Treat 'Em Rough! (1918), August Hutaf's black cat for the Tank Corps

Treat 'Em Rough! is a 1918 recruiting poster for the United States Tank Corps, art by August Hutaf, printed by National Printing & Engineering Co. A huge black cat leaps through flames over tanks and barbed wire.

What the sheet prints

A black cat the size of the sky, claws out, jaws open, springs through fire. Below it the war is small: tanks, wire, a churned field. The type is a slogan and an address of sorts, the name of a new branch.

TREAT'EM ROUGH!

JOIN THE TANKS

United States Tank Corps.

Who issued it

The United States Tank Corps, art by August Hutaf, printed by National Printing & Engineering Co., 1918. The National Archives copy is in Record Group 4, World War I Posters (series NAID 512439), local identifier 4-P-8.

How to read it

The Tank Corps was a new branch, and the poster does not explain the machine at all. The cat stands in for it, and for the men inside it. Speed, ferocity, and a certain glee are what the poster promises.

That is ordinary recruiting craft, and it is aimed at volunteers, which counts for something. Nobody was compelled by a cat. The thing to see is what the image replaces. A young man thinking about the Tank Corps might reasonably want to know about heat, fumes, mechanical failure, and what happens when a tank is hit. The poster gives him an animal instead. The enemy does not appear either; "'em" is whoever is under the claws.

It belongs with the other animal sheets of this war, but it points the other way. Destroy This Mad Brute made the enemy a beast. This makes the American soldier one, and means it as praise. Compare the Navy's appeal through charm on Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man and the Marines' through anger on Tell That to the Marines!: three services, three moods, very little information. The Wilson administration essay separates the wartime pictures that came from other offices, such as the Army's I Want You sheet, from the Committee on Public Information's own work.