Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, January 1921 · page 6 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #16 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the satirical magazine contains humorous historical anecdotes mixing biblical, classical, and contemporary references. The narrator presents absurdist retellings: Nero fiddling while Rome burned; Job threatening bears against those opposing his rights; and Anthony declaring war on Athens because Cleopatra has tonsilitis (a throat infection). The main satire targets **Henry Ford's 1915 Peace Ship expedition**, where Ford attempted to end World War I by taking pacifists to Europe. The author jokes that Ford erred by not instead sending Ziegfeld Follies chorus girls to the front lines—implying soldiers would abandon fighting to follow them, and the war would end while President Wilson retained his reputation. The exaggeration (using a Burroughs adding machine to count followers, light-travel-time comparisons) emphasizes the absurdity through hyperbole, typical of Whiz Bang's irreverent humor mocking both historical figures and recent events.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
4 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang played havoc with Rome and made the fiddle famous as the city burned. We've been fiddling ever since. Job next started showing his rights with the off shoots of the chosen people and they said they would stone him to death if he didn't stop. He came right back by saying, "If you do I'll turn my bears loose and they will eat you." The people did, Job did and the bears did. Then Job was King. I'd like to take some of your time and present the argument between Anthony and Cleopatra, but there was so little between them that it is hardly worth while. In the days when Cleopatra and Anthony were such good friends, Anthony had just won a big battle and he sent his runners to Cleopatra to tell her to doll up in her glad rags and they would go out stepping. On the way to her flat he met his runners returning. They announced, "Oh, Kind Sir: Cleopatra is down with Tonsilitis." "Darn those Greeks," said Anthony, "I shall de- clare war on Athens tomorrow." Henry Ford started one thing that he played wrong (his ears play good tunes though), when he decided to end the World's War by taking a lot of men and old maids to France and Germany. If he'd taken some of Ziegfield's chorus girls the war would have been over and President Wilson would still have been a great man. Just march those girls up No Man's land, and there would have been so many soldiers following them that a Burroughs adding machine couldn't count them in the time it takes light to travel from the Sun to Jupiter. Army recruiting stations would have been