Life, 1914-09-24 · page 32 of 45
Life — September 24, 1914 — page 32: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page satirizes "War Experts"—self-proclaimed military analysts who profitably peddle false predictions about WWI. The text mockingly defines them as consistently wrong analysts who charge $15+ weekly depending on their fabrications' scope. The top photograph titled "The Gleaners" shows workers in a field, likely illustrating ordinary people engaged in honest labor—a visual contrast to the parasitic "experts." The bottom cartoon depicts a soldier catching a baseball, accompanying the rhetorical question "Why not use our baseball catchers in time of war?" This likely critiques how military expertise was valued less than celebrity or athletic fame during wartime recruitment, or satirizes absurd military decision-making. The text particularly mocks retired officers advising the press while prevented from active duty, and those claiming friendship with the Kaiser or European royalty. The savage mathematical parody about "hypothenuses" emphasizes the absurdity of their pseudo-scientific approach to military analysis.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
About the War Expert TH War Expert is a man whose business it is to get together all the facts, figures, rumors, canards and official statements and, in the light of his vast experience, analyze and dissect and group them in such a way that the conclusions he arrives at invariably are wrong. Or to put it scientifically : Every War Expert is like every other War Expert. No two War Experts agree except in such cases where neither of them, by the remotest possibility, could be right. An intersecting line drawn from one War Expert to another, and from thence to a third, will always show that the square of the hypothenuse is in inverse ratio to the natural ignorance of one added to the combined acquired stupidity of the other two, This can be demonstrated in many ways, but the usual test is time. The ideal War Expert is a military man who is either retired or for some personal reason is temporarily pre- vented from joining his regiment, and is thus enabled to put his gigantic intellect to bear on some of the acute problems of the war, the correct details of which the news- Papers are not publishing from day to day. He is ale- as a rule, an intimate friend of the Kaiser sh hae ants eros te o iT oT or Kings engaged, who received their present military knowledge from having been his classmate. War Experts are now in demand. The price of a good ‘one varies, from fifteen dollars a week upward, according to the location of the imaginary armies and the size and extent and variety of the whoppers he has to prepare. WHY NOT USE OUR BASEBALL CATCHERS IN TIME OF WAR?