Work in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia

(By O. N. Geiffis, Commissioner.)

In this final report of the activities of the Lima office of the United States Committee on Public Information, covering the territory of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, it is necessary to note that the territory to be covered was widely scattered; that journalism in these countries is still extremely provincial, and that communication and transport are slow and uncertain.

This handicap was offset somewhat by the fact that the writer of this report, who was placed in charge of the Lima office, had been a resident in Lima for the previous five or six years and for that period of time had been handling a publicity organization, in the form of an Anglo- American newspaper. The West Coast Leader. It was possible to place the services of the Leader organization — its agents, correspondents, and friends— entirely at the disposition of the committee and obtain for the committee's publicity material a comprehensive circulation in territory which would otherwise have been difficult and expensive to cover. Thus in addition to telegraph and mail service reaching the important centers, such as Lima and Arequipa in Peru, La Paz, and Oruro in Bolivia, and Guayaquil and Quito in Ecuador, the pamphlet and pictorial publications were sent broadcast through the more remote provinces of the three republics — to the isolated mining camps, the scattered estates — to points as widely separated and as difficult to reach as Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Trinidad in Bolivia, Moyabamba and the Chanchamayo Valley in Peru, Esmeraldas and Cuenca in Ecuador.

It is not my desire to in any way over-estimate the importance of the results obtained by the work conducted in this territory. Accurate analysis of these results is, of course, impossible. Yet it can not be denied that, as a result of the few months intensive work undertaken by the committee in this field, the mass of people in all sections of the country have acquired a far more graphic and comprehensive idea of the power and position of the United States, as well as the policies and ideals of the American people, than they ever had before. These conceptions could not possibly have been obtained through ordinary channels, and it is safe to say that the Peruvians and their neighbors have a much, clearer idea of the war efforts and achievements of the States than they have of the efforts and achievements of any of our European allies, though the latter were engaged in the war for a much longer period. This clearer conception is due almost wholly to Compub activities, for other agencies of intercommunication made no radical departure in their established policies to meet the radically altered conditions.

"What I regard as concrete evidence of some of the statements made in the above paragraph is supplied by the magnificient response of Lima, a city of less than 200,000 inhabitants, to the fourth Liberty loan, with a total of $700,000. Lima is far from being a wealthy city, and this subscription was $400,000 more than the maximum set by the committee in charge of the sale of bonds. But the investing public here had become thoroughly convinced of the boundless resources and impregnable economic strength of the States. They could not evade absorbing that impression. The committee photographs setting forth American industrial resources were constantly surrounded by interesting crowds, while the morning and afternoon papers invariably carried their columns of supplementary data. As a first-hand observer of Latin American opinion during the past few years I would say that the old conception of the United States held in 1913, an admixture of Mexican and Colombian suspicions and general distrust, has given entirely away in 1919 to a wholly new conception and realization of the full magnitude of American power and policy.

Wire akd Wireless Distribution of Compub News.

The most important and perhaps the most influential feature of the Compub service from the point of view of this particular field was the daily cable service. Owing to arrangements effected by cable, railway telegraph, and wireless communication, two trunk systems were thrown out from the central office in Lima, covering a wide stretch of territory at a very low cost.

The first system was south from Lima, wireless messages being filed at the San Christobal (Lima) radiographic station, which were picked up by the Cachendo wireless station, located near Arequipa on the Southern Railway of Peru. Through arrangement with Mr. L. S. Blaisdell, manager of the Southern, an experienced telegraph operator received the messages from the State wireless service and sent them out over the railway telegraph line to Mollendo, Cuzco, Arequipa, Puno, and La Paz, and intermediate points. At all of these points the messages were given full publicity. Arrangements were being made for a further extension of this southern trunk line by sending out the messages from La Paz over all of the Bolivian railway telegraph lines, but owing to the signing of the armistice shortly after this office was opened and the falling off of cable service no regular service was ever established on the Bolivian railways, though many of the more important messages were given publicity throughout Bolivia in this manner.

The second line was north from Lima, by Central & South American Cable Co., to Payta, Peru, and Guayaquil, Ecuador. At the latter point the messages were filed free of charge on the Guayaquil & Quito Eailway telegraph line to- Quito, Ecuador, and intermediate points.

The subagents cooperating with this office on the southern line wire service were Mr. L. S. Blaisdell, manager of the Southern Railway, at Arequipa, and Mr. Victor Tyree, of Denniston & Co., at La Paz.

Those cooperating with this office on the northern wire service were Mr. C. W. Copelancl, of the American consulate, Guayaquil, and Prof. E. S. Brown, of the Allied committee at Quito. Expenditure in connection with this service is duly set forth in the accounts of the Lima office, which have been submitted.

By means of the foregoing service, the daily cables of the committee were distributed and published in all of the more important daily newspapers of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

As noted in the report of November 25th,, the following papers received the direct telegraph service.

In Peru. Lima : El Comercio, La Prensa, La Cronica, La Ley, El Tiempo.

* Piura : El Deber.

* Cajamarca : El Heraldo, El Ferrocarril.

* Chiclayo : El Progreso, El Bien Agricola.

