Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information by George Creel, Chairman, Committee on Public Information Published: 1920 Edition: Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information, 1917: 1918: 1919. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920 (Library of Congress copy, Internet Archive item completereportof00unit) Text source: Internet Archive, item completereportof00unit (Library of Congress) (https://archive.org/details/completereportof00unit) Text basis: Machine-read (OCR) text of a library scan, not proofread. Rights: A work of the United States government, printed by the Government Printing Office in 1920, so not protected by copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. 105) and in the public domain by age as well. The Library of Congress states that it is unaware of any copyright restrictions on the item. From the FRAME library (https://propagandaarchive.org/library/). The wording is the source's own; see the work's page for the mechanical changes made. ============================================================ Letter of Transmittal and General Survey ---------------------------------------- New York, June i, 1919. To the President : I have the honor to submit herewith a full report of the activities of the Committee on Public Information from the time of its establishment to the period of its conclusion. Created under your Executive order of April 14, 1917, in the very first hours of the war, and forced into instant operation by imperative necessities, the committee had to start with a purpose only, rather than any predetermined program, and grew under pressure instead of the orderly sequence provided by deliberated plan. This primary purpose was to drive home the absolute justice of America's cause, the absolute selflessness of America's aims. Realizing public opinion as a vital part of the national defense, a mighty force in the national attadi, our task was to devise machinery with which to make the fight for loyalty and unity at home, and for the friendship and understanding of the neutral nations of the world. At no point were our functions negative. We dealt in the positive, and our emphasis was ever on expression, not suppression. We fought indifference and disaffection in the United States and we fought falsehood abroad. We strove for the maintenance of our own morale by every process of stimulation ; we sought the verdict of mankind by truth telling. We did not call it " propaganda," for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with lies and corruptions. Our work was educational and informative only, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that only fair presentation of its facts was needed. Under the insistence of this necessity, the committee grew to be a world organization. Not only did it reach deep into every commmiity in the United States, but it carried the aims and objects of America to every land. There was no part of the great war machinery that we did not touch, no medium of appeal that we did not employ. The printed word, the spoken word, the motion picture, the poster, the signboard^all these were used in our campaign to make our own people and all other peoples understand the causes that compelled America to take arms in defense of its liberties and free institutions. Besides the daily war news, issued officially to the whole press of the country, the committote supplied the specialized press with feature articles and selected services. We had deep appreciation that it was not the war of an administration, but the war of 110,000,000 people, and even to the point of military indiscretion we opened up the activities of the Government to the inspection of the citizenship. ' Of 6,000 releases, 'dBalifig'with the most vital importances, only three were questioned as to accuracy, and inquiry upheld two of these. In the Four Minute Men alone the committee commanded the volunteer services of 76,000 speakers, operating in 5,200 communities, and making a total of 755,190 speeches. Through the speaking division it toured great groups, like the Blue Devils, Pershing's Veterans, and the Belgians, arranged mass meetings, conducted 45 war conferences, sent famous speakers from coast to coast, and coordinated the speaking activities of the entire Nation. Through a pamphlet division it prepared and published the war literature that was issued in pamphlet form. It commanded the services of any writer that it chose to call, and at its back were over 3,000 of the leading historians of the country, every man in the service. These pamphlets, covering every phase of America's ideals, purposes, and aims, were printed in many languages. Seventy-five millions reached the people of America, and other millions went to every corner of the world, carrying our defense and our attack. Experts planned the most effective circulation schemes, and experts directed the distribution, in order that every printed bullet might reach its mark. The committee mobilized the advertising forces of the country — press, periodical, car, and outdoor — for the patriotic campaign that gave millions of dollars' worth of free space to the national service. It mobilized the artists of America, on a volunteer basis, for the production of posters, window cards, and similar material of pictorial publicity for the use of various Government departments and patriotic societies. A total of 1,438 drawings were used. It issued an official daily newspaper, serving every department of Government, with a circulation of 100,000 copies a day. For official use only its value was such that private citizens ignored the supposedly prohibitive subscription price^ subscribing to the amount of $77,622.58. With the aid of a volunteer staff of several hundred translators the committee kept in direct touch with the foreign-language press, supplying selected articles designed to combat ignorance and disaffection. It organized and directed 23 societies and leagues designed to appeal to certain classes and particular foreign-language groups, each bod}^ carrying a specific message of unity and enthusiasm to its section of America's adopted peoples. It acted as a bureau of information for all persons who sought direction in volunteer war work, in acquiring knowledge of any administrative activities, or in approaching business dealings with the Government. In the 10 months of its existence it gave answers to 86,000 requests for specific information. Xhe committee supervised the voluntary censorship of the newspaper and periodical press. It established rules and regulations for the cable censorship with respect to press dispatches. It planned war exhibits for the State fairs of the United States, also the great series of interallied war expositions that brought home to our millions the exact nature of the struggle that was being waged in France. In Chicago alone 2,000,000 people attended in two weeks, and in 19 cities the receipts aggregated $1,432,261.3(5. It gathered together the leading novelists, essayists, and publicists of the land, and these men and women, without payment, worked faithfully in the production of brilliant, comprehensive articles that went to the press as syndicate features. One division paid particular attention to the rural press and the plate matter service. Others looked after the specialized needs of the labor press, the religious press, and the periodical press. The Division of Women's War Work prepared and issued the information of peculiar interest to the women of the United States, also aiding in the task of organizing and directing. Through the medium of the motion picture America's war progress, as well as the meanings and purposes of democracy, were carried to every community in the United States and to every corner of the world. Pershing's Crusaders, America's Answer, and Under Four Flags were types of feature films by which we drove home America's resources and determinations, while other pictures, showing our social and industrial life, made our free institutions vivid to foreign peoples. From the domestic showings alone, under a fair plan of distribution, the sum of $878,215 was gained, which went to support the cost of the campaigns in foreign countries that were necessarily free. Another division prepared and distributed still photographs and stereopticon slides to the press and public, over 200,000 of the latter being issued at cost. This division also conceived the idea of the " permit system " that opened up our military and naval activities to civilian camera men, and operated it successfully. It handled also the voluntary censorship of still and motion pictures in order that there might be no disclosure of information valuable to the enemy, the number averaging 700 a day. Another division, in New York, guarded the reputation of America in foreign countries by stopping the export of film giving false or misleading impressions of American life. By an arrangement with the War Trade Board, no export license was granted without the approval of the committee, and this leverage, aided by the patriotism of the industry, enabled us to control the flow of film to foreign countries, changing it in such manner as to serve the national cause. Soon discovering that the fight for world opinion must be made on the ground, the committee opened offices in every capital of the world. To these offices went a cable and wireless service carrying the "spot" news of the day; a mail feature service; still j)hotographs and posters for window display ; feature films showing our military effort, our social and industrial progress; pamphlets for translation and distribution; speakers to augment the efforts of those secured in the country itself, etc. At the outset we found that America was dependent upon foreign press services for her intercourse with other countries; that the volume of information was small, and what was worse, concerned only with the violent and unusual in our national life. The wireless and cables were used to remedy this evil situation. In close cooperation with the Navy, a service went out from Tuckerton to the Eiffel ToAver for use in France, and then for relay to our offices in Berne, Eome, Madrid, and Lisbon. From Tuckerton the service flashed to England, and from England there was relay to Holland, the Scandinavian countries, and Russia. We went into Mexico by cable and land wires ; from Darien we sent a service in Spanish to Central and South American countries for distribution by our representatives; the Orient was served by leaps from New York to San Diego, to Cavite to Shanghai. From Shanghai the news went to Tokio and Pekin, and from Pekin on to Vladivostok for Siberia. Australia, India, Egypt, and the Balkans were also reached, and by balloons, mortars, and aeroplanes we carried the truth across the firing line into the Central Powers. For the first time in history the speeches of a national executive were given universal circulation,! and I am proud to tell you, sir, that your declarations had the force of armies. In many countries your speeches were printed by the committee's agents on native presses and circulated by the million. They were sent out by the million from America in a score of languages. They were printed on post cards and embodied in moving-picture films and interpreted by the committee's speakers. The acts of Congress, all of our official deeds and utterances, the laws that showed our devotion to justice, instances of our enthusiasm and unity — all were put into print in every language — Teheran and Tokio getting them as completely as Paris or Rome or London or Madrid. Before this flood of publicity the German misrepresentations were swept away in Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, Spain, the Far East, Mexico, Central and South America. From being the most misunderstood nation in the world, America became the most popular. This daily news service by wire and radio was supplemented by a mail service of special articles and illustrations that went into foreign newspapers and magazines and technical journals and periodicals of special appeal. We aimed to give in this way a true picture of the American democracy, not only in its war activities but also in its devotion to the interests of peace. There were, too, series of illustrated articles on our education, our trade and industry, our finance, our labor conditions, our religions, our work in medicine, our agriculture, our women's work, our Government, and our ideals. Reading rooms were opened in foreign countries and furnished with American books, periodicals, and newspapers. Schools and public libraries were similarly supplied. Photographs were sent for display on easels in shop windows abroad. Window hangers and news-display sheets went out in English, French, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch; and display sheets went to Russia, China, Japan, chosen parts of India, and the Orient, to be supplemented with printed reading matter by the committee's agents there. Every conceivable means was used to reach the foreign mind with America's message. And there was no bribery, no sneaking influence of any sort. We got into the foreign press by the simple expedient of making our output so newsy and so interesting that the editor could not resist it. ' The records show that as high as 90 per cent of our material was printed in foreign countries, despite the shortage of paper everywhere and the pressure of war news on newspaper space. Many of the foreign problems were far from simple. When our propaganda films began to go abroad it was found that the Germans had bought up practically all the moving-picture houses in some of the neutral countries. They were busy with German propaganda films. They would not take American war pictures on any terms. It looked like a complete blockade for the committee's films, but a way was found to submarine it. The heads of the American exporting companies met with the committee's officers and agreed that no American films should be exported unless a certain amount of American propaganda film was included in the order. The foreign movie houses could not live without Americanfilm. The war had reduced the output of the foreign film companies to a minimum. The German-owned movie houses had either to capitulate or starve to death. Some took one alternative, some the other, but practically all gave up the fight. