A Political Cartoon is like an Onion

Political cartoons communicate complex ideas concisely and often humorously. Like exchanges in presidential debates, they incorporate elements that can be appreciated by both intellectuals and popular audiences; however, cartoons have the capacity to be simultaneously clearer and deeper than debate moments. Leonardo da Vinci influenced this form of rhetoric by establishing the art form of caricature, and as a result political cartoons were used for propaganda and satire as far back as the Protestant Reformation.[i] Over the centuries, many political cartoons have become iconic and galvanized people into action by distilling a complex issue into a clear, if caricatured, image.

Philip Zec’s “Don’t lose it again!” and Robert Minor’s “At last a perfect soldier!” are two such cartoons, produced during the second world war and the first world war, respectively, that distill complex messages about war and government to images that are essentially opposites. Zec’s cartoon, published on VE Day in 1945, sends a message to British politicians and voters by celebrating the military’s ability to clean up messes created by political failures. By comparison, Minor’s political cartoon is a harsh satire that demonstrates his frustration with U.S. involvement in World War I, implying that no rational soldier would fight in the mindless war. The most obvious contrast is that these socialists’ reactions to war produced a depiction of a heroic, resolute soldier in one case and a satire of a brainless soldier in the other. The more important distinction is that Zec’s cartoon made meaningful appeals to and elicited favorable responses from both of its audiences, but Minor’s had limited appeal and served mainly to criticize and protest rather than to meaningfully connect with multiple audiences.

zec-and-minor-1


Philip Zec was born in London to a Jewish father who had fled oppression in czarist Russia. Zec went to art school and at age nineteen opened his own commercial art studio. He became politically engaged during Hitler’s rise and found a job at the Daily Mirror after the outbreak of World War II, producing daily political cartoons that often targeted the Nazis.

He stirred up controversy in March of 1942 with a depiction of a seaman in the water after a submarine attack, captioned ‘“The price of petrol has been increased by one penny” – Official.’

“The price of petrol has been increased by one penny.” – Official

British Parliament interpreted the cartoon as a treasonous attack on (profiteering) petrol companies, despite Zec’s claim that it was simply a reminder to the British people to conserve resources during wartime. Parliament ordered an MI5 investigation of Zec and his newspaper, which revealed that they had generally good intentions and were merely of left-wing persuasion. In Parliament’s debate over shutting down the Daily Mirror, Zec’s credibility played a large role in the decision to merely reprimand him and the newspaper.[ii]


Zec’s contribution on VE day, May 8th, 1945, was received much more positively by the British government. As shown above, the cartoon shows a wounded soldier offering Britain laurels symbolizing ‘victory and peace in Europe’ and is captioned “Here you are! Don’t lose it again!”. Given Zec’s prior altercation with the British government, this is likely targeted at British politicians as well as the British people. That is confirmed by an analysis of the phrases used in the cartoon; the soldier’s simple words speak volumes by relying on certain commonplaces and shared understandings.

The soldier’s first phrase, “Here you are!”, is informed by the idea of the military making sacrifices on behalf of the people. This implies that the soldier is talking to the British people, because that is the group for whom the soldiers presumably fought to secure peace. The injured soldier’s appearance and the humble disposition indicated by this phrase also create strong appeals to ethos and pathos. The soldier is fulfilling his duty by making personal sacrifices to return peace and victory to the people; this in turn creates certain responsibilities for the people, such as having compassion and respect for the soldier.

The most important responsibility this creates is defined in the second phrase, “Don’t lose it again!” This is directed at the British political leaders who have the power to preserve peace in Europe. The inclusion of the word “again” hearkens back to the last time Britain lost the peace and to the much maligned “appeasement doctrine” of Neville Chamberlain, a Conservative prime minister, which gave Germany a head start in World War II and ultimately led to a longer and bloodier war.

Hence, the complete audience of this cartoon is the British people, who should appreciate the soldiers’ sacrifices for them, and the British political leaders, who should feel guilty for losing the peace prior to World War II and take responsibility for keeping the peace in Europe following World War II.

The Labour Party responded to the cartoon much as Zec wanted, officially apologizing for their past questioning of his motives and asking permission to use the cartoon in the 1945 general election campaign.[iii] This political arrangement made sense because Zec held socialist views, which aligned more closely with the Labour Party than with the Conservative Party, and his cartoon implicitly criticized Chamberlain’s prewar foreign policy. The people also responded positively to his message, delivering a landslide for Labour despite Winston Churchill’s sky-high approval ratings.[iv]

Front page of the Daily Mirror on Election Day in Britain, 1945

Robert Minor developed artistic and writing skills doing odd jobs for his hometown San Antonio Gazette, gaining interest in political cartoons. By 1910 he had become the popular chief cartoonist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and one of the first American cartoonists to use grease crayon on paper, which produced a lithographic effect. Minor had become a passionate socialist, but Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the Post-Dispatch, did not mind his strong political statements. Minor left for the New York World in 1911 to become the highest paid cartoonist in the country, but retained his passion and candor.

In 1916, Tom Mooney – a friend of Minor’s – was framed for a bombing in San Francisco and sentenced to death (the sentence was eventually commuted).[v] Minor gave impassioned speeches, wrote articles for various publications, and drew a poignant political cartoon slamming those who framed Mooney.

hog the nose
Robert Minor cartoon pleading for readers to protest the fate of Tom Mooney; here, the men who framed him are looking on coldly while he waits with a noose around his neck.

