Work in Denmark

(By Edward V. Riis, Commissioner.)

When I arrived in Denmark I found great need of propaganda work. There was nothing like an adequate conception of America's motives, the goal we sought to attain, what we were capable of doing under pressure of great necessity and what our participation and final triumph would mean to the small nations of Europe. When our work ceased, Denmark understood us as never before. Our educational work had been carried into every nOok and corner of the kingdom. The spirit of America had been photographed for the Danes by word of mouth, by written article, and by picture so that they saw us clearly and comprehended us. I found them looking through glasses darkly. We left them with a new vision of our people, our activities, and the lofty principles which governed us.

Our material was published in every publication of any importance in the land. We had our pictures displayed in towns which had never seen American war pictures. We won powerful newspapers to our side; we made people our lasting friends, for we taught them that our fight was for 'Denmark, as well as ourselves; that we had no ax to grind; that we sought neither gain of land nor gold ; that we strove to attain only world peace, universal justice, and the binder of universal brotherhood the world over.

Americans must not forget the delicacy of Denmark's position and the geographical considerations that made her absolutely helpless. When Denmark lost Schleswig and the Kiel Canal was built, there disappeared the last hope of successfully defending Copenliagen from an attack by the Germans. The taking of Schleswig and the building of the canal was really the first step for the big war. A fleet of air ships sailing from Warnemunde, the German Baltic port, could lay Copenhagen in ruins in five hours. German big guns could easily bombard Copenhagen from the Baltic. They could also sweep the peninsula of Jutland from one side to the other. Therein was the secret of the Danish fear.

Allied press representatives were informed more than once, before I came, that the papers could not afford to lean too much to one side or the other in publishing propaganda. Our task required delicate handling, and I was fortunate in securing the services of Mr. Bente, a trained journalist, who knew the likes and dislikes, the habits and the preferences of the Danish newspapers as very few know them.

From the very first we adopted the principle of laying all our cards on the table. I was open in telling those whom I wished to have help me just what I had come to Denmark for. I am convinced that had any other course been adopted we would have failed.

From a small beginning in the Hotel Phoenix, where I started with first two and then three and four emplo^^ees, the work extended until I had seven persons on my staff, three translators, a stenographer, a man to read the newspapers daily, my assistant director, and my bookkeeper and confidential man. My translators were picked with the greatest of care, and I eliminated those whom I found could not fill the bill, until we had a staff who could translate perfectly and, moreover, could write good journalistic Danish, a matter of the highest importance. So far as the publication of material is concerned the following figures will show you how our work grew :

In September we sent over 217 clippings of our own material; in October the number of our clippings had increased to 224 ; in November we sent over 591 ; in December, a month with a Aveek of holidays and when in addition I had four of my staff in bed with influenza, 420; in January no less than 606.

One article in particular — President Wilson's statement that justice would be done in the matter of Schleswig — was published in .more than 100 newspapers, including 3 newspapers in territory held by the Germans, such as the Flensborg Avis. So far as I know no other allied power had succeeded in getting propaganda material published in newspapers in territory held by the Germans.

Furthermore, when I left we were beginning to get our material into the newspapers of Germany. We had an article on the German school system — a criticism of the German school system — published in the Hamburger Ekko. We had letters from German newspapers, such as the Plamburger Fremdenblatt, asking us for material. The article published in the Ekko was written by Dr. Maximilian Grossman, of the committee, and was attributed to us. Letters from Germany appealing for our material were beginning to come in just as I left.

We did not feed the Danes cut-and-dried propaganda. We carefully selected those articles which we knew the Danish publications would be eager for. In this I had the invaluable aid of Mr. Herman Bente, my assistant director, who knew the likes and dislikes of the Danish press all through the land. We did not put out onr stnlf as propaganda. We Jet the Danish editors know that we were running a straight news bureau — that we had news of interest about America and what was going on behind the scenes there. We did not urge it on them. They coukl take it or leave it, as they chose. Thej took it and called for more. At first we went to them. Tlien they came to us. We put the breath of life in dry mateiial. We put an American journalistic punch in it. We aimed to tell the story of the pictures in short, crisp sentences Ho that they would hit the reader between the ej^es. If the Danes were told, for example, that we were producing so many thousands of tons of ammunition, they could not grasp the picture. But if they were made to understand that this ammunition, if piled, would make a mountain as high as one of the highest buildings in the land, they got the picture.

