April 23

On April 20 I showed the Sulfurphosphate deck, printed by Brepols from Turnhout, Belgium, and mentioned that when there's a French text in a Belgian deck then chances are good that there will be a second version in Flemish too and vice versa. I posted it in the Pre-1950 Playing Cards group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2252213615000011/).
Today's deck in the lockdown series is another example of that. We already had the French version for a long time, but somehow the Flemish version is more difficult to find, but we could add it a few years ago. The deck was printed by Leonard Biermans from Turnhout and published in 1919 as "Jeu des Alliés".
Kings and Queens represent the Allied Powers, the Jacks show the leaders from the Central Powers: JS - German Emperor William II, JH - Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand, JC - Austro-Hungarian emperor Francis Joseph, JD - Ottoman Mnister of War Ismail Enver Pasha (with the aid of Laherte Guerra).
Luc Biebouw reminded me of the advertising edition for Vincke-Daels, a liquor maker from Roeselare, Belgium. I've added a scan from such a deck, that I had sold a couple of years ago, when this better copy came along.
 
PS
In 2006 I published an exposition on my DXPO site called "The War on cards", where I showed the French version among many other decks. Now, 14 years later, I found that in the meantime we had gathered a good number of other "war decks". Enough to justify a complete make-over of that xpo. I will start work on that next month.