World War I brought mechanized death in a measure unimaginable to prior generations. The machine that had promised during the Industrial Revolution to relieve mankind's suffering had created chaos and crippled an entire generation. Obviously the machine's productive efficiency for man's benefit could just as easily become an extremely efficient means of death. An example of the interpretation of the machine as a destroyer is depicted in artist Raoul Hausmann's statue "The Spirit of Our Times" (1921), which condemns the dehumanizing effects of the machine in no uncertain terms.

Hausmann's sculpture is akin to a death mask and reminiscent of the primitive African masks which interested him. The vacant stare of the wooden dummy is silent. Man has engaged in a tremendous battle with the help of his machines and everyone has lost. The sounds of machine guns, pistons, locomotives, power drills and mechanical looms are his new lullabies. Innocent, ecstatic, mystical man has been replaced with expressionless, manufactured man.

Man no longer thinks for himself, but functions automatically. Life is not an expanding vista of exhilarating possibilities but is tied to the monotonous rhythm of machines in perpetual motion. In order to make accurate judgments and keep pace with his machine counterparts, Hausmann's mute, wooden dummy needs assistance from an assortment of gadgets including a metal cup, a jewel box, a typographic cylinder, a pipe stem, a wallet, a piece of a camera, a tape measure, a metal ruler and a piece of cardboard on which is printed the number twenty-two. Not only is man's life measured, but man himself has only numerical significance remaining.