As I munched on some Fritos during the afternoon, I had the History Channel on, watching a documentary about the manufacture of the Mulberry floating harbors in the UK leading up to D-Day.
(The Germans, in addition to fortifying the French coastline, had planned a strategy of pulling back to the major ports of the English Channel, with the intent that any Allied invasion would thus be unable to be properly supplied, and would then be vulnerable to counterattack. The Allies anticipated this by building massive concrete (!) floating harbors to be brought offshort and so supply the beach-heads over the long term.)
Anyway, during the documentary, I saw this poster, and it really struck me on a lot of levels. It wasn’t a promise of victory. It wasn’t an exhortation to do something specific — work hard, enlist (like the visual equivalent of Uncle Sam wants), keep your mouth shut, support the war effort, buy bonds. It was, very simply, a moral imperative — do what you need to do in your work and private life to deserve victory. It was goal-oriented, not action-oriented.
I like it. It’s something that we should all bear in mind, both in the micro and in the macro, and whatever we perceive victory to mean. It’s not all that’s necessary to achieve victory, certainly, but it is, or should be, a sine qua non.