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford led Pershing's Crusaders and America's Answer into the enemy's territory and smashed another Hindenburg line. The net effect of the whole foreign campaign of the committee has been to make a world of friends and well-wishers for the United States out of a world that was either inimical or contemptuous or indifferent. We were looked upon as a Nation of dollar-mad materialists. All the American news in foreign papers confirmed that view of us. It was news of strikes and lynchings, riots, murder cases, graft prosecutions, and all the public washing of the Nation's dirty linen. Our policies, America's unselfish aims in the war, the services by which these policies were explained and these aims supported, and the flood of news items and articles about our normal life and our commonplace activities — these have combined to give a picture of the United States to foreign eyes more truthful and more flattering. It is a picture that is of incalculable value in our future dealings with the world, political and commercial. It is a bit of press agenting that money could not buy, done out of patriotism by men and women whose services no money could have bought. Even as the Committee on Public Information claims success in its fight for public opinion in other countries, so does it advance its pride in the unity and enthusiasm that marked America's war effort. The foreign born, feared with respect to their ignorances and prejudices, were brought into closer touch with our national life than ever before, while absolute openness and honesty in the matter of official news, the eloquence of speakers, the story of motion pictures and posters, all combined to banish the ignorances and indifferences that threatened the full loyalty of the native born. I am happy to report that your original instructions have been disregarded in no single particular. The activities of the committee have been open and honest. There is not one that we are ashamed to reveal. No dollar has ever been sent on a furtive errand. Neither at home nor abroad has a cent been spent for any secret or corrupt purpose. It may be asserted also that the most searching investigation will discover no waste, but that study of the following tables will reveal a care and economy in expenditure that' is in itself a striking testimonial to the intelligence and devotion of the men and women associated in the work. 1. Funds received by the Committee on Public Information from appropriations : From the President, 1917-1919 $5, 600, 000. 00 From Congress, 1918-19 1, 250, 000. 00 Total 6, 850, 000. 00 2. Receipts by committee from earnings, 1917-1919 2, 825, 670. 23 is ' . 8. Total moneys received by committee : Appropriation 6, 850, 000. 00 Earnings and miscellaneous receipts 2, 825, 670. 23 Total 9, 675, 670. 28 4. Committee expenditure (domestic and foreign, 1917- 1919) : From national security and defense 4, 236, 494. 54 From congressional appropriation 1, 305, 715. 28 From earnings 1, 748, 062. 85 Total 7, 290, 272. 62 5. Returned to appropriations : National security and defense 1, 754, 322. 12 Congressional appropriations 573, 549. 60 Miscellaneous receipts 57, 525. 89 Total 2,885,397.61 6. What the committee cost the Government from Apr. 14, 1917, to June 1, 1919 4, 464, 602. 39 6. Statement of expenditures by divisions of the Committee on Public Information from the organization of each division to June 1, 1919. Domestic Work Appropriation . National security and defense expenses, 1918. Executive ^ State Pair Exliibitions. Civic and Educational Official War Savings Bulletin Division of SpeaVing Division of Four Minute Men Division of News Division of Syndicate Features Division of Films Bureau of Expositions Bureau of War Photographs Division of Foreign Language Newspapers Division of Business Management Division of Distribution and Production Division of Labor Publications. ....... Division of Women's War Work Service Bureau Division of Pictorial Publicity . ....... Division of Advertising Division of Industrial Relations Division of Americanization Survey. . . S48, 886. 92 1,635.49 457, 973. 32 264, 272. 26 52,158.11 72, 870. 46 37,873.75 15, 407. 96 217, 250. 03 23,616.57 9, 080. 57 109, 940. 55 126, 997. 79 51,754.44 19,956.42' 14,810.95 8,310.35 12, 612. 93 920. 75 2, 709. 00 Total 1 , 549, 038. 62 1, 305, 715. 23 1, 713, 567 Salaries and expenses. Committee on Public Information, 1919. 1, 110, 470, 18, 67, 38, 192, 982. 07 332. 76 609. 17 685. 63 279. 94 450. 07 438. 18 729. OS 26, 098. 63 Disbursements from earnings. 56, 751. 48 1,006,142.80 50, 643. 06 187, 610. 82 102, 673. 41 18,127.18 2,354.01 28,884.86 4, 860. 62 9, 899. 69 .23 30.35 Total. $73, 585. 80 3, 61 7. 5 J 568,306.08 734,881.43 70,8^3.74 140, 150. 40 76, 323. 82 15,846.14 1,066,730-59 1,006,142.80 100, 358. 26 9, 080. 57 297,551.37 229, 701. 55 69, 881. 62 22,310.43 43, 695. 81 13,170.97 22>512.62 920. ■98 2, 709. 00 4,568,321.54 Foreign Work Appropriation. Total. National Security and Defense Expenses, 1918. National Security and Defense Committee on Public Information, 1919. Disbursements from earnings. Foreign Section .1871,373.56 85,427.41 11,133.45 112, 162. 60 $852,587.95 206, 026. 08 141,004.82 181, 106. 52 60,000.00 30,923.76 9, 200. 07 35,194.06 4, 797. 49 32, 677. 07 10,094.87 3,819.80 1,629.17 3,603.49 3, 2.52. 18 2, 032. 53 81,723,961.51 291,453.49 152, 138. 27 293, 269. 12 60,000.00 30,923.76 21, 688. 48 39,887.99 4,851.49 44,849.77 10, 094. 87 3, 819. 80 1, 629. 17 3,603.49 3,252.18 2, 032. 53 Foreign Picture Service .134, 495. 16 Foreign Press— Mail Foreign Press— Cable Peace Conference Work with Foreign Born Hungarian Bureau 12,488.41 4,693.93 54.00 12, 172. 70 Scandinavian Bureau Polish Bureau German Bureau Italian Bureau Lithuanian Bureau Czecho-Slovak Jugo-Slav Russian Bureau Four Minute Men Total 1,109,506.06 1,577,949.86 2,721,951.08 34,495.16 7. Receipts from the activities of the Committee on Public Information. Division of Films $859, 994. 35 Bureau of Expositions ' 1,438,004.24 Bureau of War Pliotographs 70, 600. 10 Division of Distribution 19, 509. 22 Oflicial Bulletin 71, 323. 80 Foreign Section films 179, 439. 70 Miscellaneous refunds and receipts 186, 798. 82 2, 825, 670. 23 Work of the Domestic Section ---------------------------- Work of the Domestic Section of the Committee on Public Information. In no other belligerent nation was there any such degree of centralization as marked the duties of the Committee on Public Information. In England and France, for instance, five and more organizations were intrusted with the tasks that this committee discharged in the United States. And in one country, in one year, many of the warring nations spent more money than the total expenditure of the Committee on Public Information during the 18 months of its existence in its varied activities that reached to every community in America and to every corner of the civilized world. A brief outline of the work, division by division, is herewith appended: The Voluntary Censorship ------------------------ Despite general opinion, the Committee on Public Information was not an agency of censorship, nor was the press of the United States at any time under any compulsion of statute in the sense that the European press was curbed and supervised. Instead of being bound by prohibitive laws, backed by drastic penalties, the newspapers of the United States were put upon their honor, and made the partners of Government in guarding " military information of tangible benefit to the enemy." The Coromittee on Public Information had its sole connection with press censorship in the issuance of the following card, which will show in itself the baselessness of those rumors that charged control of " opinion " and " criticism." What the Government Asks of the Press The desires of the Government with respect to the concealment from the enemy of military policies, plans, and movements are set forth in the following specific requests. They go to the press of the United States directly from the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy and represent the thought and advice of their technical advisers. They do not apply to news dispatches censored by military authority with the expeditionary forces or in those cases where the Government itself, in the form of official statements, may find it necessary or expedient to make public information covered by these requests. For the protection of our military and naval forces and of merchant shipping it is requested that secrecy be observed in all matters of— 1. Advance information of the routes and schedules of troop movements. (See par. 5.) 2. Information tending to disclose the number of troops in the expeditionary forces abroad. 3. Information calculated to disclose the location of the permanent base or bases abroad. 4. Information that would disclose the location of American units or the eventual position of the American forces at the front. 5. Information tending to disclose an eventual or actual port of embarkation ; or information of the movement of military forces tovs^ard seaports or of the assembling of military forces at seaports from which inference might be drawn of any intention to embark them for service abroad ; and information of the assembling of transports or convoys ; and information of the embarkation itself. 6. Information of the arrival at any European port of American war vessels, transports, or any portion of any expeditionary force, combatant or noncombatant. 7. Information of the time of departure of merchant ships from American or European ports, or information of the ports from which they sailed, or information of their cargoes. 8. Information indicating the port of arrival of incoming ships from European ports or after their arrival indicating, or hinting at, the port at which the ship arrived. 9. Information as to convoys and as to the sighting of friendly or enemy ships, whether naval or merchant. 10. Information of the locality, number, or identity of vessels belonging to our own Navy or to the navies of any country at war A^il^h Germany. 11. Information of the coast or antiaircraft defenses of the United States. Any information of their very existence, as well as the number, nature, or position of their guns, is dangerous. 12. Information of the laying of mines or mine fields or of any Iiarbor defenses. 13. Information of the aircraft and appurtenances used at Government aviation schools for experimental tests under military authority, and information of contracts and production of air material, and information tending to disclose the numbers and organization of the air division, excepting when authorized by the Committee on Public Information. 14. Information of all Government devices and experiments in war material, excepting when authorized by the Committee on Public Information. 15. Information of secret notices issued to mariners or other confidential instructions issued by the Navy or the Department of Commerce relating to lights, lightships, buoys, or other guides to navigation. 16. Information as to the number^ size, character, or location of ships of the Navy ordered laid down at any port or shipyard, or in actual process of construction ; or information that they are launched or in commission. 17. Information of the train or boat schedules of traveling official missions in transit through the United States. 