Description
One of the famous of the propaganda posters produced by Preissig for the Wentworth Institute during World War I calling on Czechoslovaks living abroad to join the Czech legion fighting in Europe. The posters exist in different languages (Czech, Slovak and English) and formats (the images also appear on postcards).
The poster presents the text of the manifesto in Czech with a picture of a soldier with the American flag and the flags used by the Czechs and Slovaks independence movements.
Printed by The School of Printing and Graphic Arts of Wentworth Institute, for Czechoslovak Recruiting Office.
After war was declared, protest rallies of Czech and Slovak countrymen were organized in main centres of the United States under American flags. A revolutionary club called ‘Ceskoslovenská republika’ (Czechoslovak Republic) was established in Chicago on 8 November 1914. The effort to coordinate collective action in America reached a peak in the establishment of the Bohemian (Czech) National Alliance in September 1914. Together with the Slovak League they supported the major representative of the resistance movement—the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris (recognized as a provisional government in 1918).
