1940.08.25 "Postwar exhibit" by Paule Stetson Loring

1940.08.25 “Postwar exhibit”
by Paule Stetson Loring (1899-1968)
12 x 14 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection 

Paule Loring was a Rhode Island artist who earned an international reputation for his cartoons, caricatures, and seascapes. He left school at 13 and worked odd jobs, from truck driver to editor of a leather factory newsletter. But eventually, he distinguished himself as a war correspondent and political cartoonist for the Providence Journal-Bulletin. Later in life, Loring sold paintings and sketches from a seaman's shanty that doubled as an artist's studio.

Chamberlain, an appeaser more than an isolationist, is being used as an editorial foil in this US cartoon to criticize isolationism. He resigned in May 1940, alive but politically finished, until his death in November. 

Nazi aggression became harder to ignore and put off as irrelevant to US concerns when France fell (June) and the Battle of Britain began (July), and FDR tried to convince Americans that they could not remain aloof.

“The Hardest Day” (August 18), when heavy air raids inflicted severe losses, prompted front‐page headlines across US newspapers. Support for helping Britain was emerging from the US military.