The American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief, later Near East Relief (and now Near East Foundation) was a humanitarian organization founded in 1915, initially to provide relief to the victims of the Armenian Genocide in what is now Turkey, as well as to the millions of starving and displaced people from Syria, Greece, and other countries following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire early in World War I. The scheme was spearheaded by Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and cofounded by James L. Barton and Cleveland H. Dodge, whose name appears on the poster. W. B. King’s image of a woman in Near Eastern clothing carrying an infant on her back against a war-torn landscape was part of a hugely successful appeal to the American people as the organization launched its January 1918 campaign to raise $30,000,000 for humanitarian relief in the region. This is one of several posters King designed for this campaign; he also produced designs for other fundraising and propaganda posters during World War I, all reflecting the traditional style of his work as a book and magazine illustrator before the war.