Surely You Will Fight for Your [King] And Come Along, Boys, Before it is Too...

Surely You Will Fight for Your [King] And Come Along, Boys, Before it is Too Late’. This poster was published by the Parliamentary Recruitment Committee (PRC) as Poster No. 83, and printed by Truscott and Son Limited in May 1915. PRC posters invariably addressed the viewer as a dutiful citizen unquestioningly loyal to king and country. Representations of King George V and the British Isles were regularly deployed to elicit a suitable patriotic response, as was the phrase ‘come along, boys’ with its paternalistic, slightly school-masterly, tone. Certainly many of the one million recruits who joined up between August 1914 and January 1915 did so out of a genuine and deep-seated sense of national duty that predated the start of the war. Indeed, it is important to remember that posters and recruitment literature did not manufacture consent, but rather they appealed to pre-existing beliefs and attitudes.