---
title: 'Hunger: For Three Years America Has Fought Starvation in Belgium'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/hunger-america-has-fought-starvation-in-belgium-1917/
description: A charcoal-style drawing shows a gaunt woman with an infant and two thin children bent over in a bare interior, above the single word 'HUNGER'.
section: Collection
---

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3. Hunger: For Three Years America Has Fought Starvation in Belgium

[![Hunger: For Three Years America Has Fought Starvation in Belgium, 1917 US poster: A charcoal-style drawing shows a gaunt](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/hunger-america-has-fought-starvation-in-belgium-1917.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/hunger-america-has-fought-starvation-in-belgium-1917.jpg)

# Hunger: For Three Years America Has Fought Starvation in Belgium

A charcoal-style drawing shows a gaunt woman with an infant and two thin children bent over in a bare interior, above the single word 'HUNGER'. The text recalls three years of American relief work in Belgium and asks the viewer to eat less wheat, meat, fats and sugar so that food can be sent in ship loads. The tell is fear-appeal turned into a request: the starving figures are the argument, and the reader's own diet is the proposed remedy.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

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

## Text on the object

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

```
HUNGER

For three years America has
fought starvation in Belgium

Will you Eat less - wheat
meat - fats and sugar
that we may still send
food in ship loads?

UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION
```

Artist signature 'RALEIGH' in the drawing is not part of the poster text and is not included above.

[← The House Manager (Issued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Board of Food Administration)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/house-manager-massachusetts-board-of-food-administration-1917/) [I Am a Soldier of the United States (Service Series No. 12) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/i-am-a-soldier-of-the-united-states-service-series-no-12-1917/)

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- [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.
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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.
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