Life, 1913-10-02 · page 20 of 48
Life — October 2, 1913 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon depicts "When Women War Infantry"—a satirical fantasy showing women as soldiers marching in formation while their commander shouts orders. The joke mocks the idea of female combat troops, treating it as absurd comedy. The accompanying poem "Victory" by Charles Campbell Jones presents a sentimental battlefield scene: a lone bugler at dusk, commemorating fallen soldiers with dignity. The article "Mars, Comedian" offers bitter social satire about war's effect on natural selection. It argues that war inverts peacetime's "survival of the fittest"—physically weak men (like "Oscar" with his dry cough) stay home while strong, athletic men die in machine-gun fire. The piece sarcastically suggests mothers should celebrate their handsome sons' deaths as eugenic victory, and that the weak should "bury themselves." This is dark commentary on how war contradicts Social Darwinist ideology popular at the time, and likely responds to WWI's massive casualties (the war had begun three months earlier).
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Qn. Se KhoX eAne \; w A GRT REAoy! aa ANny Yaxe ain! TALK TY nfs & aX) 7 WHEN WOMEN WAR INFANTRY, VOL. 62 No, 1614 OCT. 2, 1913 ‘‘ While there ts Life there's Hope”* Published by LIFE PUBLISHING C JOA. Mircnett, Pres’t, 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Cannon House, Rreams Bldgs. London, E. "y and Treas. | C | WING to Mr. Martin's absence in Europe, readers of Lire will be deprived of his editorials during the next few issues, S TO ME THE INTERNATIONAL GAME ARE NOT JUST WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE.” AND HE sun is set, and where the lurid day Lit long the slope and crooked gray stone walls, Through clearing air the peaceful evening falls— A welcome calm across war’s blasted way ; Done now the test, and now the long array That, tense and eager, held the hillside, sprawls Sick with sad sense, the while a soldier calls His missing messmates, grave beneath the gay; Below him gazing, on the hill crest stands One lonely bugler; all his battle hours Wing round his flapping shirt; his blackened hands Lift slow his weary bugle into place— Till lo! against the wailing sky he towers, Triumph in tatters, with a blood-smeared face. Charles Campbell Jones. Mars, Comedian AR, an international dementia alleged to insure the al of the fittest, should be assiduously en- The man with x survi couraged by all unfit members of society. narrow chest and withered hand struggles under a decided handicap in the piping times of peace. He commonly sees the rich, witty and pulchritudinous female of the species carried off into “happiness ever after” by strapping fel- lows against whom he has no chance whatever in the sex arena, All this is changed, however, with the declaration of war and the arrival of the recruiting officer. Apollo Belvedere is the favorite fodder of the machine gun. Shrapnel screams with joy as it increases an athlete’s chest expansion from seven inches to thirty feet. What matters it if ten thousand mothers weep and wail and gnash their teeth over the details of victory? Who taught their hand- some sons to love war? These are but the tears of shame- less recantation. Let them turn for comfort to little Oscar whose dry cough kept him out of the army; to Minnie and Hal at the State Home for the Feeble-Minded. Let the unfit dead bury themselves. These that survive are the fittest. comicbooks.com