The name of Marconi was for several years unfortunately mixed up with a resounding politico-financial scandal, arising out of a traffic in shares in which the inventor was never even remotely implicated. Punch, therefore, had an extra reason for acknowledging his great services to humanity in the "S.O.S." cartoon in October, 1913, when a great disaster was averted by a wireless message from a liner in distress.
"ROUSSEAU'S DREAM"
Neptune: "Look out, my dear—you're mistress on the sea; but there's a neighbour of yours that's trying to be mistress under it."
Britannia: "All right, Father Nep—I'm not asleep."
("M. Rousseau, the inventor of the submarine warship says that the advantage of the submersible system would be incontestable, but that certain problems have arisen of which the solution has not been altogether realized.... The belief of M. Rousseau, however, is that the type of the submersible is perfectible, and that the difficulties will be overcome."—Moniteur de la Flotte, quoted in The Times.)
The Submarine of Fancy and Fact
Until the beginning of the new century Punch's treatment of the submarine was mainly fantastic with intermittent moments of misgiving. The former mood prevails in his burlesque sequel to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, printed in 1899, in which Esterhazy and Du Paty de Clam (notorious personages in the Dreyfus "affaire") are introduced along with "Captain Nemo." The submarine was at the moment chiefly associated in the public mind with Jules Verne's romance, and on that very account was perhaps treated less seriously than it deserved. Jules Verne, as we now know, was aggrieved that his countrymen did not recognize him as a scientific writer. But French engineers and inventors were busy with the problem, and in 1900 M. Rousseau's "submersible" inspired Punch with a cartoon in which Neptune warns Britannia of the new menace to her rule, while Britannia replies that she is not asleep. The heading "Rousseau's Dream" certainly implies scepticism, but little more than a year later Punch, in May, 1901, had come to recognize the grim actualities of the new branch of the Navy:—
THE SONG OF THE SUB-MARINED
A life 'neath the ocean wave,