The Romance of War

DOCUMENT #1: The first entitled The Departure, shows a German troop train departing for the battlefront in late summer 1914. The work of B. Hennerberg, an artist originally from Sweden, it originally appeared in the German periodical Simplicissimus in August 1914. That Simplicissimus would publish such an illustration indicates the depth of the nationalist emotions the war generated. Noted before the war for its irreverent satire and criticism of German militarism, Simplicissimus, once the fighting started, lent its full support to the war effort.

DOCUMENT #2: The second illustration is one of a series of war-related cards that the Mitchell Tobacco Company included in its packs of Golden Dawn Cigarettes in 1914 and early 1915. It shows a sergeant offering smokes to the soldiers under his command before battle. Tobacco advertising with military themes reached a saturation point in England during the war years.

DOCUMENT #3: An Australian recruitment poster issued in 1915 serves as the third illustration.  Although Australia, like Canada, had assumed authority over its own internal affairs by the time the war started, its foreign policy was still controlled by Great Britain. Hence when Great Britain went to war, so did Australia.  The Australian parliament refused to approve conscription (the draft), however, so the government had to work hard to encourage volunteers. This particular poster appeared at a time when Australian troops were heavily involved in the Gallipoli campaign, the allied effort to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Directing its message to the many young men who were members of sports clubs, it promised them an opportunity to enlist in a battalion made up entirely of fellow sportsmen. Such battalions had already been formed in England.

DOCUMENT #4: : The fourth poster was produced and distributed by the newly formed British Ministry of Munitions in early 1917 to encourage women to accept jobs in the munitions industry. This was just one example of the broad government attempt from 1915 onward to enlist women in the war effort as medical workers, police, agricultural workers, porters, drivers, foresters, members of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, and, most important, factory laborers. This particular poster shows a young and attractive English woman offering a jaunty salute to a passing soldier as she arrives for -work. It gives no hint of the dangers of munitions work. During the war approximately 300 "munitionettes" were killed in explosions or from chemical-related sicknesses. Women who worked with TNT came to be known as "canaries" because of the yellow color of their skin. Despite such hazards and relatively low pay, approximately 950,000 women were working in munitions factories by war’s end.