Life, 1918-08-22 · page 22 of 34
Life — August 22, 1918 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains satirical commentary on American military life during World War I (circa 1916-1918, based on references to sending officers to France). **Main article ("Description of a Gay Life"):** A female Army officer sarcastically describes her "gay" (meaning cheerful) existence: she works in a sweltering Washington office in restrictive military uniform, cannot leave without permission, repeatedly requests deployment to France but is ignored, and pays inflated wartime rent. The satire mocks both the discomfort of stateside military bureaucracy and the profiteering by landlords exploiting patriotic officers. **"Revised Utterances" section:** Three short joke-quips mock enemy leaders—the German Crown Prince (cowardly), Kaiser Wilhelm (prioritizing his sons' safety over his people), and Germans generally (preferring slavery to death)—typical WWI Allied propaganda humor. **"Eyes right!" cartoon caption:** Refers to a military command, accompanying the illustration of women in uniform, likely satirizing female military service or civilian participation in war efforts. The overall tone critiques both military inefficiency and wartime profiteering while supporting the war effort through enemy ridicule.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Eyes right!” Description of a Gay Life AM a swivel I sit ina Washington office from hali-past eight o'clock every morning until half-past five o'clock every afternoon. The temperature of the office ranges from 83 to 105. I hair officer, and my life is a gay one wear a tightly buttoned blouse with a collar that might have been invented by a garroter, breeches which fit so snugly around the knees that my legs are numb most of the time, and heavy leather puttees which are known locally as “ fire- less cookers.” It is not at all unusi midnight and to spend my Sun: Dlouse isn't carefully buttoned, or 1 for me to work until If my yy with- s on the job. I leave the out permission, I will be court-martialled. At three-day intervals I go up to the colonel’s office, stand at attention, and urge upon him the desirability of sending me to France. The colonel explains coldly and carefully that his spare energies are being devoted to get- ting himself to France, but that after he has got there he will do his best to get me over too. Meanwhile the city is hot, and the food isn’t too good, and the patriotic Washing- tonians don’t hesitate to charge an army officer one hun- dred and seventy-five dollars a month for a two-room apartment that brought thirty dollars a month in 1916. So you sce I have plenty to occupy my mind; and for amuse- ment I can read jokes on swivel-chair officers and struggle to get the view-point of the man who writes them What a wonderfully gay life it all is, to be sure! Revised Utterances HE CROWN PRINCE am his. LubeNporrr : T have met the enemy, and I I came, I saw, I retreated. Tur Katser: I regret that I have only seven lives (mine and my six sons’) to keep safely in the rear for my country. Tue Geratan Prorte: Give us slavery or give us death. AN order has just been issued by the District Commis- sioners of Washington that all dogs in that city must be muzzled. Not a word about congressmen. comicbooks.com