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J. M.WINTER

Above, left Morale in all armies depended on the maintenance of strong links between front and home front Here a German wife embraces her husband's helmet, and trusts thaf his miłitary service will protectthe home land from the predators surrounding it

Above, right: Here is a morę risquś version of the maintenance of ties between front and home frontThis French woman prepares for 'the assault' on her man, home on leave and in need of close support

but the allies who brought black troops to subdue European soldieis. Latei in the war, British and French intellectuals, artists, and wnters descended td <rimi]ar depths of vilification of an enemy whose very culture, they beheved, had spawned the diseaseof Trussianism’.

As mobilization spread, the appearance of leamed pamphlets tracing the mendacity of one side and the morał probity of the other became a marginaJ exercńse. Morę central to propaganda was the eultivation of visual forms, espedally in caricature and in poster art. Newspapers in all combatant coun-tries moralized the conflict by producing stereotypes of the enemy: the mad or animal-like Hun corresponded to the fat, grasping British businessman, lusting after Germanys wealth and treasures. In France, a rotund, cunning, and bloodthirsty Bnirnhilde stood for Germany; a lithe, joyful, though naive Mariannę for France.

These cultural icons came in many forms, aside from caricatures. What French scholars cali the ‘banalization of the war’, its capacity to settle into daily life as a normal set of events, is nowhere morę visible than here. Hin-denburg doihes, Foch ashtrays, and Kitchener beer nmgs mixed patriotism and profit, trivializing the struggle in a manner consistent with its unending continuation. The Pellerin firm, based in the city of Epinal in eastem France, specialized in cheap posters illustrating the glories of combat, Its banahties and absurdities created an entirely imaginary war, far from the mud and blood of tire conflict. Perhaps this yery unreahty helped its sales: they were gigantic and worldwide.

PROPAGANDA AND MOBILIZATION OF CONSENT

Wartime patriotism sold, especially wlien it came in sanitized forms.

Picture postcards, the essential medium of correspondence between home and front, carried all kinds of patriotic messages. In France, sexual innu-endo mixed with appeals to repopulate the country after the camage of the war.

Trivialization was anything but trivial. In effect, the power of these ephemeral objects derived from their rehearsal of a national sciipt about die war. It went on, so the message said, because the cause was just. That cause was not so much political—an area in which honourable people could dis-agree-—butrather morał. Those who thought the warshouldbe brought to an end through negotiation, or a compromise peace, were supping witii the devil, and thereby risking the betrayal of the men at the front and the men who had abeady fallen. This land of propaganda from below, dierefore, was a powerful tool helping to muzzle dissent. Govemments did their best to pre-vent paeifist messages from spreading in wartime, but a much morę power-_;-f§| agent of eonformity was die cluster of images spread diroughout wartime societies in a host- of visual forms, refined and vulgar alike.

By the middle of the war, the film industry emerged as the most important Film, propaganda, vehicle for projecting die meaning of the war as a struggle of Good against and morał rearma-Evil. This einematie effort took many forms, from comedy to melodrama to ment tragedy. Much of this film output was neidier inspired by nor organized dirough govemments, though State funding was ffequendy involved. To be surę, die censor was active; but here again die private sector took die lead.

On the screen, kitsch and popular entertainments came into their own, broadcasting messages with evident mass appeal about the virtues of one side and die villainy of the other. Musie hall, melodrama, and die gramophone industry all chipped in, selkng (at a profit) anodyne or uplifting images and songs to increasingly fatigued, anxious, andirritable populations.

No wonder film was so popular during the war. It satisfied longings for the mundane at an extraordinary moment: it lampooned the dreariness of mili-tary life, and it added alarge dose of outrage directed against die source of all the troubles—die enemy. This was a situation tailor-made for Charlie Chaplin. A British-bom musie hall performer, he hadjoined Mack Sennetts Key-stone Company in December 1913. He was already a celebrity in 1914, and contributed to the war not by joining up but by staying put in Califoraia and maldng films.

Chaplin s service to die allied war effort on die screen .far- outweighed tiie advantages of putting him in uniform. He was an iconic figurę, a man both terribly vulnerable and somehow able (sooner or later) to plant his boot 011 die seat of authority. He was the great survivor, ‘die tramp’—the tide of one ofhis most successful films of 1915—die litde guywhose decency almost gets trampled, but whose resihence is indefatigable. No wonder some British Highland Light Infantryman stole a cardboard figurę of Chaplm and brought it over to die western front.

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