Life, 1914-12-17 · page 30 of 40
Life — December 17, 1914 — page 30: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon depicts an elephant (symbolizing the Republican Party) playfully trampling vegetation while smaller monkeys observe. The caption jokes: "Say, Chim, isn't it lucky she's a vegetarian?"—satirizing the elephant's destructive power while suggesting relief it doesn't eat meat (likely a metaphor for political restraint or harm). The bottom cartoon shows a collection agent approaching sleeping figures, with a warning to "awaken the sleepers before you start the collection"—a satirical jab at collecting money from inattentive or negligent parties. The accompanying article by Mr. Simonds, the War Editor, discusses American newspaper coverage of World War I in Europe. He argues Americans received reliable war news but often didn't understand the *military significance* of reported events—a critique of readers' superficial war knowledge despite information abundance. The Evening Sun's editorials allegedly helped fill this gap.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CS \ of AW. 4 ls PLE 4 - — “BY THE WAY, MR. SUPHLEY, IT WOULD BE WELL TO AWAKEN THE SLEEPERS BEFORE YOU START THE COLLECTION ” Mr. Simonds: War Editor T seems probable that we Americans know more about the war in Europe than any other large company of newspaper readers. We think we have had more reliable news in print than other people. We have read our newspapers gratefully. Our appetite for news has been enormous, and our publishers have backed up their carts and dumped printed pieces into it in a manner fit to be a lesson to con- tractors. We believe that in the main we got true news, and that, by and large, we know what is doing, but we are also aware that often from day to day we have not understood the mili- tary significance of the news that has been offered to us. That is where the double-leaded edi- torials in the Evening Sun have helped us out, Students of strategy are scarce. The average newspaper reader is not interested in war as an art, has never studied a campaign, never mas- (Continued on page 1138.)