Your Country Needs You:the Kitchener poster, 1914

I Want You for U.S. Army, James Montgomery Flagg, 1917. Public domain.

James Montgomery Flagg's Uncle Sam first appeared on the cover of Leslie's Weekly on 6 July 1916 as "What Are You Doing for Preparedness?" and was reissued in 1917 as the Army's "I Want YOU" (Time). Time reports that Flagg used Leete's design as the basis and his own face as the model. More than four million copies were printed in 1917 and 1918 (Time, citing the Library of Congress), a larger print run than any figure on record for Leete's image. The two posters share a composition; they differ in who issued them. Flagg's version was a wartime government poster of the U.S. Army, while Leete's began as a commercial magazine cover.

"Auch du sollst beitreten zur Reichswehr" ("You too should join the Reichswehr"), Julius Ussy Engelhard, Munich, Oscar Consée Kunstanstalt, 1919. Library of Congress. Public domain (no known restrictions).

Other governments and armies took up the pointing figure after the war. A 1919 Bavarian poster for the Reichswehr (above) used a helmeted soldier, and Dmitry Moor's 1920 Soviet poster Have you volunteered? shows a Red Army soldier pointing out of the frame; it is widely described as modelled on the Kitchener type, but this page has not verified that claim against a holding institution (see Image gaps). In 1997 the British Army reissued the pose with a Black non-commissioned officer in place of Kitchener, and a 2014 two-pound coin by the Royal Mint carried the design (Wikipedia). For the American government body that ran wartime publicity in 1917 and 1918, see The Committee on Public Information: how the U.S. government sold the First World War at home (1917-1919).

• The PRC and the War Office: the PRC, formed of the Prime Minister and the heads of the political parties, issued 164 poster designs and 65 pamphlets, and over 54 million pieces of advertising in all at a cost of £40,000 (Wikipedia summary of the committee's work). Its purpose was official advertising for recruits.
• James Taylor (Your Country Needs You: The Secret History of the Propaganda Poster, 2013): the idea that the Leete poster was the most popular design and recruited millions is "an urban myth". He found it absent from the PRC's records of its almost 200 official designs, found no surviving London Opinion postcards, and did not find it in the thousands of photographs of street scenes and recruiting offices he searched.
• Nick Hiley (Imperial War Museum, 1997): described the poster as a "non event" at the time that gained its fame through later advertising and publishing (as reported in Wikipedia).
• Stephen Badsey: the 1914 surge followed Kitchener's own call and the Times coverage of Mons and the Amiens dispatch; not every volunteer can be credited to a single appeal. He notes it is often stated as fact that Kitchener's call was the main driver.
• The artist and the magazine: the record contains no statement from Leete about his intentions, and London Opinion sold the image as a cover and as a postcard, so its owners had a commercial stake in it.
• This archive's reading: documented are the cover, the date, the PRC's own posters and their printing numbers, the monthly enlistment totals, the later copies, and the lack of a surviving London Opinion postcard. Not shown: that the Leete image recruited a specific number of men, or that any poster outweighed the news from France, other pressures such as employers, neighbours and pals battalions. Disputed: whether the PRC ever issued the Leete design as its own poster.

Had a German, French or Soviet recruiting office put a famous marshal's face and pointing hand on a poster with "Your country needs you", it would be scored the same: Transfer and Identity fusion. The U.S. Army's 1917 poster, the 1919 Reichswehr poster and the 1920 Soviet poster use the device identically. The scale differs: the PRC's official campaign was one of the largest in British history, but the Kitchener pointing image was a small part of it, whereas Flagg's Uncle Sam was a mass government print run.

"To Arms!", L. Raven-Hill, Punch, 2 September 1914, caption: "Now, my lads, your country wants you. Who's for the front?" Library of Congress. Public domain (no known restrictions).