Life, 1918-07-25 · page 28 of 36
Life — July 25, 1918 — page 28: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
## "Why They Put the Captain Away" This humorous piece satirizes **military protocol during WWI**. A Army captain describes his descent into obsessive-compulsive behavior: he habitually rolls cigarettes and cannot stop, even when his fingers become permanently stained. When stationed in Washington during the war, he encounters an absurd problem—the city swarms with officers from allied nations (British, French, Canadian, Italian, Belgian, Romanian, Serbian, Japanese). Military etiquette requires constant saluting. His compulsion to roll cigarettes conflicts fatally with this duty: every time he attempts rolling, another officer appears, forcing him to salute mid-roll. The torture becomes unbearable. He withdraws entirely indoors, eventually requesting others roll cigarettes for him, leading to his institutionalization. **The satire**: mocks both rigid military hierarchy and the chaos of coordinating multiple Allied armies in Washington, while using the protagonist's nervous breakdown to comment on how absurd wartime protocol could be. ## "The New Socialism" A brief dialogue joke about wealth redistribution, where someone advocates taking money from the rich for the poor—specifically mentioning ammunition workers should share with railroad presidents. The accompanying illustration appears unrelated or uses crude humor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE: Why They Put the Captain Away LEASE don't judge me harshly, Do not turn away with a shake of the head. Hear me out. It is a short tale, but rather sad. If your complexion is not your own, it would be well to press your handkerchief to your eyes be- fore I begin. I was a captain in the regular army. Long ago, on the plains, I acquired the sit of rolling my own cigarettes. The habit grew on me. My fingers hecame dark brown in color, so that people thought I wore gloves all the time. In my home and on the streets I rolled cigarettes constantly. T even rolled them in my sleep. I rolled all the fuzz off the blankets and all the paper off the wall in the vicinity of my hed. Then the war broke out, T was shifted to Washington. Officers infested the city. Enlisted men were there in count- less numbers. There were myriads of bluejackets and marines. There were British officers and French officers and Canadian officers and Italian officers and Belgian of- ficers and Rumanian officers and Serbian officers and Japanese officers, Do you get the picture? All of us had to salute one another, Salute, salute, salute. Life was just one d——d salute after another, Does it hit you? Does the vastness of the tragedy filter through your brain? Whenever I ventured out, cigarette paper half-filled with tobacco in my left hand, and the fingers of my right hand all curved for the rolling, the officers and enlisted men began to appear. They trickled around corners, they sprang up, apparently, from the very pavement. They came in ones and twos and fives and tens; in swarms and shoals, in flocks and coveys: privates, loots, ensigns, captains, commanders, majors, colonels, rear ad- mirals, generals—the Lord knows what! And I, trying to roll my cigarette—what agony! What a torment of Tantalus! Salute, salute, salute! Over and over again. No sooner would my right hand descend to the unfinished cigarette than another officer would appear. Salute once more! Salute eternally! Salute, salute, salute! I tried walking on side streets, in the back washes of the city; but officers found me out and interfered with my rolling. I tried hiding behind trees, hut officers popped up in front of me. It was impossible for me to smoke out of doors. T became morose and sullen. I refused to go out to lunch. Then T refused to go home for dinner. Finally 1 refused to go out at all, Then I began to fear that if I tried to roll a cigarette even in the privacy of my own home an officer would materialize before me, so that I would have to salute him I began to get people to roll cigarettes for me. I asked anyone—everyone, Then they took me here. Ha, hat Ha, ha! That's what Washington did for me! Please, please roll me a cigarette! The New Socialism O you believe in taking the money away from the rich and giving it to the poor?” “T certainly do. I believe that the ammunition workers and mechanics should be willing to divide up with the rail- road presidents.” “HEY, SCOTTY, PULL DOWN youR CLoTHES! YOU MAKE comicbooks.com