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Prepared from the source scan: surroundings removed and the sheet levelled where required. The source record remains available below.
The Posters That Went to War · Before the Great War
Enlist
Fred Spear · Boston Public Safety Committee, 1915
Format
Archival pigment giclée on museum-grade matte art paper, color-managed to the source scan — the flat inks and stone grain intact. The 40×60 is the room-changer.
Size
$39.00
What it is
A colour rotogravure Fred Spear made for the Boston Public Safety Committee, printed by the Sackett & Wilhelms Corporation of New York in 1915 or 1916, 82 by 57 cm, from the Willard and Dorothy Straight Collection.
Why it matters
A German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania on 7 May 1915, eleven nautical miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, and the sheet answers with one word, long before America entered the war. The Library of Congress showed it in American Treasures of the Library of Congress in 1998 and in Echoes of the Great War in 2017.
What to notice
A woman, a passenger from the Lusitania, submerged in the water with an infant cradled in her arms, above a single word.
One word, set beneath the drowned.
Provenance
- School
- The Patriotic Print before 1917 (United States and the world)
- Designer
- Fred Spear
- Printer / house
- Sackett & Wilhelms Corporation, New York
- Campaign
- Enlist · Remember Belgium
- Format
- Political poster
- Poster published
- Boston Public Safety Committee, 1915
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 00651156 · POS - US .S656, no. 1 (C size) [P&P]
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-11-02. Commons licence re-read 2026-11-02 on the Commons mirror of the same LoC scan: Public domain (PD-Layout, PD-US-expired-text, PD-old-70-1923).
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