Many of the initial and most effective images of the war grew out of ferocious treatment of Belgian civilians by the invading German armies, right at the beginning of the war in August 1914. The link, Recruitment and War Bond Posters, opens to two unforgettable images of the German invasion. One shows the German gorilla, carrying his bloodied club (inscribed "Kultur") treading on an American shore, with a devasted Europe behind him, and the other a drowning mother and child. In our class for 8 September 1999, we considered poems by Thomas Hardy which respond immediately to the plight of Belgium. I've provided some pertinent supplementary material, as follows:
Photograph: The Ruins of Louvain
Hardy's poem, On the Belgian Expatriation
Schrecklichkeit, the German war on civilians