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!
Posters
Probably
the broadest appeal to citizens to buy Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps of
the Liberty Loans came in the form of posters. Hung in public buildings and
private businesses, posters encouraging bond purchases were “confronting us
everywhere.”[4] Early in the
war, most government-issued posters aimed to encourage patriotic duty. One such
example depicted the newly-born Uncle Sam holding a sign reading “You buy a
Liberty Bond to-day I’ll do the rest” (Fig. 1), and explaining that those who
purchase bonds wear a button to show their support.
This tandem of bonds and buttons was an effective
tactic in pressuring the public. As the war went on, wearing a button as
advertised on posters signified participation in the war, whereas those without
buttons were shunned. “The millionaire who wears a Button has done something to
take off the curse of his riches,” read one article.
The
poor man who wears a Button has entered the ranks of nobility. By the Button
the society woman shows that she is no longer merely an idler and spender but
has risen to the plane of a Servant of Humanity. By the Button the shop-girl
gives evidence that in some way she too is doing her bit in the great struggle
of America to save the world.” In this way, the initially rather benign message
of doing your part and wearing your button became a public shaming mechanism.
Those not sporting the button were called “Crooked Sticks,” and all they’re
“good for is to lie about in the backyard for better people to stumble over.” [5]
This reference to “lying about” most likely was an
allusion to the hated “slackers” – those not doing their part in the war.
Slackers were attacked and detained by the American Protective League (APL), a
private volunteer organization who tasked itself with investigating loyalty
among their neighbors and that had the support of the Attorney General’s
office, in major cities all over the United States throughout the war period,[6]
As virtually none of those detained in raids had legally done anything wrong,
there was a reasonable fear among those not wearing buttons that they could
face similar violence or detention.
Other early posters, on a theme that also was visible
throughout the war, encouraged with variants of “doing your bit” (Fig. 2). This
popular sentiment was accessible to the families of young Americans serving
overseas, if a bit of a false comparison to servicemen in the trenches.
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| Figure 2 - Liberty Loan - Do YOUR Part to End the War! |
This particular marketing angle didn’t go without its
criticism. Some of the strongest came from author Julian Street, who condemned
the constant comparison of bond buying to overseas service. “At present we are
being asked as a nation to absorb three billion dollars’ worth of Liberty
Bonds,” he wrote, “bearing interest at a rate of 4 ¼ per cent. And, as I have
said, there is in some of the appeals a sort of implication that, by so doing,
we may render a service approximating that being rendered by our fighting men.”
Street attacked the comparison: “While the man in the trenches stands ready to
give his life, what are we asked to give? Nothing. While the man in the
trenches gambles his life, what are we asked to gamble? Nothing – not even our
sleek, comfortable dollars.”[7]
Public response to this campaign apparently didn’t hold Street’s opinion –
doing one’s “bit” was a prominent theme through all four Liberty Loan
campaigns.
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| Figure 3 - "Help Stop This - Buy W.S.S. & Keep Him Out of America" |
While the earliest posters promoting Liberty Loans
were patriotic in nature, they generally did not overtly attack Germans as a
people or shame Americans too much. The appeal made by the poster designers at
the Committee of Public Information began to change its tone by the Second
Liberty Loan, and by 1918’s Third Liberty Loan, the savage depiction of Germans
became commonplace in the posters. Negative depictions of the enemy were
encouraged by private companies, such as the 1917 L. E. Waterman Company poster
encouraging the purchase of War Savings Stamps (Fig. 3). The German soldier’s
hulking, slightly hunched figure’s shadowed, Asiatic profile looks toward city
ruins, gun and bloody knife in hand, as he carelessly tramples an impossibly
small woman.
Official government posters and propaganda initially
avoided depictions of Germans in this way, though they were rarely publicly
denounced, if at all. Indeed, they were a visual embodiment of one of President
Wilson’s great fears in entering the war – that by joining a fight where so
many of America’s citizenry claimed ancestry among fighting nations, that
tension, and even violence, might erupt among ethnic groups.[8]
His worries became all the more real on April 4, 1918, when a mob in
Collinsville, IL lynched a loyal German-American named Robert Prager. After
putting the noose around Prager’s neck, the crowd hanged him from a tree,
lifting and dropping his body three times, one for each color of the flag. His
last request was reportedly to have his body buried wrapped in the American
flag.[9]
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| Figure 4 - "The Hun is still watching! Show him we're in Earnest Finish The Job Victory Liberty Loan" |
Despite this and other acts of violence against
German-Americans, The government eventually embraced the German-as-monster
imagery. Starting with dark eyes (Fig. 4) and bloody boots (Fig. 5), American
propaganda declared that the “Hun is watching,” and suggested their capability
of atrocities.
