Propaganda: can a word decide a war?

Parameters, Autumn, 2007 by Dennis M. Murphy, James F. White

CPI's domestic efforts during the war met with a high-degree of success: draft registration--the first since the tumultuous call-up of the Civil War--occurred peacefully, bond drives were over-subscribed, and the American population was, generally, supportive of the war effort. CPI operations in foreign capitals enabled Wilson to relate his war ideals and aims to a world audience. Indeed, Wilson was taken aback by this effective dissemination of his peace aims and the world's reaction. He remarked to George Creel in December 1918, "I am wondering whether you have not unconsciously spun a net for me from which there is no escape." (12)

The Interwar Years: Propaganda Introspective

The post-war appraisal of CPI was darker. George Creel compiled his official report on the committee's activities in June 1919, and soon after authored a public account, How We Advertised America. But at home and overseas, the reality of the peace lagged behind Wilsonian aspirations. The Allies forged a treaty that many Americans and others believed unfair and incomplete. Americans also started to reflect on an ugly side to the war enthusiasm in the United States. Germans and their culture had been vilified. Sauerkraut had become liberty cabbage, hamburger was Salisbury steak, but more seriously, teaching the German language and subject matter in schools became viewed as disloyal, and authorities banned it in some states. There were incidents of physical attacks and even lynchings of suspected German sympathizers and war dissenters. The Attorney General enlisted volunteer "loyalty enforcers" who carried official-looking badges and were encouraged to report those of their neighbors who spoke out against the war. (13)

Brett Gary, in his book The Nervous Liberals, recounts the range of reaction to American propaganda and also the wartime restraints on free speech and political dissent. Felix Frankfurter, future appointee to the Supreme Court, co-authored the critical "Report Upon Illegal Practices of the U.S. Justice Department" in 1920. It charged (among other things) that the Creel Committee helped create what the report termed a "vigilante atmosphere" that was part of an environment in which civil liberties and the democratic process were undermined. (14) Propaganda as an instrument had become respected, or feared, as a highly effective force giving "the power to capture men's hearts and to bypass their rational processes." (15)

Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann, an early advocate of America's entry into the war, examined democratic processes and institutions in a new light. He had become concerned with the way that public opinion could be manipulated. His 1920 book Liberty and the News examined the role of public consent in the development of government policy. Earlier theories held freedom of the press was integral to functioning democracy, but Lippmann saw that a free press by itself would not serve this purpose if it could be manipulated through prejudice or by outside organizations.