Life, 1921-10-20 · page 22 of 34
Life — October 20, 1921 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page features a satirical poem-cartoon mocking playwright Henry Arthur Jones (depicted right, in armor with sword). The cartoon contrasts Jones with caricatured figures of George Bernard Shaw (left, as a jester) and H.G. Wells. The satire references Jones's aggressive theatrical criticism and public feuds. Shaw and Oliver Herford (the poem's author) jokingly suggest Jones has already "slain" Wells verbally and should stop attacking fellow writers. Shaw sarcastically recommends Jones trade his "sword" for a "gas-mask—Shaw-proof guaranteed," implying Shaw himself is the real target of Jones's vitriol. The joke turns on early-1900s literary rivalries: these were famous quarrelsome intellectuals known for public attacks on each other's work. The poem treats their disputes as mock-warfare, a witty commentary on aggressive critical egos among prominent writers of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
To Henry Arthur Jones EAR Henry Arthur, must you slay This jabberwock! O curb, I pray, Your love of sport—Why dent your keen Edged blade upon a jester’s bean? Why seek fresh foes and victims new While even now the welkin blue Is ringing with the dying yells of H. G. Wells? TT >) Bernard Shaw . When you slew Mr. Wells we quite Agreed that what you did was right, But when a jester raves of war With England, here’s no subject for A highly tempered snickersnee ; Put up your sword—take it from me A gas-mask—Shaw-proof guaranteed, Is what you need! Oliver Herford. (a Henty Arthur Jones - eee Does It Pay to Be Born? AJOR LEONARD DARWIN, son of Charles the fa- mous one, was one of the talkers at the interesting Congress of Eugenics here last month and showed anxiety about the progress of the human race. He thought there was too much bad stuff reproduced in it, as, no doubt, there is. He was for sterilizing criminals and for drives to induce superior people to raise larger families. Racial deteriora- tion, he said, seems evident among all highly civilized peo- ples, because of the thinning out of the descendants of highly endowed stock and the multiplication of those of inferior endowment. But why should the son of the Darwin who argued that man came up from monkeys be worried about this incor- rigible progressive human stock? If we came up from mon- keys and stone-age men and all those tough and question- able characters, we certainly can take our chances with our own disreputable stock. It seems to be part of the regular program of life that the superior people shall be less pro- ductive than the inferior people and that good stocks in time shall run out. That is quite in keeping with the theory that this world is the nursery of souls and that when the souls become far enough advanced they side-step it. None of the artificial means to increase the reproductive efforts of superior people look promising at all, nor do the sugges- tions for inducing the inferior people not to reproduce look any better. When children pay, they will be born. When they do not pay, they won't. They may pay in work or they may pay in pleasure, but people won't have many of them unless there is a profit in it. More promising than any of the suggestions of the Eu- genics Congress is the assertion of a man who lives in Kansas City that he took a moron, a boy with.a five-year- old mind, and by means that he knows about taught and developed him so that he is making a living wiring houses. Wicked Fleas Noau paused but briefly, as he listened to what his wife was saying about raisipg the standard of education in the Ark. “If you must do it,” he snapped nervously, “you might put those fleas in charge of the class in multiplication.” In It “Dip you see a free-for-all fight?” asked a friend. “No,” said Mr. Murphy, “I was too busy to watch.” ever comicbooks.com