CARTOON - IN PRAISE OF BEAUTY

'In Praise of Beauty' was first published in the Western Mail on February 29, 1929, page 7 in the 'Bit of Life' section of the newspaper. The cartoon shows an Australian soldier admiring his reflection in a window. He is standing on the footpath of a busy London street surrounded by numerous women of all classes and ages (the building is suggestive of Australia House, in London, which was completed in 1918) . The soldier has a Light Horse slouch hat complete with puggaree and an emu plume. He wears shorts with his AIF tunic, along with boots and puttees. He has a cigarette in his mouth and is holding a swagger stick and what seems to be a handbag. The handbag contrasts with the briefcase held by a young woman standing close by. Despite being surrounded by so many attractive women the soldier, with chest puffed out in self-admiration, only has eyes for himself.
The writing beneath the cartoon reads:
Sir Thomas Legge (Medical Inspector of Factories) in a lecture on physical beauty before the Society of Arts in London on February 17 said that the most handsome men the world had ever seen were found among the first 100,000 Australians who came over during the war. All of them seemed to conform to the highest class of beauty, having narrow faces, straight foreheads and noses, high cheek bones, short upper lip, strong chins, thick hair and magnificent figures.
The stares of others in the cartoon, including a waving man and a horse, are difficult to read. Are they also struck by the beauty of the soldier? They could, in fact, be smirking at his self-obsession - the shorts are not attractive. I’m not sure.
Analysis
The cartoon is meant to be read ironically. Strange is poking fun at this rather ridiculous soldier, so fascinated by his own good looks that he cannot see anything else. The handbag is interesting - does this take the parody to an extreme, equating the soldier’s interest with his own beauty as feminine in its intensity? Strange is making fun of the words used by Sir Thomas Legge to describe the best of Australian manhood as ‘the highest class of beauty’.

Of course Legge’s comments, whilst extreme, echo the viewpoints of Australian contemporaries. With CEW Bean’s valorisation of the original Anzacs in The Official History of Australia in the War, 1914-1918 (1921-1942), many Australians of the time believed the Diggers were physically superior to their British counterparts.
From a British perspective, the industrialisation of many parts of the UK in the 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in a population that was regarded by many from the upper levels of society as diseased and dissolute. Poor health as a consequence of sub-standard diet and housing was especially apparent when young British working-class men signed up for WW1 and many were found to be unfit for service. In comparison, the first Australian and New Zealand troops to enlist were not only more physically able than their British counterparts but also proved to be tougher and more resilient in battle.
The admiration felt by Sir Thomas Legge for Australian soldiers is probably a response to his own situation where as medical inspector for factories he was constantly exposed to the physical effects of industrial life on working-class families in Britain.
1. Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London, 1996).
2. Peter Stanley, ‘Australia in World War One’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/australia_01.shtml