Life, 1909-12-16 · page 19 of 32
Life — December 16, 1909 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes two contemporary issues: **"Football and Hysteria"** (top): Critiques General Wingate's dismissal of safety concerns about college football as "hysteria." The cartoon mocks his position by pointing out the logical contradiction: if football is only safe with constant medical supervision (implicitly "a nurse" for each player), then it's inherently too dangerous for a sport. The satire argues Wingate can't have it both ways—either acknowledge football is dangerously violent, or stop calling concerns hysterical. This reflects genuine early-1900s debate about football's brutality (the text references a fatal accident at West Point). **"Recent Divagations of Mr H.G. Wells"** (bottom): Criticizes the acclaimed author H.G. Wells for abandoning literary restraint in recent novels addressing sexual morality. The critique argues Wells, in rejecting conventional prejudices about monogamy and marital fidelity, has become reckless—confusing intellectual superiority to prejudice with abandoning moral judgment entirely. The satire suggests Wells's usefulness as a cultural guide is thereby compromised.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Football and Hysteria ERAL WINGATE, of the New G York Board of Education, is quoted as saying: “Personally | think the whole outcry against football is hys- terical.”” Wouldn't you be nearer right, General, if you omitted from your sentence the four words preceding “ football Isn't it football itself that is hysteri cal? The papers said that 47,000 per sons wanted the 19,000 tickets which were Harvard's share in the late Yale Harvard game. As played this year foot ball has been a pretty crazy game, and little crazier about it than they ever were before What do you say yourself? “1 am strongly opposed to boys playing the without trained to. the physical condition.”’ Who is g and see that they are trained to the proper physical condition? people have been just ame being proper ing to look after all the boys Who is go- ing to watch them every minute while they play, and pull them out of the game us soon as they become exhausted and lose form, and before they get their necks broken as Byrne did at West Point? A GOAL WON Practically, General, you are opposed to football unless every player has a nurse. The jig is up with the game on your showing. If it is so dangerous as to call for unceasing vigilance to save the players alive, it is too dangerous to be useful as a national sport E.S.M Recent Divagations of Mr H. G. Wells ME H. G. WELLS has long been an interesting, stimulating and enter taining writer, His imagination is lively he knows a number of things, his mind is very active and he is a good writer. Lately in two novels he has dropped a good ways down into the sex problem, a matter that is of profound importance to society. His treatment of it discloses the incompleteness of his equipment same lack that In his rovels he discovers th Is in Jack distinguish between right and wrong: in capacity toa London—inability to eciate the ground on which civilized society some has disapproved tolerated others, 1 stamped others still with the mark of approbation. It is admirable to be superior to preju- dice, but it can be overdone. There are things, prejudices, especially in the concerns of sex, which the simple, sinless animals do not have, which increase in force and importance in human societies as they advance in civilization. The prejudice in favor of monogamy is one of them; that in favor of marital fidelity is an other. Mr. Wells seems to be perior to both quite su If he continues to be so, his usefulness as a writer for the edifica civilized con ies will be greatly impaired tion of and the rules imperfect, but them th Civilization is imperfec of it are very there is more sense in unprejudiced innovators without any particular moral training eu lly able to understand. We should be sorry Wells sheer off into the group of clever writers which includes George Jack hooks are dangerously unsound on their moral s to see Mr. Moore and London. whose HE inclination of human creatures toward veracity is inversely to the number of personal facts they need to hide. Folks can’t make match laws like to conduct who conduct make laws match comicbooks.com