Minor possessed a similar passion with respect to World War I, expressing his strong opposition through harshly anti-war cartoons. When the New York World’s editor asked him to change his tone, Minor refused outright and began drawing cartoons for the radical magazine The Masses instead. He also traveled to the Western Front to write articles about the war for The Call.[vi]


When Minor published “At last a perfect soldier!” after the U.S. officially entered the war, he was stymied by an authority higher than the magazine publishing his work. Both he and The Masses came under fire from the U.S. Government (figuratively), he for his cartoon and the journal for several contributors’ antiwar articles and cartoons. Minor’s cartoon was received poorly by the government because he directed its anti-war message mainly at a like-minded audience; the government did not interpret the cartoon through the intended ideology and did not deem Minor a civically credible rhetor.

As a radical socialist (who would later become a communist), Minor thought the workers of the world should come together rather than fighting each other in a rich men’s war.[vii] This cartoon captures his frustration with workers acting against their own interests, arguing that the “perfect soldier” is a man with all the physical attributes to fight but none of the mental faculties to question the purpose of fighting.

Minor had lost much of his mainstream audience after leaving the New York World, but this cartoon was controversial and iconic enough to reach that audience once more. However, to many in this wider audience, the cartoon seems to be attacking the country’s servicemen and comes across as unpatriotic and crass. This is due to the difficulty of expressing frustration with those who act against their self-interest: on one hand, they are essentially respectable and honorable people, but on the other, they are acting in a way that Minor perceives to make them and others like them worse off. This cartoon assumes that the audience is somewhat familiar with this line of reasoning and expresses the latter emotion, the frustration, without demonstrating the respect Minor has for the soldiers. The mainstream audience would not understand this, and the government, recognizing that, saw the cartoon as harmful to morale.

In the case of Philip Zec’s controversial petrol cartoon, British Parliament ultimately decided that Zec was fundamentally good (Zec was on Hitler’s “black list” for mocking the Nazis) and let him off on a warning, having concluded that the petrol cartoon was merely an aberration. However, Robert Minor had a history of radicalism and was known for expressing his own strong opinions rather than promoting patriotic messages. The government understood this cartoon to be part of a larger trend in Minor’s work and deemed his rhetoric harmful to the country and to the war effort.

Shortly after the cartoon was published, the government charged The Masses with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 by undermining the war effort, and Minor and several other writers and cartoonists were put on trial. Though they were never convicted (both trials resulted in a hung jury), The Masses ceased publication and the contributors were effectively silenced for the rest of the war. Though this was a setback for Minor, he had drawn public attention to his point of view and he remained ideologically pure, going on to be arrested in Europe after the war for advising workers to strike (Spartacus Educational).

An earlier response by Minor to a steelworker strike in Pittsburgh (in 1916); he used grease pencil and ink brush

These cases demonstrate the incredible amount of meaning that has to be incorporated into a successful and memorable political cartoon. Philip Zec and Robert Minor each achieved their main purposes in “Don’t lose it again!” and “At last a perfect soldier!”, but Zec had the better plan. He managed to craft a positive message about military sacrifice and civic responsibility while at the same time scolding the politicians who had doubted him. In contrast, Minor merely expressed frustration with the government and with military recruits, which led to the predictable result of governmental retaliation.

This also highlights the importance of context – the complete rhetorical situation – in the success or failure of political cartoons. Looking at these two cartoons out of context, Minor’s is the more engaging, using caricature and satire to full effect. However, in context, Zec’s made clever use of shared understandings to create more layers of meaning and elicit the desired response from each audience. As any successful cartoon must, it becomes more impressive as its layers are peeled back through rhetorical analysis.


[i] Backer, Dan. “A Brief History of Cartoons.” 1 July 1996. Graduate Thesis: Uniting Mugwumps and the Masses. Web. 27 September 2016. <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/puck/part1.html>.

[ii] Spartacus Educational Publishers, Ltd. Philip Zec. August 2014. Web. 27 September 2016. <http://spartacus-educational.com/Jzec.htm>.

[iii] Cronin, Brian. Stars of Political Cartooning – Philip Zec. 18 Ocober 2008. Web. 28 September 2016. <http://www.cbr.com/stars-of-political-cartooning-philip-zec/>.

[iv] Addison, Dr. Paul. Why Churchill Lost in 1945. 17 February 2011. Web. 3 October 2016. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml#seven>.

[v] Spartacus Educational Publishers, Ltd. Tom Mooney. September 2015. Web. 3 October 2016. <http://spartacus-educational.com/USAmooney.htm>.

[vi] Spartacus Educational Publishers, Ltd. Robert Minor. August 2014. Web. 3 October 2016. <http://spartacus-educational.com/ARTminor.htm>.

[vii] Vallen, Mark. “AT LAST A PERFECT SOLDIER!”. 28 May 2002. Web. 3 October 2016. <http://la.indymedia.org/news/2002/05/16866.php>.

One thought on “A Political Cartoon is like an Onion”

  1. Thanks for this-the cartoons have a particular relevance as we move (hopefully soon) into a post-covid world

Comments are closed.