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Large collection of 170 World War I propaganda pamphlets, chiefly British, together with clippings and other ephemera. Many items bear complimentary slips of either Sir Gilbert Parker (a Canadian novelist who was tasked with molding elite US opinion for the British) or Professor William Macneile Dixon of the University of Glasgow, his assitant. Overall Near Fine condition with some age toning and minimal wear. A fascinating assortment that can be roughly divided into the following subsections: - 37 pamphlets addressing various aspects of the war, consisting mainly of open letters. These include pleas for neutral powers to commit themselves and protestations of Allied innocence. T.W. Rolleston explains why the English treatment of Ireland can in no way be compared to the Prussian treatment of Poland, and the Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum offers a snide analysis of Germany's commemorative medals. - 29 pamphlets with a distinctly British focus, of which one, The Navy and the War, is a duplicate. Other titles include: How the British Blockade Works, The Character of the British Empire, and Why Mail Censorship is Vital to Britain. A Clear Peace: The War Aims of British Labour contains a statement issued jointly at the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference held in London in February 1918, and German Prisoners in Great Britain features photographs of well-cared-for prisoners of war playing ball, engaging in amateur theatricals, and tending to their gardens. - 22 bulletins, titled "Facts About the War" and published by the Paris Chamber of Commerce, of which 14 are still in partially opened envelopes addressed to Professor Arthur William Meyer at Stanford University and postmarked 1917 and 1918. - 19 miscellaneous items, including newspaper clippings, maps, a letter to the editor ("Supremacy of the British Soldier") by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and six letters (with one duplicate) sent by out the National Woman's Liberty Loan Committee to explain how the American public's money is being spent. The letters have some splits to the fold lines, and one sheet was torn in two so the verso could be used for a clothing list dated October 11, 1918. - 17 pamphlets published in the United States or promoting American involvement in the war, of which two (both related to 4th of July celebrations in London) are duplicates. Two are small booklets issued by the Committee on Public Information, titled The German Whisper and The Kaiser in America: One Hundred and One German Lies, which seek to persuade the reader that every false rumor or negative sentiment going around the country is the work of a German agent. Other items include Leading Opinions Both For and Against National Defense, self-published by the chemist and inventor Hudson Maxim (from the the family that produced the Maxim gun and Maxim silencer) and Reconstructing the Crippled Soldier, a Red Cross publication promoting the new prosthetics being created for disabled soldiers. - Eleven pamphlets denouncing German atrocities, of which one, The Black Slaves of Prussia, is a duplicate (the Anglican Bishop of Zanzibar expresses his touching concern that Africa will be enslaved to Germany -- at the time, most of the African continent was under French or British rule). Two pamphlets address the sinking of neutral or hospital ships, and one relatively mild booklet, Linguistic Oppression in the German Empire, recounts Prussian attempts to force ethnic minorities in outlying areas to adopt the German language. On the opposite end of the scale, Their Crimes is a classic of the genre, memorialized in textbooks today, which accuses German troops in Belgium of slaughtering children en masse and killing a headmaster for refusing to trample on his country's flag. - Ten pamphlets reproducing speeches by various leaders including H.H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, and General Smuts. - Eight pamphlets attempting to condemn the Germans in their own words, with titles.
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