On Monday, I joined Dr. Scanlon in the special archives room within Simpson Library to look at a few of the World War One posters that the university has within its collection. There was one poster in particular that we both found confusing and we were struggling to contextualize it despite having Google Translate to translate the French the accompanied it.

This poster is officially titled as “La Sale Mouche” but, Je ne parle pas français so I thought it would make most sense to translate it on here too. The translation is, “The Dirty Fly is one of the greatest enemies of babies. Coming from filth and latrines, flies carry microbes. A child cannot protect himself; his parents must do it for him. Cover the child with mosquito netting whenever it is possible for you to do so.”

To address the fly in the room, why was this poster created if it doesn’t directly have to do with the conflict? It was actually created by the American Red Cross as a public-health campaign for France. The poster was not only shown in the civilian areas closest to combat and rather actually shown all over France and even Paris. This is because there was an influx of refugees that exacerbated public sanitation and crowding in both Paris and other urban areas where there were increased health risks.