# All About Liberty Bonds (1917), a question-and-answer sheet for the First Liberty Loan A 1917 Treasury poster for the First Liberty Loan answers five questions in plain type: what a Liberty Bond is, why to buy one, how to pay, where to buy, and when subscriptions close. It prints an installment schedule and a coupon value, then ends with "If you can't fight, your money can." - Home - Archive - All About Liberty Bonds (1917), a question-and-answer sheet for the First Liberty Loan All About Liberty Bonds All About Liberty Bonds (1917), a question-and-answer sheet for the First Liberty Loan The Treasury's 1917 First Liberty Loan sheet printed the terms of the bond, an installment plan from $1 down, and a 15 June close. National Archives ## Techniques named on the archive record Card stacking Date1917Made byU.S. Treasury Department (First Liberty Loan)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeWilson AdministrationNARANAID 512439SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), RG 4 (U.S. Food Administration), World War I Posters (NAID 512439) , retrieved October 3, 2026SourceNARA Unrestricted; hosted by owner decision U.S. Treasury Department (First Liberty Loan). National Archives and Records Administration, 4-P-234. 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 1917 Treasury poster for the First Liberty Loan answers five questions in plain type: what a Liberty Bond is, why to buy one, how to pay, where to buy, and when subscriptions close. It prints an installment schedule and a coupon value, then ends with "If you can't fight, your money can." ## What the sheet prints The sheet is type only: a red and blue border frames two columns, a question word on the left and an answer on the right. The headings run WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHERE and WHEN, and the answers are mostly numbers. Each $100 bond has 60 coupons attached. You can cut off one of these every six months and get $1.75 in cash at any bank, without expense. […] You don't need a bank account to buy a Liberty Bond. […] Every dollar you pay goes to the Government. No commissions are charged to you or paid to anyone. WHEN Shall I Buy Them? Buy them NOW. Subscriptions close June 15, 1917. Our soldiers and sailors will give their lives. You are asked only to lend your money. If you can't fight, your money can. A bond may save a life. A bond will help to end the war. Excerpt, FRAME transcription; the record notes that "give," "lend" and "you" are underlined on the sheet. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. The payment plan is spelled out for a $50 subscription: $1 down, then $9, $10, $15 and $15 on four dates between 28 June and 30 August 1917. The five payments add up to the $50. Banks, trust companies, bond houses, post offices, department stores and express companies are all listed as places to buy. ## Who made it FRAME credits the U.S. Treasury Department, First Liberty Loan, 1917, and classes the source as openly identified. The National Archives copy is filed in Record Group 4, the Food Administration's World War I Posters series (NAID 512439), catalog item 512672, local identifier 4-P-234. A Treasury sheet sitting in the food agency's poster file is common in this set; the hub page explains why the count matters. ## How to read it Among the loan posters in the archive, this one and the Third Liberty Loan's numbered "The Facts" sheet treat the reader most like an adult. It says what is being sold, who stands behind it, what it pays, and when the money is due. A reader can do the arithmetic: $1.75 twice a year on $100 is 3.5 percent, and sixty half-yearly coupons are thirty years of interest. The sheet does not print a maturity date, and it does not say what a holder would get for selling a bond early. FRAME tags it card stacking for that reason: only the favorable terms are shown. The last paragraph changes register. "You are asked only to lend your money" sets a purchase beside a death, and the underlining makes sure the reader feels the gap. That is a moral argument, not a financial one, and it is a fair one to make in a declared war. It also sits a few months before a harder line from the top: in October 1917 the Treasury secretary, William G. McAdoo, called a person who refused to subscribe "a friend of Germany." That quotation, with its source, is on this site's Wilson administration page. On liberty the reading is simple. A loan offered on stated terms, which the citizen may take or leave, is how a republic should finance a war Congress declared. This sheet mostly does that. Later drives also printed a burning New York and honor rolls of buyers' names; both are in the gallery. ## Sources - FRAME object record, All About Liberty Bonds, 1917. U.S. Treasury Department (First Liberty Loan). - U.S. National Archives, RG 4, World War I Posters, series NAID 512439, catalog item 512672, local identifier 4-P-234, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: NARA unrestricted. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/all-about-liberty-bonds-1917/