Your Country Needs You

by James Taylor

  John Hassall was one of the most influential poster artists and teachers of the period. He was known as the ‘King of Poster Artists’ and he was an influential associate of Leete. In his publication The London Sketch Club (Alan Sutton, 1994), David Cuppleditch noted that Hassall ‘thrived during the years 1890–1914 when new colour printing processes were being exploited, printers’ wages were low and paper was cheap’.

  Hassall was born in Walmer, Kent. He had originally turned to fellow county artist, Thomas Sidney Cooper, based in Canterbury, for assistance and guidance. Cooper was renowned for his oil paintings of cows, many of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, and he was unimpressed with Hassall’s work. However, he was not deterred and, after studying in Antwerp and Paris, Hassall eventually was acknowledged by the art establishment – being elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) and the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers.

  ‘Skegness Is SO Bracing’ (National Railway Museum, York)

  In 1900, Hassall opened his own New Art School and School of Poster Design in Kensington, where he numbered Bert Thomas, Bruce Bairnsfather, H.M. Bateman, Harry Rountree and Sidney Strube among his students. The school was closed at the outbreak of World War I, however, during the post-war period, he ran the very successful John Hassall Correspondence School.

  Harry Lawrence Oakley’s ‘THINK!’ (LoC)

  John Hassall acknowledged Alphonse Mucha, the Czech-born Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist, as a formative influence on his work. Mucha produced many advertisements, designs, illustrations, paintings and postcards that enjoyed enormous popularity in England. The flat colours enclosed by the thick, black lines that featured in these designs became the trademark style of Hassall and contemporaries such as Dudley Hardy, among others.

  Hassall is best remembered today for his poster SKEGNESS IS SO BRACING, featuring the Jolly Fisherman skipping along the beach. It was originally commissioned by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) company and first printed by David Allen and Sons (one of the main printers approved by the PRC during World War I) in 1908.44 Skegness adopted the Jolly Fisherman as its mascot and it is still used today to promote the Lincolnshire seaside resort.

  This poster was copied and parodied at the time and continues to attract the attention of modern day cartoonists. Leete produced his own wartime parody, entitled ‘The East Coast Is So Bracing – To Recruiting’ (which included an acknowledgement to Hassall’s poster), for London Opinion on 26th December 1914. In Leete’s version, the skipping sailor’s pipe has fallen out of his mouth, and he turns with a terrified expression as a large gun shell whizzes past him. Leete also created another version inspired by Hassall for the cover of Weston-super-Mare official tourist guides. It depicted a girl holding on to her bonnet and clutching her bucket and spade on the beach, with the slogan ‘Atlantic Breezes’ (1925).

  Hassall and Leete would certainly have been familiar with each other’s work. Both were associated with London Opinion. Hassall had contributed a cover to the 6th June 1914 issue. Although there is no record of Leete attending Hassall’s art school, a stylistic comparison of their work reveals that Leete was undoubtedly influenced by him. Hassall had been elected a member of the London Sketch Club in May 1898 and Leete joined later on 11th December 1914 – proposed by A.E. Horne, Reginald Arkell, Edgar L. Patterson, Harry Rountree and Bert Thomas (prior to this, Leete would have been known to the club as a guest member). Both Leete and Hassall lived close to each other in west London: Leete at 26, Bedford Gardens, Kensington, and Hassall a short walk away at 88, Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill Gate. As noted earlier, it is likely that Hassall had a hand in the overall design of the David Allen and Sons propaganda poster that featured Leete’s Kitchener cartoon. Printed in November 1914, this poster lacked the clarity and directness of the London Opinion cartoon cover and poster.

  Poster by Bert Thomas (IWM)

  Cartoon by Bruce Bairnsfather (Priv.)

  The London Opinion artists

  Many of Leete’s fellow clubmen were also contributors to London Opinion and they included William Heath Robinson and two of his proposers who supported his membership to the London Sketch Club – Bert Thomas and Reginald Arkell (who was editor of Men Only magazine from the 1930s until 1954, when Paul Raymond purchased it).

