# Strong in the Strength of the Lord (1942), David Stone Martin's rifle and wrenches

OWI Poster No. 8, painted by David Stone Martin and printed in 1942, sets three pairs of arms against a red field, one holding a bayoneted rifle and two holding wrenches, under the words "Strong in the strength of the Lord we who fight in the people's cause will never stop until that cause is won" (NAID 513636).

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      Strong in the strength of the Lord we who fight in the people's cause will never stop until that cause is won

      Strong in the Strength of the Lord (1942), David Stone Martin's rifle and wrenches
      David Stone Martin's OWI Poster No. 8 (1942) joins a bayoneted rifle and two wrenches under the line "Strong in the strength of the Lord." NAID 513636.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Glittering generalitiesTransfer
      Date1942Made byOffice of War Information (OWI Poster No. 8), artist David Stone MartinMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513636; 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) Office of War Information. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-190 (NAID 513636).
      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

  OWI Poster No. 8, painted by David Stone Martin and printed in 1942, sets three pairs of arms against a red field, one holding a bayoneted rifle and two holding wrenches, under the words "Strong in the strength of the Lord we who fight in the people's cause will never stop until that cause is won" (NAID 513636).

## Three pairs of arms

The picture is nothing but arms and what they hold. Against a red field, one pair grips a rifle with a bayonet, one holds a pipe wrench in a work glove, and one holds a wrench with a sleeve cuff showing. The archive reads rifle and tools as one effort. Above them runs a three-line sentence.

Strong in the strength of the Lord

we who fight in the people's cause

will never stop until that cause is won

[signature:] David Stone Martin

OWI Poster No. 8

[imprint:] U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1942-O-488341

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513636, local id 44-PA-190, Record Group 44.

## No speaker named

The sheet is No. 8 in the Office of War Information's numbered series, signed by David Stone Martin, with a 1942 printing-office job number. The archive calls the words a quotation, but the transcription prints no speaker and no source. The record's purpose field reads "Reassure," its audience "Domestic public," and its themes war, the home front, and religion.

## A federal office and the Lord

The archive tags transfer, for the rifle and tools set together as one effort, and glittering generalities, for the scriptural-style wording that ties the cause to religious language. The phrase "people's cause" is the other one doing work. It is never defined, and the poster asks the viewer to supply it.

A citizen may believe his country's cause is just and pray for its success. It is a different matter when an executive agency prints, on government paper, that "we who fight" draw strength from the Lord. The poster compels no one and names no church. It does put the state's voice behind a religious claim about a war, and a reader who held another faith, or none, was still addressed as part of that "we." The same office put Rockwell's Freedom of Worship on a bond sheet, "Save Freedom of Worship," listed with the Four Freedoms posters.

Religious language was not confined to this sheet. Pvt. Joe Louis Says, another 1942 OWI poster, carries the boxer's words "because we're on God's side." The series is indexed on the Office of War Information hub.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Strong in the strength of the Lord we who fight in the people's cause will never stop until that cause is won, 1942. Office of War Information (OWI Poster No. 8), artist David Stone Martin. 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-190, NAID 513636, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/strong-in-the-strength-of-the-lord-owi-poster-8-1942/