Life — February 17, 1887 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THAT EUROPEAN WAR. CTUATED by a desire to re- lieve &he overwrought nerves of such readers of LIFE as desire to tour through Europe next summer, and are deterred by rumors of war, our Chum to Potentates addressed the crowned heads of Europe on the subject with the following results : (From General Boulanger.) My Dear CuuM,—Your communication of the r5th received. Rich Americans need have no fear of visiting Paris this coming season. The rumors of war between La Belle France and our beloved cousins over the Rhine are merely persiflage. Indeed, to show you how peace- ful we feel, I will mention that our military expenditures last month were but a trifle over seventeen billion francs. The twenty-foot-thick granite wall we have erected on the frontier is simply a precaution against mosquitoes, and the four million repeating rifles recently ordered, are to be used to furnish the armory in our new military club-house, . Yours ever, BOULANGER. * * * (From Bismarck.) MEIN LIEBER CHOM,—This war talk is absurd. The Emperor feels rather weak in the knees, and to brace him up, Moltke and I thought we'd work up a little parade for him. The idea of our mak- ing war on our dear allies of France is ridiculous in the extreme, and I may as well tell you that the increase in our standing army merely provides for forty-three battalions of trombonists and a few more brigades of oboe players. The concentration of these forces on the frontier is merely a friendly attempt to serenade our neighbors over the Rhine, Sein, BISMARCK. P.S.—The Emperor Bm. sends his love, and has ordered a pretzel struck off in honor of your recent visit. B. * * * (From Emperor Joseph.) DEAR CARLYLE,—Please deny the Sun's assertion that I looked glum at the Industriellen Ball, because I am afraid of getting hurt in asupposititious war. I admit I looked glum, but it was because Queen Victoria, who has a pet cooking-school at Windsor, sent us a real English plum-pudding, which she prepared with her own Imperial digits, and to avoid international complications, I had to eat it. Our A DENNY'S) military preparations are due to the fact that I want the army to help me out when the Queen sends me another pudding. The reporter who says he saw me curiously examining a new style of cannon-ball was in error. It was that same old Victorian cake I was regarding, but I don’t wonder the correspondent mistook it for a cartridge. Between the two, I prefer cartridges every time. Your true friend, Jor. * * * (From Lord R. Churchill.) Tue Lord presents his compliments to the Chum, and begs to state that the absence of a casus belli in Europe induced him to resign. There is nothing that the descendants of a former Chum to a former Potentate—John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and that Queen from whose time the present Mary-Ann style of architecture is alleged to have been derived—gloat in more than war, but the haunting fear of a revolt in the civil service keeps poor England in a continual state of subservient peace, which doesn't suit the Churchill taste. My desire was to egg France on to free the Alsace and Lorrainians from the Ger- man yolk—if I may thus carry out the original metaphor—but the Government preferred devoting its attention to Jubilees and Interna- tional yacht races, rather than be identified with which, to use the subtle phrase of Punch, I put on my hat and Randolph to Cannes, * * * (From the Czar.) DEAREST CHUMOVITCH,—Your questions surprise me. Of course there is to be no war over here. Who'd begin it, I'd like to know, with the rest of us around? I admit our relations are badly strained, and candles have been selling at war prices for over a year, but there is too much uncertainty about who'll be who after the war is over for the relations to get into a regular open row. For my part, my sole ob- ject in making war preparations is to preserve peace, and the more dyna- mite we put into missiles, the less there is left for the winter palace. I wish you could have been here last Tuesday. We garroted a man who had the cheek to tell me I looked pale. It would have done you good to see the recherche choke we gave him for it. Yours, ALECK, * * * These were all that had been received up to the hour of going to press, and are sufficient, I think, to show that Europe will be kept quiet and peaceful for the next year, even if it takes blood to do it. Carlyle Smith. A COHESIVE comicbooks.com