  Schmidt the Spy (Priv.)

  Bert Thomas was arguably second in popularity to Leete on London Opinion magazine during the war years. He worked for the government producing posters for the War Loans and Savings campaigns during World Wars I and II. Arkell was a scriptwriter and comic novelist and the assistant art editor of London Opinion magazine. Leete collaborated with him on several literary projects, including propaganda publications such as All the Rumours (Duckworth, 1916) and The Bosch Book (Duckworth, 1916). However, Leete’s best known publication featured the character Schmidt the Spy, and was initially serialised in London Opinion, the first part appearing on 24th October 1914. They were collectively published in Schmidt the Spy and His Messages to Berlin (Duckworth, 1916), this time both illustrated and written by Leete. His fictional character later inspired a film.

  Leete contributed to wartime cartoon exhibitions in Britain and to several publications that were intended to be sent abroad to amuse the troops at the Front, as well as to influence the Allies. They included The Passing Show, published by the House of Odhams. The editor, Comyns Beaumont, wrote in the issue of 12th August 1916, entitled ‘The Worries of Wilhelm – A Collection of Humorous and Satirical War Cartoons from the pages of The Passing Show’, that ‘the importance of the cartoon is certainly recognised by the Germans… and quite a considerable time back as the war goes, the Huns, who are totally unable to appreciate shafts of satire when directed against themselves, savagely announced that when they captured London certain editors of offending journals would be hanged for daring to make fun of the sacred person of the Kaiser.’ He concluded: ‘I may, perhaps, be allowed to claim that both by encouraging our own people, and by flinging these shafts at the Huns, at a time when moral influence is properly regarded as of first-rate importance, the cartoonists whose work appear here are contributing their quota to the world war.’

  After the war, Leete produced a very popular book called A Book of Dragons, Including Many Episodes in the Life of Dennys, Rouge Dragon of the Fiery Breath (Illustrated London Newspapers, circa 1931). This character inspired the naming of a pub in Weston-super-Mare: The Dragon Inn, owned by J.D. Wetherspoon.

  Returning to the war years, it is clear that Leete was conscious of the comic potential of recruitment posters and slogans, as evidenced by his humorous pen and ink wash original artwork for a cartoon produced in 1917, now in the Imperial War Museum, which features the ‘Crown Prince Son’ saying ‘What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?’ This derives from Savile Lumley’s controversial poster. Lumley was a popular book illustrator, who during his student days studying at the Royal Academy of Arts shared a studio with the cartoonist, illustrator and poster designer George Stampa in St John’s Wood.

  In The Street of Ink, an Intimate History of Journalism, Henry Simonis noted the period when Bert Thomas and Alfred Leete were called up for war service in 1917: ‘Bert Thomas, our cartoonist, is building up a reputation. Both he and that versatile genius, Alfred Leete, are just called up for the Army, and we shall miss their splendid work tremendously. Heaven help them if, after their innumerable jests at the expense of the Kaiser and “Little Willie”, either of them should be taken prisoner!’

  Leete, Thomas and Fred Buchanan, another contributor to London Opinion, all joined the Artists Rifles (AR). A photograph of Leete depicts him at Hare Hall (now the Royal Liberty School), within Gidea Park in Essex and where officers were trained, alongside the cartoonists Fred Buchanan and Sidney Strube, who worked for The Bystander and later became the political cartoonist of the Daily Express. The AR was raised in 1859 as a volunteer light infantry unit. The regiment saw active service during th
e Boer War and World War I, earning a number of battle honours. Celebrated artists associated have included Ford Maddox Brown, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millias, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lord Leighton, the cartoonists and illustrators Charles Keene and John Leech, along with ‘Fougasse’ and John and Paul Nash.

