Life, 1911-06-15 · page 13 of 44
Life — June 15, 1911 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The cartoon depicts a man in formal evening wear confronting two women in elegant gowns. The caption reads: "AREN'T YOU GOING TO JOIN THE GENTLEMEN, MR. NAGASAKI?" / "NO, I DO NOT SMOKE, I DO NOT SWEAR, I DO NOT DRINK. BUT THEN, I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN." **The Satire:** This is anti-Christian social commentary. The joke targets Christian hypocrisy by suggesting that Christian gentlemen habitually engage in vices (smoking, swearing, drinking) that they publicly condemn. The Japanese man's name and refusal to join them implies that non-Christian moral standards may actually be superior or more consistent than Christian practice. The humor relies on early 20th-century American assumptions about both Japanese culture and Christian social behavior.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“AREN'T YOU GOING TO JOIN THE GENTLEMEN, MR. now for six months, Give him a chance. He needs the money.” Please cable me a couple of dollars on receipt of this. Some of the help around the palace have been very nice to me. J. Bounder Ballingterd Our Need of War ISHOP CODMAN of Maine (I’rot- estant Episcopal) is for letning war down gently and gradually for fear that civilization will miss its tonic ef- fect. He admits that it is an evil, but values it considerably as a training in moral courage and self-discipline. We should take care, he is quoted as telling the Episcopal Conference in Maine, that we don't carry peace talk and disarma- ment too far, NO. 1 DO NOT SMOKE, I DO NOT SWEAR, I DO NOT DRINK. NAGASAKI?” The Bishop ought not to lose a wink of sleep for fear war will be abolished before civilization can spare it. at we shall have it as long as we need it, and probably longer, is precisely as sure as taxes. But surely so long as flying offers such good hazards, and the detective business abounds so greatly in risks and opportunities of useful public service, it is not worth while to keep up war merely as a discipline War is just like tuberculosis or small- pox; we shall have it until we learn how to avoid it. But it is a pest, and to talk of keeping it up for the sake of its lessons is—excuse us, Bishop! but it sounds like nonsense. You speak, dear sir, as though you had a grain too soft a job. Conduct a street-car for a while and see how it will hargen you up. The great mass of BUT THEN, I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN.” people who struggle for a living don't find life so casy that they need the brac- ing effects of war. Carry This News to Oliver Herford NE of the bon mots of the late Bishop Potter was that “ actresses will happen in the best regulated fami- lies."—From Everybody's for June. A Schoolmaster After Them LITTLE group of pinhead Repub- lican politicians in Elbridge, near Syracuse, N. Y., have doubtless read with lively interest President Eliot's narrative in the June McClure’s of how they tricked a competent postmis- tress out of her office a year or more before her term expired. Read that story: it is instructive. comicbooks.com