JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG WAKE UP AMERICA! 1917.

39 1/2x26 1/2 inches. The Hegeman Print, New York.
Condition A-: expertly restored losses and repaired tears in margins.
Through 1917, America had been removed, both psychologically and physically, from the widening horror of the war in Europe. Yet distant and isolated as America was, the winds of war were not ignored by all. Before the United States officially entered the war, private groups of concerned citizens took it upon themselves to begin preparing America for the upcoming battle. Flagg designed two of these images. Here in an allegory of a country unprepared, Columbia is rendered tenderly, sleeping peacefully on her front porch, while behind her the flames and smoke of war can be seen in the distance. This poster epitomizes the "key historic process...the New World turnaround from innocent neutrality to innocent all out war" (Rawls p. 9). Flagg p. 68, Rawls, cover and frontispiece, Theofiles 7.