When we were sending over 300,000 troops a month I figured out how many men that would mean departing from our shores every minute and wrote a short story stating that every minute so many men were going out from the States to serve under the flag. There was need of this. The Germans had said that we were not able to send an army. They "said that such troops as we had Avere ill-equipped. We were able to convince the Danes to the contrary,

I wrote many articles. When the great American offensive at St. Mihiel began we received, just in time, a picture of Pershing, but no written matter with it. The people of Denmark were unable to visualize Pershing. What manner of man was he ? What was his previous military experience ? Wliat had he done that he had earned the right to lead the American Armies? I had brought along with me some material, and I went out and scoured the entire city until I found some more. Then I sat down and wrote a column story which appeared, along with the picture, on the first page of the second largest newspaper in Denmark, Berlingske Tidende, the time of the publication fitting in with the beginning of the offensive.

When I found, on first coming, that nobody knew just what was going on behind the scenes at home I sat down and wrote an article telling what I had seen of the strength and power of our war preparations, letting them know that we did not want this war, but when we found that it had to be fought we became one great workshop in which all the people were working unitedly to end the war as quickly and as effectively as possible. AVhen I found that the Danes had only an imperfect idea of President Wilson, hoAV he rose to fame, what he meant in the life of the people, how he was trying to interpret tlie spirit of his country, just what he stood for and what he strove to attain, I wrote a three-column story, " Wilson, Hope of the World," in which I endeavored properly to interpret him and his principles. Along with it I tried to mirror the spirit of my people. That story was favorably commented on all over Denmark. It was not only printed in one of the largest of the Copenhagen newspapers, Berlingske Tidende, but ran the rounds of the provincial press. It was published in four provincial papers, four of the leading papers, and among others in the leading newspaper of Kibe, 3 miles from the German border. That was just where I wanted to get it.

The Danes were interested in everything American. I found that it was good propaganda work to write upon American subjects not directly connected with the war. I wrote an article about American journalism; I wrote an article about Col. Eoosevelt and the manner of man he was, after we had received news of his death; I wrote an article about the development of our shipping under the guidmg genius of Charles M. Schwab, and that article was pubhshed Lstead of a leader on the editorial page of another Copenhagen newspaper; I likewise wrote a descriptive story telling how the news of the signing of the armistice was received - in New York. These articles proved popular and the Copenhagen editors frequently asked me to write other articles.

I made several speeches in Copenhagen and in the Provinces after thev had asked me to do so. I delivered one at a large concentration camp for soldiers at Sandhohn. I ^vas asked to, and did, deliver one in the auditorium of the chief Copenhagen newspaper, Politiken, just before I left.

I made myself a personal friend of the editors. I called on some of them almost daily. I went to the Provinces and to the editors there I explained what we were trying to do. These calls were followed by an encouraging result in the greater use of our material.

We, kept careful track of what the newspapers were saying, either to our detriment or to our credit. When they said anj^thing which was incorrect, and we knew it to be incorrect, we went after them. When one newspaper which had been printing erroneous reports about us wrote vicious subheads on a news article dealing with an address delivered by the President and referred to him as the "Trustland's President," I called them to account, and the second editor came to my office and apologized. He did more. A twocolumn article was written praising our work. The newspaper swung over. so that it took with eagerness articles sent out by us, attributing them to our committee. This newspaper published two columns of Justice Clark's important decision on the eight-hour law and credited it to our committee. The story went the rounds of the Social Democratic papers.

Every magazine of any prominence using pictures published ours. We had more pictures in the magazines than any of the other allied bureaus were able to show. iSometimes half a dozen such pictures would appear in an issue of a single magazine having a circulation of 200,000. Many hundreds of pictures were sent out by us through the Pressens Illustrations Bureau, which serves between 200 and 300 publications in Scandinavia, and this material, sent out in Copenhagen, was published in Norway as well.

Copenhagen was filled with our pictures. They were posted in places conveniently located. The Germans afterwards followed us up and put up. pictures where we did. We put them up on side streets where pictures had not been shown before and in outlying districts. We sent them to provincial towns, such as Aarhus, Esbjerg, Elbe, Kallundborg, Roskilde, and other places. We grouped them so that people could see the gradual development of small-arms manufacture, of the progress of the Browning machine gun, of the flying machine, and we put red-lettered captions and stories under them which conveyed a ready lesson to the man in the street. These pictures were viewed daily by thousands.

The same may be said of the cuts we received and of the display posters.

We gave pictures to the Biitisli Legation to be used in their ' illustrated booklets and to lecturers. We even paid for lantern slides for such men as Winding, one of the prominent journalists of the staft' of Politiken, who had been a correspondent at the front and who afterwards delivered lectures telling what American troops were doing in the war, what they were like, and the spirit which actuated them.

We furnished school teachers with printed material in the shape of articles or pamphlets,, likewise writers. W^e sent a volume of President ,Wilson's messages to a large publishing house which got them out in Danish.