  The Artists Rifles Regimental Association (ARRA) was inaugurated at a mass meeting of all artists available on 29th June 1916, at the 2nd Battalion’s headquarters at Gidea Park. In A History of The Artists Rifles, 1859–1947 (Pen and Sword, 2006), Barry Gregory explained that as Leete was medically unfit for a commission in 1917 he served as a company clerk with the 2nd Battalion. As a cartoonist and illustrator, he was often in demand by the regiment during and after the war to illustrate dinner menus and memorabilia for regimental occasions.

  The ARRA published a magazine that was distributed to all members of the regiment in France and England, where it was offered for sale on bookstalls. Along with Leete, it featured contributions from Fred Buchanan, C.H. Bretherton, Tom Purvis, S.C. ‘George’ Strube, Bert Thomas, R.F.W. Rees and many others. The Times was kind enough to say that ‘the Artists Rifles’ Journal is the best Regimental publication yet produced’, whilst the Daily Telegraph said: ‘This is the best soldiers’ paper we have yet seen.’

  Without a doubt though, Leete’s most significant contribution to the war effort was his cartoon of Kitchener. Leete would have been surprised at how his artwork for London Opinion was adapted within the British Empire and by the Allies during the war, and later by Britain’s former enemies too.

  Canadian poster showing Allied soldiers (LoC)

  CHAPTER 4

  THE INFLUENCE OF ‘YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU’

  IN AUSTRALIA, CANADA, INDIA, NEW ZEALAND AND SOUTH AFRICA

  Poster appealing to Jewish-Canadians (LoC)

  BRITAIN DID EXPORT recruitment posters to individual member states and dominions of the Empire during World War I, but most of them also produced their own posters. Some specified that designs should capitalise on their own national characteristics and particular needs. The face of Lord Kitchener would have limited effectiveness in certain countries, such as India and the USA, whilst in others it was necessary to incorporate imagery and wording into poster designs that had meaning and significance to specific ethnic groups.

  Canada

  The curators of the McGill University collection of recruitment posters in Canada have identified that ‘the imagery of [our] posters was, both thematically and graphically, similar to that of British war posters and this was largely because of the imperial and constitutional ties between Canada and Britain’.

  Ethnic groups within Canada, and for that matter across the British Empire, had to be targeted in a different way, with imagery and slogans in various languages or dialects that had meaning to each group. A poster that came across as being too ‘English’ in tone and subject was not going to work well among French-Canadians, Irish-Canadians (see poster, on page 101), Jewish-Canadians (see poster, left) and Canadians of Scottish descent.

  Some British posters, however, were directly translated from English into French. Like British posters, their Canadian counterparts avoided graphic horror images of war. The major printing centres producing posters were in the cities of Hamilton, Montreal and Toronto.45

  Printed in Montreal in 1915, the poster entitled ‘Let his heart a thousandfold Take the field again!’ ARE YOU ONE OF KITCHENER’S OWN? is clearly an adaptation of Leete’s KITCHENER design.

  Another example, created by an anonymous designer in circa 1917–1918, had the slogan ‘You Are Needed To Take My Place – Go With “Kitchener’s Own” The 244th Batt.’ It showed a soldier standing with his left arm in a sling and right arm outstretched with hand pointing, evoking Leete’s LORD KITCHENER design. The poster was published by The Mortimer Co. Ltd., in Montreal, Quebec (see the illustration in the introduction).

  A third poster (see poster on page 100), by an unknown designer, entitled SOUSCRIVEZ A L’EMPRUNT DE LA “VICTOIRE” (‘Subscribe tothe Victory Loan’) and issued in circa 1917 by the Victory Bond Committee, Ottawa, also derived from Leete’s cartoon although it depicted a soldier with an outstretched left arm.

  ‘Are YOU One Of Kitchener’s Own?’ (Toronto Public Library)

  French language Canadian poster (Canadian War Museum)

  Marc H. Choko addressed the subject of print runs of posters in Canadian War Posters, 1914–1918, 1939–1945 (Canada Communication Group, 1994), noting that both official and private runs ranged from a few hundred to 50,000 copies. Although there was no central government agency controlling the production of all the war posters, the federal government did establish the War Poster Service in 1916. It produced some posters in both English and French. In addition, charities and businesses also printed posters privately.

