Life, 1915-01-14 · page 14 of 44
Life — January 14, 1915 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page features a satirical cartoon showing a magician gesturing dramatically toward a European landscape while Belgium appears to vanish or disappear—a clear reference to Belgium's invasion and occupation during World War I. The magician represents either German military power or wartime deception, making "Belgium disappear" as a darkly comic commentary on the country's conquest. The accompanying articles—"Should Deacons Be Saved?" and "Efficiency in Literature"—are unrelated domestic topics typical of Life magazine's satirical mix. The Belgium cartoon's placement alongside mundane American concerns creates ironic contrast, suggesting the magazine's readers should notice the gravity of European conflict amid ordinary daily discussions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE MAGICIAN “NOW YOU SEE BELGIUM— Should Deacons Be Saved? RE there wickeder people than church deacons? If so, where? Should there be any concerted effort to save them? Billy Sunday says the Church needs “ deacons who will deac.” Dean Matthews remarked of them re- cently: They are moral parasites who throttle the work of the ministers. Many of them are nothing more than moral thermos bottles or fireless cookers, because they show religious fire only occasionally, and then only when they find things already heated. We cannot regard church deacons in quite this light. As a rule, they are a fair barometer of the state of religion. When deacons steal into town at night and sur- reptitiously consort with chorus girls and fill up on fizz water, then ecclesiastical conditions are normal. When, however, they are referred to as thermos bottles by lead- ing dignitaries, the trouble must be, not so much with the deacons, as with the churches. Why not be a thermos bottle where there is so much hot air? Efficiency in Literature HY not have an index and synopsis of populafmovels as they are issued? Nobody has time at present to read novels, and yet, they seem, upon occasion, desir- able things to talk about. We need to know about a novel the names of the principal characters and how it ends; also, the proportion of suicides, divorces, marriages and deaths. This information can all be contained + a few lines., What a help it would be to conversation, especially to conversation with literary ladies! One must talk of some- thing with literary ladies. Why not books? At present no man does this because no man knows anything about books, But if, before meeting a literary lady, you could jog your mind up by learning the characters.and adventures of the latest books, literary ladies might soon begin to believe that the average man had at least a faint semblance of a brain, an idea which, up to the present time, has never occurred to any literary lady, comichooks.com