On les aura! (1916 poster)

One of France's most celebrated posters of the war sold debt, not enlistment. Jules-Abel Faivre's 1916 design for the Second National Defense Loan shows an ordinary soldier, rifle at his side, arm flung up as he calls his comrades on, in a pose that echoes François Rude's volunteers on the Arc de Triomphe. The handwritten "We'll get them!" quoted words attributed to General Pétain at Verdun. The lesson is how a loan appeal borrowed the energy of a charge: subscribing becomes joining the attack, and a civilian's savings are cast as ammunition. Governments on both sides leaned on public war loans, which is why posters like this were everywhere, and this image was reused in France and adapted abroad.