BULLETIN

OF THE

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN. FOUNDATIONS

VOLUME 23

AUGUST 1919

NUMBER 8

S

THE WAR POSTER EXHIBITION

By E. L. PEARSON

O many causes there were, which, according to claim, "won the war," it is curious that no one has yet asserted that the war was won by posters. We have heard that food won the war, that transportation won the war, and that many other minor and sometimes almost trivial things won the war. Persons who take the trouble to think, and those without an overwhelming personal pride in some one of the great number of admirable war activities, know that this war, like all others, was won by the fighting-men who were actually at the front. Wars have been fought and finished without the aid of pictorial art, but certainly there has never been one in which the poster was so conspicuous and so interesting.

Beginning August, 1914, The New York Public Library requested its agents in this and in foreign countries to forward all posters on the war which they could obtain. The collection numbers at present over 3,000 posters and is still growing. The extent of the collection is largely due to the interest and zeal of Mr. Edwin W. Gaillard, of the Library, who selected and arranged the posters for this exhibition. No available room in the Library is large enough to permit the exhibition of the whole collection, so there are shown a selection of about 600. These are in the Main Exhibition Room, Central Building, from May to October, 1919. Few of the posters are American, as our own are familiar and may best be exhibited by themselves at some time in the future. The present exhibition includes Russian, French, English, Canadian, Australian, East Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Brazilian, Polish,

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Slovakian, Dutch, Swiss, Italian, and German posters, as well as examples from Palestine, and other countries.

The German posters are naturally few, though with the raising of the blockade this part of the collection may grow. One or two pictorial posters in behalf of German war loans are shown, together with the Kaiser's proclamations, the satirical poster against France, "Kriegszeuge der Franzosen," in which the invasions of Germany by Louis XIV. and Napoleon I. are represented as justification for the invasion of France and Belgium in 1914. Here is a tattered copy of General von Buelow's proclamation at Namur, August 25, 1914. The Library's copy of this proclamation is in bad condition owing to the fact that it was smuggled out of Namur concealed in a loaf of bread. In this proclamation is the announcement that hostages will be taken, and that in case of an outbreak or disorder in any street, ten hostages from that street will be shot.

By way of curious contrast with this threat there is shown, in a case near by, a general order of Major-General Loring of the Confederate Army, published at Charleston, Va., September 17, 1862, in which it is stated that the general has "heard with deep mortification that in a single instance” the rules of humanity and the usages of war have been "departed from by the unauthorized order of one of his officers." It is further stated that "the wrong done will be promptly punished and redressed." While it is hardly likely that the generals on either side in the American Civil War went so far as this, and while all wars are accompanied by unauthorized acts of inhumanity, the contrast between the two orders is illuminating.

The Russian posters of the early period of the war, remarkable for their rich coloring, are almost entirely devoted to the promotion of war loans, although the scenes of the battlefield predominate. Here is the charging infantry platoon, the lonely operator of the machine-gun seated in a snowcovered field, the artillery officer calling for more ammunition as the empty shell-cases accumulate around the fieldpiece, men in the trenches, Cossacks charging a retreating enemy, and the woman-worker in the munition factory.

The Russian section is peculiar for the inclusion of twenty or thirty comic cartoons, primitive in drawing and sentiment, and crude in color. Following the custom of pictorial art designed to appeal to uneducated masses, they are boastful and chauvinistic to the last degree. Here is Ivan as the private soldier or non-commissioned officer of the Russian army, striding along with an Austrian soldier on one side and a German on the other, both yelling dismally and both led by the ear. In another, he comes upon Austria, Germany, and Turkey, trying to seize the world, and transfixes them