--- title: Can You Ignore the Challenge of this Letter? url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/canada-can-you-ignore-the-challenge-of-this-letter-1941/ description: A smiling airman's portrait sits above a reproduced typed letter on Department of Munitions and Supply letterhead. section: Collection --- 1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/) 2. [Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/) 3. Can You Ignore the Challenge of this Letter? [![Can You Ignore the Challenge of this Letter?, 1941 Canada poster: A smiling airman's portrait sits above a reproduced typed](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/canada-can-you-ignore-the-challenge-of-this-letter-1941.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/canada-can-you-ignore-the-challenge-of-this-letter-1941.jpg) # Can You Ignore the Challenge of this Letter? A smiling airman's portrait sits above a reproduced typed letter on Department of Munitions and Supply letterhead, headed 'To the Aircraft Workers of Canada' and signed Ralph P. Bell, with the question 'Can you ignore the challenge of this letter?'. The tell for testimonial is the signed letter from the Director-General; for fear-appeal, the claim that carelessness 'may cost some boy his life' beside bombers 'murdering defenseless women and children'; for name-calling, 'brutal German gangsters' who 'would cringe and cower like the cowards they are'. ## Propaganda techniques used in this poster [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) ## Text on the object Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked ``` "with YOUR help... he may be a BISHOP or a BARKER" says Ralph P. Bell Director-General of Aircraft Production DEPARTMENT OF MUNITIONS AND SUPPLY OTTAWA, CANADA To the Aircraft Workers of Canada: Yours is a privilege enjoyed by comparatively few in this Titanic struggle for the preservation of the right to live as free men and women. To be actually working with your own hands in the creation of a training plane which may produce for Canada and the Empire another Bishop, or a Barker, or a McLaren! Perhaps to have a part in the construction of a Hurricane which will some day play a decisive role in the great air battle over Britain. Or a Bolingbroke which may wing its way across the Channel to blast successfully a German invasion port on the French Coast. Or it may be you're on a Hampden, a bomb from which may some day devastate Hitler's very headquarters in Berlin itself! If you were sure this one you're working on now were that "ship", you'd take particular pride to see that every last detail was perfect, wouldn't you? Maybe it is! A bit of carelessness, a sloppy fit, some little thing not just right, even on a trainer, may cost some boy his life. A little more care on your part and that same lad may live to win the Victoria Cross! You have been singled out to participate in such responsibility. What an Honour! At the very time that I write this personal message to you men and women in the aircraft plants of Canada, German bombers are blasting British homes and murdering defenseless women and children. Yet, sufficient planes and pilots from Canada to blockade the skies over Berlin, and these brutal German gangsters would cringe and cower like the cowards they are. WHEN? IT'S UP TO YOU! WHAT A CHALLENGE! Yours for greater effort, Ralph P. Bell Director-General of Aircraft Production CAN YOU IGNORE THE CHALLENGE OF THIS LETTER? [imprint:] Prepared and published under the auspices of the Advertising and Sales Club of Toronto and distributed under the authority of the Director-General of Aircraft Production GIFT OF CENTRAL OUTDOOR ADVERTISING CO. ``` [← Big Guns of the Home Front: Action Stations Everyone](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/canada-big-guns-of-the-home-front-trevor-1941/) [Can't You See? You Must Buy Victory Bonds →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/canada-cant-you-see-you-must-buy-victory-bonds-1941/) ## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques - [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written. - [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers. - [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal) - [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling) - [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms. - [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal) - [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered. - [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)