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Emprunt de la Libération : on les a : souscrivez à la London County & Westminster Bank (Paris) Ltd.
Lithograph of 3 soldiers in battle. One is wearing a Scottish uniform with kilt. A tall soldier with a mustache wears a French uniform and holds his helmet in the air. Another in the background wears an olive/khaki uniform (British or U.S.) with helmet, and is pointing a rifle. An explosion can be seen in the background on the left.
Feed a fighter : eat only what you need-- waste nothing-- that he and his family may have enough.
Charcoal drawing of a soldier sitting in a trench, drinking out of a cup. Other soldiers can be seen in the background. At the top right corner of the poster is the round seal of the U.S. Food Administration (shield with flag motif surrounded by wheat stalks).
Crédit Lyonnais : souscrivez au 4e Emprunt National.
Naked man wearing sword belt and helmet lunges to the right with sword extended against an eagle and pulling a French flag from its beak.
Be patriotic: sign your country's pledge to save the food.
Color poster of a woman with her hands extended toward the viewer. She is wearing an dress that appears to be made from a draped U.S. flag, and a cap of a stars-and-stripes motif.
Pour le retour, souscrivez : 4e Emprunt National, Crédit Foncier d'Algérie et de Tunisie, 43, rue Cambon, Paris.
Lithograph of a Mediterranean sea port. Numerous ships and boats are in the water. In the foreground are people standing along a sea wall, in traditional white Tunisian clothing, waving at a crowd of people on a large ship. In the background is a large city. Several airplanes are seen flying overhead.
Are you 100% American? Prove it! Buy U.S. government bonds : Third Liberty Loan.
Poster is mainly black text with a red border. Centered at top is a design consisting of an eagle, U.S. flags, and cannons. Centered at the bottom is a blue shield with white text: "U.S. TREASURY WILL PAY INTEREST EVERY SIX MONTHS".
[Strasbourg]
Blank postcard with a photograph of a military gathering in Strasbourg, France.
Help yourself : get up in the world by steady saving.
All lettered poster with text in black, encouraging the public to save by buying War Savings Stamps, Treasury Savings Certificates, and Liberty Bonds.
Over the top for you : buy U.S. gov't bonds, Third Liberty Loan.
A soldier in a combat uniform and helmet appears to be climbing a hill while grasping a large U.S. flag on a pole. His mouth is open as if he is shouting.
For liberty, civilization, and humanity.
Poster of a soldier playing a bugle on a hill, standing in front of a U.S. flag. In the distant background on the right, a ship is sinking. The image of the bugler is adapted from an original sculpture by Edoardo Cammilli.
Remember! the flag of liberty, support it! : buy U.S. government bonds, 3rd. Liberty Loan.
A group of people stand in front of the American flag. A ship is in the background.
Americans all!: Victory Liberty Loan.
Painting of a woman in a yellow gown, with left arm raised holding a laurel wreath. With her right hand she grasps a large U.S. flag which is hanging behind her.
[Wire to the Axis]
A serpent made of metal wears a helmet with a swastika on it. The serpent has long tail, sharp teeth, and a long snout. Smoke billows in background. Metal beams in a "V" formation appear to approach the serpent from the upper left area of the poster.
Establishing the American Way of Death: World War I and the Foundation of the United States’ Policy Toward the Repatriation and Burial of Its Battlefield Dead
This thesis examines the policies and procedures created during and after the First World War that provided the foundation for how the United States commemorated its war dead for the next century. Many of the techniques used in modern times date back to the Great War. However, one hundred years earlier, America possessed very few methods or even ideas about how to locate, identify, repatriate, and honor its military personnel that died during foreign conflicts. These ideas were not conceived in the halls of government buildings. On the contrary, concerned citizens originated many of the concepts later codified by the American government. This paper draws extensively upon archival documents, newspapers, and published primary sources to trace the history of America’s burial and repatriation policies, the Army Graves Registration Services, and how American dead came to permanently rest in military cemeteries on the continent of Europe. The unprecedented dilemma of over 80,000 American soldiers buried in France and surrounding countries at the conclusion of the First World War in 1918 propelled the United States to solve many social, political, and military problems that arose over the final disposition of those remains. The solutions to those problems became the foundation for how America would repatriate, honor, and mourn its military dead for the next century. Some of these battles persist even today as the nation tries to grapple with the proper way to commemorate the nation’s participation in the First World War on the eve of the conflict’s centennial.
