“When you fire remember this – Enlist in the Navy”

This recruitment poster by American artist W.A. Rodgers (1854-1931) shows a sailor reaching out to a young girl in a lifeboat from the Lusitania, a British passenger steamer that was torpedoed by a German submarine off the Irish coast in May 1915. Nearly 1,200 lives were lost in the tragedy. The event galvanized the American public against Imperial Germany. Later, after America’s entry into the war, images of the victims of the Lusitania, especially children, were used in military recruitment efforts.