That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth: Buy Liberty Bonds
Lower Manhattan burns under an orange sky as aircraft fly overhead and a submarine crosses the harbour; the Statue of Liberty stands headless and broken, her head lying in the water at her base. The fear-appeal tell is the imagined catastrophe paired with one remedy, bonds; the transfer tell is the borrowed line from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address set over the national monument.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1918
- Period
- First World War
- Made by
- U.S. Treasury Department (Fourth Liberty Loan); Joseph Pennell (artist)
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Wilson Administration
- Leader
- Woodrow Wilson
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Fundraise
- Themes
- War and the military, Economy and finance
- Event
- World War I
- Regime
- Wilson administration
- Leader
- Woodrow Wilson
- 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)
Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926, artist. 1918. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-18343.
Text on the object
Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked
JOSEPH PENNELL DEL. THAT LIBERTY SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH BUY LIBERTY BONDS FOURTH LIBERTY LOAN 2-B KETTERLINUS PHILA. 1918
"JOSEPH PENNELL DEL." (delineavit, "drew this") is the artist's small printed credit in the lower left of the illustration. "2-B" (edition/plate number) and "KETTERLINUS PHILA. 1918" (the Philadelphia printer named in this entry's own notes) are tiny printed lines along the very bottom edge, read with reduced confidence given their size.
