead the views of his readers’. 34 Cartoons are reliant on the ‘active participation of readers’, as many of their messages require engagement with and understanding of the subject in order to complement and contextualize the visual clues. 35 A cartoon’s imagery, literary and popular cultural references, and artistic style are all worthy of study. They may tell us much about the intellectual horizons of the cartoonist and his audience, the mutually intelligible signals and symbols. The cartoonist had to make a judgement as to what would be understood, would chime with his readers, or would repel them. To be stimulating his work could not simply mirror public prejudices, but neither could it constantly jar with readers’ views. In seeking to influence public opinion the cartoonist had to retain the trust of his readers while maintaining their interest.
It has been suggested that Staniforth’s cartoons ‘reflected, perhaps more accurately than any other visual source, the diversity of Welsh life in the period’, with most of his work mirroring the ‘concerns (though not necessarily the opinions) of the bulk of the people’. 36 The measurement of a single cartoonist’s influence on public opinion may well be virtually impossible. 37 Yet, providing we remain alive to the approximate, ambiguous nature of the evidence, an attempt to trace Staniforth’s reactions to the war may illuminate not just Welsh but British public opinion at the time.
III. Cartooning the War
Between October 1899 and June 1902 Staniforth drew 703 cartoons for the Western Mail and 135 for the News of the World. Some 27 cartoons appeared in the Evening Express in August–September 1899, but thereafter those published were generally reprints of cartoons that had appeared first in the Mail.
Some cartoons were recycled. Up to mid-September 1899 Staniforth was drawing mostly for the Express, with the Mail reprinting his work regularly. Then the decision was taken to make Staniforth’s cartoons a feature in the Mail, and this was the place of original publication of the bulk of his work thereafter. The News of the World tended to carry one of Staniforth’s cartoons from the preceding week’s issues of the Mail, although, as discussed below, there were occasional editorial interventions. How the selection (of one from six) was made is not known, but it seems probable that all original drawings were forwarded to the News of the World once they were no longer needed in Cardiff. 38
Of 838 cartoons, spread over almost three years, half (413 or 49.3 per cent) took as their subject the war or its wider domestic and international ramifications (see Table 2). Other issues, such as the Boxer Rising, the death of Queen Victoria, and the assassination of President McKinley, occasionally intruded, but the war remained the central theme of Staniforth’s output. 39 In the first nine months of the conflict (from October 1899 to June 1900) more than two-thirds of the cartoons dealt with the war. Such a preoccupation was unsurprisingly reflected in the newspapers themselves: the Western Mail, according to Ryno Greenwall the ‘most prominent’ of the ‘provincial papers’ in its coverage of the conflict, struck a deal with the Daily Telegraph whereby the latter’s correspondents’ telegrams from South Africa could be published in the Mail. 40 The News of the World printed special editions on Sunday afternoons in order to keep its readership acquainted with the war’s progress. 41
J.M. Staniforth cartoons dealing with South Africa, all newspapers, September 1899 –June 1902.
Figures include those for September 1899.
In addition, more than 200 cartoons were selected for reprinting in book form. 42 Cartoons of the Boer War by J.M. Staniforth was first published in September 1900 by the Western Mail, covering the period 30 August 1899 to 3 August 1900. 43 It comprised 104 cartoons, as well as an introduction and a chronology of the war. It went through four editions by November 1900, and from the fourth edition replaced its penultimate cartoon, ‘A Modern Canute’, showing President Kruger being overwhelmed by a wave of ‘British power’, with ‘The Exile’s Departure’, showing Kruger leaving Lorenzo Marques on the Dutch warship the Gelderland. 44 Originally it was anticipated that the volume would be published to coincide with the end of the war, expected after the fall of Pretoria. 45 However, the war’s continuation forced the Western Mail’s hand, and it decided to close with what was considered the end of the conventional campaign. 46
Two more editions of this volume appeared in 1902, one published by the News of the World. These foreshadowed a second volume of cartoons published in July 1902, with introduction, chronology, 98 cartoons, and a large folding-plate (the cartoon ‘Peace’). This covered from 17 September 1900 to 9 July 1902, and went through at least two editions. 47
In the published volumes each cartoon retained its original title and caption, but in some cases further contextual information was supplied below a horizontal line. It is not known whether Staniforth himself contributed any additional text (or volume introductions), but references to him in the third person give the impression that this was not so. 48
There is no information on the process of selection in compiling the volumes. They contain approximately half the war cartoons. The inclusion of cartoons which, in the light of later events, were proven to be mistaken in their understanding or prophecy suggests there was no attempt at retrospective censorship. Indeed, the fact that the cartoonist occasionally had been ‘wrong’ was commented on in the contextual note. Thus ‘The New Broom at Work’ (Western Mail [WM], 6 December, News of the World [NoW], 10 December 1899), showing John Bull using Sir Redvers Buller to sweep aside Boer opposition, is reassessed thus: ‘The news that [Buller] had arrived at the front was received with much rejoicing and anticipation of a speedy victory – anticipations which were turned to disappointment.’
The volumes were marketed as ‘an illustrated history of the biggest military operation in which Great Britain has ever engaged’ and may be seen in the context of publications such as those issued by the Illustrated London News, the Graphic, the Golden Penny, and Cassell’s Illustrated History of the Boer War.
49
Each of Staniforth’s volumes retailed at an affordable sixpence. The Western Mail’s pitch was direct: Do you want a long, heavily-written narrative, which you have no time to read? Or would you prefer a work which gives at a glance all that is worth-recalling in the war, which mingles with humour and sympathy the splendid story of heroism and devotion and untiring patience? … For a record of the war, concise, true, human, bright, and easily within the reach of the poorest household, Mr Staniforth’s cartoons are unequalled.
50
The News of the World ran titles on its front page suggesting that ‘Our War History in Cartoons is Unique’ and that ‘Our War History in Cartoons should be in every library’, and billing the volume as ‘The “News of the World” History of the Boer War, Told in Cartoons by J. M. Staniforth’. 51
By August 1902 the two volumes had sold 40,000 copies. 52 Whereas in their original incarnation the cartoons had a transient impact on public opinion – newspapers being read one day and thrown away the next – those reprinted in these volumes made a longer-lasting contribution to awareness of the conflict. Readers chose to buy the volumes (rather than encountering a cartoon in the newspaper): they could come to the cartoons reflectively, long after the events they depicted, and return to them at their leisure. Although the Western Mail was gushing when suggesting that ‘in years to come, when the Boer War is discussed in the same way as we now discuss [the Napoleonic Wars], Mr Staniforth’s books will be treasured heirlooms in many families’, the fact that volumes of Cartoons of the Boer War were deposited in the National Library of Wales in 1969, 1970, and 1971, and that the News International Record Office purchased its copies in 2001, suggests that the prospect of the publication informing a historical view of the conflict was not without foundation. 53
No other contemporary volumes of cartoons were published in Britain. The works of many other cartoonists and illustrators appeared in newspapers and magazines, but their preservation and presentation to a modern audience has been an act of historical recovery, whereas the publication of ‘Cartoons of the Boer War by J. M. Staniforth’ was a claim for historical posterity.
