Life, 1915-09-02 · page 15 of 48
Life — September 2, 1915 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top illustration depicts a domestic scene where a mother instructs children to be quiet during a bishop's visit, asking if they can "just ask him if he will baptize the new kittens." This is gentle satire mocking religious formality and children's innocent irreverence toward ecclesiastical authority. Below, the article "Too Much Becker" discusses a criminal case involving someone named Becker, criticizing excessive public attention to outlaws and suggesting the legal system should return to quietly executing criminals rather than making spectacles of them. "The New System" section appears to reference post-WWI diplomacy, specifically attempting to convince Germans of Allied rightness—likely commentary on Treaty of Versailles negotiations or peace treaty justifications. The x-ray diagram on the right's caption is unclear without full context.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“NOW, CHILDREN, I WANT YOU TO BE PERFECTLY QUIET WHEN THE BISHOP IS HERE, AND NOT SAY ANYTHING THAT WILL MoRTIFY ME.” “BUT, MAMMA, CAN'T WE JUST Too Much Becker We had much more about Becker than was necessary. Very much 1go much between his arrest and exe- cution; considerably too much after his execution, The subsequent pro- ceedings in his case suggest the expe- diency of a return to the old practice of depositing the bodies of executed _ criminals in quicklime in the jai rd. Becker was an outlaw. Outlaws are apt to be popular for the reason partly that the law is no better than it should be, but chiefly because the nat- ural, average man is himself a good deal of an outlaw and has a heart that inclines to warm to lawhreakers except when they break the law to his cost. Becker was also a gambler. He gambled habitually. He bet he could heat the law, and finally lost. Almost all gamblers finally lose. That is all in the day's work and does not call for excessive public attention. Neither need the public give very much of its mind to cases where outlaws finally get the law, The New System WHat we are really trying to do is to convince the Germans that they were wrong in thinking that they could convince us that we were wrong in thinking that we could convince them that we were right. SK HIM IP HE WILL BAPTIZE THE NEW KITTENS? >” AN X-RAY VIEW OF THE WoKLD comicbooks.com