Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #3 — page 40: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains two poems with no accompanying cartoons or illustrations. "In the Gallery Where the Fat Men Go" by Louis Golding is a World War I satire. It depicts soldiers in a gallery viewing war casualties displayed like artwork—the "guts" of horse-trampled soldiers and a blinded soldier ("Private Tommy Spout"). The poem's repeated rhetorical question sardonically asks whether fat civilians would maintain their detached aesthetic appreciation if forced to experience actual combat conditions (flames, mud, gunfire, lice, disease). It's a scathing critique of wartime civilian complacency and the disconnect between those fighting and those safely observing at home. "A Regular Girl" below is a lighter poem about conventional feminine ideals—requesting a woman who is attractive yet practical, witty yet modest, articulate but not verbose. It reflects period gender expectations.