Evidence of reaction to the volumes is sparse. The Western Mail proudly reprinted the endorsement of Lord Roberts that the cartoons were ‘excellent’, and printed a large map of south Wales ostensibly relaying the reactions of the inhabitants of different towns to the volumes. 54 The people of Bridgend were pleased, apparently, that ‘no cheaper book has ever been published’, whereas in Llanelli the cartoons supposedly ‘added a new pleasure to life’. The Cardiff newspaper may have been enjoying its own joke at the expense of what it considered less sophisticated urban communities, but on Staniforth’s death in 1921 it did record that the war had given ‘abundant scope for the artist’s genius’. 55
IV. ‘A Leading Article in Tabloid Form’
Not all cartoons that appeared in the News of the World (or, indeed, in the published volumes) survived in their original incarnation. Some 24 had their titles changed (see Table 3). In no case was the artwork altered, but in a few cases captions were amended or added. Evidence from the News International Record Office suggests that these changes were made not by Staniforth but by subeditors in London.
Retitlings of South African War cartoons.
Most alterations to the titles seem to have been to render them more obvious for the News of the World’s readership. In some cases the passage of events between the initial appearance in the Western Mail and reprinting in the News of the World rendered retitling imperative. This was the case with ‘Buller Comes’, published on 23 January 1900. The original depicted a British officer in besieged Ladysmith scanning the horizon. Following Buller’s defeat at Spion Kop, the News of the World version on 28 January was retitled ‘Watching for Buller’. The News of the World cartoon ‘Watching for Tommy’ (Figure 2), from 13 July 1902, had originally appeared (WM, 5 July) as ‘See, the Conquering Hero Comes!’ But as Kitchener, to whom the original referred, had returned by the time the News of the World was to go to press, John Bull now was awaiting Tommy Atkins, and a caption was added to make this clear: ‘Bobs and Kitchener are home again; I only want Tommy back to be perfectly happy.’
Most changes were relatively innocuous or necessitated by the lapse of time and pace of events. The only blatant transformation of the meaning of a cartoon took place with ‘Poor Luck’, published in the Western Mail on 16 May 1901 (Figure 3). It depicted Kitchener as master of a fishing smack, bemoaning the fact that he had caught only a dozen fish (representing Boer commandos). It stood in contrast to the suggestion of the previous day’s editorial that the ‘scorched earth’ policy being followed by the British ‘must have led to the surrender of many Boers’. Three days later the same cartoon appeared in the News of the World, retitled ‘Gathering Them In’, with Kitchener more optimistic: ‘A few more of these hauls and there’ll be none left.’ There were no more fish in the net in the News of the World version than in the original, but pessimism and war-weariness had been converted by a subeditor’s alchemy into the anticipation of a successful conclusion to the long-running conflict. The News of the World editorial for the same issue rammed the point home: ‘Captures, and not trifling ones either, of men, horses, guns and munitions, have been reported almost daily, with the result that since the end of March over 2,500 of the enemy have been accounted for’.
‘Poor Luck’, Western Mail, 16 May 1901. Caption: ‘Kitchener (Master of the Smack): “I suppose these little catches are better than nothing, but, lor, what a contrast to the luck I had at Omdurman!”’ Reproduced as ‘Gathering Them In’, News of the World, 19 May 1901. Caption: ‘Kitchener (Master of the Smack): “A few more of these hauls and there’ll be none left.”’
This is the only clear evidence of interference on the part of News of the World staff with the editorial independence of the cartoonist. 56 Whether similar alterations were made to Staniforth’s original titles in the Western Mail’s offices is impossible to tell, although the fact that Staniforth was drawing for the next morning’s edition gave Cardiff subeditors fewer opportunities to tamper with his work.
Careful evaluation of Western Mail and News of the World editorials reveals few links between what was being articulated as the newspaper’s ‘line’ and what Staniforth drew. One example has been found. On 27 January 1900, following the battle of Spion Kop, the Western Mail editorial stated that the setback had been disappointing but that ‘we need not go into hysterics over it … The advance of our army is like the advance of an avalanche – slow, but irresistible; whatever obstructions may appear on its course will be borne down or swept out of the way.’ This was not a very accurate simile – avalanches are not slow – but Staniforth took it as his cue for his cartoon ‘The Avalanche’, on 29 January, in which ‘British Force’ was depicted as having been checked temporarily by the rocks of ‘Kimberley’, ‘Ladysmith’, ‘Mafeking’, ‘Spion Kop’, and ‘Boer Successes’, but would soon fall and engulf ‘Misrule’.
The comparison of cartoons with editorials more often yields evidence of divergent views. So the News of the World editorial of 25 August 1901, entitled ‘Hopeful Signs of Peace’, claimed that ‘[a]ll the signs from South Africa convey the promise of an early peace … we are nearer to a settlement than is generally supposed’. The same issue’s cartoon was ‘Of a Fool and His Folly There Is No End’ (WM, 22 August 1901), showing the distraught female form of ‘South Africa’ standing amid the ruins of her property, while in the background a commando flees from pursuing British forces. It is difficult to imagine a more dissonant note.
Staniforth enjoyed a considerable degree of editorial freedom, whether drawing for the Western Mail or the News of the World. He was not simply a conduit for the visual communication of the newspapers’ editorial lines (the Western Mail and News of the World were not always in agreement). His was an original and distinctive voice, responsible for producing, as he put it some years later, ‘a leading article in tabloid form’. 57 Given that the readership of both the Western Mail and the News of the World was wider and more diverse than either newspaper’s strictly political constituency, it is possible that Staniforth’s cartoons were more reflective of the views of his readers than were the editorials they sat alongside.
There is little sense in which Staniforth deliberately sought to engage with a discretely ‘Welsh’ body of public opinion that diverged from wider British society in its attitudes to the war. As Staniforth was both a Welsh patriot and a Briton proud of monarchy and empire, his views did not conflict with the dominant orthodoxy of the time, which located Wales and Welsh interests firmly within the security and prestige of the United Kingdom as a whole. 58 His cartoons translated with little difficulty from Cardiff daily to London Sunday. He did produce cartoons that addressed his Welsh audience – and these were unlikely to be picked up by the News of the World or included in the published volumes – but they did not seek to articulate a distinctively Welsh ‘position’. Rather, they were concerned to stress the positive contribution that Wales was making to the wider imperial purposes. In ‘Eager for the Fray’ (WM, 4 October 1899) Dame Wales (the personification of Welsh common sense) is shown introducing Welsh volunteers to John Bull (her British counterpart). In ‘Au Revoir to the 41st’ (WM, 7 November 1899) she waves farewell to the men of the Welsh Regiment with the instruction that they should ‘[l]et them Boers know, look you, that you are not second to the Irish boys in pluck and valour!’ And in ‘Proud of Her Sons’ (WM, 5 June 1900) she is pictured (with a Union Jack in her hatband) reading a newspaper placard declaring ‘Welshmen in the war: what they have done for [the] Empire’.
In this context it is apposite to record that there has been some discussion of whether or not the results of the khaki election in Wales validate David Lloyd George’s contemporary claim that ‘[w]hile England and Scotland are drunk with blood the Welsh continue sane; they are walking along the road of progress and liberty’. 59 At the election in Wales the Unionists lost four of their eight seats, and suffered a swing to the Liberals of 2.2 per cent. 60 On this basis Henry Pelling asserted that the war was not a vote-winner in Wales and that there was a relative preponderance of ‘pro-Boer’ feeling in the principality, and concluded that ‘the voter in Wales was more inclined than his English or Scottish counterpart to see the South African War as a war neither necessary nor just’. 61 But Kenneth O. Morgan’s detailed study of Welsh politics suggests that ‘pro-Boerism’ in Wales was far from dominant, and that many of the successful Liberals of 1900 were supporters, not opponents, of the war. 62 The Welsh-language press was predominantly ‘pro-Boer’, but the English-language press was imperialist, and this included the Liberal South Wales Daily News as well as the Conservative Western Mail. 63
Overall it is difficult to distinguish ‘Welsh’ from ‘British’ public opinion. Staniforth was conscious of his Welsh readership’s interest in the contribution made by Welsh servicemen to the war, and certainly sought to highlight positive aspects of Welsh involvement. Nonetheless, it is difficult to believe that his location in Wales was responsible either for his conscience being pricked by the troubled and turbulent events of the war, or for the weakening of his confidence in the imperial project.
