Judge, 1916-07-08 · page 11 of 28
Judge — July 8, 1916 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon satirizes marital hypocrisy: a husband complains about sparse lunch (milk and toast) while his wife explains the doctor put her on a diet. He objects to eating a full meal while she suffers—yet the accompanying essay "A Futile Doctrine" mocks exactly this kind of performative morality. The essay argues that humans constantly *preach* virtue but never *practice* it, and that's actually beneficial. If people truly lived by their own advice, society would stagnate. The piece cynically suggests moral ideals are superficial—merely "grafted on" to human nature and clinging precariously to our tongues. The "Hot Stuff" section jokes about journalistic sensationalism: editors discuss interviewing the Biblical prophet Jonah and photographing the whale that swallowed him—treating impossible folklore as reportable news. It mocks credulous or exaggerated journalism of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
He—What! a glass of milk and a piece of toast is all I get for my lunch ? that doesn’t mean me. A FUTILE DOCTRINE HE presuming friend who is constantly reminding us that we should practice what we preach is truly the worst of the many bromidic bores that waste our time and vex our sen- sibilities. Those who have closely scruti- nized the history of man say that they can find no record of an age in which cither in- dividuals or nations ever made any pre- tense of practicing what they preached. And those who talk of the future with familiarity are plainly skeptical as to the immediate or remote possibility of such an It is hardly fair to expect a being en- dowed with an awful complication of brute instinct, maudlin morality, and golden visions to do that which he advises ought to be done. Man is made of a very common sort of clay, we must remember, and most of his morality has been grafted on of comparatively recent years. His ethical ideals have not as yet sunk very deep into his blood. A few of them are uncomfortably crowded into the very top of hi brum, and the others working majority—cling franti to the tip of his tongue. Unfortunately, when an occasion for aggressive action arises they don’t get a chance to function until the damage has been done. Wouldn’t it be a funny world if we should line up in front of our own advice, and turn on the current? We'd suddenly grow so goody-good that we'd forget to evolute. Those people whom we really enjoy would shun us as a plague and we'd She—You know that the doctor has put me on a diet. He—Yes; but She—Do you mean to say you would have the heart to eat a meal while I'm on a diet ? shun them as a duty. And there is great danger too that we might get sadly out of line with the Great Scheme of Things, for the periscopes that we stick up into the atmosphere of what is eternally best for us are twisted and poorly focussed. Perhaps, after all, it’s a good thing that the cards are stacked against us so that we cannot practice what we preach, Some of the best things that the Almighty is working out down here would be dropped immediately and forever forgotten. —H. W. Dee. Hot Stuff “Good Sunday yarn this,” declared the exchange reader. rson doubts that Jonah lived three days in whale’s belly.” “Great!”” agreed the Sunday editor. “Interview Jonah and get a photo of the whale.” “Pp, comicbooks.com