Arthur Ward - A Guide To War Publications of the First & Second World War

This Edwardian Welsh Guards poster simply stipulated that eligibility for membership of the regiment depended on recruits either having a Welsh parent on one side at least, being domiciled in Wales or Monmouth or having a Welsh surname!

C ollectors of historic printed documents are prospecting along the final remaining frontier of available, authentic wartime items. Traditionally less-expensive than other more familiar items like badges and uniforms, both vigorously traded for years, lots of authentic printed ephemera remains undiscovered. Furthermore, although high-end militaria has long been subject to fakery, printed items are more difficult to forge convincingly. But, be warned, with individual wartime posters now commanding as much as 1,000, the stakes have been raised. This undiscovered country isnt going to remain fruitful for long.

Although long overlooked in favour of more substantial pieces of military clothing and equipment including that perennial favourite, Nazi regalia ephemeral printed items are now being collected with fervour. Not before time in my opinion, because these printed pieces often provide the enthusiast with a much better picture of the reality of life during wartime, be that from the point of view of the front-line soldier or the civilian on the home front. Vintage paperwork adds context to individual items like badges and helmets and helps to explain what people had to endure when embroiled in the reality of total war .

Turn of the century postcard showing the Devonshire Regiment still resplendent in scarlet tunics .

One reason for the new-found popularity of previously disregarded items is simply because their availability provides a pleasant surprise they were never expected to have a long life. On the contrary, they were designed to have only temporary, ephemeral, appeal. Consequently most of these items were not saved; they were simply disposed of instead. Therefore they have, by default, become quite rare.

Furthermore, given that the big ticket items that have been the traditional province of serious collectors for generations: military dress, regalia and certain medals and unit badges, are now regularly counterfeit, collectors are better off casting their net wider. Printed ephemera, though of less intrinsic value, is far more difficult to fake convincingly. Surprisingly, its far easier to make a copy of a badge, a re-strike, adding the odd blemish here and some tarnish there, than it is to copy a piece of 1940s heat-set lithographic printed material and achieve not only accurate colour reproduction but the texture and distinctively musty smell of vintage paper.

The dictionary definition of ephemera is things of only short-lived relevance, meaning that most printed items were never imbued with much value when they first appeared. Although mass-produced, often in the hundreds of thousands, relatively few original items survive today. And, as we all know, rarity is as attractive to collectors as shiny objects are to magpies. So, after long taken for granted, the myriad documents each belligerent government produced in support of their nations war effort, are at last achieving high prices on the collectors market.

Trench warfare didnt only spell the end of military pomp and regalia it saw the introduction of mechanised warfare as depicted on this naive French postcard .

This book aims to explore the realm of twentieth-century printed ephemera and provide details for the collector about what to look out for, who produced what and why they did so and, most importantly, where to find such collectables and what to pay for them.

At the outbreak of the Great War, Britains authorities first began to put their own slant on why the nation had become embroiled in the conflict and what role the government was adopting, which it expected its electorate to follow. When the new War Propaganda Bureau began work on 2 September 1914, its work was so secret that it was not until 1935 that its activities were revealed to the public. Several prominent writers agreed to write pamphlets and books that would promote the governments point of view and these were printed and published by such well-known publishers as Hodder & Stoughton, Methuen, Oxford University Press, John Murray, Macmillan and Thomas Nelson. In total, the War Propaganda Bureau went on to publish over 1,160 pamphlets during the war.

The German government placed a reward of 12,000 guilders, dead or alive, on Dutch artist Louis Raemaekers head. Raemaekers graphic cartoons depicted the German military in Belgium as barbarians and Kaiser Vilhelm II as an ally of Satan. The Germans also accused Raemaekers of endangering Dutch neutrality .

In Britain, the build-up to the Second World War was characterised by the official appeasement of Hitlers expansionist behaviour. The Fhrer reoccupied the Rhineland, entered Austria, proclaiming union ( Anschluss ) with that sovereign country, and even dismembered Czechoslovakia following his acquisition of the Sudetenland, without the British government doing much more than expressing its displeasure. At the time government propaganda at home concentrated on informing Britains civilian population of the dangers of modern war, which despite their confident expressions of peace in our time, they knew was a foregone conclusion.