http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/4899716493/in/set-72157624742434942

This poster would have appealed to a wide audience here at home during the war. According to Pearl James, posters such as this one were meant to appeal to the audience very quickly. "Posters are designed to appeal quickly to a passing view and depend upon a certain instantaneous recognition" (James, 20). This poster seems to me a great example of this. It is relatively simple, but it's meaning is immediately obvious. The image is rather frightening, especially of the "hun." It then suggests, with the shortest of text, that by purchasing liberty bonds, you are choosing home over the enemy (and conversely, by not purchasing them you would be choosing the enemy). It also did what James referred to as "blurring the lines between fact and fiction" (James, 32). It is not exactly a realistic image, and it seems unlikely that a person would really be choosing the huns simply because they didn't purchase a liberty bond. But this poster would have successfully played on the emotions of the time and I imagine it would have been quite powerful.

Thinking about this poster alongside Brittain's A Testament of Youth was interesting. In what we read, there was a certain separation from "the enemy." As we discussed in class, there did not seem to be any particular animosity towards the other individual fighters. This poster does not really fit with that idea though. In this case, the other soldier is made to be like a demon or monster. It does support the idea of a loss of individuality though, as we saw in Brittain's memoir. The demonization of the soldier shows this, as well as the fact that the "enemy" is clumped together as the "hun," as if there are no individuals. I found this to be quite interesting.