---
title: 'You Saved Food for Them, Now Save to Make Their Victory Complete: Eat Less, Waste Nothing'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/you-saved-food-for-them-eat-less-waste-nothing-1919/
description: A pencil drawing shows uniformed soldiers eating together at a long mess table, above a headline thanking the viewer for past saving and asking for more.
section: Collection
---

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3. You Saved Food for Them, Now Save to Make Their Victory Complete: Eat

[![You Saved Food for Them, Now Save to Make Their Victory Complete: Eat Less, Waste Nothing, 1919 US poster: A pencil drawing](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/you-saved-food-for-them-eat-less-waste-nothing-1919.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/you-saved-food-for-them-eat-less-waste-nothing-1919.jpg)

# You Saved Food for Them, Now Save to Make Their Victory Complete: Eat Less, Waste Nothing

A pencil drawing shows uniformed soldiers eating together at a long mess table, above a headline thanking the viewer for past saving and asking for more. The text warns that famine in Europe is followed by anarchy and that feeding the starving will make Bolshevism vanish, and ties continued saving to bringing American troops home sooner. The tell is the pairing of a political fear with the image of the soldiers' meal, so that a plain request to eat less carries the stakes of both.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)

## Text on the object

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

```
[artist's signature, lower left of drawing: McCOMBS]

You Saved Food for Them
Now Save to Make Their Victory Complete

Famine has spread throughout Europe—Anarchy is following.
Feed the starving millions and Bolshevism will vanish.
Are you doing your part?
Eating only what you need—not all that you can.

America must continue to save food.
Live simply—follow the doctrine of the clean plate.
The sooner normal conditions are established in Europe the sooner our boys can come home. Will you help bring them back quickly?

Eat less
waste nothing

UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION
Illinois Educational Division
CHICAGO
```

The artist's signature at lower left of the drawing reads 'McCombs'; it is shown in brackets above the printed text.

[← Where the Victims Are: Save the Survivors, 3,950,000 Starving People](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/where-the-victims-are-save-the-survivors-1919/) [Mock death notice for Austria-Hungary, Prague, 28 October 1918 →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/rakousko-uhersko-parte-prague-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)