Life, 1918-01-24 · page 11 of 40
Life — January 24, 1918 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon:** A bishop lectures a couple about faith and belief while dogs sit nearby. The husband suggests they simply adopt the habit of believing what they know to be untrue—satirizing how people rationalize convenient falsehoods. **The Article:** "Let Him Learn" concerns Prince H.H. Ong Chow Arthit of Siam, being educated in America under Siamese embassy patronage. The satire anticipates his return to Siam, where he'll likely abandon American democratic ideals upon facing entrenched corruption and incompetence—specifically mentioning that ridding his country of "friend-like" corrupt officials would prove impossible due to established power structures and social resistance. **The Point:** Both pieces satirize how people, whether individuals or nations, ultimately default to accepting the status quo despite knowing better—faith in improvement proves naive against institutional reality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
| t "LI PE® | Ht Bishop: BY FAITH ARE WE SAVED— Soulful Lady: But wow acquire. 11? Husband: "Easy, ISN'T 17, BISHOP? JUST CULTIVATE THE HABIT OF BELIEVING WHAT YOU KNOW TO BE UNTRUE. Let Him Learn RINCE H. H. ONG CHOW ARTHIT, son of the King of Siam and heir to the Siamese throne, is now in this country, where he will be educated under the patronage of the Siamese embassy at Washington. The prince is twelve years old. He will be instructed in American ways. Let us hope that the education of this young man will be thorough. While he is here he ought to learn all the ropes. He may learn how to equip an army in such a manner that nobody will have any clothes to wear or guns to shoot; that he will allow his property to be destroyed by “ friend- ly" people with bombs ; that he will permit hysterical ladies with pathologically inclined suffragette tendencies to sit on the fence in front of his house and wave banners; that he TAA hi will turn over his storerooms and household economies to pothouse politicians, and that, no matter how incompetent all the people about him may prove themselves to be, under no conceivable circumstances will he think of getting rid of them. When the Prince of Siam has learned a few of these things he will be able to go back to his own country and make a noise like a genuine simon-pure democracy. Previous ‘D° you mean to say that you knew before about the incompetence in the Ordnance Department?” “Oh, a long time ago. Why, I knew it almost as soon as Germany did.”