* FerreSafe : Le Epoca. * Trujillo : El Deber, La Libertad. * Huancayo : La Voz. * Canete : La Tarde. * Chincha Alta : La Union.

* lea : El Heraldo, El Tiempo. Mollendo : La Patria, El Portefio. Arequipa: El Heraldo.

Puno: El Siglo.

Note. — Papers indicated thus (♦) received their service from a Lima correspondent who was given copies of the Compub cables. They paid their own telegraph tolls.

In Ecuador.

Guayaquil: El Guante, El Tiempo, El Indipendiente, El Diario Ilustrado.

Quito: El Comercio, La Nacion, El Dia. Riobamba : Los Andes. Bahia: El Globe.

In Bolivia.

La Paz : El Diario, El Tiempo.

Both in Ecuador and Bolivia the telegraphic news reached more papers than those listed above, but definite lists have never been received from the agents. The armistice in November and the closure of the Compub offices in January, together with the practical abandonment of daily cable service in December, tended to lessen the enthusiasm of our outside agents, whose services were largely voluntary, Messrs. Tyree, Copeland, and Brown merely being paid a small monthly sum to cover incidental expenses. As I advised in my previous report, organization of Compub work in Ecuador and Bolivia to the same degree it was organized in Peru would have necessitated a personal visit to both these countries.

In addition to the newspapers, there were many small communities, particularly mining camps, along the line of the Central Railway of Peru, where no newspapers existed, but where this telegraphic news was received and placed on bulletin boards. The same condition applied to the Southern Railway system in southern Peru and the Guayaquil & Quito Railway in Ecuador, over which Compub telegrams were transmitted.

The handling of these north and south wire reports took up no small portion of the time of myself and my assistant, Mr. E. A. Le Roux. This work, together with the full service of every description given to the Lima newspapers, prevented us from taking up as comprehensively as could be desired the numerous suggestions and queries which came in constantly from the various sections of the committee at Washington and New York.

Mail News

All of the newspapers above listed received the mail news service regularly. The papers of La Paz, Lima, Quito, and Guayaquil were supplied with the full service, the smaller provincial papers receiving generally alternate sets of mail matter. All of the mail matter was distributed direct from the Lima office for central and northern Peru, and elsewhere by Messrs. Blaisdell from Arequij^a, Tyree from La Paz, Copeland from Guayaquil, and Brown from Quito.

Pamphlet Distribution

As stated in the previous report of the pamphlets received by this office for distribution some 40 per cent were retained in Peru, 30 per cent shipped to Ecuador, and 30 per cent shipped to Bolivia. Of the amount retained in Peru practically all were sent into the smaller towns and provinces. This was owing to the fact that in the metropolitan centers the daily press and other abundant reading material nullified' to a considerable degree the propaganda value of the pamphlet; whereas in the provinces reading matter is exceedingly scarce and difficult to secure and even patent-medicine almanacs are read religiously through. My experience has been that even the most attractive pamphlets, though they may be carefully conserved by their recipients, are rarely if ever read through in the metropolitan centers. Vast sums of money were spent by British propaganda on costly lithographed pamphlets, but it is now generally admitted that this money was inadvisably spent and that more effective results could have been secured by other means. Were it not for the provincial outlet, I personally would have advised the suspension of pamphlet distribution. It might have reached the mark in a few individual cases, but in Lima widespread pamphlet distribution would have done more harm than good. For four years pamphlets, British, French, Belgian, and German, had been raining from the heavens, the public were surfeited with them, and pamphlets were actually creating prejudice against their distributors.

Photograppiic Service

This was, beyond question, one of the most effective divisions of Compub activities. The appeal of the picture service was instantaneous, not so much to the press, as to the general public. It has been my experience that average newspaper illustrations do not hold a reader's attention very long, while high quality engravings or preferably original photographs catch and hold the eye of people in every walk of society. Certainly the 12 bulletin boards which we placed throughout Lima, each carrying 40 to 50 photographs, were never lacking an audience. This system of photographic distribution was highly satisfactory in its results. After rotating on the 12 Lima boards, sets of photographs were sent up the line of the Central Eailway to be shown at the various stations and camps, and were also sent out into the provinces and were kept track of until lost or worn out. In this manner each photograph passed before several thousand pairs of eyes, while out of the abundant supply the newspapers were provided with all they could use. The wastage in photographic publicity material was therefore practically nil. The poster reproduction of photographs with Spanish captions were also exceedingly popular and permitted us to reach certain provincial districts where the use of photographs would have been prohibitive from the viewpoint of cost. All of the photographic enlargements were suitably framed and after being exhibited for several weeks in shop windows were distributed among various leading clubs and other institutions.

This report is in many respects merely a revision of my report of November 25, but as the offices were in operation for only two months after that report was made the limited additional experience has not tended to alter materially the outlook I then had. The keynote of this office has been " efficient distribution," and more attention has been devoted to the business of keeping the material moving to the ultimate consumer— the press and the public — ^than to any other factor in the situation. There was very little to criticise in the material sent out from the States — nothing, in fact, that I can recall at the present time.