Dare you to say or think... 1943

This 1943 original wartime poster by illustrator C.C. Beall is a searing psychological appeal rendered in oil and urgency. Created during the height of World War II, the image confronts its viewer with raw emotion and moral indictment, embodying the era’s ethos of sacrifice, duty, and collective resolve.

At the center, a Naval officer, eyes wide with anguish and defiance, supports the limp, bloodied body of a wounded sailor. The composition is viscerally human — no abstraction, no patriotic gloss — just two men locked in the intimate, unbearable immediacy of war. Beall’s technique, honed as a war correspondent and portraitist, places anatomical precision in service of emotional truth. The wounded man’s pale torso, streaked with crimson, becomes both martyr and mirror.

The text, set in gold block lettering, demands not passive patriotism but internal reckoning: "Dare you to say or think you do not feel the bullet that has pierced the flesh..." This isn’t just propaganda; it’s moral theater. The phrasing is accusatory, intimate, and deliberately unsettling — an internal monologue weaponized into public persuasion.

The background is shrouded in darkness, both literal and symbolic. There is no battlefield in sight — only claustrophobic shadows and the tension between flesh, fabric, and faith. The setting might be a ship’s corridor, but it could just as easily be the conscience of the viewer. This ambiguity is the poster’s brilliance: it doesn’t document war, it invokes it.

Released by the U.S. Government Printing Office, this poster was designed not to inform but to involve — to collapse the distance between front lines and factory floors, between soldier and citizen. It calls out to workers on the home front, warning them that to falter in production is to betray the sacrifice of those in uniform.

In an era when visual media bore the full weight of national morale, Beall’s composition stands out as an unflinching portrayal of wartime ethics. Today, it endures not only as a historical artifact but as a potent reminder of how design can channel grief, fury, and urgency into a single visual cry: You are not separate. You are accountable.

War 39-45 - United States

General Cable Corporation

Good condition, one tear, one crease