O'Leary




Identification and its discontents: although some 150,000 Irishmen ultimately enlisted (compare the claim in the previous poster), newspapers also record arrests for the tearing down of recruiting posters and the disruption of recruiting rallies. O'Leary also comes into focus as an historical prototype for Gary Cooper in the 1941 film Sergeant York, a fine example of recruiting as an imaginary solution to real problems: raised in the country as a religious pacifist, Cooper learns how to enjoy slaughtering Germans by pretending he's on a turkey shoot.

Lithograph; artist unknown; 5000 printed by James Walker and Co. in April 1915.