Bill Mauldin on Vietnam
War
Bill Mauldin (1921-2003)
"From this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." (Shakespeare,
Henry IV), 1965
Published in the Chicago Sun-Times, April 13, 1965
Crayon, ink, white out and blue pencil over pencil on layered paper
Bill Mauldin Collection
Prints & Photographs Division
Copyright Bill Mauldin, 1965. Courtesy of the Mauldin Estate
LC-DIG-ppmsca-13268 (14)
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Bill Mauldin was one of the most popular and influential cartoonists
of the twentieth century. The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist
began his career with satirical army cartoons during World War
II. He later served as an editorial cartoonist with the Saint
Louis Post-Dispatch and then the Chicago Sun-Times,
from which he retired in 1991. After the war, he turned to drawing
political cartoons in which he supported policies such as civil
rights and environmental reform. Although Mauldin generally favored
the policies of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973), he
was in strong disagreement with U.S. policy in Vietnam, which he
visited in 1965, the year that Johnson began a big military buildup
there. In this cartoon, Mauldin shows Johnson reaching up through
a thorny bush labeled "Southeast Asia" to pluck a small, lone flower
at the top. The caption from William Shakespeare's Henry IV,
Part 1, Act II, Scene 3, suggests the futility of the action
and thus of the Vietnam War, which would last another ten years.
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