Militia of Mercy (U.S.). Gift Book Committee

The Gift Book Committee of the Militia of Mercy was a U.S.-based editorial committee rather than a single person. It is credited with editing Defenders of Democracy, published in New York by John Lane in 1918, a World War I-era collection of contributions from writers and artists in the Allied countries and the United States.

Contemporary catalog records and library listings describe the committee as the editor of the volume, and later book-trade descriptions characterize the project as a fundraising publication connected with support for military families during the war. That gives the committee an unusual place in literary history: part civic organization, part publisher, and part wartime cultural effort.

Because this was a committee, not an individual author, there does not appear to be a single personal portrait to use as an author image. Their lasting legacy is the book itself, which preserves a wide-ranging snapshot of patriotic and artistic voices from the First World War period.