Life, 1914-09-24 · page 13 of 45
Life — September 24, 1914 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Illustration:** A wartime domestic safety cartoon showing a man watering his garden while a car passes by. The caption warns against hiring a "French chauffeur" if neighbors employ a German gardener—likely satirizing wartime suspicions of foreign nationals and espionage paranoia during WWI. **"A Medical Gun-man":** This article criticizes medical inspectors enforcing public health authority through coercion. It compares their use of force to despotism, arguing citizens resent mandatory vaccines and medical procedures ("shoot up the town"). The piece suggests people distrust government medical mandates. **Bottom cartoon ("The Milk of Human Kindness"):** Shows a figure offering milk to a cat, illustrating kindness or charity. The page reflects WWI-era anxieties about foreign threats and governmental overreach.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘WAR TIME DON'TS IF YOUR NEIGHBORS KEEP A GERMAN GARDENER, DON’T ENGAGE A FRENCH CHAUFFEUR A Medical Gun-man A NEWS item in the daily press announces that medical inspectors representing the New York State Health Department will hereafter carry revolvers to enforce their authority. This is a pleasant indication of the growing influence of the peace movement. It is also a good sign that the common people are resisting the espionage and control of the medical authorities. It has always been characteristic of despotism that it employs force to maintain its asserted power. A modern medical inquisition would be about as agreeable to-day, to the average citizen, as it was to the religious dissenters in the days when the thumb-screw and the rack were found to be persuasive forms of argument. If the “regulars” cannot convince the citizen that it would be healthy for him to submit quietly and peaceably to their regulation, they are evidently prepared to “ shoot up the town”. And there are those who would rather take a chance with the doctor's gun than with his vaccine virus or anti-typhoid serum. W.S.M. ERE will the Kaiser retire to? Is there another hill to rent at Oyster Bay? THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS