Judge, 1917-07-14 · page 9 of 27
Judge — July 14, 1917 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines a serious essay on marriage with a humorous cartoon about WWI military recruitment. **The Main Cartoon:** A recruiting officer weighs two men trying to enlist for the U.S. Army. One is underweight, the other overweight. Their solution: "average" themselves together on the scales to meet the weight requirement. The joke satirizes both the desperation of would-be soldiers and the apparent flexibility (or incompetence) of Army recruitment standards during wartime. **The Essay:** "The Chief Business in Life" offers conventional wisdom about marriage as requiring art, science, and gambling—a serious meditation on domestic stability. The contrast between earnest marital advice and the absurd recruitment cartoon creates the satirical effect typical of Judge: juxtaposing solemn commentary with ridicule of contemporary institutions. **Historical Context:** This appears to reference WWI-era conscription efforts, when the military faced recruitment and fitness challenges.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AN EXTRA SESSION THE CHIEF BUSINESS IN LIFE gamblers, take what they get—and smile. They who can TAYING married and being reasonably happy is the chief grin and bear it were cruelly slighted in- the beatitudes. For business in life of more people than a centipede can count they shall live happily ever afterwards H.W. Dee. on his toes. It is a serious business too, one that requires a smattering of acumen, a good deal of common-sense p Z and a surprising amount of the stuff Sze Z US: ARMY that made Job famous. And_ these Z p LEA RECRUITING very things that it requires are the Va IN things that are kept in abeyance during courtship and honeymoon. Is it strange that so many people secretly wonder why they ever married cach other? Staying married is an art and a science—and a gambl It is not any one of the three—it's all three, in generous proportion, Many a carefully designed little bark that has set sail on the tricky waters of matrimony has run upon the rocks just because the happy sailors didn’t know this awful secre Those who have looked upon being contented with h other as a mere art have found that the wages of unmotivated romance is bitter disappointment, those who have thought it a science have lost heart and withered away, and those who have looked at matrimony as a gamble have found it so, with the odds heavily against them. People who intend to stay married and enjoy it should go into matrimony with their wide open and live in peace with their dimmers on oresight is much more pleasant and much more wholesome than cither insight or Recruiting Offcer—Here! why are you both on the scales at once? hindsight. Newly-weds should prepare for the worst, Applicarit—Well, He's too light to pass and I'm too heavy, so ct something less than the best and, like all good we're going to average up in hopes ye'll let us in that way. A