---
title: 'Your Ears & Eyes Can Save Lives: Volunteer! For Civilian Defense'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/your-ears-and-eyes-can-save-lives-1941/
description: 'Black and white woodcut poster: a man in a hat seen from behind raises binoculars toward formations of aircraft.'
section: Collection
---

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3. Your Ears & Eyes Can Save Lives: Volunteer! For Civilian Defense

[![Your Ears & Eyes Can Save Lives: Volunteer! For Civilian Defense, 1941 US poster: Black and white woodcut poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/your-ears-and-eyes-can-save-lives-1941.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/your-ears-and-eyes-can-save-lives-1941.jpg)

# Your Ears & Eyes Can Save Lives: Volunteer! For Civilian Defense

Black and white woodcut poster: a man in a hat seen from behind raises binoculars toward formations of aircraft, under the headline 'Your Ears & Eyes Can Save Lives' and the call 'Volunteer! For Civilian Defense'. The technique is faint: the approaching aircraft imply a threat (fear-appeal) while the ask is a local volunteer post.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

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

## Text on the object

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

```
Your Ears & Eyes
Can Save Lives
VOLUNTEER!
FOR CIVILIAN DEFENSE
[signature:] Francerne
[credit line:] Wood Cut by Frances O'Brien Garfield and Ernest Hamlin Baker, Designed for Putnam County War Council, Carmel, N. Y.
```

[← What d' ya mean - you ain't gonna buy no bonds?](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/what-d-ya-mean-bonds-1941/) [Your Food is the Best - Don't Waste It →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/your-food-is-the-best-dont-waste-it-dyer-1941/)

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- [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.
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- [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)