That liberty shall not perish from the earth
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Library of Congress · LC-DIG-ppmsca-18343 (digital file from original print) · Public domain · Catalog record
The pins
Context
For discussion
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Appeal to fear The headless statue The Statue of Liberty beheaded and New York in flames. No German bomber could reach the city in 1918, and the artist said so; the picture is a fear, not a forecast.
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Hyperbole The bombers A formation of aircraft over Manhattan, drawn as if the war had crossed the Atlantic. The exaggeration is the argument: if this is what losing looks like, no bond is too expensive.
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Transfer The Lincoln line "That liberty shall not perish from the earth" is Gettysburg, misquoted slightly. Lincoln's authority is attached to a Treasury loan.
Joseph Pennell's lithograph for the Fourth Liberty Loan of autumn 1918 shows New York under attack: the Statue of Liberty beheaded, the harbor in flames, bombers overhead. No such attack was possible in 1918, and Pennell said as much in a pamphlet about the poster. The headline quotes Lincoln at Gettysburg. About two million copies were printed.
- The poster shows an event that could not have happened. Does that make it a lie, a warning, or something else?
- Why quote Lincoln?
- The Statue of Liberty appears often in American war posters. What does it do here that a soldier could not?
See also
Same era, or the same techniques.
