An Amazing Look at 100 Years

A sailor drowning in a deep, dark sea points his finger at the viewer and stares accusingly. ‘Someone talked!’ the poster screams.

A concerned-looking father sits in an armchair while his son plays with toy soldiers on the carpet and his daughter sits on his lap asking, ‘Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?’

Five short, sharp words below a crown tell the British population what to do in the event of a German invasion in World War II: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’

These are three of the most powerful images from the Australian War Memorial’s huge collection of propaganda posters – one of the largest in the world – amassed over the past century.

Now these posters have left the museum for the first time and are being displayed in an exhibition called Propaganda at Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (MPRG).

This American World War II poster was issued by the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information. The drowning sailor points accusingly at the viewer as he reaches out for help. The poster is designed to warn of the fatal consequences of careless talk on the home front   

This is probably the best-remembered British recruitment poster of World War I. A father sits in an armchair with a look of concern across his face. His son plays with toy soldiers below him on the carpet, while his curious daughter sits on his knee, asking what he did in the Great War 

The MPRG’s exhibition features dozens of posters covering all aspects of wartime propaganda from a time before television and the internet.

Many of the posters encourage military recruitment, sometimes by trying to shame men of eligible age into enlisting.

That image of a daughter looking up from her book to ask what her father did in the war is perhaps the best-remembered British propaganda poster of World War I.

Soldiers on the Western Front displayed it on the walls of their dugouts, with their own answers to the question penciled in.

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