Life, 1918-07-11 · page 3 of 34
Life — July 11, 1918 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising** rather than satire or political commentary. The dominant feature is a full-page Chase Mohair Velvets advertisement for motor cars and furniture, showing an elegant automobile interior with well-dressed passengers. The left column contains two distinct items: 1. **"A Recipe"** - A dark humorous poem by Oliver Herford about cooking, using unpleasant ingredients (snakes, rats, scorpions) as metaphor—typical of Herford's sardonic style. 2. **"War and Pleasure"** - Political commentary arguing legislators tax "pleasures" (dancing, beer, baseball) as "sinful" inventions, while pleasure is actually necessary for public mental health during wartime. The bottom includes a Biltmore Hotel advertisement and a small cartoon about German perseverance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AKL everything evil under the sun That man since time began has don Add all that we shudder at and shun In the snake and the rat and the scorpion, em together and roll them in hell-broth, and when it’s done Then you'll have something approach- ing a Hun, Oliver Herford. War and Pleasure HE. legislator in a great crisis is seldom a psychologist. He sees all ically, concretely. Ina war 1, regulated and assembled. The legislator seeks to dehumanize him. The first thing the lawmaker taxes is pleasure—as though pleasure was som thing sinful, superfluous, an artifi invention, He strikes immediately at the the- atres, “ movies,” dancing, heer, baseball receipts, and all those other life-giving reactions which he in his yawping stu- pidity pronounces “ unnecessary.” Pleasure is a profound psychologica It is mental sanitation, hygiene. The play-instinet is a ligious instinct—as the Greeks and the Latins knew, In these tragic days, when the world stands to the neck in blood and debts and tears, nothing is more necessary for the nerves, the brain, the heart— for the very well-being of the soul it- seli—than pleasure in all its normal forms. Lower the taxes on the pleasures of the masses to the minimum and pile it Ge BILTMORE 43rd and 44th Sts. and Madison Ave. The Centre of Social Life of the Metropolis Close to theatres and shops. The Cascades, Italian sunken gardens. Special features. Afternoon tea - Orchestra Dancing MOH AIR VELVETS (0 other upholstery material combines r decorative appearance with extraor: wearing qu: an extent as beautiful Chase Mohair Velvets. MOTOR-CAR INTERIORS onious, sanitary, econor nduring, generation after . CHASE & C D, San Francisco Chicago Sei 607 on the Juxuries of the rich, The in- sidious influence of the witch-burning, Sunday-closing, dance-hating elements is already being felt in this country, and to no good so far as concerns the cause of the Allies. @ thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing at once. And this ap- particularly to those persons who procrastinate about their praiseworthy intention of subscribing to Lire “OF COURSE GERMANY WILL HOLD out, AND PERSEVERANCE ALWAYS WINS “Ur pors, £1? DID You EVER TRY 10 MATEH OUT A DOOR KNOW?