Life, 1915-11-18 · page 40 of 52
Life — November 18, 1915 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a political satire and period advertisements from Life magazine (circa WWI era). **The Satire:** The opening essay "War on the Installment Plan" mocks the escalating costs and disruption of World War I. The author suggests ironically that nations should wage "installment war"—small, regular conflicts rather than total war—as a compromise between militarists and pacifists. This is absurdist satire criticizing the war's scale and expense while ridiculing both warmongers and peace advocates for their extremism. **The Advertisements:** The page is dominated by truck and automobile ads typical of the period, including Denby Motor Trucks and Stromberg Carburetors. **The Essay "Miss Le Clere's Legacy":** This piece critiques French writer Anatole France for allegedly corrupting French morality, then ironically notes that a wealthy American spinster actually left money to fight "bad literature in France"—underscoring the perceived cultural threat of French influence on American values. Overall: period-specific commercial content mixed with contemporary cultural anxiety about war, literature, and moral influence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
* TE RErET War on the Installment Plan T is hereby respectfully suggested to the war experts that they figure out a way to conduct war on the installment plan. If we must have war and shoot each other up in barbarous fashion, let us be true to our nature and have it, but let us not try to do it all at once. It is too costly and too distracting. That's where the Kaiser made his grand mistake. For many years he had nothing but peace with the rest of the world, and now he has nothing but war. That is poor judgment, showing a love of extremes that doesn't at all comport with the eternal fitness of things, Just at present the militarists and the pacifists are a long way apart, but per- haps some installment plan by which we may have only a little war at a time, but have it regularly, would offer an acceptable compromise between them. BY 34 Ton Truck*890 With body as shown, Top, panel body, starting, and lichting system, Y "desired, at moderate additional expenses” A Service HE business man with the light-delivery That Makes work finds this new Denby model exactly == it Pay suited to his needs. The Denby internal-gear drive and other features of Denby leadership are embodied in it; and it is a truck designed from the ground up for light-delivery duty. The Denby Business-Building and Sales Efficiency Service [= A Real assures the owner that he can make the truck pay. This [ Light-Delivery service—prepared by experts—consists of a correspondence course of thirty-six lessons, embracing every branch of retail salesmanship. It shows how to get new customers; how to increase orders; how to do a better business at greater profit. It adds a fully-equipped salesman to your force. Every truck or delivery-wagon owner may name one person to take the course, without charge. °$3000 has been appro- priated by us for rewards to successful students. You Can Afford Motor-Haulage Now Like thousands of other business men, you have probably realized the superior speed, efficiency, dependability and neat- ness of the motor-truck. But you may have been doubtful about the actual dollars-and-cents return. The Denby truck is mechanically right. And the exclusive Denby Business- Building Service assures you that you will be able to make it profitable. Write for particulars of the model in which you are especially interested. DENBY Motor Truck Company 405 Holbrook Ave., Detroit, Mich, STROMBERG Han§gs Up Another. Record! 27/, Miles on One Gallon of Gasoline—6] Miles an Hour The car made the t STROMBERG MOTOR DEVICES Co., Devt. B G4 East 25th Street, Chicago, Seed facts about new Stromberg Carbaretor foes Miss Le Clere’s Legacy IX Reedy’s Mirror (October 15) John L. Hervey sails into Anatole France to the length of a whole three-column page because of his demoralizing in- fluence on the spirit of France. He blames him as one of those who, by studiously diverting the French sexual instinct away from procreation, have brought France to “the most desperate crisis in her history.” Of a truth, France has had a lot of rotten writers, very skillful at their em- ployment and very pernicious in their effect. Four or five years ago an old French woman in New York left a considerable legacy to fight bad litera- ture in France. She was a spinster and a Protestant, Mile. Le Clere, who had been a teacher here in girls’ schools for fifty years and had many attached friends. The legacy was large—fifty or a hundred thousand dollars. It failed for some reason of illegality. She was a true French patriot, that old woman. She saw a literature that was poisoning France and did her best to check it. It needed a longer reach than hers, and, perhaps, will get it now. “Wuy do ye look so sorrowful, Den- nis?” asked one man of another. “T just hear-r-d wan man call another a liar, and the man that was called a liar said the other man would have to apologize, or there would be a fight.” “And why should that make you look sad?” “The other man apologized!” —Tit-Bits. comicbooks.com