שפייז וועט געווינען דיא קריעג! (Food Will Win the War!), Yiddish edition

שפייז וועט געווינען דיא קריעג! (Food Will Win the War!), Yiddish edition

Immigrants crowd a ship's rail as it passes the Statue of Liberty, with the New York skyline under a rainbow of flag stripes. The Yiddish text reads: 'Food will win the war! You came here to find freedom. Now you must help to preserve it. We must supply the Allies with wheat. Let nothing go to waste.' The tell of transfer is the arrival scene itself: the viewer's own memory of Liberty is attached to a request about bread.

Date
1917
Period
First World War
Made by
U.S. Food Administration; Charles Edward Chambers (artist)
Region
North America
Country
United States
Medium
Poster
Issuer type
State
Regime
Wilson Administration
Leader
Woodrow Wilson
Audience
Diaspora or minority
Purpose
Mobilize or secure compliance
Themes
Home front, Migration
Event
World War I
Techniques
Transfer
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
Library of Congress, retrieved September 27, 2026
Rights
Public domain in the U.S. (published before 1931)
Chambers, Charles Edward, approximately 1883-1941, artist. 1917. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-05651.

Text on the object

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

שפייז וועט געווינען דיא קריעג!

איהר קומט אהער צו געפינען פרייהייט.
יעצט מוזט איהר העלפען זיא צו בעשיצען
מיר מוזען דיא עלליים פערזארגען מיט ווייץ.

לאזט קיין זאך ניט גיין אין ניוועץ.

[seal: United States Food Administration]

יונייטעד סטייטס שפייז פערוואלטונג.

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

Food will win the war!

You came here to find freedom.
Now you must help to protect it.
We must supply the Allies with wheat.

Let nothing go to ruin/waste.

[seal: United States Food Administration]

United States Food Administration.

Text is in the Yiddish (Hebrew) alphabet, printed left-to-right lines reading right-to-left as usual for Yiddish. The final line is a Yiddish transliteration of the agency's English name, not a translation of it. The small circular emblem between the body text and that last line is the U.S. Food Administration's seal graphic, not further legible text.