We took up the Schleswig question at a time when scores of persons came to see me to ask that the United States help to adjust the Schleswig problem on a basis of justice to the Danes, and I sent home cables, articles, and pamphlets dealing exhaustively with the entire Schleswig question. I Avrote home about it, and even sent a letter to the President, pointing out that the people of the small neutral nation which had suffered so grievously looked to him in the wistful hope that he would right an ancient wrong and strike off the shackles of the Danes in Schleswig who for 50 long years had felt the tyranny and oppression of Prussian rule. I talked among others to Mr. Hansen-Norrem011e, the Danish representative from that district in the German Reichstag, who came to my office to see me, and I wrote and cabled home what- he told me about the Schleswig question.

I sent a daily cable informing the committee about conditions in Germany, Russia, and Denmark, as they came to my notice. T was able to cable home in early October that the Germans had suffered a severe blow to their morale, and sometime before the Kaiser's abdication I cabled that the people in Berlin were talking of the possibility, I also cabled how the German Army had been shot with Bolshevism by agents from Russia. _ .

When Mr. Edgar Sisson's Bolshevist disclosures first reached Denmark by cable I got the complete text and, that

. night, I called a meeting of my staff and instructed them to go get out the entire text on our duplicating machine first thing in the morning. I invited the chief censor to sit in on our talk. It was not necessary for us to get it out on the duplicating machine, for the newspapers were imjpressed with its extreme importance as news and the next day all the Danish newspapers gave it all the space that was possible. The Social-Demokraten, the strongest organ among the Socialists of Denmark, alone published eight columns of the revelations. The newspapers continued to publish the story for three days. Later we got rid of between 10,000 and 15,000 copies of the disclosures printed in pamphlet form, part in Danish and part in Russian. The Russians who were combating Bolshevism snapped them up eagerly.

We published three pamphlets in Denmark. One was by Booth Tarkington, dealing with our awakening ; another w as by Ernest Poole and described the spirit of the Army; a third was an appeal to the reason of the German people written by a Capt. Helwig, born in Germany, but an American serving as a captain in our Army.

The last-named pamphlet was published in German. It was distributed in the last months of the war. From one place alone we received reports that it had been given into the hands of about 300 Germans. Copies of that pamphlet were left at all hotels and restaurants frequented by Germans. We sent many into Germany.

The Germans had been unloading propaganda on Denmark for three years. The British and the French were on the ground long before we were. The Germans had a strong organization. It included a number of young authors who had been unsuccessful in having their works published. The Germans tempted them by telling them they would see their names in print and offered to get out, free, the books they wrote. In among these books they cleverly sandwiched others dealing with German propaganda. These books were issued from a large publishing house. Later the Germans added another and smaller publishing firm. They had a clientele of from 100,000 to 150,000. The Germans also tempted newspapers which were known to be in financial difficulties by offering them paying advertising contracts and a supply of printing paper at considerably less cost th^n they were able to get it from allied sources. This paper was to be delivered free at the plant. They also offered ink and printing machines.

The leader of the German propaganda was Louis vom Kohl, of an old Danish family and a clever author. He and his associates bought up a chain of eight Danish magazines, but none of the more influential ones fell into their clutches. The last they got hold of was a magazine circulating among seafaring men in which the propaganda was subtly concealed.

Denmark was tired of propaganda when I came and if we had attempted to put out material plainly tagged as such it would have gone into the wastebasket. I adopted a new line of endeavor. I went to the editors and told them frankly what we were aiming at". I hid nothing. I said we were conducting a news bureau. Before I did that I went to the chief censor, Mr. Marinus Yde (one of the fairest, ablest men I ever met), and was perfectly frank with him. I showed him our files and said he might come and look at our office at any time. We strove to, and we did, convince the people that we were there not so much to advertise our wares as to bring about a better relationship, a mutual understanding between our country and theirs as to the aims, objects, and purposes of each. Frankness on our part begot frankness on their part.

In pursuance of this I had a talk with the leading agricultural experts and sent home a careful and accurate report written by one of them detailing the exact situation in Denmark and what she could do to help the hungry if she obtained her requirements.

I suggested and helped to arrange the visit to our country of the 12 Scandinavian journalists. That visit did much to cement the friendly relations between ourselves, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. When they returned they wrote many admirable articles showing a ready understanding of our people and our spirit and correcting such impressions as that we were a dollar-chasing land engrossed merely in our own selfish considerations. Emil Marot, one of the Danes and a member of Parliament, gave, on his return, a series of 25 lectures in which he explained us to his people.

