Life — November 10, 1921 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Senator Sounder Says— Senator Sounder giving last-minute instructions to the other American Delegates. 7 ASHINGTON, November 1st——My appointment as delegate-at-large to the disarmament conference has aroused considerable opposition among my political enemies, who claim that I am not fitted to be either delegate or at large. In the main, however, I feel that the country, realiz- ing the need of a Real American on the delegation, is with me. Anybody must realize that there are two occa- sions when we need a big navy; viz. (1) in war, (2) in peace. There are very likely other occasions, but these suffice for my argument. In fact, I won’t even touch on the first, since the purpose of the conference is to eliminate war. But if it is an era of peace that we have to consider, there are occasions when only battleships can represent the government. There is the Prince of Wales—and other dis- tinguished visitors—to be met every year, there are Con- gressional committees to be carried to distant islands for the purpose of investigating whether there is anything to inves- tigate. You can’t help feeling a bit of a piker to be spend- ing only $500,000,000 (exclusive of upkeep) for this im- portant work during the next year. And that isn’t all that a battleship does. Before long it gets obsolete and then it performs the last service in its short but expensive little life by acting as a target for the younger generation of battleships. It must be very inspiring to our gunners to have a $42,000,000 target to shoot at, and, of course, it can’t fail to arouse a little feeling of pride, or something, in the bosoms of the tax-payers who paid for it. At the same time, I don’t wish to create the impression that I am narrow about this. Though I hold my views about practical disarming, I admit that in the abstract disarmament is a very pretty thing to think about. You can make a sort of game out of thinking up all the useful things that the government, or the ta payers, could do with that $500,000,000 during the next year. In fact, if I felt sure that the delegates would treat the question purely in the abstract, no one would work harder for the success of the conference than I. We might, after due deliberation, pass some such resolution as “Resolved, that it is the sense of the conference that disarmament is a good thing,” and I’d even favor appointing a committee to report in three years whether those nations that hadn't meanwhile gone bankrupt still favored international dis- armament. Sounder. Up-to-Date HE Great Detective scowled thoughtfully. “Jack and Jill,” he read from the report before him, “went up the hill to draw a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.” “Humph,” said the master-mind. “That seems to be sim- ple enough. A plain case. These two joy riders found their radiator getting hot while speeding in a mountainous section. They tried to make a tough grade on low, but it was too much. Then the brakes refused to work. The man got panic-stricken and stumbled out of the car on his dome. The bus kept on going down the slope and took the dame along with it. Both of ’em carried accident policies, and the car was probably insured, too. I advise both com- panies to suspend payment till the driver can prove he wasn’t under the influence.” Gregarious “Does Pablo Gonzales live here?” “No, but he is a neighbor of ours; lives just ninety miles west of us.” comicbooks.com