---
title: The Greatest Crime in Christendom
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/the-greatest-crime-in-christendom-1918/
description: A woman scrapes food from a plate into a garbage can beside a block of text equating waste with a crime and setting battlefield deaths against deaths
section: Collection
---

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3. The Greatest Crime in Christendom

[![The Greatest Crime in Christendom, 1918 US poster: A woman scrapes food from a plate into a garbage can beside a block](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/the-greatest-crime-in-christendom-1918.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/the-greatest-crime-in-christendom-1918.jpg)

# The Greatest Crime in Christendom

A woman scrapes food from a plate into a garbage can beside a block of text equating waste with a crime and setting battlefield deaths against deaths by starvation. The tell is the figures and the moral frame: large casualty numbers are placed directly beside the plate to make a household act feel like a cause of death, with no source given for the numbers.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

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

## Text on the object

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

```
The Greatest Crime
in Christendom

To buy - to cook - to eat more
than you need; to waste a single morsel
of food that can be used - is a crime.

Ten million have died bravely on the field
of battle. They at least had a chance. They
gave their all willingly and unselfishly.

Over twenty million have died of starvation -
without even a chance to fight. To these death
has come only as a relief from torture worse than
death - starvation.

It is our job - yours and ours - to save food so
that the millions of starving people in
Europe may have SOMETHING to eat.

Don't
Waste
Food

Eat Less
Waste Nothing

Live Simply - avoid all food waste.

United States Food Administration
ILLINOIS EDUCATIONAL DIVISION
CHICAGO
```

The circular seal at the lower left is the Food Administration emblem.

[← The Country Needs You to Help Harvest the Cotton](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/the-country-needs-you-to-help-harvest-the-cotton-1918/) [The President Says: Hunger Does Not Breed Reform; It Breeds Madness (America's Food Pledge, 20 Million Tons) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/the-president-says-hunger-does-not-breed-reform-1918/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [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.
- [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.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 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/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [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)