ABSTRACT
The cultural notion of childhood exerts – as historians Paula Fass and Mary Ann Masson have pointed out – a tremendous emotional influence, because children “are convenient symbols of our better selves” (2000: 1). Considered as the embodiment of self-sacrifice, determination, and national pride, the child personifies the values that adults want (or, at least, hope) to see in themselves. Consequently, childhood has been a common trope in popular culture and government propaganda efforts and is often employed to attract the attention and shape the behavior of adults, especially during periods of national crisis. As this chapter demonstrates, this was especially true of the United States during the First World War. From 1914 through to 1918, as America’s political debates shifted from at least nominal neutrality to belligerency, the rhetoric and imagery of childhood changed noticeably, even radically.