V. ‘All His Own Work!’
Staniforth did not witness the war first-hand, and did not, in his cartoons, depict actual battle. There was just one sketch, ‘Lyddite!!’ (Evening Express[EE], 20 November 1899), which portrayed the Naval Brigade at Ladysmith shelling the Boers. Metaphor and allegory was his preferred approach. The British reverse at Spion Kop on 24 January 1900 was represented in ‘Too Hot to Hold’ by Sir Charles Warren, cast as a blacksmith, dropping a ‘Spion Kop’ horseshoe that had burned his hand. Not that the human cost of the war was ignored. In ‘All his own Work!’ (WM, 30 November 1899) Staniforth showed President Kruger brooding over serried ranks of British and Boer bodies.
Staniforth’s approach was relatively conventional, representing states, nations, and societies through stock figures or stereotypes (see Table 4). Thus Great Britain was most often John Bull, but occasionally Britannia (particularly when noble sentiments were being expressed) or a bulldog (emphasizing tenacity and fighting spirit). Tommy Atkins, the everyman British soldier, symbolized the steadfast and long-suffering qualities of the rank and file. Foreign powers, Britain’s rivals, were represented by characters in national dress. The frequency with which they appeared communicates how keenly Staniforth felt European criticism of Britain’s actions in South Africa, and how the war was seen in its international context, its ramifications not being limited to the theatre of war.
Frequency of depiction of stock characters (Cartoons of the Boer War volumes only, 10 most frequently occurring).
That the conflict was an international battle for public opinion is exemplified by a relatively rare example, in Staniforth’s oeuvre, of intertextuality: positioning his cartoons in relation to those of another. One of the most famous cartoons critical of Britain’s actions in South Africa was that of Petrus Van Geldorp in the Amsterdamsche Courant of 17 November 1899. 64 It depicted John Bull, trapped like Gulliver in Swift’s satire, with Boer commandos pinning him to the ground, and reflected the Boers’ successes in the war’s initial stages. Staniforth seems to have learned of this Dutch cartoon through its republication in the Spanish press. ‘A Spanish Cartoon and Its Equal’ (WM, 9 December 1899;Figure 4) reversed the fate of John Bull in the original to place Kruger at the mercy of the British soldier.
‘A Spanish Cartoon and Its Equal’, Western Mail, 9 December 1899.
Staniforth most regularly represented the Boers in the figure of Kruger, at least until his departure for Europe in October 1900 (see Table 5). The predominance of images of Kruger (and the menace of ‘Krugerism’) over those of President Steyn of the Orange Free State was partly a reflection of the greater role played by the Transvaal in the conflict. It may also have had something to do with the fact that Kruger was a superior subject for a cartoonist, with his black hat, white beard, and immensely characterful face. In the long run the identification of the Boer cause with Kruger may have assisted the process of reconciliation at war’s end: Kruger was by then in exile, a lonely, desolate figure (though one still accorded some measure of respect by the cartoonist), who could be consigned to historical oblivion. The Boer fighters were easier to rehabilitate – their countenances rendered more benign, their bearing more submissive.
Frequency of depiction of individual figures (Cartoons of the Boer War volumes only, 10 most frequently occurring).
Boer generals were depicted in Staniforth’s cartoons, but usually had to be labelled since, presumably, readers would not have recognized them. More often the Boer in the field was represented as the ubiquitous commando, complete with slouch hat and bandolier. For hunting metaphors, or for cartoons involving the British lion, then a Boer hog was deployed.
Many senior British politicians and military personnel were caricatured individually, which suggests that readers would have recognized them without a label. That Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary, was more often pictured than Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury, suggests something about popular understandings of who was responsible for initiating and directing the conflict on Britain’s behalf. The fact that Liberal leader Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman made many appearances is reflective of the contested nature of the war and its impact on domestic politics in Britain.
The remainder of this article considers four themes prominent in Staniforth’s cartoons. First, there is the question of Staniforth’s response to the threat of war, and his reaction to its outbreak. Second, the frequency with which British forces suffered reverses at the hands of an enemy both they and British society had badly underestimated provoked a series of criticisms drawn in black and white. Staniforth’s solicitude for the welfare of Tommy Atkins is a distinctive third element in his work. Finally, the ethics of the war, particularly the ‘scorched earth’ policy pursued by the British from summer 1900, generated some intriguingly ambivalent cartoons which raise fascinating questions about the artist’s intentions and the interpretations of his audience.
VI. ‘Doubtful’
As the diplomatic crisis between Britain and the Boer republics deepened during summer 1899, Staniforth’s cartoons offered an alternative view to those of his leader-writers. In the News of the World war was accepted as a strong possibility by late July, and in August there was talk of avenging Britain’s 1881 defeat at Majuba.
65
On 17 September the newspaper was unequivocal as to responsibility for the impasse: If war results the Boers will have their president alone to thank. Greater consideration than that which the British Government have shown him could not be desired. They have given him both time and opportunity. He has rejected both. ‘Now let the storm burst.’
Though in favour of imperial expansion, in his cartoons Staniforth expressed anxieties about the likelihood of war. ‘Doubtful’ (EE, 6 May 1899) showed a ‘South African capitalist’ pushing Joseph Chamberlain, who was in turn pushing John Bull and urging him to ‘smash [Kruger] up’. Bull replies, ‘I’d have done so long ago if – er – I was sure I was in the right.’ ‘Precept and Practice’ (EE, 9 June 1899) contrasted a serene John Bull – calmly discussing the benefits of peace at the Hague Conference (which had begun the previous month) – with an irate Bull threatening to attack the Transvaal. As war appeared more likely, so direct pleading replaced ironic humour. ‘Would Feel More at Ease’ (EE, 1 September, and WM, 2 September 1899;Figure 5) saw John Bull advising Lord Salisbury to intervene in Joseph Chamberlain’s management of negotiations. In ‘An Inflammable Forest’ (EE, 7 September, and WM, 8 September 1899;Figure 6) ‘Prudence’ tried to restrain Chamberlain, for fear that if war began with the Transvaal, it might be followed by further conflict in the Orange Free State, the Cape Colony, Rhodesia, and Natal. Both cartoons indicate Staniforth’s lack of confidence in the course Chamberlain was pursuing.
‘Would Feel More at Ease’, Evening Express, 1 September 1899. Caption: ‘John Bull: “Nevertheless, I should like to see the old gentleman take a little more interest in the affair, and not leave it entirely to that youngster.”’ Reproduced in Western Mail, 2 September 1899, and in J.M. Staniforth, Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1900), I, p. 10, with the additional comment: ‘This cartoon voices a certain mistrust which existed in the minds of a number of people at that time, and the feeling found expression in a powerful two-column letter which Mr Frederic Harrison sent to the Daily Chronicle, appealing to Lord Salisbury, in the hour of national crisis, to personally take in hand the delicate negotiations with the Transvaal.’
