Life, 1917-11-01 · page 10 of 38
Life — November 1, 1917 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine satirizes World War I diplomacy and German conduct. The large cartoon titled "Old King Coal Was a Merry Old Soul" depicts a bloated figure labeled "Coal Trust" being kicked by two caricatured figures (likely representing British and American interests), suggesting criticism of profiteering during wartime. The text "May Have Been Mistaken" discusses David Lawrence's proposal for an American-British naval commission, questioning whether lack of cooperation between the navies actually existed. The smaller cartoon "Little Boy Blew" uses nursery rhyme imagery to mock Germany's military aggression. The section "The 'Less' Nation" sarcastically praises Germany's innovations in ruthlessness—rubber-less goods, footless assassins, conscience-less sailors—mocking German wartime practices and atrocities.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
704 May Have Been Mistaken David Lawrence would not adver- tise the fact of a lack of co-opera- tion between the American and Brit- ish navies if the lack did not exist, and if he did not see helpfulness in bringing it to the public’s attention. —Boston Advertiser. might. In a letter to the E Post, dated October 2nd, imagined and advertised for Colonel House a company to gather informa- tion and data for the use of the Amer- ican Commission to the Peace Confer- ence (when there is one), that in- cluded Justice Brandeis, Mr. Root, Mr. Taft, Abram Elkus, Henry Morgan- thau, Oscar Straus and “every states- man who is versed in European phases of international politics and familiar with merica’s traditional position therein.” To be sure, his collection of infor- mation-gatherers was conjectural, but a gentleman so apt in conjecture and advertisement of it, and such a bad guesser, might have been practising this fascinating art when he gave out that there was lack of co-operation be- tween the American and British navies. “IT WONDER what the German peo- ple think of raiding open cities.” “Oh, just what the Kaiser tells them to think about it.” EACHER: Define camouflage. Stupent: Josephus Daniels as Secretary of, the Navy. LITTLE BOY BLEW OLD KING COAL WAS A MERRY OLD SOUL The “Less” Nation HE super-efficient and sublimely ingenious Germans, having invented rubberless caoutchouc, foodless meals, conscienceless sailors, powerless majorities and traceless assassinations, seem now to have been devoting their entire attention to the production of honorless diplomats. a HAT’S a shadow Hun?” “A man who is too foxy openly to champion Ger- many’s cause and too disloyal to approve of America’s.”