---
title: Victory Delayed
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-victory-delayed-laura-knight-1939/
description: A painting by Laura Knight shows a factory fire, with a worker climbing from a burning vessel and a fire extinguisher in use at right.
section: Collection
---

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3. Victory Delayed

[![Victory Delayed, 1939 UK poster: A painting by Laura Knight shows a factory fire, with a worker climbing from a burning](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-victory-delayed-laura-knight-1939.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-victory-delayed-laura-knight-1939.jpg)

# Victory Delayed

A painting by Laura Knight shows a factory fire, with a worker climbing from a burning vessel and a fire extinguisher in use at right. The caption carries a message from the artist asking war workers to be careful with smoking, naked lights and electrical equipment: the scene supplies the fear (fear-appeal) and the named artist the endorsement (testimonial).

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

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

## Text on the object

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

```
VICTORY DELAYED

A MESSAGE FROM DAME LAURA KNIGHT, R.A.

"I dedicate this picture to all men and women engaged in every kind of vital war production, whose carefulness in smoking and in the use of naked lights and electrical equipment largely ensures that the sort of scene I have painted above shall not happen. . . . Good luck to you all."

Laura Knight

PRINTED FOR H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE BY J. WEINER LTD., LONDON, W.C.1. 51-3814
```

[← Venereal Diseases - Tomorrow's Citizen](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-venereal-diseases-tomorrows-citizen-mount-1939/) [Victory Is in Your Hands! Tighten Your Grip - get into War Work →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-victory-is-in-your-hands-war-work-1939/)

## 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)