Life, 1917-01-25 · page 8 of 40
Life — January 25, 1917 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This editorial essay criticizes American public indifference to World War I, despite witnessing atrocities in Belgium, the sinking of the Lusitania, poison gas attacks, and crimes against civilians across Europe. The author argues that most Americans have remained detached—focused on earning wages rather than engaging emotionally or politically with the war. The piece expresses frustration that the nation shows "apathy" toward military preparedness and war readiness, using sarcasm about Maine being "splintered" and burned by religious conflict. It suggests Americans are emotionally exhausted ("dull-eyed") observers of European suffering, yet unmotivated to act decisively either for or against intervention. The decorative borders contain allegorical or classical figures, typical of Life magazine's artistic presentation during this period.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
American Apathy INCE the war began we Americans have had all the emotions S possible. We had them over Belgium, over Rheims cathedral and Louvain, over the Lusitania and all the other submarine murders, over Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, over poison gas and Zeppelin raids, over crimes without number against women, children, wounded men and prisoners; over Poland, Servia and Armenia. About all these things we have had all the feelings possible, and expressed them as we could, mainly in words. Individual Americans who were free to act on their war impulses, and have had money or time to give, have given both freely. But the great mass of our people have been held to their necessary wage earning, and have kept busy at it. Out of our feelings as a nation not only has nothing more important than inaction come, but even our national capacity for indignation seems to have been exhausted. We have grown torpid, and look on, nowadays, dull-eyed at Europe, and sigh at the cost of eggs, and read the stock market. If Gabriel should sound his trumpet it is hard to say how it would affect us. One can imagine an astonished archangel muttering to him- self, “Is it impossible to start anything in that country?” Somebody once described Maine as so splintered up into sects and burnt over by peculiar beliefs that religion was as good as dead in it. So it is, a good deal, with us as a nation about the war. We are a graveyard of dead fervors, torpid even about ourselves, If invited by invaders to stand up against a wall and be shot, a good many of us might line up almost with a sense of relief. It would be something at last that we could do. Even our ardor for military preparation is touched with apathy. We think we ought to arm and exercise for self-defense, but we are going about it with long rest-intervals, and leisurely discussion, and all the deliberation of a ship provisioning for a voyage around the world, hoping meanwhile that in the end it won't be necessary to start. We are a fire that is going out, leaving nearly all the fuel unburned. It is a very curious condition. “ All Wilson's fault,” every second man will tell you. “If Roosevelt had been President the war would have been over months ago.” As to that, no one can tell, nor whether we should be better off ablaze than as we are. But this one sees, that the majority of our comicbooks.com