Life, 1918-01-31 · page 35 of 40
Life — January 31, 1918 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This article compares Germany's pre-war economic expansion to the Biblical Tower of Babel—a cautionary tale about ambition and overreach. **The argument:** Captain Persius, a German war-writer, documented Germany's massive export trade (75% to Europe; $1 billion annually by 1913 from major powers). Life's editor sardonically notes this "hog-everything spirit" parallels Babel's builders, whose rapid material progress made them believe nothing could be withheld from them—until God confused their speech and scattered them. **The satire's point:** Germany's economic aggressiveness, though impressive, bred the same hubris that caused Babel's collapse. Now, after losing WWI, Germany faces similar scattering—its men may become diaspora, including emigration to America ("chances are that a lot of them will come here"). The joke uses religious allegory to frame German imperial ambition as doomed overconfidence, implying God-like consequences for such greed. It reflects post-WWI American skepticism toward Germany's pre-war economic model.
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sing wed into ked rad- fron plied addressed of Rie he date « Builders of Babel ‘APTAIN PERSIUS, well known as a German war-writer, is con- cerned about Germany’s economic future. He writes to the Berlin Tage- blatt about the denuded state in which Germany will be caught when peace comes. “ We must not forget,” he says, “that the greater part of our overseas trade in pre-war days was conducted with England.” He tells the Germans that more than three quarters of Ger- man exports went to European coun- tries, and that in 1913 England, France, Russia, Italy and Belgium took a bil- lion dollars’ worth of German prod- ucts. Combating “the — erroneous view” that the English before the war hampered German world-economic ac- tivities, he gives figures to the effect that between 1900 and 1 German imports in British India increased threefold, in British Africa tenfold, in Egypt nearly eightfold. When one considers the immense spread of German commerce before the war, supported by the enormous in- crease in German manufactures, it re- calls the builders of Babel, whose speech was confounded because their progress in material things was so rapid that it seemed that “nothing would be restrained from them which they had imagined to do.” The same hog-everything spirit that reared by CAUTION: LIFE employs no direct travel- ing representatives; it does not offer prizes, college courses or other in- ducements for agents to canvass for subscriptions. Anyone soliciting subscriptions on any such basis should be turned over to the author- ities as a swindler. Be sure to place your order with a reliable bookseller, news agent or solicitor, if you do not mail it to LIFE direct. & % & Semen. eam ET LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 17 West 31st Street, New York The Picture From Home FoR MEN OF BRAINS IGARS *MADE AT KEY WEST — EASTMAN KODAK CO., Rochester, N. Y., The Kodak City swift accretions Germany's towering economic edifice inevitably brought on this war that will leave her—no one can tell where. Bare of necessaries, the Ger- mans may have to scatter the men of Babel did. The chances are that a lot of them will come here. UN Did he marry her for her intellect? Br Yes—it was just weak enough to suit him! has long been a mystery how the Pilgrim Fathers kept up their spirits under the hardships they encountered when they landed at Plymouth Rock. Bad weather, bad food and bad Indians were enough to make anyone downheart- ed, but it has lately been vered that oue of their number was a regular sub- seriber and had brought a file of Live with him on the Mayflower, This also accounts for the fact that to-day Lire is the most popular periodical in the old Bay State, comicbooks.com