‘An Inflammable Forest’, Evening Express, 7 September 1899. Caption: ‘Prudence: “Don’t be in too much of a hurry to light that fire, Master Joe; it’s easy enough to start it, but can you say where it will stop?”’ Reproduced in Western Mail, 8 September 1899, and in J.M. Staniforth, Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1900), I, p. 11, with the additional comment: ‘Prudence appeals to the Colonial Secretary for great caution in the conduct of deliberations which, if they resulted in an open rupture, might be fraught with the gravest consequences, including, not impossibly, even civil war throughout Her Majesty’s South African possessions.’
That Staniforth was prepared to distance himself from government policy is bolstered by ‘A Great Variety Artist’ (EE, 9 September 1899; Figure 7). It is possible to read the cartoon as conveying admiration for the colonial secretary’s skills in rhetoric and brinkmanship, which (readers might have believed) could be sufficient to bully Kruger into submission without resort to war. But a more obvious interpretation was that Chamberlain was guilty of hypocrisy, having been prepared to argue against war (and against Britain’s right to dictate terms to the Transvaal) in 1896, only to pursue confrontation in 1899.
‘A Great Variety Artist’, Evening Express, 9 September 1899.Caption for left-hand panel: ‘“A war in South Africa would be one of the most serious wars that could possibly be waged. It would be a long war, a bitter war, and a costly war, and, as I have pointed out already, I believe generations would hardly be able to blot it; and to go to war with President Kruger, to enforce upon him reforms in the internal affairs of his State, in which Secretaries of State, standing in their place, have repudiated all right of interference – that would be a course of action which would be immoral.” – Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, 1896.’ Caption for right-hand panel: ‘“Will he speak the necessary words? The sands are running down in the glass. The situation is too fraught with danger, it is too strained for any indefinite postponement. The knot must be loosened, to use Mr Balfour’s words, or else we shall have to find other ways of untying it, and if we do that, if we are forced to that, then I would repeat now the warning that was given by Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, and I would say, if we are forced to make further preparations, and if this delay continues much longer, we shall not hold ourselves limited by what we have already offered, but, having taken this matter in hand, we will not let it go until we have secured conditions which once for all shall establish which is the paramount Power in South Africa.” – Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, 1899.’
Staniforth’s pre-war cartoons suggest that he did not regard war as either inevitable or desirable. He believed that, under severe pressure, the Boer republics would make sufficient concessions for war to be avoided. In ‘Time to Move’ (WM, 14 September 1899) Kruger was pictured about to surrender, imploring a rifle-toting Chamberlain not to shoot. Staniforth greeted the outbreak of war with a mixture of disappointment, resignation, and bemusement, it being thought highly unlikely that the Boers would long trouble the might of the British Empire. 66 However, the fact that the Boers had themselves declared war by issuing the ultimatum of 9 October 1899 removed much of the problem for Staniforth, as the conflict could now be presented as one of self-defence. As the Western Mail (11 October 1899) put it, ‘[t]he ultimatum comes as a decided relief to Great Britain, for our hands are now free and our course clear’. Protecting one’s territory against foreign aggressors, and in so doing safeguarding the beneficent presence of the British Empire, needed little justification. As John Darwin has noted, ‘loyalty to the imperial purpose was deeply entrenched in Late Victorian society’. 67
Despite his early caution, and notwithstanding what follows below in respect of ethical controversies, Staniforth stood against any ‘pro-Boer’ stance. In ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’ (WM, 24 November 1899) he lampooned ‘Stop the War’ campaigner W.T. Stead, and suggested that ‘A Good Use for Pro-Boers’ (WM, 23 September 1901) was to strap Stead, along with Lloyd George, to the front of trains travelling through the ‘disturbed districts’, so as to deter Boer train-wrecking activities. Lloyd George’s escape, dressed as a policeman, from a hostile crowd at Birmingham provided the inspiration for the mocking ‘The Pro-Boer at Brum’ (WM, 20 December, and NoW, 22 December 1901).
Whatever doubts he expressed prior to the war, and although he regarded its arrival as the consequence of diplomatic mismanagement, once military action commenced Staniforth backed the campaign, putting his faith, at least initially, in senior politicians and military leaders to win an easy victory. This was of a piece with conventional wisdom, the Western Mail (11 October 1899) complacently suggesting that ‘[n]o danger whatever need be anticipated; the time when the Boers could have struck with effect has gone’.
VII. ‘Not up to Expectations’
Such confidence was short-lived, as the early months of the war revealed a British army failing to impose itself on resourceful, determined, and skilful opposition. Given the extensive media coverage of the conflict, British reverses could not be concealed, and Staniforth commented on Boer achievements as well as British successes. 68 ‘The Unkindest Cut of All’ (WM, 28 October 1899) expressed dismay at the capture of a squadron of the 18th Hussars at Glencoe, and ‘A Round in Favour of Kruger’ (WM, 12 December 1899) acknowledged Gatacre’s defeat at Stormberg.
The combined military disasters of ‘Black Week’ – the defeats at Stormberg (10 December 1899), Magersfontein (11 December), and Colenso (15 December) – were a setback, but rather than inducing any wavering in Staniforth’s resolve, they acted to solidify his support for the conflict. In ‘Upon His Mettle’ (WM, 18 December 1899;Figure 8) Staniforth depicted a wounded but determined John Bull reaching for reinforcements, speaking lines from Joseph Addison’s 1712 play, Cato: A Tragedy.
‘Upon His Mettle’, Western Mail, 18 December 1899. Caption: ‘John Bull (with set teeth): “Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more – deserve it!”’
Though refusing to countenance anything other than eventual triumph, Staniforth did acknowledge that the conflict was not being managed well. In ‘Becoming Annoyed’ (WM, 1 November 1899) John Bull admonished General White for reverses at the battle of Ladysmith/Nicholson’s Nek on 30 October. ‘The Moral That Adorns the Tale’ (WM, 29 December, and NoW, 31 December 1899) showed Lord Dunraven explaining to the War Office that the campaign required more irregular horsemen and better artillery, and ‘Not Up To Expectations’ (WM, 4 January, and NoW, 7 January 1900) saw Lord Wolseley on the receiving end as John Bull listed the deficiencies of British field artillery.
‘Preparing to Bombard the Enemy’ (WM, 9 January 1900;Figure 9) brought this disgruntlement together in consolidated form. Liberal politicians, including Sir William Harcourt, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and John Morley, train their critical cannon on the government. The shells read (left to right): ‘Why were slow ships used for transports’, ‘Why have our generals made so many blunders’, ‘Who was responsible for keeping back the cavalry at the commencement of war’, ‘Why was Lyddite kept back so long’, ‘Why was it necessary to use naval guns in the field?’, ‘Why was Ladysmith not properly defenced [sic]’, ‘Why was the government misled by their military advisers’. This cartoon suggested that the government and military establishment had a case to answer in respect of the difficulties being experienced in South Africa.
‘Preparing to Bombard the Enemy’, Western Mail, 9 January 1900.
