Patterns of Representation

The most obvious representational pattern here is that all of these cartoons or posters feature children. Images of children are being deployed in at least three different ways here.

• First, we see representations of vulnerable children endangered by German aggression used as a way to mobilize sympathy for the plight of the British and to make a case for the need to intervene. Portrayals of children are often used to try to cultivate an empathetic connection with people affected by a conflict that is taking place elsewhere. As Helen Berents writes in her 2020 article, "Politics, policy-making and the presence of images of suffering children," images of children "are often invoked as rationale or justification for political action; the concept of ‘the child’, a product of particular western historical, cultural and political developments, as innocent, vulnerable and in need of protection has become universalized in significant ways." Children in danger, in other words, has become a common rhetorical and representational trope to signal the need for action and to make clear the moral stakes of a conflict. Thus in Figure 1, Dr. Seuss portrays America First as heartless and uncaring because, he argues, they don't care about the fate of foreign children who are being hurt by Hitler. Clarence Kessig brings this point home in his cartoon (Figure 4) with his insistence that we pay attention and be moved by the dangers to British children even if American children are not directly affected by it.

• Second, vulnerable children are also used here to help make a case about America's own stake in this fight. The interventionists had to try to convince Americans that the dangers of not aiding Britain were greater than those of doing so. The Fight for Freedom Committee poster includes a woman with two young children to make the case that if we don't help Britain stop Germany, America's own women and children will be in danger. The poster thus frames aiding Britain as a way to protect vulnerable American women and children.

• Finally, children in these images function as avatars of innocence who are put in the role of speaking truth to power. Encapsulated by the old phrase, "out of the mouth of babes," children are frequently represented as expressing a kind of purity and moral reasoning unaffected by adult machinations. Thus in the Dr. Suess cartoon, the two children are clearly appalled by the idea that the lives of foreign children don't matter; they are the stand-ins for the interventionist argument here (note that even the cat is appalled which suggests that not caring about others just because they are foreign is so unnatural that even animals know it is wrong). America First uses children in this role too, however; in their poster, it is the child who points out the seeming hypocrisy of Roosevelt's policies vis-a-vis Germany and the USSR.

It's interesting that two of these images feature an adult reading a story to a child or children, reflecting a shared vocabulary of the common cultural experience of parents' reading their children bedtime stories. But both the Seuss cartoon and America First Committee poster in some ways put that trope on its head. Instead of loving parents imparting moral wisdom to their children with their storytelling, here we see adults leading children astray by telling them a story, a fictionalized or false narrative. Both Seuss and America First equate the views of their opponents as a false narrative, a story constructed to serve a particular agenda and they use the image of an adult reading to children from a book to reinforce that perspective.

How the enemy is represented in a foreign policy conflict is always worth exploring. In the debate over US aid to Britain, those favoring intervention had much more scope to create representations of the enemy in their efforts to mobilize public opinion. Anti-interventionists had to walk a fine line; they didn't want to seem pro-German but they didn't see the British as the enemy either, so most of their imagery, visual or otherwise, focuses on domestic issues and actors rather than portrayals an enemy.

But for the interventionists, visual (and rhetorical) representations of Germany were another way to make the case for the necessity of American aid to Britain. We see three different representations of Germany here. In Figure 1, the Dr. Suess cartoon, Adolf Hitler is described as a wolf and drawn as a wolf with sharp teeth that are dripping saliva (or perhaps blood?) Of course, that imagery harkens back to a very famous story, that of Little Red Robin Hood who is eaten by the Big Bad Wolf. Portraying Hitler as a ravenous wolf who "chews up" children and "spits out their bones" offers an easy to understand, culturally resonant critique of Germany and its war program.

The Fight for Freedom poster offers a different kind of visual representation of Germany. This poster portrays German aggression, here symbolized by a looming German soldier, as monstrous threat to American women and children. Portrayed in red with white eyes and a mouth that looks quite a lot like fangs, this German threat is inhuman in a different way than the wolf. This image could harken to popular representations of zombies or vampires. Although subtle, this image also portrays Germany as a sexual and racialized threat. The fact that this soldier looms over a cowering women and the decision to highlight the whiteness of the woman and her two children emphasizes how dangerous he is in ways that resonated with the common racial representations of white female purity.

Finally, we see Germany represented as a squadron of bomber planes flying towards Britain out of a roiling cloud in a triangle formation as part of a "planned Nazi invasion" of Britain. The Germans here are clearly bringing death, destruction, chaos, and storm clouds with them. We see no Germans in Figure 4; they are faceless, nameless, and seeming heartless, as emphasized by the civilians who are fleeing in their wake. In contrast, Klessig includes the image of a sole British soldier holding a gun standing guard at the border. On the one hand, this imagery suggests that the British were outgunned by the Germans, but the lone soldier also symbolizes resistance and resiliency. The cartoon associates the Germans with machines while humanizing the British as individuals.