Greenwich resident John Watling donated the posters to the Bruce Museum
(Julie Ruth/ for the Greenwich Citizen)
The Bruce Museum spotlights the recent gift of original posters from the First World War by longtime Greenwich residents John and Beverly Watling in a new exhibition, "That Liberty Shall Not Perish: World War I Posters," on view from Saturday, Nov. 1 through Feb. 1, 2009.
The show features 18 original posters, including those created for the four Liberty Loan campaigns, the War Savings Stamp program, the Victory Loan program, and the Red Cross.
Now nearly 100 years old, the posters are a window to a time that is growing increasingly distant from many people's personal experience. They primarily reflect an overriding national tone of innocence, patriotism, and national pride, far different from more recent conflicts of the .....
...John's stepfather, Charles B. Warren Jr., along with his older brother, Wetmore Warren, collected these posters while they were living in Washington, D.C., where their father, Charles B. Warren, Sr., was stationed during World War I, serving as chief of staff to the U.S. provost marshal, Enoch Chower. Chower led the drafting of the Selective Service Act.....
....The government issued more than 20 million copies of some 2,500 posters in support of the war effort.
In an era that preceded radio and television broadcasting, they were created as a way to communicate essential information rapidly and efficiently. They accomplished this by using bold graphics, strong color and concise wording to urge Americans to contribute to the war effort in specific ways. Enlist! Fight or Buy Bonds! I Want You for the Navy! One of the most compelling posters has no words at all, only a lovely Red Cross nurse with outspread arms beseeching the viewer.
"For many World War I posters to speak to us now," Walton Rawls has written in World War I and the American Poster, "requires an effort on our part to be more responsive to the spirit of that period a dominant faith in America as God's 'chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world.'
It now seems that, in many ways, citizens of the World War I era are about as distant intellectually from post-Vietnam Americans as are the knights of King Arthur's Round Table."
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