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The Marconi scandal was an incubus which lay heavily on the Government throughout the year. In the early stages of the inquiry, Punch showed Rumour presenting her season-ticket, and disgusted at being denied admittance, as the Committee were about to "get to business." The amount of space devoted to the question in the Press is satirized by the announcement of the forthcoming publication of "The Marconi Affair in a Nut-shell," by Messrs. Garvin and Maxse, in 968 pages. When the Report appeared, Punch thought the whitewash had been laid on too thick:

      "More Whitewash!" said the Falconer,2

      "Throw it about in bucketfuls;

      Some of it's bound to stick."

      "Very poor art!" the public cried;

      "You've laid it on too thick!"

      Even more hostile is the cartoon "Blameless Telegraphy," in which John Bull addresses Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs, dressed as telegraph boys with "Marconi, U.S.A.," on their caps: "My boys, you leave the court without a stain – except, perhaps, for the whitewash." There was no whitewash in Lord Robert Cecil's minority Report; and the reverberations of the Marconi affair did not die down for many months, nor did Punch wish that they should – witness his ironic cartoon of the Master of Elibank, luxuriating in a hammock in tropical Bogota, and expressing his keen disappointment that the inquiry had been closed.

      Britannia: "These things seem all the rage in Paris and Berlin; and I really can't afford to be out of it!"

      A propos of the theft of the "Mona Lisa" portrait from the Louvre, Punch portrayed Mr. Asquith as "Il Giocondo" with an inscrutable and enigmatic smile. The internal embarrassments of the Cabinet certainly must have taxed the smiling capacities of the Premier to the utmost, to say nothing of Ulster and the militant suffragists. Yet when Dame Curzon is depicted tempting Master Asquith to take a joy-ride on a donkey labelled "General Election," Master Asquith replies that he is not taking any violent exercise this season, but thinks of waiting till 1915. There are not a few people who in the interests of the country are very thankful that the Liberals were still in power and not in opposition when the great decision had to be made a year later. There is a touch of unconscious and complacent prophecy in the picture of Britannia girding on "The Wings of Victory" – the new rage in Paris and Berlin – "because she can't afford to be out of it." It took us four years to make good the title, but it was done in the end.

      The gap that separates us from pre-war years is illustrated in many curious ways. For example, in March, 1913, Punch has a picture of a lady asking to have a cheque for £15 cashed all in gold "if you've got it." In those golden days of peace such a question was simply a mark of feminine ignorance; two years later it would have argued insanity.

      England's Detachment

      In the seven months that remained before the outbreak of the Great War you may search the pages of Punch in vain for evidences of a provocative attitude towards Germany or of anything indicating national preparedness for the conflict. Punch, as a mirror of middle-class public opinion, faithfully reflected our domestic troubles and preoccupations. International politics are conspicuously absent from the Almanack of Christmas, 1913, except for a picture of Sir Edward Grey producing doves from a hat labelled Balkan Crisis, and portraits of Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the Sultan of Turkey and the King of Montenegro, offering tickets of admission to the Concert of Europe. Comment, criticism and satire are monopolized by Ulster, labour troubles, Marconi and oil scandals, the dancing mania, social extravagance and the spread of the cinema habit. The first cartoon of the New Year of 1914 is devoted to Mr. Lloyd George's land campaign; there is nothing aggressive in the picture of Mr. Churchill as a sailor surrounded by a Tory chorus singing, "You've made me love you; I didn't want to do it" —à propos of the Navy Estimates; nothing provocative in "The Price of Admiralty," where Britannia, outside a door marked "Cabinet Council (Private and Controversial)," is seen waiting to know whether she is to lay down the ships she wants, on which Mr. Punch adds "or lay down your trident." No serious misgiving is aroused by Turkey's purchase of a Dreadnought, and Punch's comment on General Leonard Wood's pessimistic report on the practically unarmed condition of the U.S.A. army, if not exactly unsympathetic, is light-hearted and detached.

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      1

      Josiah Tatnall, flag-officer of the East India Squadron in 1856.

      2

      Mr. James Falconer, the Liberal Member for Forfarshire, 1909-1918.

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1

Josiah Tatnall, flag-officer of the East India Squadron in 1856.

2

Mr. James Falconer, the Liberal Member for Forfarshire, 1909-1918.

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