Life — May 27, 1915 — page 8: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Political Context and Satire This Life magazine page from 1936 addresses World War I atrocities and prisoner treatment. The article "Not Eating Prisoners Yet" responds to claims by Bourke Cochran that Germans won't eat prisoners, satirizing this as an absurdly low bar for "civilization." The piece argues that Germans have only recently abandoned practices like cannibalism in the South Seas, and that restraint in prisoner treatment shouldn't warrant praise. The cartoon "The Hold-Up" (lower left) depicts a mounted soldier confronting a pedestrian—likely satirizing German militarism or wartime coercion. The poem "Paris" on the right, by Kate Masterson, nostalgically evokes pre-war Paris's cultural glory while lamenting its current state, evoking loss and decline during wartime.