Life, 1914-12-17 · page 11 of 40
Life — December 17, 1914 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page displays a map of Europe with corrective marks made by an offended German reader, as noted in the caption. The map appears to have shown territorial claims or borders that a German reader disputed. The three article excerpts below address early-20th-century race science and German perspectives: 1. **"The Crown Prince Likes Life"** discusses the Crown Prince's reading habits, noting his preference for Life magazine's satirical commentary. 2. **"The Inferiority of the Negro"** presents a racist pseudo-scientific argument claiming Black inferiority, advocating inferior schools as justification. 3. **"Blessed Inefficiency"** quotes Dr. J.H. Tilden on vaccine failures, followed by commentary on German diplomatic misunderstandings of American viewpoints. The page satirizes both German nationalism and American racist ideology prevalent in that era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THIS MAP, PUBLISHED IN A RECENT ISSUE OF LIFE” HAS BEEN RETURNED WITH CORRECTIONS SHOWN ABOVE BY “ AN OFFENDED READER”, WITH A GERMAN NAME The Crown Prince Likes Life A glance at the reading-table in the Crown Prince’ generally repeated story that he reads only what 1s clipped for him. I saw on his table leading American, English, French and Italian papers, with several numbers of Puck and Lire. [asked him what he thought of American humor, and he replied that of his favorite magazines because of its clever po- litical satire, its wisdom and_ its faculty for puncturing conceit. -The interview with Crown Prince. e's room nailed the Lire was one F course we think better of the Crown Prince for his good opin- ion of Lire. If he has kept up with that publication since August rst and still can speak as he does, he is more of a philosopher than we had sup- posed. There seems to be nothing the matter with the Crown Prince except the distressing ailment which affects the whole of Germany—the national big-head, growing out of sudden pros- perity, and an extreme over-apprecia- tion of Germany’s virtue, power, rela- tive importance and duty to the rest of mankind. No doubt all the Kaiser's boys have caught the disease which has been epidemic in Germany, but otherwise, judging from what one reads and hears, they seem to be as good a family of boys, simple, decent and affectionate, as there is in Europe. Blessed Inefficiency D* J. H. Tilden, of Denver, says: “The only reason we do not have more fatalit: from vaccine ainst’ smallpox is because the poison fails to get deep enough to gain entrance to the circulation or the material used is inert.” Thus we see that professional care- lessness and commercial imposture are not always without their compensa- tions. The Inferiority of the Negro UR friends down South, being sure that the negroes are inferior, deny them advantages and provide in- ferior schools for negro children in order that they will. continue to be inferior and thus prove the correctness of the contention of the scientists and sentimentalists that the negro is in- ferior. After all, there is nothing quite so satisfying as the feeling that you have got things fixed so that you will always have an inferior race in your midst. HE Germans do not understand other Their diplomacy has shown that convincingly. Most of the letters of American Germans to the newspapers show the same thing. They do not get even a glimmer of the American point of view. people.