---
title: Remember Belgium. Buy Bonds. Fourth Liberty Loan
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/remember-belgium-buy-bonds-1918/
description: A German soldier in a spiked helmet, drawn as a black silhouette, pulls a girl by the hand past a burning town under the words 'Remember Belgium'.
section: Collection
---

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

**Content note:** A German soldier drags a girl past a burning town, implying abduction and sexual violence against a child. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![Remember Belgium. Buy Bonds. Fourth Liberty Loan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/remember-belgium-buy-bonds-1918.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/remember-belgium-buy-bonds-1918.jpg)

# Remember Belgium. Buy Bonds. Fourth Liberty Loan

A German soldier in a spiked helmet, drawn as a black silhouette, pulls a girl by the hand past a burning town under the words 'Remember Belgium'. The implied threat to the girl carries the poster, the pickelhaube stands for the whole German army, and 'Buy bonds' is the one remedy offered, three years and an ocean away from the 1914 events it recalls.

- **Date:** 1918
- **Period:** [First World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwi)
- **Made by:** U.S. Treasury Department, Fourth Liberty Loan; artist Ellsworth Young
- **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:** [Wilson Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=wilson-administration)
- **Leader:** [Woodrow Wilson](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=woodrow-wilson)
- **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), [Economy and finance](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=economy-finance)
- **Event:** [World War I](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=world-war-i)
- **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/96507603/), retrieved September 27, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain in the U.S. (published before 1931) Young, Ellsworth, artist. 1918. Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-4441.

## Text on the object

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

```
REMEMBER BELGIUM

Buy Bonds
Fourth
Liberty
Loan

Ellsworth Young [artist's signature, lower left]
```

Small printer's credit line at the very bottom edge of the sheet is too small to read at this resolution and is not transcribed. The photographed copy is bordered by Kodak color/gray-scale calibration strips added for archival photography, not part of the original poster.

[← ? (The German Ogre), Norman Lindsay recruiting poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/question-mark-german-ogre-lindsay-1918/) [Save Your Child from Autocracy and Poverty: Buy War Savings Stamps →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/save-your-child-from-autocracy-1918/)

## 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)