The turning of the tide against the Boers early in 1900 meant that cartoons from that point on could be more celebratory, yet frustrations continued. ‘Another Blunder’ (WM, 21 April 1900) had John Bull chastising Lord Lansdowne, secretary of state for war, for washing the War Office’s dirty linen in public, Lansdowne having published the Spion Kop dispatches in which Roberts criticized both Buller and Warren for their handling of the action. ‘A Last Kick’ (WM, 14 July 1900; retitled ‘In the Last Throes’ for NoW, 15 July 1900) acknowledged the Boer victory at Nitral’s Nek on 11 July. Many, including those preparing Cartoons of the Boer War in the summer of 1900, expected the war to be brought to a swift conclusion once the Boer capitals had surrendered. When this did not happen, and particularly when the Boers embarrassed the British, Staniforth vented his exasperation. ‘’E Dunno Where ’E Are’ (WM, 18 December, and NoW, 23 December 1900;Figure 10) took as its title a popular music-hall ditty by the Cockney songster Gus Elen, as John Bull puzzled over the contradiction between Roberts’s optimism (the memorandum reads ‘The war is practically over’) and news of another British defeat, at Nooitgedacht. 69 ‘Counsel and Defendant’ (WM, 28 February, and NoW, 3 March 1901) depicted John Bull, along with Chamberlain and Balfour, quizzing Lansdowne as to why 9,000 British troops had thus far surrendered in actions at Nicholson’s Nek, Colenso, Linley, and Helvetia. 70 The public conflict over responsibility for the war’s mismanagement between Wolseley and Lansdowne was expressed directly as ‘Wolseley versus Lansdowne’ (WM, 18 March 1901); further British reverses at Blood River Poort and Elands River Poort were the subject of ‘A Tonic!’ (for an ailing Kruger in exile; WM, 21 September, and NoW, 29 September 1901); and as late as March 1902 Lord Methuen’s humiliation and capture at the hands of De la Rey at Tweebosch was treated in ‘A Nasty Knock’ (WM, 12 March 1902), with the caption explaining that ‘The blow was a severe one – probably the severest since the guerilla warfare began’. ‘A Gentleman of the Road’ (WM, 15 March 1902) depicted De la Rey as a highwayman handing back the wounded Methuen (in the form of an empty purse) to John Bull ‘with a chivalry which won the admiration of all Englishmen’.
‘’E Dunno Where ’E Are’, Western Mail, 18 December 1900. Reproduced in the News of the World, 23 December 1900, and in J.M. Staniforth, Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1902), II, p. 27, with the comment: ‘“The war is practically over,” was the unfortunate cable which Lord Roberts sent home before leaving South Africa. With this in hand, John Bull became rather perplexed when he opened his morning paper to find “another regrettable incident” had occurred. In the battle of Nooitgedacht, Delarey inflicted severe losses on a British force.’
Notwithstanding Staniforth’s general support for the war and the need to see it through, his cartoons expressed sustained criticism of the inefficiency with which the war was being conducted. This was not absent from the organs for which he drew – the News of the World editorial for 10 February 1901 carried a lengthy indictment of ‘the irresponsibility of any and every individual who held high office or appointment’ in respect of the war – but Staniforth articulated such a view from an early stage of the conflict, and was prepared to point his artistic finger at those in senior positions if he felt they were culpable. 71
VIII. ‘Let Us Manage So As, Later, We Can Look Him in the Face’
The third recurrent theme in Staniforth’s cartoons was his concern that both the British state and society should look after servicemen and their dependants. This he explored from the outset. ‘The Girl He Leaves behind Him’ (WM, 16 October, and NoW, 22 October 1899) took as its title a line from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’ (‘We must help the girl that Tommy’s left behind him!’) and showed the Princess of Wales, as president of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association, reassuring Tommy Atkins that she would care for his wife and children’s welfare in his absence. 72 The published volume added the rose-tinted commentary that ‘[w]hilst Tommy Atkins embarked for the front he had the pleasing consciousness that for the first time in perhaps all wars the country was going to do its duty by those he left behind’. 73 While the War Office was confronted by substantial public concern over this issue at the outset of the war, ultimately it was British civil society rather than the state that responded most effectively to the need. 74
Staniforth’s cartoons returned frequently to the shabby treatment meted out to ordinary soldiers and their families. The plight of the ex-soldier, particularly one who had suffered serious wounding, had historically received little attention. 75 State provision was inadequate and miserly, with many who did not suffer their disability in action not being eligible for pensions, instead being forced to seek funding from private charities. 76 Staniforth did not let such injustices pass without comment. ‘Not on the List’ (WM, 8 January 1900) contrasted the enthusiasm of working-class volunteers for service in South Africa with the lack of support from the wealthier classes for raising money to equip a company of yeomanry. ‘A Discredit to the Nation’ (WM, 19 June 1900;Figure 11) showed John Bull reacting with dismay as he witnessed a disabled soldier forced into the workhouse through lack of means. ‘Something Wrong Somewhere’ (WM, 22 August 1902) contrasted the hero’s welcome given to Boer generals Botha, De Wet, and De la Rey when they arrived in England with the lack of enthusiasm encountered by British troops on returning from service. And Staniforth followed this up with ‘Disillusioned’ (WM, 30 September 1902), in which a reservist fresh off the boat and looking for work found there were no openings to be had. Staniforth’s metaphor in this case was the soldier finding himself barred from riding on an omnibus, an act of discrimination not unknown in late Victorian Britain. 77 Such responses to the plight of veterans may be seen as evidence of an increasing interest in the welfare of ex-soldiers and what Andrew Thompson has termed ‘the depth of public sympathy and solidarity with British soldiers’. 78
‘A Discredit to the Nation’, Western Mail, 19 June 1900. Caption: ‘John Bull: “Going into the workhouse! My heroes, coming back from the war maimed and broken, and going into the workhouse! Egad, but I must see to this!!”’ Reproduced in Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1900), I, p. 107, with the additional comment: ‘The war had the result of arousing the national sympathy in favour of Tommy Atkins, and a generous treatment of his claims, as it is safe to say it was never roused before. One or two soldiers who had fought in South Africa found their way to the workhouse, and the discovery aroused much indignation.’
Although the ending of hostilities inevitably moved Staniforth’s focus elsewhere, he maintained an interest in the plight of the veteran and in the commemoration of the dead. When, in 1905, the Western Mail ran a campaign to raise funds for a Welsh war memorial to those 878 Welsh men and 2 Welsh women who had lost their lives in the war, Staniforth was there to drum up support. ‘Let Us Manage So As, Later, We Can Look Him In The Face’ (WM, 12 September 1905) took another line from ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’ as its title, showing Dame Wales digging in her pocket to help finance the memorial. Further cartoons on this theme followed. ‘One of the Right Sort’ (WM, 5 October 1905) depicted working men contributing their shillings in memory of a friend who had died in South Africa, and ‘A Capital Idea’ (WM, 4 November 1905) celebrated an athletics event organized to raise funds. In due course Staniforth adjudicated on the design for the memorial, and he celebrated its unveiling four years later with ‘Lest We Forget’ (WM, 22 November 1909). 79 Hailing from a humble background, as did his wife (whose father was a shepherd and mother an agricultural labourer), Staniforth, we may speculate, was conscious of the debt Britain owed to those regular soldiers and volunteers who had been charged with defeating the tenacious Boer.
IX. ‘Methods of Barbarism’?
As already noted, Staniforth was not enthusiastic about the prospect of war between Britain and the Boer republics, yet once it began he threw his support behind the troops in the field. However, after the conflict had been underway for almost a year, and with the conventional military campaign terminated, he began to express serious concerns about the methods deployed in pursuit of ultimate victory.