18. Information of the transportation of munitions or of war material. Photographs. — ^Photographs conveying the information specified above should not be published. These requests to the press without larger authority than the necessities of the war-making branches. Their enforcement is a matter for the press itself. To the overwhelming proportion of newspapers who have" given unselfish, patriotic adherence to the voluntary agreement, the Government extends its gratitude and high appreciation. Committee on Public Infobmation, - By Geokge Creel, Chairman. As will be seen, no law stood behind these requests, compliance resting entirely upon honor and patriotism. There were violations, as a matter of course, but as it was realized that the requests of Government were concerned with human lives and national hopes, as it was driven home that the passing satisfaction of a news item might endanger a transport or a troop train, the voluntary censorship grew in strength and certainty. Division of News ---------------- A first duty of the committee, as we saw it, was the coordination and control of the daily news of military operations given out by the war-making branches of Government. The work was soon turned over to the Division of News, which became the sole medium for the issuance of official war information, and acted not only for the Army and Navy, but for the White House, the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, the National War Labor Board, the Council of National Defense, the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, and the Alien Property Custodian. It had its sworn representatives in the war-making branches of the Government, trained newspaper men whose duty was to open up operations to the inspection of the people. The committee believed that public support was a matter of public understanding, and it became the duty of the division to take deadwood out of the channels of information, permitting a freer, more continuous flow. This was not the simplest thing in the world. On one hand was the press, impatient of reticence and suspicious of concealments, and on the other hand were generals and admirals reared in a school of iron silence. Both, however, grew in understanding. The press finally realized our honesty of purpose, and the military experts came to have an increasing faith in the power of absolute frankness. The Army and Navy, through this Division of News, pledged themselves to give to the people instant and honest announcement of all casualties, all accidents, all disasters. We did not have to conceal reverses because we did not have to fear for the courage of America. All the official news of government, with direct relation to the war, went to the people through the Division of News. The Pershing communiques, the weekly press interviews with Gen. March, Chief of Staff, and daily interviews with Secretary of War Baker were other regular news features issued in mimeographed form. Preparation of the daily casualty lists for the newspapers was one of the duties of the News Division. Originally these lists were issued for immediate release, but as the totals swelled to such a point that the taslv of carrying them on the telegraph wires became too great an arrangement was made at the request of the press associations by which the lists were printed and mailed to newspapers with a five-day release date. This system meant no delay in the notification of relatives, who received word by telegraph from The Adjutant General's Office several days in advance of publication in the newspapers. During the latter part of its existence the News Division took over the preparation of a nightly review of the news of the world for transmission by wireless to the vessels of the Navy in all waters, as well as to all transports in passage. The division also acted as a reference bureau in connection Avith the voluntary censorship, advising and interpreting the Government's requests. The News Division also issued a weekly digest of war news for country weeklies. Country dailies also asked to be put on this list, which grew to more than 12,000. At any intimation that this matter was not desired, the paper was removed from the mailing list and by this and other checking we were able to keep a more or less careful watch on the extent to which the service was used. It ran as high as 6,000 columns a week. Some 2,000 newspapers throughout the country were served by wire association. An extremely conservative estimate placed our average daily figure with these at one column per newspaper per day, or 12,000 columns per week, not including the mass of our stuff which was printed first-hand in Sunday newspapers and worked into mosaics for feature stories. Nor did this include the large number of newspaper and magazine stories for which we supplied data exclusively to a writer or correspondent who brought in the idea of the story he wanted, nor the vast amount of time spent in clearing the way for them to get first-hand such information as they required. Reckoned solely on the basis of mimeographed matter issued by the News Division, 20,000 columns per week was an extremely conservative estimate of the use made of the service by the press of America. A special and painstaking effort was made to present the facts without the slightest trace of color or bias, either in the selection of the facts to be made public or in the manner in which they were presented. Thus the News Division set forth in exactly the same colorless style the remarkable success of the Browning guns on the one hand and on the other the facts of bad health conditions in three or four of our large camps. Every precaution was exercised also to guard against misstatements. Manuscript of articles prepared by employees of the committee were invariably submitted for approval to the department chief from which the information emanated. In cases where a subordinate furnished the information one of the heads of the department also approved it. No possible check as to accuracy was omitted. The effectiveness of the system is proved by the fact that while over 6,000 releases were issued in the year and a half of operation, only three were ever questioned. As two of the attacks were without honest foundation, the record of the News Division stands as one mistake in 6,000 instances. No news organization in the world equals, or even approaches, this record of painstaking accuracy established by a war organization hastily assembled and driven at all times under tremendous pressure. Mr. J. W. McConaughy was director of the Division of News until sent to Central America, at which time Mr. Leigh Eeilly took up the work, carrying it forward with the same faith, devotion and brilliance. From first to last, the division never closed doors, remaining open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, a clearing house for Government news, a service bureau to the press. Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation --------------------------------------------- A second imperative duty of the Committee on Public Information was to put into convincing print America's reasons for entering the war, the meaning of America, the nature of our free institutions, and our war aims, together with a thorough analysis of the Prussian system, as well as an exposure of the enemy's misrepresentations, aggressions, and barbarities. The Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation was formed, and to its aid were called the best American investigators, writers, economists, historians, and political scientists, and in addition we enlisted the powerful cooperation of the National Historical Board. / Money could not have purchased the voluntary aid that was given freely, the various universities lending their best men, and individuals devoting weeks of their time to specific tasks without remuneration. In logical sequence, the following pamphlets were prepared, printed, and distributed: How the War Came to America 5, 428, 048 Swedish :_! 67,487 Polish 82, 658 German 292,610 Italian 129,860 Spanish 96, 816 Bohemian 121, 058 Portuguese 9, 375 National Service Handbook 454, 699 The Battle Line of Democracy 94, 848 President's Flag Day Address 6, 813, 340 Conquest and Kultur ^ 1, 203, 607 German War Practices 1, 592, 801 The War Cyclopedia 195,231 German Treatment of Conquered Territory 720, 848 War, Labor, and Peace 584, 027 Qerman Plots and Intrigues 127, 153 The War Message 2, 499, 903 Nation in Arms 1,666,231 Government of Germany 1, 798, 155 German 20, 500 Great War from Spectator to Participant 1, 581, 908 War of Self-Defense 721,944 American Loyalty 702, 598 German 564, 787 American Interest in Popular Government Abroad 596, 533 Home Beading Course for Citizen Soldiers 361, 000 First Session of War Congress 608,950 German War Code . 514, 452 American and Allied Ideals . 228,986, German Militarism 303, 600 German 103,300 War for Peace 302,370 Why America Fights Germany 725, 345 Study of the Great War 678, 929 Friendly Words to the Foreign Born : 570, 543 The Prussian System 571, 036 Labor and the War ■ 509,550 A War Message to the Farmer : 546, 911 Plain Issues of the War 112,492 •Ways to Serve the Nation 568, 907 What Really Matters 574, 502 The Kaiserite in America— 5, 550, 521 War Publications Bulletin : 13, 126, 006 Post Cards 1, 687, 408 Posters — Why Germany Wants Peace . 31, 000 Germany's Confession 324, 985 The German Whisper 487, 484 I National School Service : 4, 251, 570 Lieber and Schurz 26,360 America's War Aims and Peace Terms 719, 315 Total 61,626,852 Publication for Foreign Section. La Libertad Universal 102, 967 Las Intenciones del Alemania 95, 798 Lialtad a Estados Unidos 124, 229 The German Bolsheviki 187,375 La Guerra Intrepreation 125, 100 Las Reve'ationes del Principe Lichnowsky 46,850 La Guerra del Trabajo 48,611 Ein Aufruf Meiner Vaterland 60, 500 R. W. & B. No. 10 (Spanish) 49*750 Portuguese 15, ooo America's War Aims (Spanish) 80,600 Mexican ^ 17 400 Total 904, 180 PuUicatioiis for Friends of German Democracy (in German). My London Mission (Prince Lichnowsky) 661,300 Tlie Meaning of America 10, 421 The Democratic Rising of German people in '48 20, 320 On Loyalty, Liberty, and Democracy 19,070 Friends of German Democracy 61, 500 Democracy, the Heritage of All : 30, 000 The Root of the Evil 30,000 No Qualified Americanism 30 lOO German Militarism 1^ 500 Total _ 864, 211 Publications for Division of American Alliance for Labor and Democracy. Why Workingmen Support 313, 535 Who is Paying for This War? 313, 082 German Socialists and the War L 316, 005 To the Workers of Free America '. 323, 605 What Can Your Local Branch Do? 15,000 Labor's Red, White, and Blue Book 99, 355 \ Total 1,380,612 Miscellaneous. Posters — Capitol Building 26, 100 Posters — Independence Hall ; 26, 100 • Farmers' Bulletin 8, 000 Posters for War Cyclopedia 2, 050 Purpose and Scope ; 25, 000 For Freedom (Serbian National Defense) 5,000 War Savings Campaign Appeals 6, 000 Posters — America Gave you All 7, 500 Map — The Pan-German Plan 122, 000 Buttons, American-Hungarian Loyalty League 25, 489 Nevs^spaper, United States Department of Labor 80, 000 Streamers, Four-Minute Men 25, 000 Division of Films Bulletin 121, 119 Selective Service Registration Bulletin 765, 700 The Advertising Bulletin 112, 000 Register, Four-Minute Men 1, 606, 350 1210S3— 20 2 \ Circulars, Every Man Must Register 7, 163, 770 The Ameriean Navy 2, 100 Flying for America 2, 100 America at War 12,000 Guarantee of Permanent Peace 26, 162 Under Four Flags (posters) 22,000 Window Display Suggestions 5, 600 Will American Socialists Do This (Yiddish) 32,000 Why Workingmen Support the War (Yiddish) 33,000 No Compromise for America 15, 683 Ships, More Ships (poster) 15,000 Address of Secretary Lansing : Spanish 34, 000 Portuguese 15, 000 Total 10, 350, 553 Grand total 75,117,178 Such was the excellence of the pamphlets that many of the great metropolitan dailies printed them in their entirety as supplements. Nor does the total take account of the hundreds of thousands of copies of these pamphlets printed and distributed by private agencies and individuals at their own cost. The figures also show domestic circulation conclusively, although a great majority of the pamphlets were put into 14 foreign languages and given world-wide distribution. It is a matter of pride to the Conunittee on Public Information, as it should be to America, that the directors of English, French, and Italian propaganda were a unit in agreeing that our literature was remarkable above all others for its brilliant and concentrated effectiveness. At no time was any haphazard method of distribution employed, for while a fixed mailing list was maintained 75 per cent of the pamphlets were sent only upon request as a safeguard against waste. Among the organizations that assisted in effective distribution were the Department of Agriculture, the American Federation of Labor, the Department of State, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the Young Men's Christian Association, National War Council, the American Library Association, the State defense councils, Members of both Houses of Congress, and the political parties. Besides the usual newspaper notices given when pamphlets were released the last two, " Conquest and Itultur " and " German War Practices," as well as the " Flag Day Speech " (with annotations) , " How the War Came to America," and the " War Message " (with annotations), were published serially in many papers throughout the country. A second great task of the division was to reach the school^, the colleges, and universities with the message of America in ordeT that the youth of the land should be made to understand the nature of the conflict in every detail. Representatives of the division went before teachers' institutes, summer sessions, educational bodies, etc., and the great institutions of learning were joined in organized form for the study of the war by teachers, pupils, and whole communities. In direct response to a request from the Emergency Council of Education and the Education Commission of the National Education Association, the division commenced the publication of the JNational School Service, a 16-page paper issued twice a month to every one of the 520,000 teachers in the United States. I^ many respects this publication was one of the most remarkable features of the war, for it gave to the schools the needs and messages of Government in concise and usable form and to the Government a direct medium for reaching the 20,000,000 homes represented in the schools. The achievements of the division are due entirely to the devotions and abilities of Prof. Guy Stanton Ford, dean of the University of Minnesota, its director from first to last. ^ Division of Production and Distribution --------------------------------------- The production and distribution of the literature and other printed matter issued by the committee started in June, 1917, upon the publication of the "War Message and Facts Behind It." The printing was all done hy the Public Printer. The distribution was handled through the circulation department at No. 10 Jackson Place. From June to November 1, 4,399,650 copies of nine pamphlets were printed and distributed. The Public Printer could not keep up with the demand for pamphlets and the distribution facilities were not adequate at No. 10 Jackson Place, so the Division of Production and Distribution was organized, printing contracts were let in New York, and on January 1, 1918, the first floor of the Printers Craft Building was leased as a distribution center. A complete stock of all the committee's publications was kept to fill the constant demand from all parts of the country. The requests came from Congressmen and Senators, ministers and school-teachers, labor leaders and war organizations, etc., who wished to spread the truth about the war and America's position. The number of pamphlets sent on each request was limited and a definite understanding that the pamphlets be carefully distributed was made in each case. A mailing list of the leaders of thought in the country was compiled, to whom a copy of the pamphlets for general distribution were sent as soon as issued. Special campaigns were planned to carry a particular message over a wide distribution. Five million copies of the President's Flag Day Address were delivered by hand by the Boy Scouts of America to men and women who agreed to read the pamphlets and then pass them on. Five hundred and sixty thousand copies of the " Kaiserite in America " were sent to traveling men in the United States to combat German lies. Other special campaigns were made in schools, camps, and cantonments; Liberty loan workers and Four-Minute Men and local leaders were urged to advise of special conditions requiring attention in their districts, mailing lists of names to whom literature should be sent. Over 30,000,000 pamphlets were distributed by these methods to July 1, 1918. As the work of the division grew and the efficiency of the distribution facilities became apparent, the work of producing and distributing all the printed matter issued by the committee, except that done at the Government Printing Office, was centered in the division. In July the division undertook the campaign for the Department of Labor to promote registration of men for employment. It furnished all the channels of distribution for the literature of the campaign. On extremely short notice the committee undertook the advertising campaign for the Provost Marshal General prior to the second draft. The greater part of the campaign was based on the equipment of the Division of Production and Distribution. As the time was so short onl}^ the most direct methods could be employed. It distributed 100,000 copies of a four-page newspaper to all publication advertisers, advertising agents, and large manufacturers, containing advertising copy for reprinting. The Selective Service Register was issued as a four-page newspaper, serving a double purpose of a news sheet and poster. A small poster was distributed to every rural free-delivery box in the country. All churches received a copy of the Four Minute Men registration bulletin. A total of over 8,000,000 pieces of literature were sent out to specific addresses. The able director of this division was Mr. Henry Atwater. Four Minute Men --------------- The Four Minute Men will live in history as the most unique and one of the most effective agencies developed during the war for the stimulation of public opinion and the promotion of unity. The following letter, written by the President of the United States, may be cited as one of many deserved tributes from the heads of Government : The White House, Washington, Novem'ber 29, 1918. To all the Four Minute Men of the Committee on Public Information: I have read with real interest tlie repoi't of your activities, and I wish to express my sincere appreciation of tlie value to the Government of your effective and inspiring efforts. It is a remarkable record of patriotic accomplishment that an organization of 75,000 speakers should have carried on so extensive a work at a cost to the Government of little more than $100,000 for the 18-month period — less than $1 yearly on an individual basis. Each member of your organization, in receiving honorable discharge from the service, may justly feel a glow of proper pride in the part that he has played in holding fast the inner lines. May I say that I, personally, have always taken the deepest and most sympathetic interest in your work, and have noted, from time to time, the excellent results you have procured for the various departments of the Government. Now that this work has come to its conclusion and the name of the Four Minute Men (which I venture to hope will not be used henceforth by any similar organization) has become a part of the history of the great war, I would not willingly omit my heartfelt testimony to its great value to the country, and indeed to civilization as a whole, during our period of national trial and triumph. I shall always keep in memory the patriotic cooperation and assistance accorded me throughout this period and shall remain deeply and sincerely grateful to all who, like yourselves, have aided so nobly in the achievement of our aims. Cordinally and sincerely, yours, WooDROw Wilson. From first to last, fully 75,000 speakers were used. The number of speeches made were 755,190 and a fair estimate of audiences makes it certain that a total of 314,454,514 people were addressed. The idea of the Four Minute Men was originated by Mr. Donald Ryerson, of Chicago, who made the first Four Minute speech in a Chicago theater. Two days after the formation of the Committee on Public Information, Mr. Ryerson came to Mr. Creel, in Washington, who saw instantly the possibilities of the plan and straightway proceeded to put it upon a national basis under Government supervision. Under the original arrangement this statement of policy was issued : The , Four Minute Men is a. specialized publicity service giving four-minute talks by local volunteers, introduced by a standard introduction slide furnished by the Government, in the intermission at motion-picture theaters in accordance with a single standard plan throughout the country. At this time the following form of slide was adopted : 0 MINUTE MEN 0 (Copyright, 1917. Trade-mark.) (Insert name of speaker.) will speak four minutes on a subject of national importance. He speaks under the authority of The Committee on Public Information. Geokge Ceeel, Chairman, Washington, D. C. This same bulletin went on to define that all topics are of national importance connected with the war plans of the Government and are assigned by the department at Washington. Each campaign is of a stated length and is inaugurated by the delivery to the chairmen (1) of campaign instructiofis to themselves and (2) of a brief with a typical four-minute talk approved and released by the Committee on Public Information to be distributed to the speakers. The talks are prepared by the individual speaker on the basis of the policy* points of emphasis, lines of argument, and general information contained in this bulletin on each subject. The aim is to preserve individuality and forcefulness of expression and yet confine the message absolutely to the four-minute limit and within the policy limits of the bulletin in order that the character of the original message formulated in Washington may not be lost in transmission through the speaker. The speakers in every case received their authority and appointment from the chairmen of the local branches of the organization, who, in turn, were appointed through the State chairman or direct from headquarters at Washington. Each local chairman was registered at once in Washington. The original method of organizing a local branch was as follows: The written indorsement of three prominent citizens— bankers, professional, or business men — written on their own stationery in a prescribed official form was required for the nomination of a local chairman. These indorsements were forwarded to headquarters in Washington, together with the proper form of application for authority to form a local branch with the privilege of representing the Government, in which application the number of speakers available was stated, in order that material might be forwarded promptly in case the application was approved. Early in June, 1917, Mr. Ryerson, who had previously received a commission in the United States Navy and had secured two months' furlough in order to establish the organization, resigned from the Four Minute Men in order to enter tho training school at Annapolis. William McCormick Blair, of Chicago, became national director on June 16, and the work of organizing progressed swiftly. Mr. Blair appointed State chairmen immediately in a number of States, while the rest of the country was organized through the State councils of defense by writing directly to the governors of the various States, outlining the plan of organization and urging them to nominate State directors and to incorporate it in the work of their respective State councils. The National Advisory Council was formed about this time, Mr. William H. TngersoU, of New York, becoming the first member. Prof. S. H. Clark and Samuel Hopkins Adams subsequently became members of the council, which in the fall of 1918 was greatly increased in membership. The following is a complete list of bulletins issued from the original inception of the organization to the date of its official demobilization on December 24, 1918 : Four Minute Men Bulletins, 1911-18. Bulletin No. Period. 1,2... 3,4... 5,6... 8,9,10 7A.... Universal Service by Selective Draft . First Liberty Loan Red Cross Organization Food Conservation Why We Are Fighting The Nation in Arms The Importance of Speed What Our Enemy Really Is Unmasking German Propaganda Onward to Victory Second Liberty Loan Food Pledge MaLutaining Morals and Morale Carrying the Message War Savings Stamps The Shipbuilder Eyes for the Navy , The Danger to Democracy Lincoln's Gettysburg Address The Income Tax Farm and Garden President WUson's Letter to Theaters Third Liberty Loan Organization Second Red Cross Campaign Danger to America Second War Savings Campaign The Meaning of America Mobilizing America's Man Power. . . . Where Did You Get Your Facts? .... Certificates to Theater Members Register Four Minute Singing Fourth Liberty Loan Food Program for 1919 Fire Prevention United War Work Campaign Red Cross Home Service What Have We Won? Red Cross Christmas Roll Call A Tribute to the Allies May 12-21, 1917. May 22-June 15, 1917. June 18-25, 1917. July 1-14, 1917. July 23-Aug. 5, 1917. Aug. 6-26, 1917. Aug. 19-26, 1917. Aug. 27-Sept. 23, 1917. Aug. 27-Sept. 23, 1917 (supplementarytopic). Sept. 24-Oct. 27, 1917. Oct. 8-28, 1917. Oct. 29-Nov. 4, 1917. Nov. 12-25, 1917. Nov. 26-Dec. 22, 1917. Jan. 2-19, 1918. Jan. 28-Feb. 9, 1918. Feb. 11-16, 1918. Feb. 18-Mar. 10, 1918. Feb. 12, 1918. Mar. 11-16, 1918. Mar. 25-30, 1918. Mar. 31-Apr. 5, 1918. Apr. 6-May 4, 1918. (Republished Apr. 23, 1918.) May 13-25, 1918. May 27-June 12, 1918. June 24-28, 1918. June 29-Julv 27, 1918. July 29- Aug. 17, 1918. Aug. 26-Sept. 7, 1918. Sept. 9-14, 1918. Sept. 5-12, 1918. For general use. Sept. 28-Oct. 19, 1918. Changed to Dec. 1-7; finally canceled.. Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 1918. Nov. 3-18, 1918. Dec. 7, 1918. Dec. 8-14, 1918. Dec. 15-23, 1918. Dec. 24, 1918. These bulletins were issued to the field workers and to associated individuals and official organizations in the following^^ quantities : EEPOKT COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INl'OKMATION. Statement of literature issued to tJie field. state. Alabama Alaska: Chairmen Lodges Arizona Arkansas California Canal Zone Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia. . Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey Sept. 1917. 370 560 300 305 425 165 100 370 5 275 620 685 540 340 100 200 100 875 550 355 120 400 90 50 120 580 Mar. 31, 1918. 675 540 1,815 2,335 1,890 2,275 1,945 1,280 1,135 1,250 2,120 1,275 2,880 2, 875 1,395 Nov. 1, 1918. 2,806 447 68 1,241 2,630 927 1,252 125 2,155 677 50 689 7,668 1,936 3,140 3,093 1,376 733 1,221 898 1,225 1,879 2,027 3, 280 4,203 1,163 2,622 400 2,197 State. Nevada New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Porto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia "Washington West Virginia "Wisconsin "Wyoming Colleges San Francisco speakers Current list New Hampshiregrange Maryland grange. . Vermont speakers . Connecticut grange Vermont grange. . . Total. Sept. 15, 1917. ,180 380 450 100 835 50 100 180 235 775 455 15,675 Mar. 31, 1918. 225 255 4,280 725 1,450 2,170 1,375 760 6,530 15 270 540 470 405 1,245 1,384 780 1,610 436 58, 390 Nov. 1, 1918. 5,784 1,151 1,875 3,007 1,424 9,057 1,474 1,600 ■ 482 2,100 2,l25 1,425 1,956 4,536 97, 340 Aoproximate number of bulletins required on Nov. 23, 1918, 101,000. Army Bulletins At the request of the War Department bulletins similar to those published for the use of Four Minute Men were produced by national headquarters to be used by company commanders in many cantonments throughout the country in preparing short talks to their men on the causes and issues of the war. The following campaigns of the kind were conducted to the complete satisfaction of the War Department as expressed in its official report on the subject: 1. Why We Are Fighting. January 2, 1918. 2. Insurance for Soldiers and Sailors. February 1, 1918. 3. Back of the Trenches. April 6, 1918. Early in August the scope of the work was extended to reach other audiences besides those in motion-picture theaters. A church department of the Four Minute Men was organized in many of the local branches to present four-minute speeches in churches, synagogues, and Sunday schools. The first church department was organized in New York City. Other Meetings National arrangements had already been made to have speakers appear at the meetings of lodges, fraternal organizations, and labor unions and this work progressed swiftly. In most cases these speakers were selected from the membership of the organizations to whom they spoke. Under the authority of State lecturers of granges, four-minute messages based upon the official bulletins were given also at all meetings of the granges- in many States. The work was next extended to reach the lumber camps of the country, some 500 organizations being formed in such communities. The work was also extended to cover Indian reservations. women's divisions. About this time some of the States, acting under authority from headquarters, organized women's divisions to bring the messages of the Government to audiences at matinee performances in the motion-picture theaters, and to 'the memj bers of women's clubs, and other similar organizations. Junior Four Minute Men The Junior Four Minute Men movement commenced with a Junior War-Savings Stamps bulletin published for the State of Minnesota. Eesults were such that in March, 1918, a Junior War-Savings Stamps campaign was held for the rest of the country. Over a million and a half copies of the bulletin published for this campaign were sent out through the various State war-savings stamps committees, which distributed them to the schools. The general plan was for the teacher to explain the subject, using the bulletin as a textbook, and the children then wrote their speeches and submitted them to the teacher or principal. The best were selected and delivered as speeches or were read. In a few cases extemporaneous talks were given. There were many different ways of conducting these contests. Sometimes they were considered as a regular part of the school work and were held in the classroom with no outsiders present, but more often they were made special events, the entire school, together with parents and other visitors, being present. Both boys and girls were eligible and the winners were given an official certificate from the Government, commissioning them as Four Minute speakers upon the specified topic of the contest. Following the war savings stamps contest came the third Liberty loan contest of April 6 to May 4, 1917. A million copies of this bulletin were published and were sent directly to the schools from the stencils of the United States Bureau of Education in Washington. About 200,000 schools in all parts of the country were reached in this way. The same plan of distribution was used for the junior fourth Liberty loan contest and for the junior Eed Cross Christmas roll call, and these two bulletins were published in connection with the School Service Bulletin which was then going out from the committee twice monthly to all schools on this list. Theater Members On September 9 a special bulletin (No. 36) was published, governing the presentation of certificates to the proper representatives of the motion-picture theaters in recognition of the patriotic service of granting to the Four Minute Men the exclusive priAdlege of speaking to their audiences, creating them theater members of the organization. Four-minute Singing Prior to Mr. Blair's leaving, another innovation had been inaugurated in the decision to add four-minute singing to the work of the division. A bulletin (No. 38) of specially prepared songs was published on September 10 for general use, and instructions were issued to the chairmen to appoint song leaders to encourage the audiences of the motion-picture theaters in community singing. College Four Minute Men In September also college Four Minute Men were organized, under instructors acting as chairmen, to study the regular Four Minute Men bulletins and practice speaking upon the subjects thereof, each student being required to deliver at least one four-minute speech to the student body during the semester in addition to securing satisfactory credits, in order to qualify as a Four Minute Man. This work was organized in 163 colleges. Junior Bulletins A further development of the original field was the introduction of four-minute speaking contests in schools to decide which of the pupils were worthy to become Junior Four Minute Men on specific topics presented in bulletins similar to those used by the senior speakers. This work was conducted on a national scale and was participated in by many millions of American school children in connection with each of the following four campaigns: Junior Four Minute Men Contests 1. War Savings Contest. March 11, 1918. 2. Third Liberty Loan Contest.^ April 6-May 4, 1918. 3. Fourth Liberty Loan Contest. September 28-October 19, 1918. 4. Eed Cross Christmas Eoll Call. December 2-20, 1918. News Bulletins To keep the thousands of separate organizations in touch with each other and with developments of the actual application of the work, six News Bulletins were published at intervals of about three months. Publicity In addition to the messages brought to the people by means of the spoken word, the Four Minute Men secured for the Government pul lictify \v«itih at least three- (piartors of a Hiilliou dollars. Articles containing the pith of each bulletin were sent out from headquarters and released through local chairmen and publicity managers in thousands of communities for use in the local papers. The average number of press clippings received at headquarters from a single clipping bureau, covering only the larger newspapers of the country, was 873 a month, or more than 15,000 during the 18-month life of the organization. These clippings averaged certainly not less than 60 lines each, totaling 900,000 lines, which at a low rate for this type of publicity, if purchased, would have cost $225,000. Hundreds of newspapers mailed to headquarters from the smaller towns indicate that much Targer space was consistently devoted to the Government messages in these places, while during the ban on public meetings due to the influenza epidemic newspapers in all parts of the country devoted sufficient space to carry daily four-minute messages prepared for them by members of the organization. It is extremely conservative to estimate the total value of all this publicity at $750,000. ACCOMPLISHMENTS, Exact reports, covering approximately one-half of the full activities of the organization, give a total of 505,190 speeches made to audiences totaling 202,454,514 people. This total does not cover the six campaigns from October 27, 1918, to the closing date of December 24, nor does it include the first campaigns from May 22 to October 27, 1917. At a very reasonable estimate, these first campaigns added 40,- 000,000 to the total audience reached and not less than 70,000 to the number of speeches delivered, while the final six campaigns added certainly not less than 72,000,000 to the total audience and 180,000 to the number of speeches. Adding these conservative estimates to the above incomplete reports, the following results are shown: Number of speeches given 755, 190 Total audience 314,454,514 A very reasonable allowance for the considerable number of communities from which incomplete or no reports were received justifies an estimate of final totals of a million speeches heard by four hundred million individuals during the 18-month life of the organization — an average of about 28,000 speeches, reaching more than 11,000,000 people, during each of the 36 distinct campaigns covered by the 46 bulletins. Costs. Official Expenditt.tees The amounts expended from presidential and congressional appropriations on behalf of the Four Minute Men from the commencement of the work in 1917 to the date of disbanding in December, 1918, were as follows : July, 1917- June, 1918. July-Dec, 1918. Totals. S24,033.04 29,107.08 7, 300. 68 4,942.09 5,856.90 .?18, 711.96 7,344.82 $42, 745. 00 Printing 36,451.88 Slides 7, 300. 68 Traveling 1,000.00 3,258.55 5, 942. 09 General 9 115.45 Total 71,239.77 30,315.33 101,555.10 (July to December, 1918, figures partly estimated, as business division is unable to give figures after September 30, 1918. Old fiscal year figures subject to change, as bills are still coming in.) Conteibuted Expenditures In addition to the foregoing, large sums have been expended from July, 1917, to December, 1918, from private sources and public subscriptions in the maintenance of the offices of State directors and local chairmen, and by the individual speakers in their travels to and from places of speaking and in their incidental expenses. These expenses have been recorded exactly wherever possible, and in other cases have been estimated very carefully from accurate data. Actual expenses of State director's offices $177, 090 Expenses of local chairmen's offices ; estimated at $10 monthly for the known average number of chairmen (.4,422 averaged over the entire 18-month period) 795,960 Expenses of individual speakers, averaging 10 speakers to the chairman and allowing for each speaker $2 monthly for all traveling and incidental expenses 1, 591, 920 Total of contributed expenses 2, 564, 970 Thus the estimated amounts expended from voluntary contributions were more than 25 times the expenditures from the official appropriations. Summary It is impossible to set an adequate monetary valuation upon services contributed so graciously and so patriotically as were those of all the Four Minute Men, the motion-picture theaters, newspapers, churches, granges, lodges, labor unions, and other agencies which have furthered this work. The following attempt is made merely with a view to visualizing in some concrete and tangible form the material value of this work in relation to the actual cost thereof to the Government. It would not be reasonable to set a lower valuation than $4 on the delivery of a four-minute speech, requiring the most painstaking and exact preparation and unusual skill in condensation and forcefulness of delivery. Indeed, this sum is ridiculously small, but because of its numerical appropriateness let it be taken as a basis of valuation, in addition, of course, to the actual expenses of the speakers. Not with any suggestion of undervaluing the inestimable cooperation of the theaters and other places in which speeches were delivered, but rather, with a view to the most thorough conservatism, we will estimate a " rental value " for the delivery of each speech at one-half the speakers' rate. The expenses of the various offices and individuals on the number of speeches, and also on the value of publicity generously contributed by the press, have been recorded above. A summary of all these items gives the following estimated valuation : Official expenditures (headquarters) $101,555.10 Contributed expenditures -— 2, 564, 970. 