---
title: You Can Do Something to Help Stop Them! They Must Not Pass! Buy Liberty Bonds, It's Your War!
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/you-can-do-something-to-help-stop-them-they-must-not-pass-1917-1919/
description: A lone helmeted soldier with a bayoneted rifle stands at lower left facing a barbed-wire line, behind which a mass of dim.
section: Collection
---

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2. [Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)
3. You Can Do Something to Help Stop Them! They Must Not Pass! Buy

**Content note:** A soldier faces masses of dim, beast-like figures in spiked helmets behind barbed wire, as issued. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![You Can Do Something to Help Stop Them! They Must Not Pass! Buy Liberty Bonds, It's Your War!, 1917 US poster: A lone](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/you-can-do-something-to-help-stop-them-they-must-not-pass-1917-1919.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/you-can-do-something-to-help-stop-them-they-must-not-pass-1917-1919.jpg)

# You Can Do Something to Help Stop Them! They Must Not Pass! Buy Liberty Bonds, It's Your War!

A lone helmeted soldier with a bayoneted rifle stands at lower left facing a barbed-wire line, behind which a mass of dim, beast-like figures in spiked helmets advances under the flags of the United States, Britain, Belgium, Italy and France. Hand-lettered words ask the viewer to help stop them and to buy Liberty Bonds because 'it's your war.' The tell of fear-appeal is the advancing mass held back only by the wire and the soldier; identity-fusion is the claim that the war belongs to the viewer personally.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

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

## Text on the object

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

```
YOU CAN
DO
SOMETHING
TO
HELP
STOP THEM!
THEY MUST NOT
PASS!
BUY LIBERTY BONDS,
IT'S YOUR WAR!
[artist's signature, lettered at lower right: C. F. BATCHELDER]
```

The signature at lower right is lettered and reads 'C. F. Batchelder'.

[← You Buy a Liberty Bond, Lest I Perish: Get Behind the Government](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/you-buy-a-liberty-bond-lest-i-perish-get-behind-the-government-1917/) [You Go Get 'Em Over Here, While He'll Go Get 'Em Over There →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/you-go-get-em-over-here-liberty-bonds-1917/)

## 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)