Life, 1915-11-11 · page 21 of 44
Life — November 11, 1915 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This *Life* magazine page satirizes arguments against war and large families, specifically targeting sociologist David Starr Jordan's pacifist views. **The Cartoon:** The caricatured figure holds a document labeled "Path of Science," depicted as a pompous academic or expert promoting eugenic/population control ideas. The "scrap of paper" reference echoes the phrase used to dismiss Belgium's neutrality treaty before WWI. **The Satire:** The text mocks Jordan's two antiwar arguments: (1) that war kills the brave and strong, weakening nations, and (2) that aristocrats started WWI to distract from socialism. The author dismisses both points as naive and pedantic—arguing that France survived despite war casualties, and that "only" Prussians actually support war, making Jordan's pacifism pointless preaching. **Context:** This reflects early-20th-century debates over Darwinism, eugenics, and American neutrality before U.S. entry into WWI. The piece defends war as inevitable and criticizes intellectual pacifism as ineffectual.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“ELLISON, HOOVER ANOTHER “ SCRAP OF PAPER” The world can never be conquered by increasing the birth rate of Germans any more than it can be Romanized by increasing the birth rate of Roman Catholics. The reason is that both Ger- mans and Roman Catholics will escape from control as soon as they become supernumerous enough to be uncom- fortable, or rich enough to become hopefully ambitious. Children are the most interesting possibility in life. People who love life and are tolerably happy will be apt to have as many children as they think they can raise to advantage. Ad- venturous people will risk more children than they can afford, timid ones will cut down their families be- low the limit of prudence. Good gov- ernment makes life easier and surer and that makes for larger families; and so does religion which makes people 909 bolder in the affairs of this world by strengthening their characters and their confidence in the world to come. But exhortations to parents to have sev- enth, eighth and ninth sons to strength- en either church or state are futile. SocloLocicaL Expert David Starr Jordan explained to the Massachusetts Aggies at Amherst that one thing that brought on the war was that the aristocracy of Europe felt that there should be outside fighting to turn the attention of the people away from internal unrest (sometimes called bel- ly-ache) and socialism. If so, they miscalculated, for Socio- logical Expert Frederick C. Howe, Commissioner of Immigration in New York, figures out that “State social- ism on an unprecedented scale will un- doubtedly be one of the by-products of the war all over Europe.” Dr. Jordan disapproves of war. His two main arguments are that murder is murder even though done on a large scale, and that war kills off the brave and strong, letting the nations breed from the weak and poor. As to the first argument, Moses, who put murder into the Ten Command- ments, was able to distinguish between murder and war, and most people since Moses have been able to make the distinction. But it doesn’t greatly matter, because being murdered and being conquered in war are almost equally unacceptable and both warrant objection too violent for Dr. Jordan to approve. Dr. Jordan's other argument under- estimates the recuperative powers of nations. The French people to-day are nothing but a remnant bred from sur- vivors of war. But as people go the French are not so bad. But why argue against war, as though any one who was not crazy thought well of it. The only important people of our time who really think well of it are some of the Prussians, and the effort now making to divert them to other views ought to satisfy even Dr. Jordan. comicbooks.com