[The Flying Parliament]
Photographs of "The Flying Parliament" by Edwina S. Babcock, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is open to a dedication page, which is a note written in pen handwriting. The name Donald Thomas 1973 is at the top. On the top left side is the word "Poetry" written in pencil. The cover is red with an intricate gold design over most of the page, the title is in the middle of the cover in gold.
[Over Here: War Time Rhymes, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Over Here: War Time Rhymes" by Edgar A. Guest, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark blue with the first part of the title in dark blue inside of a gold banner, the rest of the title and author stamped in gold under it.
[Swords and Ploughshares]
Photographs of "Swords and Ploughshares" John Drinkwater, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image shows the title page, with the page to the left of it containing a small list of books by the same author. Image 2, poem on page 48 titled "On the Picture of a Private Soldier Who Had Gained a Victoria Cross", the page next to it contains a poem titled "One Speaks In Germany. In “On the Picture of a Private Soldier Who Had Gained a Victoria Cross,” the author calls upon the theme of photography to apply pressure to its revelatory and documentary status. Photographs are not only signs. They are also indexes—that is, they are created by the conditions they record. This adds authority to their status as objective or unmediated by interpretive bias, but such objectivity is an illusion. The alignment of the documentary photo with objectivity forgets the deceptive nature of physical surfaces, how they might exclude or even repress the deeper conflicts of inner life expressed in a poem. In Drinkwater’s poem, the deceptive nature of physical appearance dialogues with the deceptive nature of accolades for valor and the sense of liberation from horrors of the past. Drinkwater thus registers an insight fundamental to new waves of psychoanalytic theory—that is, the burial of trauma constitutes a form of preservation, of intensification even, as opposed to conquest and erasure.
[October and Other Poems]
Photographs of "October and Other Poems" by Robert Bridges, held by UNT Special Collections. The book has an old white cover, framed by a black line and the title printed at the top in black. Image 2, "The West Front" and "To the United States of America." Page 32 contains the title of the first one at the top, and page 33 has the other one at the top followed by the date April 1917.
[Fifes and Drums: Poems of America at War, The Vigilantes]
Photographs of "Fifes and Drums: Poems of America at War," held by UNT Special Collections. The brown book cover has the title in dark blue in the top right corner in a white label, framed by a dark blue line. Image 2, title page. On the left page is a list of The Vigilante books inside a box, and on the right page is the title page with a small upside down triangle with the letter D in it.
[Flower of Youth: Poems in War Time]
Photographs of "Flower of Youth: Poems in War Time" by Katharine Tynan, held by UNT Special Collections. Image 1, the spine of the dark blue book with the title on a white label on the spine. Image 2, with the page to the left of it containing a box with the title of books also by Tynan.
[The Red Flower: Poems Written in War Time, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "The Red Flower: Poems Written in War Time" by Henry Van Dyke, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is white with a dark blue spine, the top of the front contains the title at the top and author at the bottom in dark blue print. In the middle of it is an orange/red flower design.
[Sonnets from a Prison Camp, title page]
Photograph of the title page from "Sonnets from a Prison Camp" by Archibald Allan Bowman, held by UNT Special Collections. Scottish philosopher and poet Allan Archibald Bowman (1883-1936) was working as a professor at Princeton University when World War I began. He took a leave of absence in 1915, enlisted in the British Army, and was assigned to the Highland Light Infantry. Three years later, Bowman was taken prisoner by German forces during the Battle of Lys. The poems collected in Sonnets from a Prison Camp were written after Bowman’s capture, between April 27 and July 25, 1918. Most were composed at the Rastatt prison camp, though some were written after Bowman was transferred to Hesepe. The volume itself contains twelve chronologically arranged sections and a clean, minimal layout with one sonnet per page. This neatly bound, 152-page book has a board cover with thread wear on the bottom and top of the spine. A lithographed errata slip on different paper is pasted into the binding and precedes the title page. Part of the Soldier Poets section of the exhibit, Sonnets from a Prison Camp contains poems that reflect on the horrors of war, the boredom of life in a prison camp, and a deep longing for home and peace. Bowman also employs Christian theology to decry the power of “Nations,” asserting that “Earth’s glory sinks confronted with Christ’s cross” (p. 104). In the following sonnet, he writes that the “Commonwealth” cannot “unchallenged claim / To be the First and Last.” There is “a holier Name” (p. 105). Each sonnet includes a date and location, allowing the sequence to function like diary entries, and in his foreword, Bowman notes that during his early days as a prisoner of war, these poems “stood between my soul and madness” (p. v). The …
[From an Outpost and Other Poems, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "From an Outpost and Other Poems" by Leslie Coulson, held by UNT Special Collections. The white paper cover has a thin orange line that frames the title, followed by a photo of a young man and the author under the picture all in orange tint.