‘The Obstinate Heart Shall Be Laden with Sorrows’ (Figure 12) appeared in the Western Mail on 17 September 1900, its subject the policy declared by Lord Roberts that, wherever Boers had attacked British troops, railways, or telegraph lines, houses would be burned down and food supplies destroyed. 80 The cartoon’s title was taken from Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha) 3.27, with the King James Bible giving the full line as ‘An obstinate heart shall be laden with sorrows; and the wicked man shall heap sin upon sin.’ Although perhaps it was the Boers who were being charged with obstinacy (in not succumbing to the inevitable and giving up the fight), we might well wonder – looking at the relatively unsympathetic depiction of Lord Roberts, contrasting with the suppliancy of the figure of ‘Mercy’ – who was the ‘wicked man’ heaping ‘sin upon sin’? The caption’s acknowledgement that the policy ‘raised a great deal of feeling at home’ reinforces the suggestion that the cartoonist was here distancing himself from what he felt to be unjustifiably extreme measures, responsible in total for the destruction of 30,000 Boer homes. 81
‘The Obstinate Heart Shall Be Laden with Sorrows’, Western Mail, 17 September 1900. Caption: ‘Lord Roberts: “Stand aside, Madam, I have listened to you long enough. This miserable business must now be ended, and quickly!”’ Reproduced in Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1902), II, p. 7, with the additional comment: ‘Towards the end of 1900 it became apparent to most people that we were to be involved in a prolonged guerilla warfare. Merciful treatment had failed, and the British had perforce to take harsher measures to put it down, a proclamation being issued to the effect that farms in the vicinity of train-wrecking episodes would be burnt. The proclamation raised a great deal of feeling at home.’
British policy towards Boer civilians rendered homeless by the ‘scorched earth’ policy was no less controversial. Although the establishment of the (in retrospect, unfortunately named) ‘concentration camps’ was a recognition by the imperial authorities that they took responsibility for the welfare of Boer women, children, and elderly males (and the many thousands of black civilians whose livelihoods were also affected by the war), the planning and administration of such camps was starkly inadequate. By the autumn of 1901, 34 camps had been established, housing 110,000 people. Mortality rates in the camps were ghastly, peaking in the period between August and October 1901 when death rates (largely from disease) ran in excess of 300 per 1,000 per year in both Boer and black camps. It has been estimated that nearly 28,000 Boers and over 20,000 black people died in the camps. 82
Maladministration and its tragic consequences were exposed in part through the campaigns of Emily Hobhouse, who visited a number of concentration camps between December 1900 and May 1901. On her return to Britain her revelations so shocked the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman that in June in the House of Commons he asked the question, ‘When is a war not a war?’, and answered himself, ‘When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.’ In the long term Campbell-Bannerman’s status as a principled and credible politician was enhanced by his speaking out, although at the time his actions divided his own supporters and attracted considerable obloquy. 83
Staniforth’s most intriguing cartoon on this theme was ‘In Goodly Company’ (WM, 28 October 1901;Figure 13). Here Campbell-Bannerman was aligned with six stock figures representing critical European powers. Each is condemning British actions as ‘barbarous’, a clear reference to Campbell-Bannerman’s use (and deliberate reuse that very week) of the phrase ‘methods of barbarism’ to describe the scorched earth policy. 84 Standing shoulder to shoulder, calmly facing their critics, are Joseph Chamberlain (carrying a Union Jack), Lord Salisbury, and Arthur Balfour, together representing the government. Given Staniforth’s British patriotism and his sustained rejection of the right of European powers to comment on British policy, at first glance this cartoon appears to suggest that Campbell-Bannerman was acting in an unpatriotic manner, condemned by the company he is keeping. But look over Balfour’s left shoulder. Who is that standing in the shadows? We might well think that to be the Devil. Perhaps a contemporary would instead see a resemblance to the then chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. The confusion may have been deliberate: given the chancellor’s responsibility for raising the money (largely through taxation) to pay for the war, Staniforth was used to drawing him in a variety of unflattering guises – as a torturer about to inflict grievous suffering on John Bull (‘Pay, Pay, Pay!’, WM, 25 January 1900) and as a highwayman (‘With Pleasure’, WM, 7 March 1900; ‘Not to Escape’, WM, 15 December 1900). 85 Might Staniforth have been attempting here a (subliminal?) criticism of British policy? Was this an attempt at subversion? Bereft of further clues as to Staniforth’s intentions (the published volume’s comment does not note the ambiguity or comment on the identity of the shadowy figure), we can only wonder at what the cartoon’s originator and its viewers may have taken from this image.
‘In Goodly Company’, Western Mail, 28 October 1901. Caption: ‘“He had on a former occasion denounced the Government’s methods as the methods of barbarism. He adhered to the phrase. (Cheers).” (Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at Stirling).’ Reproduced in Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1902), II, p. 73, with the comment: ‘Speaking at Stirling on Friday, October 25th, 1901, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman again denounced the Government’s methods as the methods of barbarism.’
Staniforth returned to this theme with ‘The Two Artists’ (WM, 31 October, and NoW, 3 November 1901;Figure 14). Although the published volume’s comment made it clear how it wished the cartoon to be understood (‘[t]he phrase, “methods of barbarism” was applied, without a shadow of justification’), the original gave no such obvious steer. If few readers, we imagine, could have believed the British soldier capable of the barbarities depicted in Campbell-Bannerman’s painting, surely many others would have had difficulty finding Chamberlain’s illustration any more credible, given the revelations circulating by this time of conditions in the concentration camps. Perhaps Staniforth was suggesting that readers should regard the claims of politicians from either party with caution. 86
‘The Two Artists’, Western Mail, 31 October 1901. Reproduced in the News of the World, 3 November 1901, and in Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1902), II, p. 74, with the additional comment: ‘Very different pictures of the British soldier were drawn by Mr Chamberlain, on the one hand, and by Sir H. C. Bannerman on the other. The phrase, “methods of barbarism” was applied, without a shadow of justification, by the latter, while Mr Chamberlain could find no words sufficiently eloquent to express the supreme politeness of the British soldier.’
Once finished, like any work of art, a cartoon passes from the control of the artist. Whatever Staniforth’s intentions in drawing a particular image and supplying a specific caption, it was and remains open to audiences, both at the time and subsequently, to read their own meanings into his cartoons. That cartoons, perhaps more so than written communication, offer scope for such ambiguity and variety of interpretation has been recognized by some of the medium’s greatest exponents. For David Low, ‘symbolism and analogy are highly subjective … a cartoon that wanders beyond moronic simplicity seems … capable of an infinite number of interpretations’. 87 But however we read these cartoons, they hold out the possibility of doubt over the methods deployed by the British army in seeking to bring the war to an end. As such they may be contrasted with the bullish statements regularly to be found in the editorials of the newspapers in which they appeared. 88
X. Conclusions: The Two Artists?
When the war came to an end at Vereeniging on 31 May 1902 Staniforth welcomed it. ‘Peace’ (NoW, 1 June, and WM, 2 June 1902;Figure 15) depicted the submissive Boer being greeted by a respectful John Bull, as the goddess of Peace looked on. In ‘Brothers at Last’ (WM, 6 June 1902) Boer and Briton joined together in singing ‘Rule Britannia!’ Such an image of reconciliation and friendship was repeated on the occasion of the coronation of King Edward VII. ‘Last, But Not Least’ (WM, 9 August 1902) depicted ‘Brother Boer’ being welcomed magnanimously into the imperial family. Thereafter, Staniforth continued to follow South African affairs through to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. 89
‘Peace on Monday’ was the anticipatory title in the News of the World, 1 June 1902, although the treaty was signed on the Saturday evening. The cartoon was titled simply ‘Peace’ in the Western Mail, 2 June 1902, and was reproduced in Cartoons of the Boer War (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1902), II, p. 105. In the latter versions it was accompanied by five verses, each of four lines, written by the Western Mail’s resident poet ‘Idris’, the first beginning: ‘Your hand, my Friend – and friend so much the more / Because you’ve proved yourself a doughty foe’.
