Life — June 5, 1919 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Follies of 1861" This is a six-panel comic strip satirizing military life during the American Civil War. The narrative follows a soldier's romantic entanglement: a woman asks her father's permission to marry a soldier ("little Oswald"), claiming he'll "hurry and finish his work" in the war. The humor derives from the contrast between her optimistic expectations and military reality. Panels show her excitement about him finishing quickly, followed by increasingly frantic scenes of actual combat ("Oil! Oil! Oh! Oh on!!!"). The final panels show her disappointment when the soldier returns to ask about watching artillery rather than marrying her. The satire mocks both naive civilian assumptions about war's duration and soldiers' distraction from romantic obligations by military duty.