[Naked Warriors, cover]
Photograph of "Naked Warriors" by Herbert Read, held by UNT Special Collections. In 1917, poet and literary critic Herbert Read co-founded the avant-garde quarterly journal Arts and Letters, which in 1919 published Read’s book Naked Warriors. (The volume’s first section “Kneeshaw Goes to War” originally appeared in Arts and Letters, as noted in the contents.) This sixty-page volume of poetry and prose explores the arc of the British soldier’s combat experience in World War I. Read, who served in the war and was awarded both the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross, includes an epigraph before each section, visually separating sections that are joined by a thematic progression rather than common characters. Before the contents page, readers encounter a six-line poem entitled “Parody of a Forgotten Beauty” and a one-paragraph preface in which Read encourages his generation to “strive to create a beauty where hitherto it has had no absolute existence” (5). This desire is reflected in the cover illustration, thought to be the work of artist Wyndham Lewis. The central figure employs Vorticism, an early twentieth-century British art movement using a form of urban cubism to express the dynamism of the modern world. The book is bound in textured, tan paper boards printed in striking red, featuring the title, Vorticist illustration, author, and price (“three shillings net”) on the front cover, and information on the journal Arts and Letters on the back cover. The front leaf of this copy is inscribed “T. A. Lamb, from W. R. Childe. 8.4.1919” under the title. Considering the place of publication and publisher, we can speculate that this copy was given to T. A. Lamb, author of T.N.T. Tales (Oxford, 1919)—a collection of anecdotes describing the work of munitionettes at the Barnbow shell-filling factory near Leeds—by Wilfred Rowland Childe, editor of Oxford …
[Forward, March!, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Forward, March!" by Angela Morgan, held by UNT Special Collections. The dark red cover has the title at the top left corner, followed by a graphic of a hand holding a torch and the author. This all encased by a line, and all in gold lettering/lines.
[Sword Blades and Poppy Seed]
Photographs of "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed" by Amy Lowell, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image is of the blue/grey spine with a label at the top of it containing the title. Image 2, the book opened up to the title page, with the left page containing publishing information.
[Soldier Songs from Anzac, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Soldier Songs from Anzac" by Tom Skeyhill, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is worn lavender in color, with a double border in black ink. The title is at the top, and the publishing information at the bottom also in black ink.
[The Making of Micky Mcghee]
Photographs of "The Making of Micky Mcghee" by R.W. Campbell, held by UNT Special Collections. The third image shows the book opened up to pages 64-5. On the left page are the words "Carry On" next to a drawing of a soldier kneeling with a long rifle, followed by a bit of text. On the right page are the words "Miners and Miners" next to a drawing of a man holding a shovel followed by a few paragraphs of text. Image 1, pale brown book cover with the title at the top in an illustration of a man standing in front of a sign, and buildings behind it, the author in the bottom right corner. Image 2, inscription written on the inside of the cover in pencil. Robert Walter Campbell, born 1876, served with the Royal Scots Fusiliers in the Boer War (1899 to 1902), and then again with the 5th battalion in Gallipoli (1914) in the Great War. This second tour gave him the material for his poems in support of the war effort. Campbell wrote 25 lively poems and songs in Standard English for The Making of Micky McGhee. Some 20th century Scottish slang is sprinkled throughout.