00 One million speeches at $4 each 4, 000, 000. 00 " Rent " of theaters, etc., to deliver above 2, 000, 000. 00 Speeches (331) of traveling spealiers 8,275.00 Publicity contributed by press 750, 000. 00 Grand total - 9, 424, 800. 10 Thus it appears that the investment of a sum of little more than $100,000 in this war-emergency agency has procured for the Government services and patriotic contributions to a conservatively estimated total of nearly 95 times as much. In the fall of 1918 Mr. Blair entered an officers' training camp, and his place was taken by Mr. William H. IngersoU, a member of the Advisory Council since 1917. The Speaking Division --------------------- The Speaking Division owed its establishment to the need for some organization to act as a clearing house for national speaking campaigns. By the beginning of September, 1917, more than a dozen national speakers' bureaus were being conducted by Government departments and by associations which were seeking to promote the national interest. Scores of State speaking campaigns were being inaugurated under the auspices of councils of defense and other organizations. All these were competing for speakers, in danger of duplicating each others' activities, and failing to coordinate their efforts in an effective and comprehensive campaign. There was a need of some central clearing house in Washington through which these various organizations, working for a great common purpose, but each with its special message, could be brought into touch with the affairs and facilities of other departments, and given the inspiration and information which came from the vital national interests involved. ■ In consideration of these needs, the Speaking Division of the Committee on Public Information was brought into being on September 25, 1917, through the approval of the President, given in the following letter : My Dear Mr. Creel : I heartily approve of the suggestion you have made that through your committee some effort be made to coordinate the work of the various bureaus, departments, and agencies interested in presenting from the platform various phases of the national task. With the cooperation of the departments, the Food Administration, the Council of National Defense, and the Committee on Public Information, it would seem possible to enlist the many State and private organizations who have put. the Nation's cause above every other issue and stand ready to participate in a speaking campaign that shall give to the people that fullness of information which will enable and inspire each citizen to play intelligently his part in the greatest and most vital struggle ever undertaken by self-governing nations. Your suggestion of Mr. Arthur E. Bestor, president of Chautauqua Institution, to direct this work is excellent. You are fortunate to be able to enlist one who has been so intimately connected with a great American educational institution devoted to popular instruction without prejudice or partisanship. Cordially and sincerely yours, WooDBOw Wilson. Certain general policies were followed from the very beginning with such modifications as from time to time became necessary. It was not the purpose of the division to attempt to combine the speakers' bureaus of the several departments or private organizations, nor to assume any responsibility for supervision over them, but rather to establish a bureau to coordinate their efforts where they related to common aims or activities. It was the purpose to seek cooperation among these speakers' bureaus by agreement and consultation; to offer a national clearing house for speaking campaigns; to avoid duplication of effort and overlapping of territory; and to supply speakers with usable information from Government departments; to concentrate the attention of speakers during special periods upon different national needs; and to foster in all speakers a sense of the unity of the national purpose. There was never an attempt to control and supervise the speaking of the country — the problem was one of cooperation and coordination. A card catalogue of over 10,000 speakers and makers of public opinion was eventually gathered and a select list of 300 effective speakers. Whenever a request was made for an individual address a list was prepared of those available for such service. This resulted in many appointments being made by organizations direct with speakers reconunended by the division. While aid was given to every organization that requested it, direct relationship was constantly kept up with the following organizations: Treasury Department (for the three Liberty loans). Department of Labor, Council of National Defense, United States Food Administration, American Red Cross, Friends of German Democracy, American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, National Committee on the Churches and the Moral Aims of the War. Relations were established with many national organizations which had organized audiences, such as the United States Chamber of Commerce, International Association of Rotary Clubs, Advertising Clubs of the World, Open Forum National Council, League to Enforce Peace, and various bureaus conducting circuit chautauquas. The International Lyceum Association held a very successful | Conference for American Lecturers in Washington whose |^ I program was largely arranged through Mr. Creel's personal % approach to officials of our own and to allied Governments. The division kept in touch with all these organizations through bimonthly bulletins, conferences, and correspondence, and was thus able at all times to have knowledge of the patriotic campaigns which were being carried on in the country. In January, 1918, a service of speakers bulletins was inaugurated, which supplied approximately 15,000 makers of public opinion with various governmental publications. In order not to duplicate the work so admirably done by the Four Minute Men, it was decided after the third issue to utilize the bulletins of the Four Minute Men and other governmental agencies. I'he following bulletins were issued together with various publications of the committee : No. 1. " Purpose and Scope of the Work of the Speaking Division." No. 2. "Hints for Speakers — The Issues of the War at a Glance," accompanied by publications of the Committee on Public Information as follows : How the A¥ar Came to America. The War Message and the Facts Behind it. The Nation in Arms. The Government of Germany. The Great War : from Spectator to Participant. No. 3. " Ships, Ships, and yet More Ships — The Nation's Greatest Need," accompanied by the War Encyclopedia issued by the Committee on Public Information. This bulletin was issued in cooperation with the United States Shipping Board. No. 4. Letter transmitting Four Minute Bulletin No. 24 "The Danger to Democracy " and the pamphlet " Conquest and Kultur " issued by the Committee on Public Information. No. 5. Letter transmitting the Four Minute Bulletin on the Third Liberty Loan issued in cooperation with the Treasury Department. In cooperation with the States Relations Division of the Council of National Defense speaking organizations were created under the State councils of defense in all of the States except New York and Delaware. Upon recommendation of the division, in connection with many State speakers' bureaus, there was organized a committee in which the following interests were represented: State Council of Defense. State Division of the Woman's Committee. Extension Division, Department of Agriculture. State Department of Education. Extension Division of the State University. State Department of Labor. State Community Organizer. Cliairman Four Minute Men. Federal Food Administrator. Federal Fuel Administrator. Patriotic Societies which have carried on effective speaking campaigns or have ready-made audiences. It was possible therefore to route national speakers on short notice and put them into communities and before audiences where they could be most effective. This decentralization of the work meant that responsibility was put upon the State officials who knew intimately of local needs ~ and who had in Washington an organization in touch with all speaking campaigns. District conferences to plan war conferences and more effective organization were held by officers of the Speaking Division and the States Kelations Division with representatives of the State councils of defense as follows : Washington, November 10, 1917, for Pennsylvania and the South Atlantic States ; Chicago, November 17, 1917, for the Middle Western States; Birmingham, February 15, 1918, for the Southern States; and Boston, April 1, 1918, for New Jersey and the New England States. In cooperation with the States Relations Division of the Council of National Defense and under the direct auspices of the State councils of defense, there were held 45 War Conferences in 37 States, and in addition, local conferences were held in four cities in Arizona and five cities in Utah. These War Conferences brought together all the effective war workers in the State, usually occupied two days, and m addition to the general meetings addressed by the speakers sent out by the division, there were sectional conferences held by Federal and State officials who were carrying on war work. These War Conferences were oftentimes the greatest gatherings held within the States during the war. They had a profound effect upon public opinion and upon the efficient organization of State war work. Usually the State-wide conferences were followed by county and town conferences of the same character. A list of the War Conferences, with the speakers furnished by the division, is as follows : December 5-6, Richmond, Va. : Secretary Newton D. Baker, Hon. Henry J. Allen, George F. Porter, and Arthur E. Bestor. December 6-7, Columbia, S. O. : Hon. Henry J. Allen and Dr. J. A. B. Scherer. December 13-14, Indianapolis, Ind. : Vice President Marshall, George Creel, Medill McCormick, Lieut. Paul Perigord, and Arthur E. Bestor. December 14-15, Des Moines, Iowa. December 17-18, Philadelphia, Pa. : Secretary William G. McAdoo, Lieut. Paul Perigord, and Arthur E. Bestor. December 20, Little Rock, Ark. January 14-15, Chicago, 111. ; 15-16, Louisville, Ky. ; 16-17, Columbia, Mo. ; 17-18, Topeka, Kans. ; 18-19, Lincoln, Nebr. : Sir Frederick E. Smith, Solicitor General John W. Davis, Dr. George E. Vincent, and Arthur E. Bestor. February 20, Lansing, Mich. ; 2'2', Sioux Falls, S. Dak. : Hon. Crawford Vaughan and Prof. Thomas F. Moran. February 24, St. Paul, Minn. : "^^ Hon. Joseph C. Grew and Prof. Thomas F. Moran. February 25, Bismarck, N. Dak. : Hon. Joseph C. Grew, Prof. Thomas F. Moran, and Charles Edward Russell. February 26, Aberdeen, S. Dak. : Hon. Joseph C. Grew and Prof. Thomas F. Moran. March 11, Oklahoma City, Okla. ; 12, Dallas, Tex. ; 13, Houston, Tex. ; 14, Shreveport, La. ; 15, Jackson, Miss. ; 16, New Orleans, La. ; 18, Birmingham, Ala. ; 19, Atlanta, Ga. ; 21, Tampa, Fla. ; 22, Jacksonville, Fla. ; 23, Columbia, S. C. : Secretary David ¥. Houston, Lieut. Paul Perigord, and Prof. Thomas F. Moran. May 7-8, Denver, Colo. ; 9-10, Albuquerque, N. Mex. ; 10-11, El Paso, Tex. ; 11, Phoenix, Ariz. ; 13-14, Los Angeles, Calif. ; 14-15, San Francisco, Calif.; 16-17, Reno, Nev. ; 17-18, Salt Lake City, Utah; 20-21, Boise, Idaho ; 22-23, Portland, Oreg. ; 24-25, Seattle, Wash. ; 27-28, Spokane, Wash. ; 28-29, Helena. Mont. : Lieut. Paul Perigord, Prof. Guy Stanton Ford, and George B. Chandler. May 7, Trenton, N. J. : Maj. Laughlin McLean Watt, Maj. Rutledge Smith, Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, and Arthur E. Bestor. ■ May 8, Portland, Me. ; 9, Concord, N. H. ; 10, Montpelier, Vt. ; 11, Hartford, Conn. : Hon. Frederick D. Walcott, Maj. Laughlin McLean Watt, Maj. Rutledge Smith, and Arthur E. Bestor. The most extensive work of the division was the handling of national speakers and routing through the country representatives of our own Government and of our Allies. No salaries were paid any speakers and no payment made for individual addresses except traveling expenses, which were sometimes borne by the division and oftentimes by the State or local organization for whom they spoke. The most distinguished speakers in America were among those who gave their services on this basis. The division worked in close cooperation with the British War Mission, the French High Commission, the Italian Embassy, the Belgian Legation, as well as with the various departments of the United States Government. Among officials of our own Government for whom appointments were made were Vice President Marshall ; Secretaries Baker, Lane, McAdoo, Houston, and Redfield; Solicitor General John W. Davis ; Senators Kenyon and Nelson ; Congressman Albert Sidney Johnson ; Col. Clarence Ousley and Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretaries of