While the colours of hand-tinted postcards experienced little change through the 1910s, the First World War certainly had an impact on the visuals of romance postcards. The pressure of war added an urgency to love. More couples were separated, with less certainty about their future. Postcards were sent back and forth between soldiers and their sweethearts (you can see a great set here, with a happy ending). In this context, the depiction of couples shifted. The chaste gazes began to give way to touching and kissing. While 'dirty' postcards always co-existed with this more romantic, hand-tinted meant-for-sending type, the lines began to blur more and more. It is not uncommon to see postcards of this type depicting women in lingerie (though of course, lingerie at this time was much less revealing than it would become) or indeed, couples lying in bed together (unfortunately this post includes no examples--still on my 'to acquire' list! However, examples can be see here, here, here, and here).
The kind of postcard pose we see in the pre-WWI postcards, with the gentleman changed to a soldier (these did remain common):
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(I'm not sure why the address and message side are reversed on this... quite odd).
Another fairly chaste pose... with the prominent addition of a bed in the background.
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1917.
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The kind of passionate embrace rarely seen before WWI:
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1917.
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A woman flat-out sitting in a man's lap:
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1917.
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The kiss, staple of the 1920s cards but almost never seen pre-WWI:
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August 1918.
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