Life, 1919-05-01 · page 23 of 44
Life — May 1, 1919 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main cartoon depicts the **Peace Congress** (Paris Peace Conference, 1919) as a steam roller grinding ineffectually forward. A figure sits at a desk labeled "CONGRESS" while a military officer stands nearby. The satire mocks the conference's slow, clumsy progress in post-WWI negotiations. The accompanying text discusses specific diplomatic tensions: **Italy's demands for Fiume**, **Japan's frustration** that racial equality wasn't adequately addressed in conference agreements, and the broader challenge of managing competing national interests. The author argues these tensions are natural and that distinct racial/national "families" cannot be truly merged, despite good intentions. The caption quotes someone praising noble behavior while cutting salaries and rank—likely satirizing how nations reward wartime sacrifice inadequately. The page critiques both the conference's ineffectiveness and contemporary attitudes about race and national identity that would have been mainstream in 1919.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“YOU HAVE BEHAVED NOBLY, AND YOUR COUNTRY 15 PROUD OF YOU. TO PROVE OUR APPRECIATION, I AM GOID in wisdom which accompanies humility and is denied to pride Mr. Burleson has serious faults as a postmaster-general, but as a detail of national discipline he makes good. Mr. Theodore Vail would doubtless do Mr. Burleson’s job ever so much better than Mr. Burleson does, but he would be of no value at all as a discipline. He would merely make things go right, and the foolish people could yo right on being foolish. It is the people of first rate energy and second rate minds that are truly instructive. Such people put over Prohibition. They show how things ought not to be done. Mr. Burleson, for example, is killing off the idea of TO CURTAIL YOUR SALARY AND REDUCE YOUR RANK gove: pment ownership, and that is useful. Why disturb him, then, until he gets through? 'HE Peace Congress grinds along making what haste it can. is evidently being kept in Pari port now s ington is coming School Re- that the George Wash- ‘k from Brest with a load of troops. and that Mr. Wilson will catch a ride home on some vi that is coming when he gets ready. el 755 The steam roller at the conference pursues no better than a jolting course just now. Italy feel: this writing, that she must have Fiume and is let- ting off some fireworks, but whether it is the Italian government or the Ital- ian people that needs Fiume so sorely, is debatable, and may be disclosed if matters go far enough. Italy is in bad straits, and her repre- sentatives want to fetch back some- thing substantial and consoling from Paris. But the Czecho-Slavs need a port for their new country, and it seems to be the judgment of the con- ference that they should have it France and Great Britain being bound to Italy, in a measure, by agreements made before the United States came into the war, cannot say much, and it is left mainly to Mr. Wilson to fight it out with Italy. And Japan seems to be worried, Her desire that the conference should obliterate all race distinctions has not been realized in a degree broad enough to satisfy her. She thinks that Japa- nese are not regarded as the equals of white people, and that troubles her, Some white people consider the Japanese inferior to themselves, and some do not, but most white people agree that Japanese are of a breed so distinct from the white races that it is not profitable for cither family to he too much mixed up with the other. Japanese of high quality are admirable people, very high in ci ion, mas- ters of beautiful arts, and of an intel- ligence and character not surpassed anywhere. There are also white people who are deserving and of whom much good may be said. But who would have high hopes of a mixed people, part Japanese and part white? Surely to avoid such race mixtures should be quite as much the desire of Japan as of any white race whatever. At the hottom of all diplomatic deal- ings with Japan is the recognition, tacit or outspoken, of the need to keep rea- sonably separate, families too dissimi- lar to be mixed. The people of the earth are not going to be all one family, no matter what is said or done at Paris. They will continue to he sev- eral families as heretofore, but they must live in mutual respect and tolera- tion, and work together.