# A War Message: Stop Pleasure Travel! (1944), a card about the railroads

A war message: Stop pleasure travel! Railroads are war roads is a tall, picture-free card printed by the Government Printing Office in 1944, with no issuing agency named. Red, white and blue lettering asks the reader to give up trips taken for pleasure (NAID 515498).

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      A war message: Stop pleasure travel! Railroads are war roads

      A War Message: Stop Pleasure Travel! (1944), a card about the railroads
      A War Message: Stop Pleasure Travel! (1944): a picture-free GPO card that tells Americans the railroads are war roads and asks them to give up pleasure

## Techniques named on the archive record

Glittering generalities
      Date1944Made byU.S. government (Government Printing Office imprint)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 515498; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) U.S. Government Printing Office. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1818 (NAID 515498).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A war message: Stop pleasure travel! Railroads are war roads is a tall, picture-free card printed by the Government Printing Office in 1944, with no issuing agency named. Red, white and blue lettering asks the reader to give up trips taken for pleasure (NAID 515498).

## A card made only of type

There is no picture. The card is tall and narrow, in the shape of a bookmark, and it is all type. "A WAR MESSAGE" sits inside a red frame. The order to stop pleasure travel is printed in blue. The reason, that the railroads are war roads, is set in white on a red block. The card also carries a Government Printing Office job number.

A WAR

MESSAGE

STOP

PLEASURE

TRAVEL!

RAIL

ROADS

ARE

WAR

ROADS

[imprint:] U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1944-O-595955

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 515498, local id 44-PA-1818, Record Group 44.

## A federal imprint and no agency

The GPO imprint dates the card to 1944 and places it with the federal printer. It names no office. The National Archives keeps it in Record Group 44, World War II Posters. FRAME records the issuer type as "State", the audience as "Domestic public" and the purpose as "Mobilize or secure compliance", with home front and economy as themes.

Two other 1944 cards in this site's snapshot have catalog titles that begin with the same three words: one on fighting waste, and one, credited to the Office of War Information, on not discussing troop movements and ship sailings. The record does not say whether the cards were printed as a set.

## A request dressed as a message

FRAME tags one technique, glittering generalities, and calls it faint. The phrase "war roads" recasts every passenger seat as a military asset, and the card offers no figures to show how much a vacation trip took from the war. It is a slogan, not a case.

It is also a request. The card cites no ticket rule, no priority system and no penalty, and the record shows none. A citizen who read it could choose to stay home. What a free reader can still ask of a sheet like this is the reason, and on this card the reason is a single slogan. The heading calls it a war message; the imprint shows it came from the government's printer, without saying which part of the government spoke.

A sharper home-front sheet about getting around is When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Hitler, which urged the reader to join a car-sharing club. Other things the wartime government asked of the public are set out in the Roosevelt administration essay.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, A war message: Stop pleasure travel! Railroads are war roads, 1944. U.S. government (Government Printing Office imprint); no issuing agency named. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1818, NAID 515498, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/a-war-message-stop-pleasure-travel-1944/