Life, 1916-03-23 · page 24 of 52
Life — March 23, 1916 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page combines WWI commemoration with dystopian satire. The **"Anzac"** section is a serious poem by Wallace Irwin mourning the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign, where Australian and New Zealand troops suffered catastrophic casualties against Ottoman forces. It references the slaughter directly ("corpse-clogged waves were red") and invokes vengeance, typical of WWI-era patriotic literature. The **"Twenty-five Years Hence"** section satirizes an imagined future society of 1950 (written around 1925). It mocks feared dystopian trends: eugenics ("state eugenic hospital"), state execution ("electricity to kill prisoners"), industrial negligence ("eight hundred people burned"), devaluation of human life, loss of freedom under unnamed oppressive rule ("before the Germans came"), and surveillance ("you'll have to be identified"). The cartoon depicts an unidentified man confronting someone at a doorway—likely illustrating the surveillance/identification theme. This satirizes contemporary anxieties about totalitarianism and social degeneration, presenting them as logical extensions of current trends.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘LIF E* Anzac “Why don’t they advance?” asked an observer on one of the ships, sceing great masses of troops halt on tke hillside. “ They have advanced,” replied an officer grimly; and taking the glasses the observer beheld the spectacle—whole companies had been mowed down almost simultaneously, and lay still, as though awaiting a charge. N those shores confronting Troy, bloody in an epic world, Thunder drowning Homer's lyre, tens of thousands they were hurled; Not as Agamemnon charged, armed against a bowman’s skill, But as valor and as youth poured into a slaughter-mill, Human flesh confronting steel from each unrelenting gun, Snouting from the fort-rimmed hills of the heathen and the Hun. From the deserts and the mines, England's stoutest pioneers, Eager with adventure-blood of young twenty’s glowing years, “Let us forth!” again they cried as they leaped into the tide Where the barb-mesh drew them down: and they struggled till they died, While their thousands still came on to be mingled with the dead, Till the beach could hold no more and the corpse-clogged waves were red. Days of fever, nights of hell. And the death-stench filled the air ‘Till the browned New Zealand men drooped and sickened in the glare, Till the lean Australian lads, used to deserts and to drouth, Fell to babbling at the curse from the cannon’s open mouth. Rocks were shaken upon rocks while the Monsters of the Den, Licking forth their magic fires, blasted out the lives of men. Anzac! Harsh and bitter sound, like some blood-fed idol’s fane! Let them go. Be satisfied. You can fatten on the slain That a frenzied War Lord drew—call him Odin, Moloch, Baal— You haye burnt a Nation’s flower. To what purpose? Did they fail? For every man that died in that Strait’s polluted breath Shall a hundred Britons rise to do vengeance for his death. Wallace Irwin, Nay! In 1950 MANNING: These pies, my love, are just like the ones my mother used to decline when she was on a hunger strike. Twenty-five Years Hence “YOU say that at one time he was a clergyman? How interesting! I understand they used to be quite numerous.” “This is your busy week, isn’t it?” “Yes, indeed. You know our baby is coming home from the state eugenic hospital to spend the holidays.” “T understand they used to use electricity to kill pris- oners with. But letting them loose in the streets of New York, as they do now, is so much more humane, don’t you think? It’s all over so soon.” Eprtortat (minor): Only eight hundred people weré burned to death in factories yesterday. This is the best day we have had for a week. Surceon (politely): Wouldn't it be better, as long as you are here, for me to remove all of your vital organs in- stead of two? You know we do it at club rates. “Papa, what does the word Freedom mean?” “It’s an obsolete word, my son, that was used before the Germans came. It has no meaning now.” “T don't want to say anything against him. He might suit you very well, but if I were you I would take him on trial for a week first. I say this as woman to woman.” “Come, father and mother, it’s time for you to go to “(YM VERY SORRY, SIR, BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO BE IDENTIFIED” comicbooks.com