Woodrow
Wilson was less than a month into his second administration as President of the
United States when he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. It was an
unlikely position for the President, who had, in his inaugural address, just
reaffirmed the nation’s neutrality in Europe’s war.[1]
His famous reelection campaign slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War,” was suddenly
replaced by an appeal to make the world “safe for democracy.”[2]
At
the time, The United States had very little in the way of a standing army,
which was reflected in their annual budget. On the day that Congress passed the
declaration of war on Germany, the entire national budget was $1 billon. Just a
year later, war spending would force it to increase by 2000% to $20 billion.[3]
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| Figure 1 - Poster promoting Liberty Bonds. All images in this post courtesy of Library of Congress. |
Raising revenues by such an extreme amount proved a
daunting task for the Treasury Department, but Secretary George McAdoo, along
with the newly minted Department of Public Information, popular magazines and
newspapers, and home front armies of volunteers from organizations like the Boy
Scouts, The Four-Minute Men, and local bond drive organizers effectively sold
bonds over the course of America’s 18-month involvement “over there” through
posters, editorials, articles, lectures, social events, and door-to-door sales.
These efforts, as we will see, played on a wide range of emotions and beliefs
of Americans, ranging from pride in community and nation, to guilt and
obligation, to depictions of belligerent enemies as monsters, non-Europeans,
and amoral.
Regardless
of their angle, these varied and often decentralized approaches at fundraising
were all directed at The Department of Treasury’s “Liberty Loans”, of which
heavy-loaded requests for purchase were made of the American people four times
from April 24, 1917 to September 28, 1918.
Read about posters after the jump!