[Socks]
Photographs of "Socks" by Emily Caroline Oliphant, held by UNT Special Collections. Image 2, shows the title page, the words "Moriendo Vivo" in the middle of it. Image 3, open book with table of contents on the left page and the page on the right the beginning of a chapter titled "Socks" with the date September 1914 under it. Image 4, page of text titled "Socks" on the left and page on right titled "The Mine-Sweepers." Image 1, green book cover with the title and author in the middle in red lettering. In the top right corner are blue, white and red stripes. While not every poem in Emily Caroline Oliphant’s Socks directly concerns the role of women on the home front of World War I, the most noteworthy of the book’s 27 poems, “Socks,” details the almost laughable frustration of the limited contributions a woman could make in contrast to her husband’s sacrifices: “Tis little a woman can do when fighting is to the fore; / True, she can send her menkind now as in days of yore; /... But every minute to spare she knits for her soldier—socks.” The book’s title page bears the information that it was published in Blairgowrie, a burgh in Scotland, and printed in 1915 at the Advertiser Office, a local newspaper office. The following page denotes that it was sold for the Prince of Wales’ National Relief fund, which was developed in order to aid the wives and families of those serving in the war. Bound in forest-green cloth with three diagonal stripes across the top right corner in cherry red, gold, and navy blue, the 34-page book is an unusual format (about 10” x 7.5”) and was sold for one shilling. Choosing to bind the book in a color reminiscent of the …
[Plain Song 1914-1916]
Photographs of "Plain Song" by Eden Phillpotts, held by UNT Special Collections. Image 2 shows the table of contents on the left page and a page with a poem titled "August the Fourth." Image 3, continuation of the poem "August the Fourth" and number 2 and 3. Image 1, cover of the book made of grey paper, framed by a thick line with the title at the top followed by the dates 1914-1916. Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960) was born in British India and is best known for his celebration of the landscape of Dartmoor in southern England. His collection of poems, Plain Song, moves from horror to acceptance, but always with a sense of detachment of the poet at home. The opening poem takes its title from the date Britain declared war on Germany, “August 4, 1914.” Thwarting the reader’s expectations, the poem begins with a peaceful woodland scene at dusk, where the speaker watches the moon rise over a clearing filled with emerald-like glow-worms and the purr of a swooping churn-owl, who “throbbed and throbbed, then took his flight...in rapture and delight” (p. 2). The poem ends by shattering this scene “by Nature sanctified” when the speaker suddenly recalls the “hell / This day hath seen ascend” (p. 3). The poem thus plays on the poet’s physical distance from the war to produce its emotional affect.
[Taps: Famous Poems of the World War]
Photographs of "Taps" by Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Grantland Rice, held by UNT Special Collections. The second image is of pages 110 an 111, the page on the left is a drawing of a figure laying on grass and the page on the right is a poem titled "No Man's Land." Image 3, pages 200 and 201 with the page on the left containing parts of a poem and the page on the right containing a drawing of two soldiers sitting down with skull faces. Image 1, cover of the book. It is dirty yellow in color with title in bold at the top with black lettering, the subtitle and names in smaller letters. Expanding vertically on the left side of the cover is a sketch of a soldier playing a trumpet. Image 4, side view of book's spine that contains the title and author, small white stars along it vertically.
[Rookie Rhymes]
Photographs of "Rookie Rhymes," held by UNT Special Collections. The book is opened up to a page on the left titled "The Call" followed by a poem. On the right page is an illustration of a soldier and woman in a big dress dancing. Image 1, the brown paper book cover has no spine, and the title is at the top in big black letters followed by an illustration of a man in a hat smoking a pipe.
[Selected Poems on Woodrow Wilson]
Photographs of "Selected Poems on Woodrow Wilson," held by UNT Special Collections. The first image, the pale blue cover of the book with the title and author printed at the top of the front in dark blue. The second image shows the title page of the book, including the editor, illustrator and publishing information. Image 3, "The Crusader (In Memory of Woodrow Wilson)" poem by Thomas Curtis Clark on page 57. On the page to the left of it is an illustration of a pointed doorway, flags seen inside of it.
