Life, 1916-08-24 · page 12 of 42
Life — August 24, 1916 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes America's military readiness (likely pre-WWI era). The illustration shows a ragtag group of civilians in mismatched clothing and uniforms—including what appears to be a man in a top hat, someone in checkered pants, and figures with improvised weapons—marching chaotically under the sun. The caption "OUR MILITIA" is ironic: rather than displaying an organized, professional fighting force, the image depicts an undisciplined, unprepared citizen militia. The varied costumes and casual demeanor suggest incompetence and lack of training. The accompanying essay about Solomon's wisdom and marital relations appears unrelated to the cartoon, suggesting this is a multi-topic magazine page typical of Life's format.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“LIFE: A Short Sermon for Men HE femiaist of to-day might be justified in concluding that the wisdom of Solomon was chiefly displayed in the number of wives he maintained. He was not sufficiently trivial to have collected them for the mere purposes of diversion. A varied assortment was evidently necessary to satisfy the needs of his manifold nature. And a purely chivalrous consideration for the limitations of the individual woman must have induced him to multiply her, indefinitely, in his domestic scheme. Solomon was a wise man, but above all, a gentleman, Unlike the modern male, he was too sensible and too just to expect one feminine gem to fill all the facets of his in- finite requirements. For it is a self-evident fact that the more civilized a man becomes, the more barbarous and omnivorous are his demands. The average husband requires beauty, but he makes no allowance for its cultivation. He forgets that leisure, rest, change, freedom from care, are all necessary to its preser- vation and __ perpetuation. His wife must be physically strong, but she must also possess the clinging quality of the parasite and the deli- cacy of the odalisque. She must have brains, but her reasoning powers must Balletin No, 23460 A hot breakfast next week til further notice. Coffee is prohibited. Bad for the nerves. For lanch—cold raw cactus and sand. Don’t OVER-EAT. Don’t drink any water. Be patient. We expect plen- ty of food by October or never become sufficiently acute to question either his ac- tions or his statements. Humor should be one of her characteristics, but it must be limited to an appreciation of his own particular brand of jokes. Her moral strength must be sufficient to resist her own temptations, and at the same time she must be broad and liberal enough to excuse and overlook his derelictions and obliquities. While denying her an intellectual equality, he expects her to solve, in her own narrowed province, domestic and economic problems which would have staggered the genius of an Archimedes. She must patiently submit herself to his caprices, whims, moods and tempers, but he deprecates the “cunning” and “trickery” which are the inevitable outcome of any moral or financial dependence. These reprehensible qualities he considers peculiar to her sex, and not to her condition. When he begins to compare her with other women, which he invariably and unconsciously does, as soon as the moon of honey has waned, he selects some one particular charm of a casual acquaintance, which his wife has failed to de- velop, and thereby falls into the specious fallacy of mis- taking a part for the whole. When Mrs. A. appears in chic attire, the male observer assigns to the bird the credit due the feathers, and overlooks the fact that friend hus- band may have been frisked to pay the bills. When Mrs. B, has had the leisure to cram for a discussion of the latest war news, or the last best-seller, it never occurs to the OUR MILITIA