Life, 1914-06-18 · page 10 of 44
Life — June 18, 1914 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two opinion pieces. The first, signed E. S. Martin, discusses Presbyterian Church debates over alcohol and tobacco use, criticizing what he sees as naive prohibition efforts. He argues that climate and cultural factors make Scottish drinking habits unsuitable to import to America, and mocks church resolutions as ineffectual moral posturing. The second piece, "Peace and Patents" by Amos R. Wells, discusses military technology. It sarcastically notes that while peace advocates celebrate inventions like the ultraviolet ray as conflict-prevention tools, modern weapons (submarines, destroyers, aeroplanes) only make war more expensive rather than impossible. The illustration shows a woman examining or sharpening what appears to be a knife or blade, captioned "I'M SO GLAD JACK HAD IT SHARPENED"—likely a domestic humor cartoon, though its exact satirical point remains unclear without additional context.
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1102 plenty of them in New Jersey and New York and else- where, and they are good average people or better, but not very different from the rest of us. The sect does well enough, but it does not prosper conspicuously on beer or American whiskey or soft drinks. When you get it de- tached from Scotland and Scotch whiskey (or from Ulster and whatever they take with it there) it loses its individual ginger and becomes about like any other Protestant sect. It’s too bad. If we could breed such Presbyterians here as they have in Scotland nothing could hurt us, no immi- gration, no matter from where nor how many. But we cannot do it. It is impossible in this climate to use the blend that has made Scotland such a prodigy. If we drank as the Scots have drunk, instead of being ministers, and engincers, and iron-masters, and writers, and teachers, and philosophers, as they are, we'd all be in the penitentiary or the sanitarium or Py the cemetery, So perhaps it was well enough that the one hundred and twenty-sixth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, that met the other day at Chicago, should have passed resolutions urging Presbyterians to resign from clubs that sell rum, praising Jo. Daniels, Secretary, for his order separating admirals from light wines, and favoring Captain Hobson's bill to put prohibition into the Constitution. They even deprecated the effect of cigarettes upon the physical, intellectual and moral life! Stars above! to what feebleness in the faith must the Presbyterians have come to feel that they are only safe in strait-jackets and shielded by statute and orders of council from the ordinary temptations of life! Of course, it matters nothing what the General Assembly resolves, because its orders have no power behind them to compel obedience, but cer- tainly a deposition against cigarettes is rather a pitiful, as well as a futile and ignorant, pronounce- ment for the representative council of what has been a great Protestant denomination. E, S. Martin. Peace and Patents ANGUINE peace-lovers welcome the ultra-violet ray as an undoubted pacifier of the nations. How can men longer wage war when this puissant emanation gets to work, exploding magazines through the viewless air at the safe distance of ten miles? But just wait. Precisely such hopes were aroused by armored ships; and lo! rifled cannon were in- vented, piercing the armor. And by submarine torpedoes; but torpedo-boat destroyers came next. And by aeroplanes dropping bombs; but The Hague ruled out the hopeful practice among civilized nations. Very soon the physicists will discover a shield through which the ultra-violet ray cannot pass. No, brothers of the “LIFE” I'M SO GLAD JACK HAD IT SHARPENED” dove, modern inventions are not in business to make war impossible; what they are doing is just to make it more expensive, Amos R. Wells. comichooksfeom