The American public was primed for this kind of
representation of the Germans, as can be seen in a poem meant for children by
Porter Emerson Browne just after war had been declared: “This is a Girl…
Be-cause the Girl’s na-tion is un-pre-pared, the girl’s Fath-er and Broth-ers
are killed. The Girl is worse than killed. That is all.”[10]
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| Figure 5 - "Keep these off the U.S.A. - Buy more LIBERTY BONDS" |
Poems like this one, partnered with images of
blood-soaked Germans, reminded Americans of the alleged atrocities by the
Germans in Belgium in the “Bryce Report,” an unsubstantiated but widely
circulated and believed report of German atrocities against Belgian civilians
released by the British Committee on Alleged German Outrages in 1915.[11]
The symbolism of the savagery in that report, which alleged that Germans raped
and murdered their way through defenseless, neutral Belgium, wasn’t lost on
American propagandists, who made use of German attacks on women and children in
their posters with great frequency (Fig. 6, 7).
With the more savage, direct appeals to aid America
against a monstrous enemy, these posters must have been at least partially
effective. While earlier campaigns were criticized in the press,[12]
the loans increased in size and scope with each new incarnation. The Third
Liberty Loan, in April, 1918, had more individual subscribers than the previous
two.[13]
Certainly, some of the later loan’s success must be attributed to the change in
sales tactics by the government.
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| Figure 6 - "Remember Belgium" |
Posters were certainly effective in raising awareness
and encouraging bond sales, but in doing so, they played possibly the biggest
part in depicting a large immigrant group in America as a dangerous “other.”
The demand on German-Americans to prove themselves as American as a result of
this campaign led to violence, as we’ve seen, and public demands for displays
of loyalty not required of Anglo-Americans or other ethnic groups. “The
American,” wrote a writer identifying with the 100% American “Vigilantes”
writing group, “believes that the power in control of Germany [means] to
control the world and that the German people… are obedient to that power, and
to a large extent, sympathetic to it.” German-Americans who hadn’t yet publicly
denounced their home country were just as much part of that group as those
still in Germany, and the onus to be part of the America most of them had
already pledged themselves to was put on them every day the war, the
consequences their own responsibility. ”If the German-American says, “No! I
will declare nothing!’ he has satisfied his pride or vanity, but not alleviated
the situation; for the American (always ready to declare his own loyalty and
welcoming the opportunity) cannot
understand a pride or vanity which prevents a man from ‘declaring for the
flag,’ especially if any creature
on earth question his loyalty.” [14]
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| Figure 7 - "Halt the Hun" |
[1] Woodrow
Wilson, “Second Inaugural Address.”
[2] Woodrow
Wilson, Address to a Joint Session
of Congress Requesting a Declaration of War Against Germany.
[3] Mark
Sullivan. “When America Woke.” Collier’s Magazine. April 6, 1918, 6.
[4] Julian
Street. “Our Fighting Posters,” McClure’s Magazine. July, 1918, 34.
[5] Dr. Frank
Crane. “Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?” McClure’s Magazine. September,
1918, 18.
[6] Christopher
Capozzola. What Uncle Sam Really Wants, 44.
David Kennedy. Over Here, 81-3.
[7] Julian
Street. “Stand Back of Them,” Collier’s Magazine. April 20, 1918, 5.
[8] Susan A.
Brewer. Why America Fights, 49.
[9] Christopher
Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You, 185;
[10] Porter
Emerson Browne. “A Primer for Pacifists,” McClure’s Magazine. May, 1917, 16.
[11] Susan A.
Brewer. Why America Fights, 51-2.
[12] Julian
Street, “Our Fighting Posters,” 34.
[13] ---, “What
a Bond Is,” Collier’s Magazine, May 25,
1918.
[14] Booth
Tarkington. “The Separating Hyphen,” McClure’s Magazine. October, 1917, 52.
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