Life, 1916-08-10 · page 9 of 38
Life — August 10, 1916 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the *Evening Post*'s aggressive criticism of U.S. military mobilization during World War I. The article "Too Bad About the Post" defends the army against accusations that the Seventh Regiment received inadequate care (lacking Pullman cars, medical exams, hot meals en route to Texas). The cartoons illustrate the tension: a man celebrating finally dressing his wife in her "war rig" (top left), and soldiers in proper military dress (bottom). The satire's point: the *Post* is hypocritically using legitimate logistical concerns to undermine public support for military preparation. The author argues the newspaper prioritizes sensationalism over patriotic responsibility, making it an unreliable critic of actual military needs.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“LIFE: Too Bad About the Post HE pacific zeal of the Evening Post has made it quite a passionate critic of the militia mo- bilization. It is out to prove, apparently, that everything connected with our army and military proceedings is bad, and to make trouble for our military managers anywhere it can. It has wailed freely about the Seventh regiment and its prog- ress to the border, demanding to know why it left without a medical examination; why it didn’t travel in Pullman cars, and why was it not met by government officers with a hot meal when it got to St. Louis. The Post insists that nothing like this neglect of the Seventh happened in the German mobilization of 1914. “Does anyone believe that the German staff would have sent the Seventh off without medical examination? But Colonel Fiske writes back from Texas that every man of the Seventh got his medical examination before he started, and no regiment ever made a long journey more comfortably than the Seventh journeyed to Tex The Post prints his letter with an editorial sigh at the bottom of it, and of course the Post's readers laugh. It is a pity the Post snivels so. It makes one wish the Villards would sell it. And yet it might easily be in worse hands. To publish the Evening Post is a labor that calls for sincere conse- cration, Marse Henry Watterson, 225 writing of the sale of the Sun, said the “vital ethics—the source and the resource—the very soul of journalism ~—is Disinterestedness.” His point was that editors, if they would succeed, must not seek office, nor use their pa pers for ulterior purposes, but be satis- fied to make a paper and get what is coming to them out of that. Of course that is so. A man who uses himself to make a newspaper sometimes does it, but a man who uses a paper to get himself an office or a bargain in stocks usually ruins his paper. No doubt the Villards have a kind of disinterestedness. They use the Post to promote virtue as they see it, and manage to retain in it more per- sonality and quality than there is in any other New York evening paper. But they are fanatical people, and a fanatical paper which, in spite of its merits and its high price, does not represent its readers. It makes one wish that pacifism and suffrage might find another organ. We need good military critics. The mobilization needs criticism. The Post is intelligent and might do good to the army if it had that purpose. But its purpose, apparently, is to do harm; and to disaffect so much of the public mind as it can influence, towards all military preparation. “COMPANY—ATTENTION! RIGHT DRESS! A CO-FDUCATIONAL MILITARY TRAINING CAMP IS SOON TO BE OPENED “SOMEWHERE” IN NEW JERSEY comicbooks.com