Life, 1917-01-18 · page 7 of 40
Life — January 18, 1917 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes German militarism and discipline. The headline quotes military figures (Gen. Leonard Wood and Gen. Hugh Scott) debating whether six months or a year of military training suffices to create soldiers. The cartoon contrasts this with Germany's approach: forty years of harsh officer training in Belgium created such brutalized commanders that they committed atrocities. The text references "horrors that its officers commanded" and notes Germany's moral corruption required prior to its Prussianization. The illustration shows a man in formal dress fleeing a wedding (set for 3:00 PM, now only 3:01) past a wrecked automobile—suggesting chaotic, violent disruption of normal life, likely representing German militarism's destructive impact on civilian society.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Forty Years of It Gen, Leonard Wood believes that six months of military training under high pressure is sufficient to make a good soldier of the American boy. Gen. Hugh Scott insists that a year is necessary—The World. 'O make the kind of soldier who invaded Belgium and did the horrors that his officers commanded took at least forty years, with all the German professors and preachers helping Prussia with the job. The whole Ger- man standard of decency and morals—what there was of it—had first to be corrupted. Perhaps forty years is too low an estimate, for Germans have been Germans a long, long time. But Germany was not completely Prussianized until after the Franco-Prus- sian war. IT 1S NOW 3:01. M15 WEDDING WAS SET FOR 3:00 comicbooks.com