Life, 1915-08-19 · page 11 of 48
Life — August 19, 1915 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main cartoon depicts a military officer standing over a prone figure labeled as a "cub." The illustration satirizes Professor Nearing's dismissal from University of Pennsylvania, discussed in the article "Not the Matter, But the Manner." The satire critiques how university trustees handled Nearing's removal—not objecting to his views themselves, but objecting to *how* he expressed them publicly. The "trainer" (authority figure) represents institutional power disciplining the "cub" (Nearing or radical academics generally). The article quotes Nearing's complaint that court officials showed "petty insolence" and that he was forced to resign rather than be dismissed outright. The cartoon visually represents this power dynamic: institutional authority training or punishing dissenting intellectuals through intimidation rather than direct confrontation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE CUB AND Not the Matter, But the Manner WRITER for the New York Times has been interviewing’ the trustees of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania in order to get “the truth” about Professor Nearing’s dismissal, just as if the truth were not already as plain as the sum of two and two. The trustees refuse to be quoted by name, but they stoutly maintain that they are not opposed to free speech, and that it wasn’t anything that Professor Nearing said, but the way he said it, that agitated their equanimit To illustrate, here is a remark that Professor Nearing made after he had served a while on a petit jury: I saw foreigners come into court dazed and terrified, unrepresented by counsel, badly understood through inefficient interpreters, and sentenced to months or even years in prison. I saw political power and wealth, fur coats on arm, bowed respectfully in and out of court, and even in and out of the prisoners’ dock, though HIS TRAINER the members of the jury were subjected to the petty insolence of the court officials. Property is a god in criminal jurisprudence. Manifestly there could be nothing offensive to respectable magnates and politicians in such a statement as that, but it was the way Mr. Nearing did it. He wrote it in a letter to the newspaper of largest circulation in Phila- delphia, thus enabling a great many people to see it. That was a mistake. When a man has such information to reveal he should go off by himself in the woods and whisper it to the birds. Not Urlikely Mé* WANAMAK buy Belgium might be only a beginning. keeps on long enough almost any country in Europe can be bought for a song. Fancy England, Russia, Germany or France selling on the Wall Street curb at forty-three bid, forty-five asked! R’S proposal that the United States If the war comicbooks.com