As stated earlier, there is no single source for British public opinion towards the South African War. Popular responses were fluid, complex, and specific to the time and issue. The cartoons of J.M. Staniforth do not straightforwardly unlock the attitudes of the British people. What they offer is an insight into Staniforth’s own views, which were themselves quite possibly conflicted or contradictory. The reach and popularity of the newspaper cartoons and the longevity of the images in reprinted editions suggest further that Staniforth’s readers – of two of the era’s most popular newspapers – may have understood and shared some of his responses to the war.
If this was the case then Conservative imperialists, despite their backing for Salisbury’s government and desire to see the war won, were prepared to ask questions about the apparent diplomatic mismanagement (to view it in the most favourable light) that had led to war, the military unpreparedness that characterized its execution, the degree to which the interests of the soldier were cared for, and the methods employed to defeat the Boers’ guerrilla operations. Even committed imperialists were not uncritical. Popular imperialism was not reducible to knee-jerk jingoism, and a desire to see the British Empire strong and resolute did not rule out delivering disturbing verdicts on the mistakes its leaders were making.
Footnotes
Funding
The author is grateful to the British Academy for Small Research Grant SG-47830, which facilitated work on the News of the World.
1
Iain R. Smith, The Origins of the South African War, 1899–1902 (London: Longman, 1996), p. 1. I thank Professor Fransjohan Pretorius of the University of Pretoria, Professor Stephen Miller of the University of Maine, and the anonymous referees for War in History for their interest and encouragement.
2
Richard Price, An Imperial War and the British Working Class: Working-Class Attitudes and Reactions to the Boer War, 1899–1902 (London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1972); M.D. Blanch, ‘British Society and the War’, in Peter Warwick, ed., The South African War: The Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902 (Harlow: Longman, 1980), pp. 210–38; and Paul Readman, ‘The Conservative Party, Patriotism, and British Politics: The Case of the General Election of 1900’, Journal of British Studies XL (2001), pp. 107–45.
3
Price, Imperial War, pp. 10–11.
4
David Omissi and Andrew Thompson, ‘Introduction: Investigating the Impact of the War’, in Omissi and Thompson, eds, The Impact of the South African War (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002), p. 10.
5
Donal Lowry, ‘“The Boers Were the Beginning of the End”? The Wider Impact of the South African War’, in Lowry, ed., The South African War Reappraised (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 203. See also A.N. Porter, The Origins of the South African War: Joseph Chamberlain and the Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1895–99 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p. vii.
6
Andrew Thompson, ‘Imperial Propaganda during the South African War’, in Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh and Mary-Lynn Suttie, eds, Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002), p. 319.
7
Bill Nasson, The Boer War: The Struggle for South Africa (Stroud: Spellmount, 2011), p. 264.
8
Thompson, ‘Imperial Propaganda’, p. 319.
9
Blanch, ‘British Society’, p. 217.
10
Winston Churchill, The Boer War (London: Pimlico, 2002 [originally London to Ladysmith, 1900]), p. 10.
11
Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘The Boer War and the Media (1899–1902)’, Twentieth Century British History XIII (2002), p. 9; Denis Judd and Keith Surridge, The Boer War (London: John Murray, 2002), pp. 255–6.
12
John Gooch, ‘Introduction’, to Gooch, ed., The Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp.xix, xx.
13
Glenn R. Wilkinson, Depictions and Images of War in Edwardian Newspapers, 1899–1914 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002), p. 10.
14
John M. MacKenzie, ‘The Press and the Dominant Ideology of Empire’, in Simon J. Potter, ed., Newspapers and Empire in Ireland and Britain: Reporting the British Empire, c. 1857–1921 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), p. 25.
15
John Springhall, ‘Up Guards and At Them! British Imperialism and Popular Art, 1880–1914’, in John M. MacKenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 69.
16
Jane Carruthers, ‘Introduction’, to Ryno Greenwall, Artists and Illustrators of the Anglo-Boer War (Vlaeberg: Fernwood, 1992), pp.14–15.
17
Cited by Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh and Mary-Lynn Suttie, ‘Introduction’, to Cuthbertson et al., Writing a Wider War, p.ix.
18
‘The doyen of British cartoonists’: the tribute of the Western Mail [WM], 21 December 1921.
19
Lord Riddell, The Story of the Western Mail (Cardiff: Western Mail & South Wales News, 1929); WM, 1 May 1919, 29 April 1929.
20
WM, 1 July 1902, 19 December 1921; Peter Lord, The Visual Culture of Wales: Industrial Society (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), p. 164.
21
Aled Gruffydd Jones, Press, Politics and Society: A History of Journalism in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993), p. 95, suggests readership of newspapers at this time may have been over 30 times that of copies sold in towns, and 7 to 8 times that of copies sold in rural areas.
22
Wilkinson, Depictions and Images, pp. 75–6.
23
Joanne Cayford, ‘The Western Mail, 1869–1914: A Study in the Politics and Management of a Provincial Newspaper’, PhD thesis, University of Wales, 1992, p. 415.
24
Ibid., p. 449.
25
Other daily newspapers using political cartoons at this time were the Daily Graphic, Daily Chronicle, Daily Express, and Daily Mail.
26
Writing in the ‘Two Introductions’ to Staniforth’s Cartoons of the Welsh Revolt (London:Western Mail, 1905), p. 3.
27
William E. Pegg, ‘Makers of Welsh Opinion. II – The Conductors of the “Western Mail”’, Wales I (June 1911), p. 65; WM, 1 May 1919.
28
Martin Walker, Daily Sketches: A Cartoon History of Twentieth-Century Britain (London: Frederick Muller, 1978), pp. 26, 187; Frank E. Huggett, Cartoonists at War (Leicester: Windward, 1981), pp. 112–13, 117; Timothy S. Benson, The Cartoon Century: Modern Britain through the Eyes of Its Cartoonists (London: Random House, 2007), pp. 16–62; Mark Bryant, Wars of Empire in Cartoons (London: Grub Street, 2008), pp. 127–58.
29
Greenwall, Artists and Illustrators, pp. 78, 211; Bill Nasson, The South African War, 1899–1902 (London: Arnold, 1999), p. 248; Matthew Cragoe, ‘“Brimful of Patriotism”: Welsh Conservatives, the South African War and the “Khaki” election of 1900’, in Cragoe and Chris Williams, eds, Wales and War: Politics, Society and Religion in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007); Wilkinson, Depictions and Images, pp. 64, 75–7, 102, 109–11.
30
Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion, 2001), p. 10.
31
A suggestion made by William H. Schneider, An Empire for the Masses: The French Popular Image of Africa, 1870–1900 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982), pp. 62, 77.
32
Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 185.
33
Roy Douglas, ‘Great Nations Still Enchained’: The Cartoonists’ Vision of Empire, 1848–1914 (London: Routledge, 1993), p. vii.
34
WM, 19 December 1921.
35
Wilkinson, Depictions and Images, p. 9.
36
Lord, Visual Culture, pp. 164, 165.
37
See Roy Douglas, Liam Harte and Jim O’Hara, Drawing Conclusions: A Cartoon History of Anglo-Irish Relations, 1798–1998 (Belfast:Blackstaff, 1998), pp. 1–2, and Joseph Darracott, A Cartoon War: World War Two in Cartoons (London: Leo Cooper, 1989), pp. 152–3.
