Re-socialising the child from potential enemy to protected innocent: the early fundraising of the Save the Children Fund

Montgomery, Heather (2010). Re-socialising the child from potential enemy to protected innocent: the early fundraising of the Save the Children Fund. AmS-Skrifter, 23, pp. 137–144.

Abstract

This chapter looks at the fundraising efforts of the Save the Children Fund (SCF) between 1919 and 1922. It focuses on a series of newspaper advertisements taken out in The Times of London, which appealed for help for Austrian children, suffering because of the Allied blockade at the end of World War One, and later on for British children living in poverty. It will then go on to discuss the silent film, Famine -The Russian Famine Of 1921, released in 1922, which depicted the plight of Russian children and appealed for funds for them. The chapter argues that these fundraising advertisements had a dual purpose; not only did they seek to raise money but they also sought to shape adult attitudes and behaviour towards children in need. By drawing on particular notions of patriotism and Christianity, the adverts of SCF attempted to re-socialise British adults from hostile antagonists to magnanimous victors and to turn children, previously dismissed as potential enemies, into innocent victims.