Life, 1915-07-29 · page 30 of 40
Life — July 29, 1915 — page 30: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece features Martin Luther as an interviewed ghost, reflecting on the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation. Luther defends his accomplishments ("a lovely Reformation") but grows melancholy learning the Catholic Church still thrives and that reformism has proliferated into endless causes—now even affecting women. The lower cartoon, "Removing His Hyphen," depicts a "German-American" figure being made sad by having his hyphenated identity surgically removed. This likely references WWI-era tensions: German-Americans faced discrimination and pressure to prove loyalty to America rather than maintaining dual identity. The procedure's emotional toll suggests the painful erasure of cultural heritage demanded by wartime nationalism. Both pieces use dark humor to critique institutional change and political conformity pressure.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
210 Interviews With Dead Celebrities H® was sitting on the doorstep as we came along. His wonderful cye lighted up, but he did not smile. He motioned to us rather bruskly, we thought, to sit down beside him. “You came, of course, to interview me,” he said. “Now, before you be- gin, let me tell you at once that I'm not going into any lengthy explanation of why things are not any better than they are, or whether I lived in vain or not. I know just what you are after. You want to make a newspaper story of why it is after I had started the Reformation, got it going and passed on, that it shouldn’t have done more than it did to straighten things out. None of that. That's thread- bare.” “Well, Mr. Luther, as you have headed us off, we leave it entirely to you, merely observing that the Roman Catholic Church is still doing business at the old stand.” He mused. “Thad a lot of fun with ’em, didn’t 1?” he said at last. “You certainly di “Tt was a lovely Reformation. There's no moral to it, of course. But «All 7 INK laine ZENS Kis TA | ull te | lh REMOVING HIS HYPHEN A MINOR OPERATION ON A GERMAN-AMERICAN AQ TEMPERAMENT WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HIM?” NOTHING THE MATTER WITH HIM, LADY, HE'S JEST SAD.” there’s no moral to any great work of art.” “Certainly not.” “T suppose it was rather mean of me—so far as posterity is concerned— to put the reforming business on a paying basis. I see it has spread to the women.” He looked sad. “That's mighty bad,” he went on. “If I had known—” “Don’t feel any remorse about it,” we said, gently; “they would probably have done it anyway. Besides, there’s so much more to reform than there Sink was. Take the churches. You had only one. Now there are a dozen or so. Any one of them is a man’s job.” He shook his head. “But somehow or other,” he said, “T have given reforming a certain standing, and the strange part of it is that none of them would for a mo- comicbooks.com