While the First World War officially ended at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919,\u00a0 major hostilities\u00a0 concluded on November 11, 1918,\u00a0 at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.\u00a0 November 11 was thereafter observed as Armistice Day\u00a0 in many of the allied nations, including France, the United States, Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth nations. \u00a0 The day originally served to remember the\u00a0 9 million combatants who had died\u00a0 during the war.\u00a0 After the Second World War, veterans of that conflict pressed in the United States to have November 11 become a day on which all veterans of military service would be honored, irrespective of\u00a0 when they served in the U.S. Armed Forces. \u00a0 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, himself a veteran of both the first and second World Wars,\u00a0 signed the enabling legislation into effect in 1954.<\/p>\n
Today, although all combatants from “war to end all wars”\u00a0 have died,\u00a0 we grapple still with the legacy of that terrible conflict which spawned several national revolutions,\u00a0 reshaped the map of Europe, led\u00a0 to the Second World War, and\u00a0 directly or indirectly occasioned the creation of the modern states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and ultimately Israel.<\/p>\n
The First World War is regarded\u00a0 as a watershed event in the history of warfare, society and culture.\u00a0 Government powers (taxation, rationing, conscription) significantly expanded in many nations in order to mobilize entire economies to fight a technologically advanced and industrially intensive war of such great geographic extent and duration.\u00a0\u00a0 Propaganda reached new heights of pervasiveness and persuasive power as governments increasingly saw the necessity to garner and maintain broad public support\u00a0 in favor of war policies in the context of\u00a0 broad literacy rates and mass suffrage.<\/p>\n
One of the most prominent manifestations of the new propaganda was the war poster, many of which have survived in the collections of libraries and historical societies, as well as in private collections. \u00a0 The Special Collections Research Center of the Temple University Libraries hold\u00a0 a magnificent collection of over 1,500 World War I posters which were donated to Temple in 1937 by George F. Tyler who had been a Major in the U.S. Army Field Artillery during the War.\u00a0 Temple’s Tyler School of Art is named for Tyler’s wife Stella Elkins Tyler. \u00a0\u00a0 Virtually all these posters have been digitized and are now freely available for study in our Digital Collections.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An interpretive online exhibition is also offered at:\u00a0 http:\/\/exhibitions.library.temple.edu\/exhibits\/ww1\/ .\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n Jonathan LeBreton, Senior Assoc. University Librarian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While the First World War officially ended at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919,\u00a0 major hostilities\u00a0 concluded on November 11, 1918,\u00a0 at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.\u00a0 November 11 … Continue reading