Agriculture ; Hon. Joseph E. Grew ; Hon. Gaillard Hunt and Hon. Wesley Frost, of the Department of State ; Hon. F. C. Walcott ; Dr. Vernon Kellogg; Maj. W. L. Brown, Dr. Henry J. Waters, and Dr. Henry C. Culbertson, of the Food Administration; and Dr. Anna Shaw and Miss Ida Tarbell, of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense. In cooperation with the British War Mission, engagements were made for Sir Frederick E. Smith, the British Attorney General; Sir Walter Lawrence, Sir George Adam Smith, Gen. H. D. Swinton, Col. A. C. Murray, Maj. Ian Hay Beith, Lieut. Hector MacQuarrie, Hon. Harald Smith, Maj. Robert Massie, and Maj. Laughlin McLean Watt. The French High Commission placed at the disposal of the division Lieut. Paul Perigord for seven months' service, and appointments were also made for M. de Billy, M. Maurice Casenave, and Lieut. Wierzbicke. Speaking engagements were also arranged for Lieut. Bruno Roselli, of the Italian Embassy. In cooperation with the Friends of German Democracy, Mr. Henry Riesenburg made 27 addresses in 19 States ; Dr. Frank Bohn, 9 addresses in 3 States ; Dr. William H. Bohn, 26 addresses in 3 States ; Dr. Karl Mathie, 18 addresses in 2 States ; and Prof. A. E. Koenig, 9 addresses. The American Alliance for Labor and Democracy were furnished many speakers, but most the engagements were made direct. Lieut. Paul Perigord, loaned to the division for seven months by the French High Commission, made 152 addresses under the auspices of the division in all parts of the country. Probably no speaker heard in America aroused more enthusiasm. Lieut. Hector MacQuarrie, through the cooperation of the British War Mission, gave 93 addresses in four months in 9 States, and everywhere was a most effective speaker for the allied cause. Hon. Crawford Vaughan, ex-premier of South Australia, a noted labor leader, was brought across the continent" by the division, spoke at several of the War Conferences, and gave in all 22 addresses under the auspices of the division until he became connected with the United States Shipping Board. Capt. Eaould Amundsen, who had had unusual opportunities to observe the American troops at the front, made a tour in March and April, speaking 13 times in 6 States with particular success before Scandinavian audiences. Hon. Wesley Frost, former consul at Queenstown, and the official reporter of 81 submarine sinkings, created profound sensation in his transcontinental tours, and from September to February gave 63 addresses in 29 States for the Speaking Division. Charles Edward Russfell, a member of the President's Commission to Russia, who was particularly effective before labor audiences, gave 58 addresses from October to February in all parts of the country. Congressman Albert Johnson, just back from the front, delivered 19 addresses in 9 States from December to February. In conjunction with the Four Minute Men, Prof. S. H. Clark delivered 19 addresses in 4 of the Western States in March and April. Among others for whom the division made speaking engagements are the following: Prof. Guy Stanton Ford, Dr. Mitchell Carroll, George B. Chandler, Maj. Rutledge Smith, Mary Antin, Dr. George E. Vincent, Prof. J. S. P. Tatlock, Dr. Hugh Birckhead, Richard D. Hollington, Justice S. Harrison White, Dr. T. Alexander Cairns, Dr. James Sullivan, Judge A. D. Dabney, Gapt. J. M. de Beaufort, William Forkell, Prof. Bertram Nelson, Dr. E. Y. Mullins, Judge Clarence W. Goodwin, Sergt. Bernard S. Wolff, Felix M. Warburg, Dr. D. F. Garland, Dr. George E. Raiguel, William B. Guthrie, Bishop William F. McDowell, James Hugh Keeley, Col. Thomason, Miss Jane Addams, Dr. J. A. B. Scherer. Inasmuch as the division had relations with State councils of defense in practically all the States and with various organizations like the chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, and others that had ready-made audiences, the division came more and more to be the organization to handle tours for patriotic purposes which were other than merely speaking tours. The French Blue Devils were routed under the auspices of the division and the 344 Belgian soldiers returning from Russia were brought across the continent by the division. The 50 American soldiers sent by Gen. Pershing to aid in the third Liberty loan were, at the conclusion of that loan, routed by the division for one month and heard in practically all of the States. An extensive trip through the South was arranged for the Marquis and Marquise de Courtivron and the Marquis and Marquise de Polignac, accompanied by Mr. Charles Edward Russell. Mr. Arthur E. Bestor, president of Chautauqua Institution, and from May until September, 1917, chairman of the committee of lecturers and entertainments in training camps for the Young Men's Christian Association War Council, was Director of the Speaking Division from its organization, September 25, 1917, until its consolidation with the Four Minute Division, September 1, 1918. From September until May he delivered 53 addresses under the auspices of the division. Mr. J. J. Petti John, director of the extension division of Indiana University and head of the Indiana State Speakers' Bureau, became associate director of the division on May 6, 1918, and from June was in active charge in the absence of Mr. Bestor, until the consolidation of the division with the Four Minute Men, when he become the associate director of that division. His wide experience in popular education and his ability as an organizer were of great value to the division in the last months of its separate organization. , *'/■ Prof. Thomas F. Moran, of Purdue University, was loaned |ffo the division by that institution for service from January jto April. His ability as a writer and speaker was used to 1^ great advantage in the editing of the bulletins and in ad- ■ dresses before the Southern War Conferences and individual addresses before many audiences, 34 in all. Mr. W. Frank McClure, publicity director of the Eedpath Bureau, Chicago, was loaned by that organization to the division for the month of November. He performed a very useful service in organizing the publicity machinery for the committee. Division of Pictorial Publicity One of the first realizations of the Committee on Public Information was the importance of pictorial publicity in building morale, arousing the spiritual forces of the Nation, and stimulating the war will of the people. It was not only that America needed posters, but it needed the hest posters ever drawn. To this end the Division of Pictorial Publicity was created on April 17, 1917, and the following organization formed to mobilize the art forces of the United States : Chairman. — Charles Dana Gibson. Vice chairman and secretary. — F. D. Casey. Associate chairmen. — Herbert Adams, E. H. Blashfleld, Ralph Clarkson, Cass Gilbert, Oliver D. Grover, Francis Jones, Arthur F. Matthews, Joseph Pennell, Edmond Tarbell, Douglas Volk. Executive committee. — F. G. Cooper, N. Pousette-Dart, I. Doskow, F. E. Dayton, C. B. Falls, Albert E. Gallatin, Ray Greenleaf, Miss Malvina Hoffman, W. A. Rogers, Lieut. Henry Reuterdahl, U. S. N. R. F. ; H. Scott Train, H. D. Welsh, J. Thompson Willing, H. T. Webster, Walter Whitehead, Jack Sheridan. Departmental captains. — C. B. Falls, H. T. Webster, Walter Whitehead, Ray Greenleaf, I. Doskow, N. Pousette-Dart, H. Scott Train. Enlisting for the duration of the war, as members of the division, American painters, sculptors, designers, postermen, illustrators, and cartoonists volunteered their artistic services to the Government, and worked together under the chairmanship of Mr. Gibson, with headquarters at No. 200 Fifth Avenue, New York City. To increase the scope of the committee and to stimulate the personal interest of the artists outside of New .York, sectional branches were formed, and Oliver Dennett Grover, of Chicago, became the chairman of the Western Committee, Mr. E. Tarbell and Mr. Arthur F. Matthews taking charge in Boston and San Francisco. The full contribution of the artists of America to the national cause, as well as the reliance placed upon the Division of Pictorial Publicity by every department of Government, is shown by the following record of achievement : Poster designs. Car, bus, and window cards. Newspaper and other advertising. Cartoons. Seals, buttons,. banners, etc. American Red Cross, Washington and 10' 25 50 10 100 25 15 25 50 50 43 3 15 3 2 1 1 15 10 10 50 23 Pubhc Health Service 7 7 3 2 4 3 Young Men's Christian Association Young Women's Christian Association . Umted States Boys Worldng Reserve.. 1 1 2 2 6 10 2 4 11 2 2 2 3 6 2 1 5 1 3 5 6 8 1 1 1 5 3 9 1 2 Federation of Neighborhood Associa- Offlce of Chief of Staff 1 1 3 Bastile Day i4 ^ar,bus. Poster and designs, window cards. Newspaper and other advertising. Cartoons. Seals, button's, banners, etc. Ma.riTifi Corps 5 2 2 Fifth Avenue Association American Poets Committee Federal Food Board 3 2 Rehabilitating Wounded Soldiers Dewey Recreation Committee Italian War Work ... Mayor's Committee 1 1 3 1 Official Bulletin Phonograph Recruiting Records Connecticut Defense Council United War AVork Campaign RECAPITULATION. Departments and committees requesting work Poster designs submitted 700 Cards requested 122 Newspaper and other advertistug 310 Cartoons submitted 287 Seals, buttons, etc., executed 19 Total material (drawmgs, designs, etc.) 1, 438 In addition to the above, Lieut. Henry Keuterdahl and N. C. Wyeth worked on a painting 90 feet long, 25 feet high, which was placed at the Subtreasury Building for the third Liberty loan. Lieut. Keuterdahl made also three paintings, each over 20 feet, for the publicity of the fourth Liberty loan in Washington, D. C. During the United War Work Campaign the same plan was followed, seven artists painting on days assigned, in front of the Public Library, two others assigned in front of the Metropolitan Museum. This work was carried on by a committee of this division. These artists were : P. D. Steele, Young Men's Christian Association. Micldleton Chambers, Knights of Columbus. C. B. Falls, Salvation Army. I. Olinsky, Jewish Welfare. Denman Fink, Library Association. Jean McLane, Young Woman's Christian Association. Howard Giles, War Camp Community Service. Charles Chapman and Luis Mora, Metropolitan Museum. An Allied War Salon, under the direction of Mr. Albert Eugene Gallatin, appointed by Mr. Charles Dana Gibson, to further the cause of pictorial propaganda and to acquaint our people with the extent of our nlitary and naval preparations, was held at the American Art Galleries from December 9 to 24. A feature of this salon was the 200 drawings by the artists officially attached to our armies in France. All of the above mentioned work was gratuitously offered by and through the Division of Pictorial Publicity. Too great credit can not be given to Mr. Gibson and to Mr. Casey for inspired leadership and tireless enthusiasm. When Gen. Pershing cabled for the services of eight artists, the question of picking the proper men was placed in the hands of the Division of Pictorial Publicity. Besides the work of procuring drawings, this division has also arranged complete exhibitions of American posters in such places as the Corcoran Art Gallery, in Washington; the Academy of Fine Arts, of Philadelphia; the Art Institute, of Chicago; the Brooklyn Academy, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; Aeolin Hall, Brooklyn; the Woman's Committee, East Orange, N. J. ; the National Arts Club, oi New York City ; Taft Hotel, New Haven, Conn.; the Graphic Arts Society, New York City; and the Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia. The Division of Advertising --------------------------- I hereby create, under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Public Information, heretofore establislied by Executive order of April 14, 1917, a Division of Advertising for the purpose of receiving and directing through the proper channels the generous offers of the advertising forces of the Nation to support the effort of the Government to inform public opinion properly and adequately. WooDEow Wilson. By virtue of this authority, the advertising forces of the United States were mobilized, and the great organizations, by request, named these men to serve as a board of control : Mr. William H. Johns, chairman, president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, representing 115 leading firms of this kind in the country; Mr. Thomas Cusack, the acknowledged head of the poster and painted bulletin industry; Mr. W. C. D'Arcy, president of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, representing 180 advertising clubs with a combined membership of 17,000 ; Mr. O. C. Harn, chairman of the National Commission of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World; Mr. Herbert S. Houston, formerly president of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World; Mr. Lewis B. Jones, president of the Association of National Advertisers; and Mr. Jesse H. Neal, executive secretary of the Associated Business Papers, consisting of 500 leading trade and technical publications. Over 800 publishers of monthly and weekly periodicals gave space, worth $159,275.64 per month, for the duration of the war and this was being increased monthly when the armistice terminated the arrangement. In addition, advertisers of merchandise purchased $340,981.21 vforth of space in various nationally-circulated periodicals and turned this space over to the Division of Advertising to use for Government purposes. These were definite purchases for 1918, but indications had already been given that renewals would follow in 1919. Figuring on a yearly basis, the donation of space only has totaled approximately $2,250,000. Of this, only about $1,594,000 was used, owing to the sudden cessation of activities. Following summarizes in total all space with which the Division of Advertising has dealt — all contributed by patriotic advertisers and publishers for the winning of the war : Insertions. 