[History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion]
Photographs of "History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion" by Lee C. McCollum, held by UNT Special Collections. The second image is open to two poems, the one on the left tiled "Our Commander" and the one on the right "Up There." On each side and bottom of the page is an illustration of field workers, the bottom part being the ground. Each page also has a dedication. Image 3, poem titled "My Pals" expanding over two pages. On the outer part of each page is part of an illustration of things like soldiers lying on the ground and someone in a gas mask. Image 1, dark blue cover of the book with the title and author in gold lettering. In the top left corner is a red, white and blue stripe.
[Song of the Soldiers, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Song of the Soldiers" by Thomas Hardy, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is brown, the front framed a black design. The song and author are at the top and underlined in black ink.
[Rupert Brooke: A Memoir, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Rupert Brooke: A Memoir" by Edward Marsh, held by UNT Special Collections. The simple black cover has the title in a white box at the top, the title inside it framed by an orange line. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was the son of a Rugby schoolmaster and attended school at Rugby and later at King’s College of Cambridge University. After completing his education, Brooke continued writing poetry and became one of the founders of the first anthology of Georgian Poetry. Now little studied, it was a dominant poetic movement of the time until it was supplanted by Imagism and the High Modernism of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. B. Yeats. While not as experimental as the Modernists, the Georgian poets did look to free poetry from the ornate language of Victorian verse and employ in its place plain and concrete language. Along with the Georgian poets, Brooke also interacted with members of the influential Bloomsbury Group, which included such prominent writers as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. When war broke out, Brooke enlisted but never saw combat, instead dying of illness in March 1915 on his way to Gallipoli. Despite this, Brooke became a touchstone for other WWI poets, who dedicated volumes of verse to him, wrote essays celebrating his work, and published memoirs of his life. Rupert Brooke’s most anthologized poetry is often selected to represent a more inspirational and conventional perspective than the soldier poets that follow him. The patriotic sensibility in his most famous poem “The Soldier,” for example, is often contrasted with the disillusionment, horror, and lack of sentimentality of other WWI poets. This is not surprising, considering that Brooke did not see combat, but it has had unfortunate consequences for Brooke’s reputation and much of his best poetry …
[The Other Side: Poems, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "The Other Side: And Other Poems" by Gilbert Frankau, held by UNT Special Collections. The worn orange cover contains the title in a white box on the top left.
[1914 & Other Poems]
Photographs of "1914 & Other Poems" by Rupert Brooke, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image, is of the inside of the book with a faint illustration of a man's profile, the second image the see-through brown piece of paper is turned over to cover the illustration but to reveal the title of the book. Although Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) died before ever seeing battle, he was renowned for his war sonnets. W.B. Yeats noted that Brooke was “handsomest young man of England,” a fact that may account for some of his fame. Educated at Cambridge, he became a thespian, scholar, and soldier. Brooke, commissioned in the Royal Navy, never got to see battle. He died in 1915 at sea from sepsis. An eerie photograph portrait of the author’s profile, dated 1913, appears opposite the title page in this edition. Following the title page with publisher information and the typical copyright statement, we encounter a brief biographical note listing Brooke’s education and war time experience. His five war sonnets, titled “1914,” became notable for their romantic and patriotic view of the war. As a young man, Brooke wrote poems and published in anthologies and periodicals; his first volume of poetry, simply titled Poems, appeared in 1911 and (according to a note printed in this edition of 1914 and Other Poems) was reprinted in 1913 and twice in 1915. The contents of this volume are separated into sections beginning with the war sonnets titled “1914” followed by “The South Seas” and finally “Other Poems.” The last page of the book lists where the book was printed and contains a small slip that is taped to the back page, which was to be affixed to the spine of the book. An original slip is glued on the spine with the title of …
[Somewhere in France: And Other Poems, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Somewhere in France: And Other Poems" by Ella F. Cowan, held by UNT Special Collections. The grey textured cover has the title and author stamped on the front at the top.
