Life — May 17, 1917 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

*LIPE- Pew 1a “THIS WAR MUST BE STOPPED!” J Spend Your Money! OW do our friends in Washington expect to get any moncy out of the American people when they advise the people not to spend anything? Secretary Houston, for example, thinks that saving ought to be made fashionable. But is this sound? For two years or more sensible men in the country were advising the government of what was coming. But demo- cratic governments are proverbially slow to act. The slogan, “He kept us out of war,” was a panacea for all future ills. Then, when we went into war, Congress pro- ceeded, with the help of the newspaper headlines, to scare to death every business man. Threatened by the govern- ment with every unknown ill, naturally everyone in the country stopped buying overnight. Result: thousands of workers were discharged in our large cities, and thou- sands of worthy business men trembled in their boots. One reason why this country is the wealthiest in the world is because we know how to spend money. Let us keep right on. If you have ordered a new gown, madam, don’t countermand it. If you, sir, have a new auto com- ing, don’t countermand it. Order another small one, if necessary, and help the workman keep his job. Spend your money and keep business alive. ASHER: operation? Pucitist: Five hundred dollars, win, lose or draw. What are the surgeon’s terms for your THe German machine seems to be stuck in reverse. What Is Billy Sunday's Religion? ILLY SUNDAY has got something, and it seems to be valuable, but what is it? Investigators have followed him ‘in the cities in which he has operated and analyzed and tabulated the results of his gninistrations. They have reported that he does good, and they have statistics to show that, as an agency of re- form, he is profitable to employ, notwithstanding the large expense of his engagements. They find, no doubt, that when he has thoroughly beaten atl up and evangelized a community he leaves vice a diminished in it, drunkenness lessened, dis-. honesty restrained, and indulgence in all the car- nal delights less prevalent than he ‘found it. These are results not less agreeable to the soul of thrift than to piety. And yet they do not in themselves explain what Billy has got. Evidently he uses in his work a cer- tain amount of religion, but what kind of religion is it? He excites in people the will to be good in the phases of goodness that he understands. If they need to be reformed in their habits or deportment he fires them with the will to be reformed. Muldoon by different means can do some- thing like that; so can various keepers of sanitariums. A Jewish or a Mahommedan revivalist might do the same, and so, possibly, might an’ Indian medicine man. About the religion of Wesley, of Whitfield, of Moody there was no doubt. It was Christian. But this religion that Billy Sunday works with is a curious thing. It is less reverent than baseball. There is nothing that is much like it in the New Testament, and no preacher who is there recorded preached or performed at all like Billy. It may be that his office is not to impart religion, but merely to plough the hard human clay, and so prepare the soil that someone who has religion to impart can plant some in it. If that is the case, a man in whom Christianity is planted after Billy has got through with him may work out into quite a promising Christian. Probably that often happens, because Christianity is the only religion that is much taught hereabouts, and when a soul has been made ready to receive religion and looks about for some, Chris- tianity of the prevailing sort is what it is likely to get. But that anybody can get it from Billy Sunday seems very doubtful. He seems to have religion and to use it, but what jit is, heaven knows. comicbooks.com