---
title: 'Help Crush the Menace of the Seas: Buy Liberty Bonds'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/help-crush-the-menace-of-the-seas-1917/
description: A red fist rises from dark, blood-streaked water gripping a dripping, arrow-shaped spike, while a warship flying a U.S. flag steams on the horizon.
section: Collection
---

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3. Help Crush the Menace of the Seas: Buy Liberty Bonds

[![Help Crush the Menace of the Seas: Buy Liberty Bonds, 1917 US poster: A red fist rises from dark, blood-streaked water](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/help-crush-the-menace-of-the-seas-1917.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/help-crush-the-menace-of-the-seas-1917.jpg)

# Help Crush the Menace of the Seas: Buy Liberty Bonds

A red fist rises from dark, blood-streaked water gripping a dripping, arrow-shaped spike, while a warship flying a U.S. flag steams on the horizon. The headline names an unspecified 'menace of the seas' and attaches the purchase of Liberty Bonds to crushing it, with 'Buy Quickly, Buy Freely' as the instruction. The tell is the threat shown as an image rather than a stated claim, paired with an urgent, concrete ask.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)

## Text on the object

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

```
HELP CRUSH the MENACE of the SEAS

BUY LIBERTY BONDS
Buy Quickly    Buy Freely

RAINBOW DIVISION
SPECIAL
LIBERTY LOAN COMMITTEE

J.L.Grosse

Poster Contributed by Cloak, Suit and Skirt Industry Committee
O'Connor-Fyffe, Adv., N.Y.
```

[← Helft uns siegen! Zeichnet die Kriegsanleihe (Help Us Win! Subscribe to the War Loan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/helft-uns-siegen-1917/) [Help Swell the Fund! 5% of Today's Sales in Every One of Our Stores Will Be Donated to the Y.M.C.A. War Fund →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/help-swell-the-fund-ymca-war-fund-1917/)

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- [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.
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- [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)
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- [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)