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
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.
