---
title: 'Don''t Let That Shadow Touch Them: Buy War Bonds'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dont-let-that-shadow-touch-them-1942/
description: Three children play on a lawn, a boy with a toy warplane, a toddler with a paper hat and a flag, and a girl with a doll, while a large dark shadow in the…
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Don't Let That Shadow Touch Them: Buy War Bonds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/dont-let-that-shadow-touch-them-1942.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/dont-let-that-shadow-touch-them-1942.jpg)

# Don't Let That Shadow Touch Them: Buy War Bonds

Three children play on a lawn, a boy with a toy warplane, a toddler with a paper hat and a flag, and a girl with a doll, while a large dark shadow in the shape of a swastika falls across the grass around them. The threat is never shown directly: the viewer is told that buying a bond keeps it off the children.

- **Date:** 1942
- **Period:** [Second World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwii)
- **Made by:** U.S. government war bond campaign (artist Lawrence Beall Smith; printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office)
- **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america)
- **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states)
- **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster)
- **Issuer type:** [State](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=state)
- **Regime:** [Roosevelt Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=roosevelt-administration)
- **Leader:** [Franklin D. Roosevelt](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=franklin-d-roosevelt)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Fundraise](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=fundraise)
- **Themes:** [War and the military](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=war-military), [Home front](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=home-front), [Economy and finance](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=economy-finance)
- **Event:** [World War II](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=world-war-ii)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2015647884/), retrieved September 27, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (U.S. government work; LOC: no known restrictions on publication) Lawrence Beall Smith. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-43383.

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
Don't Let That Shadow Touch Them

Buy WAR BONDS

[illegible — small printer's job-number line, bottom right]
```

A small white printer's credit line in the bottom right of the green band (beginning 'U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE') is present but too low-resolution to transcribe the job number and poster number with confidence.

[← 'BUT if you continue to resist...' (Japanese leaflet to Australian troops)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/but-leaflet-australian-troops-1942/) ['He's coming south. It's fight, work or perish' (Australian Department of Information) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/hes-coming-south-australia-1942/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (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/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)