  Choko noted that ‘The initiatives were many and varied, coming from companies and from wealthy citizens wishing to participate in the war effort. Recruitment posters were made by individual regiments, which contracted printing companies close to the quarters. The commandant would sometimes ask for price quotations and request adjustments to the graphic design or text. After he paid for and took delivery of the posters, he was then responsible for posting them in appropriate spots.’

  He also observed that ‘The quality of the posters depended, of course, on the talent of the graphic designers working at the printing companies most of whom were accustomed to creating realistic posters to sell consumer products. Some borrowed directly from foreign works and adapted them to the situation. In some cases, the image was appropriated and reframed and a different text was added.’

  In the preface to Choko’s publication, Robert R. Fowler wrote: ‘I find it amazing that during the Great War of 1914–1918 from a population of about eight million, this country managed to raise an army of over 600,000, a Navy of 9,600 personnel and 115 vessels, and sent more than twenty thousand young men to serve in the British flying services, as well as over 3,000 nursing sisters with the medical corps. What was more shocking was the cost in human lives. The worst example was in the Canadian Expeditionary Corps – the largest active army formation ever to have been organised by Canada – about 60,000 died, a fatality rate of 14.2 per cent (a further 138,166 were wounded). When casualties rose to extreme levels, the government introduced conscription, a move that led to severe unrest and nearly undermined national unity in 1917–18.’

  Mr Leicester A. Bonner, Van Winkle, Cariboo, B.C., 28th June 1915

  ‘Thanks very much for your recruiting posters. We had a recruiting rally in Cariboo and got 71 and more to go. I did a bit to help in taking the officers round, and they expressed their appreciation of the posters.’

  Mr W.H. Danby, Victoria Gas Co., Ltd., Victoria, B.C., 14th June 1915

  ‘The posters you sent have done a lot of good. You should see the letters of thanks I have received from those to whom I sent them.’

  Sir Thomas Tait, Citizens’ Recruiting Association, McGill Building, Montreal, 13th March 1915

  ‘The posters issued by your Association have attracted a very great deal of comment on this side of the Atlantic, and there still exists a great demand for them. Even American visitors are continually making applications for them, as they admire them so.’

  Mr S.W. Dawson, Travellers Building Sample Rooms, 3rd Avenue, Saskatoon, SASK, 27th August 1915

  ‘Through this advertising matter and Recruiting medium I can trace directly an enlistment of over 30 men.’

  Mr W. F. Currie, Box 547, Arcola, Saskatchewan

  ‘I thank you very much for the posters, and I feel sure that they will help us a very great deal in getting recruits as they are, I can assure you, a very great draw here.’

  An appeal to Irish-Canadians (LoC)

  Mr A.O. Huguet, ‘the Manse’, Wilmer, B.C., 15th October 1915

  ‘It is surprising what an amount of public interest has been awakened by the posters. They have been posted up in the most prominent positio
ns, and they have stirred people.’

  The Hon. A.L. Sifton, Premier of Alberta, 17th January 1916

  ‘Yours of the 23rd. December enclosing parcel of British recruiting posters received. I have distributed the various ones received at different times, and I have no doubt that they have been made as useful as possible. This batch is certainly very effective.’

  ‘The Navy Wants Men’ (LoC)

  Mr T.J. Holden, Asst. Manager, The Standard, St. Catherines, Ont., 1st September 1915

  ‘Your posters have been of splendid service here in stirring up the enthusiasm of the young men of our city, and recruiting has taken on an added interest.’

  Lieut. G.D. Burn, C.O.T.C. 255, Metcalf Street, Ottawa, 6th December 1915

  ‘They (the posters) are so much better than the average Canadian poster that they attract attention more quickly.’

  Capt. A.H. Thorburn, Recruiting Officer, C.E.F., Ottawa, 29th November 1915