The picture below was the scan from Coronet, January, 1943. You can read the "By His Deeds...Measure Yours" at the bottom.
In Life Magazine, March 15, 1943, the picture was placed in the middle of the following message.
It is not pleasant to have your peaceful life upset by wartime needs and restrictions and activities....It is not pleasant to die, either....Between you who live at home and the men who die at the front there is a direct connection...By your actions, definitely, a certain number of these men will die or they will come through alive. If you do everything you can to hasten victory and do every bit of it as fast as you can....then, sure as fate you will save the lives of some men who will otherwise die because you let the war last too long....Think it over. Till the war is won you cannot, in fairness to them, complain or waste or shirk. Instead, you will apply every last ounce of your effort to getting this thing done....In the name of God and your fellow man, that is your job.
BY HIS DEEDS...MEASURE YOURS
The civilian war orgainzation needs your help. The Government has formed Citizens Service Corps as part of local Defense Councils. If such a group is at work in your community, cooperate with it to the limit of your ability. If none exists, help to organize one. A free booklet telling you what to do and how to do it will be sent to you at no charge if you will write to this magazine. This is your war. Help win it. Choose what you will do -- now!
EVERY CIVILIAN A FIGHTER
A lasting homage to the Prince of Peace.
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5 comments:
Wow. That's all I can say. The picture is disturbing but even more so is the final lines of the propaganda: "This is your war. Help win it. Choose what you will do - now!"
First off, it sounds like those forwards that try to guilt people into continuing to chain. As if the true mark of a Christian is whether you forward an email.
But what is worse is the assumption that everyone is in agreement with the war - this is YOUR war. Maybe by virtue of being an American and America being involved in the war. But that does not mean that everyone in America at that time supported and embraced that war or even agreed with the decision to enter it.
Sometimes I feel that people push the same sort of agenda for our involvement in Iraq. I wonder if, when they say, "Support our Troops" they really mean, "Support our government's decision to send those troops."
I just found this quotation while looking for other things:
“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.” - Thomas Merton
What I found most disturbing (besides the picture itself) was the line: "you will apply every last ounce of your effort to getting this thing done....In the name of God and your fellow man, that is your job." It is linking the war to being God's will.
I just read a great article in the Sun (www.thesunmagazine.org) from the June 2008 issue that is not yet posted online. It was about an anti-war therapist who helps soldiers get over Post-Tramautic stress. I found it really challenging to me to help soldiers heal from the experience of war despite being against war. To me, that is what supporting the troops is. It is not placing them in harms way, but freeing them from having to commit the atrocities that war demands.
This image by Falter appeared in a nationwide magazine campaign in the spring of 1943. The original painting is in the Nebraska State Historical Society, where Falter's papers are also stored. For another image in the campaign series, see this one:
http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/collections/wwii-posters/img/ww1645-21.jpg
Interesting, I just came across a page with the Christ/soldier image by John Falter on a single page removed from a magazine in our Archives in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. It struck me so that I had to make a copy of it and find out more. On first response to the image I saw it as an anit-war image thus it is quite interesting to discover that it was intended as propaganda in support of Ally actions in World War II.
- metascrawl
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