Life, 1914-08-27 · page 17 of 44
Life — August 27, 1914 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three distinct satirical pieces: **"The Good Word"** (top cartoon): Shows men gossiping about a drunk character named "Old Crableigh," illustrating how reputations are formed through idle talk. **"The Machine Gun"** (left column): A darkly poetic monologue personifying the machine gun as an instrument of death, sponsored by "Science, Christianity and Civilization." This is anti-war satire, likely from WWI era, condemning mechanized warfare's indiscriminate destruction of civilians—"women and children pay for me." **"Bathing-beach Policemen Should Travel"** (right column): Satirizes American prudishness about women's bathing attire. It suggests sending American beach police to observe European women's less-restrictive swimwear, implying they'd return with "liberalized ideas about clothing." This mocks both American moral rigidity and hints at the absurdity of nations fighting over "commercial descendency" (economic decline) rather than genuine principles. The overall tone critiques American hypocrisy, militarism, and sexual prudishness.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE GOOD WORD “WHO IS THAT? HE MUST BE A CHARACTER” “YES, THAT'S OLD CRABLEIGH—HE DRINKS” The Machine Gun SPEAK with the voice of men and devils. My mes- sengers speed their unerring flight to countless hearts. I work between two voids—back of me a pile of empty shells, in front of me a widening circle of empty hearths. I am no respecter of persons, My victories lie in a horizon of homes. Hell inspired me, man created me, women and children pay for me. Each day of battle I prepare a feast of bodies, with Death as the host. With my blackened wand I touch the breast of man, and forthwith there springs the incarnadine river of death. I turn but an inch, and the lives of maidens are blasted, mothers and sisters mourn, and a hundred babes are fatherless, Science, Christianity and Civilization stand sponsors for me. Bathing-beach Policemen Should Travel [eke there a Carnegie or Rockefeller education fund that could be persuaded to furnish a moderate sum of money to send to Europe delegates from the bathing-beach police of our Atlantic Coast (including New Jersey) to observe the habits of bathers on the west coast of Con- tinental Europe? The thing is worth doing in the interests of civilization. If our bathing-beach policemen could once see what women bathers wear at Scheveningen, Ostend, Deauville, Biarritz and on down the coast, those who survived the shock would come home better men, with very much liberalized ideas about clothing. “NYJHAT are the European nations fighting for, any- way—commercial ascendency?” “No—commercial descendency.”