ABSTRACT
At Kansas City’s spectacular Liberty Memorial, the US national monument to the First World War, an enormous figure-filled mural commemorating the contribution of the United States to Allied victory adorns the north wall of Memory Hall (Figure 7.1). In the centre of the crowded composition, President Woodrow Wilson, responsible for the US’s entry into the war and a chief architect of its ultimately failed peace, stands at the foot of a painted bust of George Washington. Notable American military, government and civilian wartime figures, and several mythic American ‘types’ – such as a strutting cowboy – comprise the remainder of the American section, which totals about 100 figures. On either side of the American section are grouped leading wartime figures from most of America’s 23 wartime allies.
