Puck's Suggestion for the German Kaiser's Benefit

S. D. Ehrhart's full-color centerspread lampoons Kaiser Wilhelm II as a blustering teetotaler whose banquet speeches alarm his own court. Wilhelm sits slumped at a white-draped table, crown askew, wearing an ermine robe and a ribbon reading 'Sons of Cold Water'—mocking his temperance posturing. Chancellor Count Leo von Caprivi, rendered as a hulking figure in military dress, pointedly pours a pitcher labeled 'Ice Water' into the Kaiser's wine glass. Around the table, exaggeratedly jowled German officers—drawn with the broad ethnic caricature standard to Puck's era, emphasizing mustaches, florid complexions, and comic corpulence—toast merrily with champagne. The caption explains the joke: Wilhelm's actions are praiseworthy, but his banquet speeches reveal a need for cold water when he dines out. Ehrhart turns the Kaiser's own temperance rhetoric into a rebuke of his diplomatic recklessness.