T haVe seen a change of feeling come over people who had f ot understood us before. I have seen a new understanding of [^resident Wilson come into the minds of the Danes so that tliey placed him on a plane beside their greatest national heroes. I have known them to cut out the photographs of him sent out by us, which appeared in Danish papers, and place them in a sort of family shrine. Yes, I have known the rough farmers to do that on the lonely heath lands. I know that the people of the small neutral nations of Europe, soulsick with war, yearning for an enduring peace, have looked to him in the hour of trial as the great deliverer, the Moses in a wilderness of trouble. They looked to him to lead them to the light, to lasting peace, to bind the nations in the great brotherhood of which so many millions dream. They believed in him and in us when I left.

Edward V. E,iis, G ommissioneT for Denmark.

Summaries of Typical Inteeviews Given by Mr. Kiis

Hovedstaden, August 18 ; headline, " Denmark and America " : The name of Jacob Riis is very popular in Denmark. Who has not enjoyed reading the story of the boy from Kibe, who lived to be called New York's most useful citizen by an American President? The son of this man is sure to be welcome in Denmark.

In intervievF Riis says that it is wrong that the United States should not have the friendliest feelings for Denmark. On the contrary, America vi^ishes to strengthen the tie of friendship and considers it important that Danes should understand why America went to war. The United States not in war to crush German nation, but German militarism, so the world will be more fit for our children to live in. America thanks Denmark and Scandinavia for what their sons have done in the war. Two hundred thousand are in the Army and Navy and the Scandinavians have contributed liberally to war loans, the Red Cross, etc. Proud that two Scandinavians are among the 22 first American soldiers to receive the highest military American war decoration. Danish league formed in the United States to promote better understanding of war. Asked if Roosevelt is his friend, like he was his father's friend, Riis answers yes and tells of the ex- I'resident's sons in war. Says the United States now has one and quarter million soldiers in France and nest summer will have four million men over there, and Gen. March promises that with these troops he will be able to go through the German lines at any time. . We don't believe, we know that we shall win. The will to victory is strong and still growing in America. We feel this is the most unselfish war the United States ever participated in ; more unselfish even than the war of 1776, birt' we are fighting for the same principlesv-life, happiness, and liberty, and for justice and humanity. We do not need to hide our purposes. There is nothing to hide. President AVilson is to-day placed alongside of Washington and Lincoln by the A-merican people, who have confidence in his leadership and will follow him everywhere, because his diplomatic wisdom shows he is the greatest man of his time.

Questioned if America not satisfied with Denmark's neutral attitude, Rils says nobody Mdshes to drag Denmark into the war, but wants it to be neutral. He concludes with words of appreciation because his father's name is honored in Denmark and thanks for the welcome he himself has received.

Dageus Nyheder, August 16 ; headline. "America and the World War — United States and Denmark — Jacob A.' Riis's Son Tells Dagens Nyheder About Holy War '" :

After introductory remarks about Jacob A. Riis. Edward R-iis says in lntervie^^■ it was impression in the United States that you in Denmark needed better information from America and about the Americans in war. To this end I have been sent here by the Comrnittee on Public Information. There is nothing secret or underhanded in my mission. You can read my instructions hei'e. I am no spy, but a man whose purpose is to get Danes and Americans to understand each other better. There is nothing but friendly feelings for Denmark in America, and there ha,s been no change in this during the war. They think here that vve have been unduly strict in our embargo policy, but you must understand that we are in a struggle which for us means all and it can not be helped that also the small nations feel tliat. We did not go to war because we wanted war. When President Wilson was reelected the Nation was not for war, but the feeling changed because of Germany's aggressive methods on the high seas and in regard to our munition plants and factories in the United States. W^e saw that we could not keep our self-respect and our liberty, and not the w^orld's respect either, if we did not go to war; not to crush Germany or to obtain material advantages, but to secure for the world's peoples liberty and peace for the future. It is German autocracy, not the German people, we are fighting, and we will not stop until the war is M^on. There are now a million and a half American soldiers in France. Next Christmas there will be two millions. In a year, four or five millions and, if necessary, we will send ten or fifteen millions over there. Strangers think it remarkable that ^^■e, of our people, composed of so many elemeJits, have been able to create such a unity. It surprised even ourselves. It was a miracle. I have seen regiments after regiments of men of cTift'erent nationalities, all united in one and the same will, all inspired by the same idea, the fight for freedom, for the people's liberty, for democracy. It has become a religion for Americans. The war is for them a holy war. The struggle is between the old feudalism, autocratic rule, and the people's right to self-determination. All American preparations are for five years' war, but I believe the war will be over long before that.