Life, 1918-01-17 · page 25 of 40
Life — January 17, 1918 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines wartime satire with self-promotion. The top cartoon illustrates the "Save the Gasoline Movement"—a real WWI-era conservation effort—showing people literally pulling a car by rope, humorously suggesting extreme fuel rationing. The main illustration, "The Willowbys' Ward," depicts a domestic scene where Professor and Mrs. Willowby rush home from an outing, apparently fearing their ward Molly will be lonely without them—mocking middle-class anxieties during wartime disruptions. Below, the text celebrates that soldiers at Camp Sherman, Ohio ranked *Life* magazine as their most-desired periodical among thirty options. The magazine boasts about this validation, with characteristic self-congratulatory humor. The final joke suggests a man who dislikes the narrator as intensely as an Ordnance Department official would reject a proposed war-ending invention—implying bureaucratic resistance to innovation. The page reflects 1918 American life: gasoline rationing, military camps, and magazines' role in home-front morale.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
” MOVEMENT THE “SAVE THE GASOLINE THE WILLOWBYS' WARD. 4 MRS. WILLOWRY AND THE PROFESSOR HURRY HOME FROM THEIR JRIP FOR FEAR MOLLY Reverse UR elder army officers (They're headed now for France) Who in times past danced the German, Now will make the German dance. How It Happens CCORDING to a census by Li- brarian Burton E. Stevenson at the national cantonment at Camp Sher- MAY BE LONESOME man, Chillicothe, Ohio, the most de- sirable periodical was Lire. This w from a list of thirty leading periodicals. What astonishes us in this report is that the men of Camp Sherman should he in such close agreement with those in this office. Being entirely unpreju- diced in our own view, it is a great satisfaction to know that there are others who have, independently of us, arrived at the same conclusion, We have read Lire regularly now for more than thirty years, and we ought to know. “LPYOESN'T he like you?” “Like me! Why, that man hates me as if he were at the head of the Ordnance Department and T had of- fered hi a useful invention to end the war with comicbooks.com