[Men, Women and Ghosts]
Photographs of "Men, Women and Ghosts" by Amy Lowell, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is blue with a green spine, the title on a white label at the top framed by lines. Image 2, title page with the page on the left containing publishing information. Amy Lowell's Men, Women, and Ghosts, per her own preface, is meant to be an authentic window into the experience of WWI. It is a collection of 30 poems that had been published five times before this 1919 impression. The reprinting was made possible by electrotype. It was published in New York, but an earlier printing where the electrotype was produced occurred in Norwood, Massachusetts. In the preface Lowell discusses which poems she chose to include in the collection. She excludes “purely lyrical poems” (ix) because she is more concerned with experimenting with vers libre, or free verse that does not subscribe to standardized rhyming and metrical schemes. Lowell classifies many of her poems as “polyphonic prose” and was a forerunner of experimentation with the prose poem in English. Many of her poems in the collection have elements of prose, including “Pickthorn Manor” a story about a woman whose sweetheart is on the front lines. Lowell also constructs poems as one would a musical number, as in “Stravinsky’s Three Pieces ‘Grotesques’, For String”. There are many poems about impression and perception, including “Spring Day” and “Towns in Colour.” The collection is divided into five sections: “Figurines In Old Saxe”, “Bronze Tablets” (which Lowell sees as being most directly about war), “War Pictures”, “The Overgrown Pasture”, and “Clocks Tick a Century”. The multiple printings of this collection, and the production of electrotype plates to make reprinting easy, hint that this was a widely-read collection of poetry. UNT’s copy itself also shows signs that it …
[In Flanders Fields]
Photographs of "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark blue with the title on the front in gold lettering inside gold oval. Image 2, frontispiece containing a photo of a soldier in uniform titled "John McCrae." Image 3, facsimile inscription. with the page on the right written in black ink handwriting. Image 3, book opened up to "In Flanders Fields" on the right page.
[36th National Guard Private's wool jacket, , World War I]
Photographs of 36th National Guard Private's wool jacket from World War I, held by UNT Special Collections. This jacket was worn by George N. Rucker who was stationed at Camp Travis in San Antonio, Texas, during World War I. The first image shows an arrowhead patch with the "T" in the center represents the 36th infantry division of the Texas Army National Guard, which was made up of Texans and Oklahomans. The silver chevron patch lower on the sleeve represents stateside service of at least six months. A second silver chevron patch would have been added for an additional six months served, so we can tell that Rucker only served between six and eleven months. The red chevron near the shoulder represents honorable discharge. Image 2, front of wool jacket with two pockets on the top and bottom of each side and five buttons along the middle.
[Patriotic Toasts, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Patriotic Toasts" by Fred Emerson Brooks, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is striped with red at the top, white in the middle and blue at the bottom. The title is over it in big black letters with the author in the bottom right corner in red lettering. This edition of Patriotic Toasts was published in 1917 by Forbes and Company in Chicago. Each page has a lithographic decorative blue border surrounding the printed text, and the dense cardboard cover contains a stoic depiction of Uncle Sam carrying an American flag, reinforcing the book’s self-proclaimed patriotism. The author, Fred Emerson Brooks, a popular 19th century poet, wrote several books of “toasts” – short poems likely meant to be read aloud in social gatherings. A notice in the back of this volume advertises Brooks’s other publications, including the comically titled Cream Toasts and Buttered Toasts, with a series of quotes from major newspapers attesting to Brooks’s sparkling wit. The collection of poems in this book captures the vigor of the American spirit at the time of its entry into World War I. Poems such as “Old Glory” and “Liberty’s Banner” are dense with the nationalist rhetoric that would eventually lose much of its appeal in the years to come. Other poems, like “To Our Own Good Germans,” exemplify the propagandizing attempts to vilify the people of Germany. When reading these poems, one can easily envision the host of a dinner party at the turn of the 20th century lifting his glass at the end of a spirited speech.
[The Poems of Alice Meynell: Complete Edition, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "The Poems of Alice Meynell" by Alice Meynell, held by UNT Special Collections. The faded blue cover contains the title and author in gold lettering at the top, the words "Complete Edition" in gold at the bottom. There are two small stars on the cover.
[Peace and Patriotism, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Peace and Patriotism" by Elva S. Smith, held by UNT Special Collections. The pale blue cover has a black stamped graphic over most of the front of a woman wearing a long white dress. The woman holds the dark train with stars up and holds a dove in her arms. The title is at the bottom in big letters.
