Must Children Die and Mothers Plead in Vain?
Artist
Walter H. Everett
United States, 1880 - 1946
Date1918
Dimensions39 1/2 x 29 1/4 in. (100.3 x 74.3 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.17
DescriptionDuring World War I, the U.S. government’s Committee on Public Information instituted four wartime Liberty Loan drives, and a fifth immediately after the Armistice. Walter H. Everett, an established illustrator of both books and national magazines, was commissioned to produce the illustration for this poster for the fourth Liberty Bond drive of September 2018 after winning a competition set by the committee’s Department of Pictorial Publicity. This traditional figurative design seems to be his only poster for the war effort and one million copies of it were issued. The committee deployed the most current methods of psychological coercion in the numerous posters, pamphlets, fliers, and reminders that it circulated around the nation. This maudlin scene of a mother clutching her tiny children to her in a war-torn landscape as she reaches for help was clearly intended to stir the emotions and appeal to the viewer’s conscience. On View
Not on view
