Life, 1915-05-20 · page 28 of 44
Life — May 20, 1915 — page 28: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes early-WWI attitudes toward the conflict (likely 1914-1915). The main article "Optimists and the War" mocks pre-war optimists who believed humanity was progressing inevitably toward perfection. The author argues that pessimists deliberately triggered the war to prove optimists wrong—a darkly ironic commentary suggesting the catastrophic conflict has vindicated the pessimists' gloomier worldview and silenced naive progress-believers "for a century." The cartoon "Husbands of the Right Sort" (top) depicts men swimming/lounging while women watch from above—likely mocking men avoiding military service or satirizing gender dynamics during wartime. "Strict Neutrality" (lower left) shows a dog evading conflict, referencing America's non-combatant status at this date. The "Crothers Says" item references evangelist Billy Sunday, a controversial public figure, quipping that his inflammatory rhetoric is simply how he naturally speaks. The bottom cartoon shows a military captain instructing a recruit about earning honor through service.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Optimists and the War THiS war was brought on by. some unseen but far-seeing intelli- gence in order to discomfit the opti- mists. The optimists had got things almost entirely their own way. They were running with the bit in their teeth, and were just about to push everybody else out of the seats of the mighty. It had got so that nobody but the optimists were respectable. Their story was that the human race was not only a superbly wonderful race, but that it was getting better all the time, and that everything was for the best, and that civilization had STRICT NEUTRALITY ip HUSBANDS OF THE RIGHT SORT never before reached such a high state of civilization, and that we rapidly gaining on the millennium. So long and so insistently did they din this into our ears that nearly everybody finally was in the way of believing. it. Everybody but the pessimists, of course, the few obstinate pessimists who could only sit back and bite their lips in resentment at the way things were going. And then, suddenly, by some mysterious but tremendously effective coup d’état, the pessimists (or their representatives) brought on the biggest and most disastrous war in all the long history of the whole world. The result has already been decisive. The optimists long since took to their heels in dismay, and he is indeed a venturesome and irresponsible optimist who to-day can forget Europe long enough to assert that the human race is on the up-grade. It may be that a reaction will come in time, and that the voice of the optimist will again be heard throughout the land, but their cause has been retarded at least a century. were E. 0. J. who hopes Crothers Says D®. SAMUEL CROTHERS, essay- ist and Unitarian minister, de- clines to he shocked by Billy Sunday. He says: “The things that Sun¢ says are simply the way he talks.” The Captain (to the new recruit): We MUST ADD A GREATER GLORY TO OUR ANCIENT UNIFORM BY EARNING THE RIGHT TO FILL IT, KEEP THIS ALWAYS BEFORE You comicbooks.com