Vintage Poster Archives
WW1 Recruitment Poster 1917 | Lloyd Myers British Propaganda
WW1 Recruitment Poster 1917 | Lloyd Myers British Propaganda
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A British Tommy in khaki, Lee-Enfield rifle in hand, leans across the teal Atlantic from France to clasp hands with a British civilian in a navy suit standing on the United States. The globe beneath them carries three labels: GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, UNITED STATES. Bold red-orange type at the base delivers the demand in three words: COME ACROSS NOW.
Lloyd Myers designed this WW1 recruitment poster in 1917 for the British and Canadian Recruiting Mission, an organisation tasked with persuading British-born men living in North America to cross the Atlantic and enlist in British and Canadian forces. Albert Frank and Co. of New York printed it. Myers, born in Sterling, Illinois in 1892 and trained at the Art Students League in New York, was in his mid-twenties when he produced this work. A member of the Society of Illustrators, he went on to a career in commercial illustration and advertising art directing.
The design works through geography rather than shame. Where many contemporary recruitment posters pointed at the viewer or appealed to honour, this composition reduces the argument to a single gesture: the soldier does not accuse, he reaches. The Atlantic becomes a puddle. The poster is held in five major institutional collections including the Library of Congress (LC-DIG-ppmsca-40987), the Imperial War Museum, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Reproduced as an archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. The design is public domain; the Library of Congress confirms no known restrictions on reproduction. Of interest to collectors of WW1 graphic design, students of Anglo-American wartime communication, and anyone drawn to early twentieth-century illustration.
