Life, 1918-04-04 · page 4 of 40
Life — April 4, 1918 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily a **subscription advertisement** for *Life* magazine rather than a political cartoon. The illustration at top shows seven people reading newspapers on public transit, titled "How to be Happy Though Married or Single." The ad's humor is self-promotional: the editors jokingly claim they're making an "unusual" and "immodest" request by asking readers to subscribe. They emphasize *Life* will be "so good, so fresh, so full of pictures, so delightful" this summer, and hint it "will be humorous"—while admitting "probably nobody would believe this." The tone is tongue-in-cheek flattery. Rather than offering special incentives, they simply command: "SUBSCRIBE. Obey that impulse." The joke relies on *Life's* reputation for quality satire and humor to make the bold pitch itself entertaining.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
How to be Happy Though Married or Single Be Prepared for a Great Surprise We are going to do an unusual thing; but it has been a long, hard winter, and the spring has made us reckless. : We are going to ask you to become regular subscrib- ers to LIFE. : We have intimated this before in this page, but have never come out so immodestly as upon this occasion. Moreover, we are going to do this without offering you any special inducements. We might, of course, call attention to the fact that the summer is coming on and that LIFE will never bé so good, so fresh, so full of pic- tures, so delightful, as it will be thissummer. We might even hint that it will be humorous—although probably ' nobody would believe this. But no! All we say is, SUBSCRIBE. Obey that impulse. You may regret it, but take a ‘\ chance. \ NX N nN Our soldiers and sailors all like Lire. Send them your . copy when you have read it, or, better yet, enter a sub- " scription. n Subscriptions to Lire may be sent to American soldiers abroad at American rates of postage if addressed to them N as members of the American Expeditionary N _ The price of annual subscriptions, posta — - ‘\ n, British and other soldiers in th Open o! to new subscribers; no sub- \ ah crewed at this rate S everal sample copies will be sent to any address on re : . ceipt of ten cents. 39 LIFE, 17 West 31st Street, New York. X One Year, $5.00. (Canadian, $5.52 ; Foreign, $6.04. )