MEN OF BRITAIN, UPHOLD YOUR COUNTRY'S
HONOR AND LIBERTY! SERVE WITH
YOUR FRIENDS!
or you would read what the King had said:
"NO PRICE CAN BE TOO HIGH WHEN
HONOR AND LIBERTY ARE AT STAKE."
Even the fences of the parks, the windows and sides of the omnibuses and the wind-shields of the taxicabs reminded men every hour of the day and night that "Your King and Country Need You."
I recall, with amusement, how "scandalized" some Americans were at England's resort to "circus methods" to manufacture an army. I remember that pert (and extremely pretty) young Chicago newspaper-woman who, having come over from Paris which had not needed to advertise for an army, because France had one, was mortified beyond words to find London screaming with "Your-King-and-Country-Need-You" sign literature. She was so stirred by this "undignified exhibition" that she sat down before she had been in town forty-eight hours and dashed off to her paper just what she thought about "degenerate Britain." She was convinced that a nation so "hopelessly unpatriotic" that it had to advertise for defenders was "doomed." Her erudite observations made a deep impression on her editors, who, in a learned editorial asked gravely whether the British Empire was "reaching the Diocletian period of the Romans."
4 Questions to the Women of England
As a matter of fact, Kitchener's project to advertise for an army was the one ray of imagination, and a boundlessly encouraging one, which the War Office had so far revealed. It showed even more imagination in entrusting the technique of the scheme to a professional, Mr. Hedley F. Le Bas, who, besides bringing to the task the expert knowledge of a publisher, had once been a trooper in the 15th Hussars, and knew and loved the army. Mr. Le Bas modestly disclaims credit for originating the plan to create an army of millions by advertisement. He says that the Duke of Wellington beat him to it. A hundred years ago, when England was at grips with the oppressor of that day, a poster appeal for soldiers was issued, which is prima facie evidence that advertising is not a modern invention. Only a few Englishmen, and probably still fewer Americans, are aware that even in Napoleonic times advertising for an army was de rigueur, and as the invitation to "The Warriors of Manchester" was, to a certain extent, the spiritual inspiration of Kitchener's remarkable recruit-getting campaign, I make no apologies, despite its raciness, for reproducing on the following page a document of genuinely historical value.
The methods to which the American Democracy has resorted to secure soldiers for her wars were also in the minds of Lord Kitchener and Mr. Le Bas. Indeed, the practises of President Lincoln, in respect of raising armies, were the model to which the British Government from the start determined to adhere. It was discovered that Lincoln and Seward had not shrunk from appealing to the men of the North from the hoardings and through the newspapers, while the advertisements of the United States army and navy during the Spanish-American War were a modern example of recruiting measures in a country where the absence of conscription compels a Government, in the hour of emergency, to scrape an army together by hook or crook. Then the constant advertising by our War and Navy departments, even in peace-times, proved that there must be efficacy in asking men to serve their country in posters, magazines or newspaper-columns in which they were also being persuasively urged to buy automobiles, "quality" clothes or shaving-sticks. Kitchener's "advertising campaign" was destined, before the war was old, to be the target of bitter attack, but the skill, persistence and comprehensiveness with which it was prosecuted played an immense rôle in the creation of the greatest volunteer army in history. It opened a new epoch in advertising and clothed that art with a distinction which will never be taken from it. The seal of an Empire has been placed on the maxim that it pays to advertise.