38
One cartoon, ‘Peace on Monday’, appeared in the News of the World [NoW] the day before (1 June 1902) its variant (‘Peace’) appeared in the WM. Two cartoons (‘Too Busy’, 13 May 1900; ‘Well, I’m Staggered’, 3 June 1900) appeared in the NoW but not in the WM.
39
Readman, ‘Conservative Party’, p. 109.
40
Greenwall, Artists and Illustrators, p. 78; Cayford, ‘Western Mail’, p. 194.
41
R. Power Berrey, The Romance of a Great Newspaper (London: News of the World, 1943), p. 50.
42
Three cartoons have not been located in either the WM or the NoW.
43
WM, 19 September 1900.
44
‘A Modern Canute’ appeared in WM, 3 August, and was reprinted in the NoW of 12 August. ‘The Exile’s Departure’ appeared in both WM and Evening Express on 22 October.
45
NoW, 10 June 1900, did not consider a continuation of the war by guerrilla methods probable. According to WM, 25 July 1900, the book was to be issued ‘immediately at the conclusion of hostilities’.
46
The opening sentence of the volume’s introduction (3) begins ‘The conclusion of the South African Campaign adds to the British Empire a territory’.
47
WM, 26 July 1902. See also R.G. Hackett, South African War Books: An Illustrated Bibliography of English Language Publications relating to the Boer War of 1899–1902 (London: privately printed, 1994), p. 187.
48
Cartoons of the Boer War [CBW]I (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1900), pp. 31, 36.
49
WM, 25 September 1900; Peter Harrington, British Artists and War: The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints, 1700–1914 (London: Greenhill, 1993), pp. 294–5; Greenwall, Artists and Illustrators, pp. 61–2.
50
WM, 26 July 1902.
51
NoW, 6, 20 July 1902. Some 30 of the cartoons in CBW I and 29 of those in CBW II (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1902) had appeared in the NoW – about 30 per cent of those reproduced in the volumes.
52
WM, 9 August 1902.
53
WM, 1 July 1902.
54
Roberts’s reaction was printed in WM, 22 October 1900. The map is in WM, 28 August 1902.
55
WM, 19 December 1921.
56
The News International Archive, Wapping, London, contains a small collection of Staniforth originals, albeit for a later period. Some reveal titles and captions amended in like manner.
57
J.M. Staniforth, Cartoons, II (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1910), p. vi. In the foreword to this volume Staniforth was clear that he made the decision on the subject matter of his cartoons.
58
For some of the general context, see Aled Jones and Bill Jones, ‘Empire and the Welsh Press’, in Potter, Newspapers and Empire.
59
Cited in Elie Halévy, A History of the English People: Epilogue, vol. I: 1895–1905 (London: Ernest Benn, 1929), p. 96.
60
Contested seats only included in this figure.
61
Henry Pelling, ‘Wales and the Boer War’, Welsh History Review IV (1969), p. 365.
62
Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘Wales and the Boer War: A Reply’, Welsh History Review IV (1969), pp. 367–80.
63
A point reinforced by Jones and Jones, ‘Empire and the Welsh Press’, who note (p. 87) that the two Cardiff dailies were ‘unmistakeably jingoistic’.
64
See M.C.E. Van Schoor, Spotrente van die Anglo-Boereoorlog (Kaapstad: Tafelberg, 1981), p. 22; Greenwall, Artists and Illustrators, p. 87.
65
NoW, 30 July, 6 August 1899.
66
See ‘Can be Accommodated’, WM, 20 September 1899; ‘Crying for Help’, WM, 21 September 1899; ‘Violent Diseases Require Violent Remedies’, WM, 28 September 1899; and ‘There Can Be But One Result’, WM, 12 October 1899.
67
John Darwin, ‘Afterword: The Imprint of the War’, in Omissi and Thompson, Impact of the South African War, p. 295.
68
Morgan, ‘The Boer War and the Media’, p. 2; Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes, ‘The Press and the Public during the Boer War, 1899–1902’, Historian LXI (1999), p. 10.
69
The song concerns a Jack Jones, who comes into a sum of money and thinks himself above conversing with his former friends: ‘When he’s up at Covint Gardinyou can see ’im a standin’ all alone, / Won’t join in a quiet little Tommy Dodd [half-pint of beer], drinking Scotch and Soda on ’is own, / ’E ’as the cheek and impidence to call ’is muvver’ is Ma, / Since Jack Jones came into a little bit o’ splosh [money], well ’e dunno where ’e are.’ A later cartoon on a similar theme is ‘Knocking the Head Off It’ (CBW II, p. 61).
70
The cartoon was modelled on ‘Defendant and Counsel’ (1895), by William Frederick Yeames.
71
Edward M. Spiers, The Late Victorian Army, 1868–1902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 309–12; Judd and Surridge, Boer War, pp. 253–6.
72
Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 199, notes that ‘the many songs that enjoin the nation not to forget the wives/widows/families of the poor troopers outnumbered the tub-thumpers by about ten to one’, so Staniforth was evidently in good company.
73
CBWI, p. 20.
74
Alan Ramsay Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home: The Recruitment and Terms and Conditions of the British Regular, 1859–1899 (London: Croom Helm, 1977), pp. 216–17; Andrew Thompson, ‘Publicity, Philanthropy and Commemoration: British Society and the War’, in Omissi and Thompson, Impact of the South African War, pp. 107–9.
75
Kent Fedorowich, ‘The Migration of British Ex-servicemen to Canada and the Role of the Naval and Military Emigration League, 1899–1914’, Histoire Sociale / Social History XXV (1992), p. 76.
76
Skelley, Victorian Army, pp. 205–18; Thompson, ‘Publicity, Philanthropy’, p. 106.
77
Edward M. Spiers, The Army and Society, 1815–1914 (London: Longman, 1980), p. 219; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 202.
78
Thompson, ‘Publicity, Philanthropy’, p. 112.
79
WM, 20 November 1909.
80
S.B. Spies, Methods of Barbarism? Roberts and Kitchener and Civilians in the Boer Republics, January 1900 – May 1902 (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 1977), p. 110.
81
Recent and revised estimates of figures are to be found in Fransjohan Pretorius, ed., The A to Z of the Anglo-Boer War (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2009), pp. 102–6.
82
Ibid.
83
For the context, see G.R. Searle, A New England? Peace and War, 1886–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 281–301.
84
This refers to aspeech reported in WM, 26 October 1901. Campbell-Bannerman stated that he ‘adhered to the phrase [methods of barbarism] …because the burning of a country and the turning of women and children into camps was a process to which nothing could furnish a justification’.
85
Searle, New England?, p. 300.
86
The speeches alluded to in the cartoon were delivered on the same day by Chamberlain at Edinburgh and Campbell-Bannerman at Stirling.
87
David Low, Low Visibility: A Cartoon History, 1945–1953 (London: Collins, 1953), p. 6.
88
NoW (25 November 1900, 8 September 1901) argued that the British government should have imitated the uncompromising policy of the Germans when confronted by francs-tireurs during the Franco-Prussian War.
89
See ‘Turning over a New Page’ (WM, 29 July 1909), ‘The Start on the Voyage’ (WM, 7 November 1910 – retitled ‘The Launch of a New Dreadnought’ for NoW, 6 November 1910), ‘A Reliable Falcon’ (WM, 31 January 1911), and ‘Cubs of the Old Lion’ (WM, 3 August 1914).