Life, 1920-01-15 · page 10 of 36
Life — January 15, 1920 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page critiques post-WWI American forgetfulness about the war's costs. The main illustration shows a woman encountering someone she once knew, unable to recall his name—a pointed reference to amnesia about wartime sacrifice. The article "Lest We Remember" argues that while Americans pursue leisure (travel, luxury goods, automobiles), they're ignoring the war's human toll: disabled veterans and grieving families throughout the country. The bottom cartoon shows an automobile salesman dismissing a potential customer—suggesting even commerce trivializes war suffering. The page references Victor Berger, a congressman convicted of "treasonable conduct during the war," implying the public has moved on from accountability. The satire warns that prosperity and distraction enable collective forgetting of sacrifice.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
miderpuyster: ER—VOURK PACE IS PAMILIAR, BUT--EK-R—1 CAN'T RECALL YOUR NAME! “YOU USED TO CALL ME MAGGIE, WHES LWAS COOKIN’ FoR You.” Lest We Remember \nd this straw is but one of many that show, how the “Powe mut the war,” seems to be the slogan of is blowing : American people F Spend; travels dit Forget about the war ; jazz: dash off to Fh to California, to Euro: How would “Remember about the war" do for a where, everywhere: huy expensive automobiles, luxurious change 2 throw money right and left, but were are a few of America’s hundred ot forget ut the war. It is to be doubted if the parents of the fifty thousand American dead in France can ever fo: it th ar. Nor will those men in the hospitals scattered throughout the country who are without an arm, a leg, or their sight, be very likely ts forget about the war. Not, at any rate, in the immediate future But recent indications are that the mass of the American people are forgetting about the war. very satisfactorily The recent clections in Wisconsin, where Victor L. Berger, but lately convicted on charges of treasonable conduct dur- ing the war, was elected to the House of Congress by a ALMOST ANY AUTOMOBILE SALESMAN’S OPINION OF YOUR majority of five thousand votes, would scem to point to it. PRESENT CAR -comicbooks.com