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. [Footnote 2: Mr. James Falconer, the Liberal Member for Forfarshire, 1909-1918.] [Illustration: THE WINGS OF VICTORY 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. [Sidenote: _England's Detachment_]