Life, 1921-08-18 · page 15 of 35
Life — August 18, 1921 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Main Article**: "Let Us Defend Ourselves" advocates for President Harding's government physical training camps, arguing citizens need exercise systems to protect health against modern sedentary life. **Top Cartoon** ("And That's That!"): Depicts a figure struggling with exercise equipment, satirizing a pseudo-intellectual ("Tainte—Philosopher—Scientist—Saint") who lectures about systems he doesn't understand. The humor lies in the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical ability. **Bottom Illustration**: Shows the "Marveletti Family, Eccentric Acrobats" performing dangerous stunts in a car on a rocky turnpike—presented as a cautionary example that such risky behavior is unsafe, contrasting with the article's endorsement of *controlled* government training. The page argues exercise is healthful only when systematized and supervised, not improvised dangerously.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
August 18 Let Us Defend Ourselves VERY citizen who can do so shquld avail himself of President Harding’s cordial invitation to attend a government training camp, if for no other reason than to counteract the various systems of exercise now menacing our national life. It is absolutely essential that everyone should have some system of exercise to protect himself against all the other sys- tems. And yet, when one yields for the first time to the siren voice of some seductive exercise. there is no way of telling where the thing is going to stop. Before it is fully realized, the deadly habit of taking-a new system every few weeks or so may be fastened upon you. In this muscular ci iat confronts us, nobody is safe. We have known strong men, with the flush of health upon their cheeks—capable of smoking ten or twelve cigars a day with ease, sitting in comfortable chairs— to be led away by some oratorical giant who told them that they must stand on their heads twice a day—we have known these men to grow weaker and weaker until, in the end, they had to give up AND THAT’S THAT! everything that makes life worth living. There was a young feller named Tainte— Aside from playing golf, which is so Philosopher—Scientist—Saint; much more expensive than it ought to wher beg never eard be, and from reading the sporting news, When Tainte doesn’t know it, it ain't! it is hard enough for most of us to get up every morning and put on our clothes without manual help. To be told that that we must raise our feet above our above our feet only once—all this is we must flex our biceps fifty times, and heads at least twenty-five times, when it doubtless very well, if we had the cour- rise on our toes a couple of hundred; is hard enough for us to raise our heads age and control to stick at it long enough so that it wouldn’t wear us out to do it. But just as we get used to it, to discover that some other system invented during the week will increase our units of energy twenty per cent. more than the one we are trying to learn, is too wearing on any tranquilly unhealthy organism. The government training camps appear to be the only refuge a man has from this sort of thing. They ought to be encour- aged by everybody as the best form of national and personal self-defense. T. L. M. Discovery MET a man Who knows a woman Who has a sister Who is married to a man Who is related to a girl Who knows a man Who knows a man The Marveletti Family, Eccentric Acrobats, prove that driving a new Who has never pulled a prohibition car on a rocky turnpike is a perfectly safe pastime provided you know joke. the principal holds. I shall try to trace him. comicbooks.com