Life — August 29, 1918 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of "The New Nobility" and "The Fate of the Ostrich" **"The New Nobility"** satirizes class mobility during World War I. The poem describes an English nobleman whose son married a lady of humble origins, and all their formerly aristocratic men now fight as equals in France. The point: war erases social hierarchy—a gardener's son fights alongside lords. This mocks old class pretensions. **"The Fate of the Ostrich"** uses Germany as a personified ostrich and a sand crab as America. Germany buries her head in sand, claiming ignorance of American troops arriving ("millions more on the way"). The satire suggests Germany denies obvious military reality—the approaching American Expeditionary Forces during WWI—clinging to false hopes while dismissing uncomfortable truths. Both pieces critique willful blindness to wartime realities.