Life, 1917-11-08 · page 13 of 40
Life — November 8, 1917 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Main Cartoon:** A winged female figure (Liberty or Victory) aims a pistol at a bearded man in ornate military dress with feathered headgear, who holds a torch and staff. A prone figure lies at their feet. The caption reads: "I'LL GIVE BACK YOUR SILVER IF YOU'LL LET ME KEEP THE GIRL." This appears to reference **World War I-era negotiations**, satirizing military leadership's willingness to trade resources (silver/wealth) for control over women or civilian populations. The caricatured military figure likely represents an enemy power or corrupt authority. **Secondary Content:** "Family Weight" is a humorous recruiting examiner dialogue about carrying forty pounds, featuring cartoon illustrations of physical exertion. The page overall satirizes **wartime priorities and gender dynamics** during WWI mobilization, mocking militarism and highlighting women's expanded wartime roles.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“LIFE: 745° the organization of the women’s army is excessive. To get the spirit of the war thoroughly diffused through Amer- ican households is an undertaking that necessitates a good deal of drumming up. But the most incessant war occupation of all is knitting. Every woman, every girl, whenever she sits down, falls to knitting gray yarn. That implies not only an immense pro- duction of stockings, sweaters and scarfs, but a constant concentration of mind on war work. Really, the great army of war-knitters is a very formidable army. They are not knitting for nothing. They mean to win the war— click! click! click! There is women’s work in the training camps, and they do it. There is a vast deal of work at home for women whose men have gone to the war. There will be more of that, no doubt, but there is much now. More than ever women go to offices to take the places of the men who have heen called out. The government employs them by the thou- sand; so do banks and factories and all concerns that are busy with government work. For every one of the twenty- five thousand war nurses who marched down Fifth Avenue LL GIVE BACK YOUR SILVER IF YOU'LL LET ME KEEP THE GIRL” there are five hundred women in these States working somewhere for the war. So it will be till the war ends. As long as our men are in it our women will be in it, and in greater number than the men, Family Weight <CRUITING EXAMINER pounds? Mr. Mucu MARRIED: lets and a twin, isn’t forty Can you carry Let me see; that’s about three trip- NOT YET BUT——? comicbooks.com