Judge — March 16, 1918 — page 15: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This R.B. Fuller cartoon satirizes WWI newspaper headlines and wartime propaganda. The same caricatured figure (likely representing a politician or military official) reacts with exaggerated cheerfulness to increasingly contradictory war reports. The joke: headlines announce both military successes (trenches taken, ships sunk, planes downed) *and* serious failures (ships lost, factories burned, troops poorly equipped, production delays). The character's unchanging smile mocks how officials spin bad news as good, or how newspapers present chaotic wartime reality as a coherent narrative. The final three panels show the figure increasingly unraveling under the weight of these contradictions—literally falling apart—suggesting this propaganda approach is unsustainable. The cartoon critiques both government messaging and media credibility during WWI.