The Humanity Flag, a special variant novelty 48 star version of the United States flag was patented (#51812) by Albert Hewitt of Mount Vernon, NY, on February 26th, 1918. In his alliance flag, Hewitt substituted rows of the British jack for the red stripes of the Stars & Stripes. The canton, instead of being all blue, he divided vertically into the French tri-color-blue, white, and red; and the forty-eight stars upon that canton are shown in colors opposite of the tri-colors bars.
It was his belief that this flag, which was marketed as a painting, a lithograph and an actual cloth flag, was a graphic representation of Woodrow Wilsons famous casus belli, for the US entering World War I, to make the world safe for democracy. Delivered on April 2, 1917, in a speech before a joint session of Congress, Wilson clearly detailed that the intentions of the United States was not to defeat Imperial Germany.
Accompanying these flags were labels which read: The Humanity Flag "Auxilio Dei"
This Flag will make the World safe for Democracy and Humanity
Manufactured exclusively by The Commercial Decalcomania Co. Inc.
Sole Distributor: Muirheid-Winter Co. Inc.
200 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
"It is a noble consummation that at the conclusion of a hundred years of
unbroken peace among the United States, Great Britain and France,
These three once- warring Powers should be firmly united in an alliance for waging
the world's latest and greatest conflict, for what we may hope will be the final
vindication of the great principles which first brought them together,
in so different circumstances, at Yorktown.
It is an appropriate commemoration of their century of peace"
From The North American Review, July, 1918.
Ambassador Jusserand's speech, "The Three Yorktown Nations."
Patented Feb. 26th, 1918 Serial No. 51812
This was formerly part of the acclaimed collection of noted antique dealer Mr. Boleslaw Mastai and his wife Marie-Louise d'Otrange Mastai, formerly of New York City, and later Amagansett, Long Island. Their collection was the result of fifty years of collecting, research and study by the late husband-wife team. Mastai, started collecting in the early 20th century and amassed to greatest private flag collection in the United States which he detailed in his landmark book The Stars and The Stripes; The American Flag from Birth of the Republic to the Present, published by Alfred Knopf, New York 1973, and hailed as a revelation of the American Flag as art and as social history.
United States 48-star, British, French integrated patriotic flag, WWI; Sotheby's Lot 156.
ZFC # Sothebys # Description/Exhibit-Publication History
(sale 10 Oct. 02
0740 122-bx, p. 72-550 Hewitt Humanity Flag (duplicate)
ZFC Important
No Description