[Any Soldier to His Son, cover]
Photograph of the cover of "Any Soldier to His Son" by George Willis, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is grey, with the spine being darker. The title is in a silver frame on the top right, the lettering also in silver. In 1919, a collection of poems titled Any Soldier to His Son, authored by George Willis, was published by George Allen & Unwin LTD out of London. Although there is not much readily available biographical information on Willis, it is known that he was a soldier in the British army during World War I. The book itself is small, with an olive green cover designed by C.R.W. Nevinson but otherwise lacking illustrations other than the ornate publisher’s insignia on the title page. There is also no dedication or foreword, leaving the reader with little direction on how to read the book. However, the book concludes with a one-page advertisement for three other books of war poetry also published by George Allen & Unwin, including A Gallipoli Diary by Major Graham Gillam, another first-hand account of battle. Any Soldier to His Son contains eighteen poems, ranging in length but written primarily in rhyming couplets. Notable titles include “Any Soldier to His Son,” “To My Mate,” and “By Green Envelope,” addressed to the poet’s beloved wife. The subject matter of Willis’ poetry revolves around the experiences of a soldier, both during and after the war. Willis investigates the change in a soldier brought on by combat, and the book ends with “A Testament,” in which the soldier is asking for peace in death. In the progression of the poems, Willis is arguably imagining himself as a mouthpiece for all soldiers. Through his poetry, he seeks to help civilians better understand what it meant to be on the front lines …
[The Heart of Peace: And Other Poems]
Photographs of "The Heart of Peace: And Other Poems" by Laurence Housman, held by UNT Special Collections. The light blue cover has the title printed at the top in dark blue, under it are six small hearts. Image 2, two pages with a poem titled "The Quick and The Dead" on page 16 and 17.
[U.S. officer's campaign hat, World War I]
Photograph of a U.S. officer's campaign hat from World War I, held by UNT Special Collections. The brown felt hat with four dents, a black string tied around it.
[Selected Poems, Lady Margaret Sackville]
Photographs of Selected Poems by Lady Margaret Sackville, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark brown with the spine tan in color, with the title on the spine in a worn label. Image 2, "The Peacemakers" and "The Fighters" poems on pages 136 and 137. Lady Margaret Sackville was a British poet born on 24 December 1881 in Mayfair, London. Her talents appeared early on her life: at six she wrote in verse and at sixteen she performed on the stage. The book’s history of ownership is revealed through a bookplate and a signature on the front end sheet. The bookplate bears the name of the first owner, William Marchbank, while the signature reveals the second owner Donald Thomas. The book is bound with light brown cloth on the spine over dark brown boards, and is printed on handmade woven paper, something that is quite unusual in 1919. Physically, the book is in excellent condition, and it does not appear that its first owner actually read the book: the leaves remain uncut, meaning that the pages are joined together at the top as they were when the large sheet of paper was folded to make the individual gatherings of the book. Sackville divided her book into three sections, forging the first two about home and peace, while the third communicates how civilians at home depict the warfare. The poems in the first section portray nature in highly metaphorical language which lends a dreamlike quality to the poems. By contrast, the poems in the second section are written in dramatic style using stage directions and character tags. In the third section, Sackville begins with short poems that use themes of courage, bravery and patriotism, but the section concludes with poems on the theme of death and massacres which dominate …
[The One-Legged Man p.43, The Old Huntsman]
Photograph of page 43 from "The One-Legged Man" by Siegfried Sassoon, held by UNT Special Collections. The page on the right is titled "The One-Legged Man." The poet Siegfried Sassoon, recipient of the Military Cross for acts of heroism, became famous not only for his angry and candid war poems, but also for his open letter of protest to the War Department after being wounded in action. “I believe that this War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it,” he wrote, and after the letter was read aloud in the House of Commons, Sassoon expected to be court-martialed. Once the poet Robert Graves intervened, claiming that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock. Sassoon was then sent to a facility for mentally infirm soldiers, where he later mentored Wilfred Owen. The poem “The One-Legged Man” represents one of Sassoon’s more bitterly ironic poems in which a man blesses the fortunes of one horror—his own amputation—since it spares him the greater horror of further military service. Doubtless the story resonates with Sassoon’s own, where his patriotism as a citizen of England became subordinate to more peaceful allegiances as a “citizen of life.” The irony of the poem suggests one man’s limitation is another’s mobility, his reinstated power to “choose.”
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