There now, _Punch_! Drat this nasty stupid good-for-nothing Eastern
Question. I am sick and sorry of hearing it talked of, din, din, din,
bother, bother, bother, every day, and all day long. Drat the Russians
and Turks both, one's barbarians and the other's savages. I wouldn't
give a fig for either of 'em; the Russians are just as bad as the Turks,
and the Turks every bit as bad as the Russians, there isn't a pin to
choose between 'em, six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. The Turks
commit double and treble bigamy, and the Russians drink train oil; the
Russians are beaten with the knout, and the Turks with the bastinado,
and deserve to be, both alike. Oh, I know all about it, although I am
only an old woman! and what's the whole to-do about but a parcel of
nonsense, ambassadors niggling with their diplomatic notes, and
quibbling backwards and forwards because an i wasn't dotted on one side
and a t crossed on the other. Hity tity! I've no patience with 'em. Of
course, if our bounden duty is to interfere, we must; but it's a great
plague, and sickness in the land, and raining cats and dogs, and bread
up and meat up, and how much higher they'll go goodness knows, but it
will be beyond everything if there should be a war. Drat it! we can't
help pestilence and famine, but it's our own doings if we add war. Not
that I'm for MR. COBDEN and your 'No Soldiers' people that want to do
away with the army and navy, and leave their sisters and mothers to
invasion. Drat them, too--I despise such dirty drabs. But I do think
it's such annoyance to be drawn in and forced to fight when you've no
heart in the quarrel. What a pity it is we can't leave 'em alone and let
'em fight it out. Neither of 'em is our fellow Christians, Turks being
Mahometans, and Russians Greek, which is as bad as Latin; and what I
should like would be to see them left to themselves and eat each other
up, like the Irish cats--poor things! Drat the ultimatums, drat the
Phosphorus--which is always causing a combustion--drat the Dardanelles
which I am sure they must be some forward husseys--drat the whole
business, it's altogether a bad job from beginning to end, if there is
to be any end, which if the scrimmage goes on I'm afraid will be the end
of everything. Drat it all I say! I wish I had a good large broom, and
power to sweep both your SULTAN and your EMPEROR, and all their forces
into the Red Sea, or Black Sea, or any sea deep enough to drown 'em out
of the way