Life, 1914-08-27 · page 31 of 44
Life — August 27, 1914 — page 31: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**"A Wasted Opportunity"** satirizes naval safety practices. The Navy planned to sink obsolete battleships from the Spanish-American War as gunnery targets. The cartoonist sarcastically suggests using excursion boats on Long Island Sound instead—implying this would be equally reckless and expose civilians to danger. The joke critiques indifference to public safety. **"Heredity?"** shows a woman viewing family portraits, questioning whether traits pass through generations—a reference to contemporary eugenics debates popular among educated Americans of this era. **"The War Prophets"** mocks self-proclaimed experts predicting Europe's future. The text defines a "war prophet" as someone who makes bold predictions about war's causes and outcomes *after* the war ends—obviously useless hindsight repackaged as foresight. The final jab at bankers receiving government aid suggests wartime profiteering while others suffer. This reflects pre-WWI skepticism toward both intellectuals and financial interests.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HEREDITY ? A Wasted Opportunity The Navy Department is considering the question of using our obsolete battleships of the time of the Cuban War as targets for big-gun practice. —Scientific American. HY not do still better and use for this purpose some of the excursion boats which are still permitted by the authorities to ply on Long Island Sound and in New York Harbor? “INS AND OUTS OF LIFE” The War Prophets AMONG all the able sociologists, political economists and other historical literati who have been writing epoch-making books on the conditions, armament and fu- ture of Europe in the past ten years, there is a vast raw material for the war prophets who will blossom out during the next ten years, A war prophet, by the way, is a man who is able to foretell just what is going to happen in a war, including its causes, after the war is over. BLESSED are the bankers, for they shall always be first in line for government help.