# Save Food, Fight Famine (1946), a four-word banner

Save Food, Fight Famine is a 1946 Government Printing Office banner with no picture: four white capital words on a long, narrow brown strip. The sheet does not print the issuing agency. NAID 515340, in the National Archives' World War II poster series.

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      Save food, fight famine

      Save Food, Fight Famine (1946), a four-word banner
      A 1946 banner with no picture and four words, "Save food, fight famine," printed by the Government Printing Office. No agency is named. NAID 515340.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Glittering generalities
      Date1946Made byU.S. Government (agency not printed)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationNARANAID 515340; 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. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1672 (NAID 515340).
      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

  Save Food, Fight Famine is a 1946 Government Printing Office banner with no picture: four white capital words on a long, narrow brown strip. The sheet does not print the issuing agency. NAID 515340, in the National Archives' World War II poster series.

## What there is

Very little. The archive describes a long, narrow brown banner with white capital letters and no illustration at all. The only other line is the printer's number.

SAVE FOOD   FIGHT FAMINE

[imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1946 O 701601]

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 515340, local id 44-PA-1672, Record Group 44.

## Who issued it

The record's maker line is "U.S. Government (agency not printed)." The GPO number dates the printing to 1946. Nothing on the strip says which office asked for it, where it was meant to hang, or which famine it means.

## Reading four words

The archive files the banner under glittering generalities and calls the technique faint. That is fair. "Fight famine" is a phrase no one argues with, and the sheet pairs it with a household act, saving food, without a number, a place, or a reason why one family's savings would reach anyone hungry. The persuasion is in the pairing: small thrift at home is promoted to a fight.

Still, the request is voluntary and modest. It asks people to waste less and does not threaten or shame them. It states a cause and leaves the reader to decide.

## Related food sheets

A longer appeal on food is A Message About Food from the President of the United States, a 1945 sheet over Harry Truman's printed signature that ends "There can be no lasting peace in a hungry world." From an earlier war, the Food Administration's Food Is Ammunition, Don't Waste It (1917) tied the kitchen to the front. The archive also holds a 1946 sheet in the same vein, Seed Needed: Help Fight Famine.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Save food, fight famine, 1946. U.S. Government (agency not printed).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 515340, local id 44-PA-1672, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/save-food-fight-famine-1946/