1, 512 1,443 4,353 653 377 llfi 9, 367 Circulation. Amount. General maiieut. Walter Wanger, E. Q. Cordner, and Herbert Hoaglaiid built the machinery for handling American war, industrial, and agricultural films. These films were selected and forwarded to the bureau at Rome by the committee's office at either Paris or New York and were subsequently given Italian titles and prepared for "popular consumption" in Ualy by this department. The perfected films were shown to both military and civilian populations, at the front and behind the lines. In its exhibitions this department employed both private and public agencies, such as Italian cinema houses, patriotic associations, schools, Italian offices of naval and military propaganda, the American Young Men's Christian Association, etc. Once a week this department supplied the Inter- Allied Weekly, a war-time Pathe of the Italian Government, with appropriate film material for display in theaters throughout Italy. Conclusion Fortnightly or monthly reports, detailing the variety and extent of the activities of the committee's representatives in Italy are gathered in the official archives of the Committee on Public Information at Washington. Exhibits evidencing the committee's operations in Italy are also on file at Washington. These include newspaper and magazine clippings from the Italian press and periodicals, testimonial letters from Italian official and unofficial sources, a statistical map and specimens of the post card, pamphlet, and picture material, distributed by the committee's bureau in Italy. The clippings and testimonial letters alone adequately demonstrate that the committee's educational appeal not only reached the Italian masses but psychologically did much toward steadying and heartening them through a critical period of the world war. John H. Heaeusy, Commissioner of Italy. Work in Spain ------------- (By Frank J. Maeion, Commissioner.) I left Washington for Spain via Habana on November 17, having with me the following letter of confirmation and instructions from the President: 14 November, 1917. My Dear Me. Marion : Mr. Creel informs me that you are leavingfor Spain and Italy at once for tlie purpose of making arrangementsfor such disti-ibution of motion pictures as will acquaint these coun- / tries with the life of America, our aims and our ideals. It is a distinct service that you are privileged to render to your country and the whole democratic movement, aud I know that tliis will serve at once as reward and inspiration. Please bear in mind always that we want nothing for ourselves, and that this very unselfishness carries with it an obligation of open dealing. Guard against any effect of officious intrusion, and try to express a disinterested friendship that is our sole impulse. Cordially and sincerely, (Signed) WooDKOw Wilson. It will be noted that originally the scope of my work was limited to the distribution of motion pictures. Under instructions, and with the utmost leeway allowed to my own judgment, it expanded to embrace many other educational methods. In the beginning, the Madrid office of the committee was established in that of the American naval attache.^ Capt. (now Rear Admiral) Burton C. Decker, who, from the first cooperated with me most cordially, and who gave great assistance and unstinted support. As I had brought with me a considerable stock of moving-picture films, showing the industrial and agricultural resources of the United States, together Avith views of the early work of training our new Army, I VN^as prepared to start as quickly as the films could be titled in Spanish. I attended several conferences with representatives of the English, French, and Italian Embassies who were engaged in a similar work and quickly found that their efforts had the appearance of being handicapped by its " official " character. Spain, being a neutral country, and most jealous of its neutrality, was naturally unwilling to countenance anything to which the German Embassy might object, and at the time of my arrival the German Embassy was by far the most active and aggressive in Spain, with 70,000 German citizens well organized in the territory and with apparently unlimited funds at its disposal. The only moving pictures which our Allies had available were of a military character— scenes at the front, etc.— and as they were not permitted to be shown in public by the Spanish censorship, they were limited to private exhibition, hence to a very small audience, composed presumably of persons already predisposed to the allied cause. I therefore determined to get the American fihns into the reguhxr moving-picture theaters, and because of the " unofficious " character of my mission I was able to get the entire stock passed by the Spanish censors and shown throughout Spain in tlie regular programs of the distributing house of Ledesma & Villeseca, the immediate work of supervision being handled by Jose M. Gay, an American attorney of Filipino parentage, whom I had engaged as secretary and who gave me the most faithful and efficient service during the committee's operations in Spain. From the theaters we expanded to the schools and colleges and j&nally to open-air shows when the weather permitted. In the latter we showed to as high as 9,000 people in one audience and the Spanish press was unanimous and enthusiastic in its praise. Particular success was made by a series of pictures furnished for the purpose without charge by the Ford Automobile Co., of Detroit. One of the most gratifying features of the work with moving pictures in Spain was that there was no expense to the distribution, except the titling in Spanish. Many of the prints were originally donated by patriotic American manufacturers, and the expense of circulation was covered by a small fee charged for the exhibition. From time to time new subjects were added to the stock. At the close of the work in February, 1919, I was fortunate in being able to sell the entire stock of films used in Spain, and those of the Italian office as well, to the Foyers de Soldats, of France, for a price which almost covered the cost of stock and printing. Early in February, 1918, I proceeded to Italy to inaugurate the work there. Upon the arrival of Capt. Merriam, appointed commissioner for Italy, I received instructions to return to Madrid to act as commissioner for Spain, with full authority to launch a complete campaign. Back in Madrid I opened separate offices at Zurbano 14, engaged a small staff of translators and office assistants, and decided to supplement our films with a press service. At first this task seemed fated to failure. Most of the leading papers in Spain were under regular subsidy from the German Embassy, and I was told by my French colleagues that space could not be secured in the Spanish press without paying for it at a price per line. A very large sum was suggested as necessary to carry out the plan. However, I was convinced that truthful news items from America would be welcomed by all the progressive papers and that the system then in vogue of sending out " official " communiques from the various embassies could only naturally result m the material being treated as advertising. I arranged with the Fabra press service to handle a daily service of American news, and it was soon apparent that my surmise was correct. Within a short time the pape'rs of Madrid, including all those subsidized by the enemy, were carrying our service and not a cent of subsidy was paid to any Spanish paper by the committee during my tenure of office. However, the Fabra Agency was not furnishing the service to the smaller papers of the Provinces which could not afford to pay the telegraph tolls, because of the high cost of , print paper and the scarcity of advertising. ^ Accordingly, with the aid of the naval attache, who placed his various secret agents throughout Spain at my disposal, I organized my own distributing system and within a short time had the satisfaction of seeing the entire press of Spain printing more news from America than from the allied countries combined. Following the establishment of the Foreign Press Bureau of the committee in New York my office commenced to receive regular weekly installments of special articles, photographs, posters, window display cards, etc. This material necessitated further expansion. The special articles, prepared with rare good judgment by Mr. Ernest Poole and his associates, were placed in the hands of leading literary men of Spain, and reappeared over the Spanish names in the best daily and weekly publications. My chief translator, Senor Jose Armas, for many years correspondent of the New York Herald, and Senorita Raquel Alonzo, formerly of the Gulick School for Girls, performed prodigies of labor and could always be relied upon to give not only accurate translations,, but translations of a high literary style. Miss Irene Wright was for a time typist and office manager, but resigned m July, 1918, and was succeeded by Mr. Seward B. Collins, who, being physically unfitted for military duty, joined my staff as a volunteer without pay. In the summer of 1918 the work was expanded to full force. A lecture course on American ideals was inaugurated with Prof. M. Romera-Navarro, of the University of Pennsylvania, in charge. Although interrupted for a long time by the influenza epidemic, Prof. Romera-Navarro delivered lectures before universities and lyceums in most of the principal cities of Spain and was everywhere well received. An exhibit of an edition de luxe of the war drawings of Joseph Pennell was started in San Sebastian in July, 1918, under the patronage of SoroUa, the great Spanish painter, and from San Sebastian went to most of the leading cities of northern Spain. In our window display work we had the invaluable assistance of the Singer Sewing Machine Co., whose manager for Spain, Mr. Adcock, placed at the disposal of the committee the windows of 200 branch stores in Spain and without charge to us undertook the distribution and exhibition of a great mass of window display material.__ The windows of the Eastman Kodak Co. and the Aeolian Co. in Madrid, and the entire store of the Ajnerican Machinery Corporation in Barcelona were in constant use for the display of educational material. Photographs mounted in handsome -frames were extensively used and deemed very effective. In July, 1918, we started the publication of a weekly bulletin in English, the American News, which was distributed free of charge to all Americans whose names we could secure in Spain and Portugal. The purpose of this bulletin, in the form of a small eight-page newspaper, was to put the facts of our war preparations and achievements into the hands of Americans to be disseminated by them in their contact with the Spanish people. The editor of this paper was Seward B. Collins. The value of this publication may perhaps be attested by the following quotation from a letter to your representative from Hon. Thomas H. Birch, Ameri< can minister to Portugal : We receive regularly the copies of the American News and put them to good use, many thanks for your kindness to this legation, anything worth while we will wire promptly. I think it is a fine idea the publishing of the American News, some items we do not get by wireless, so I change the date and use them here as well. While attending the propaganda conference in Paris I became convinced that the strongest arguments in behalf of the allied cause were embodied in the various official utterances of President Wilson, and in following that conviction, the Madrid office of your committee used every effort to give the widest possible publicity to all of the "President's speeches. Not only were they published immediately in the Spanish press, but they were printed in pamphlet form as well and sent under letter postage to upward of 10,000 prominent Spaniards. It was a matter of great gratification to us that so accurate and elegant in its diction was our translation by Prof. Komera-Navarro of the President's famous "Fourteen Points" speech that it was adopted as a literary textbook by one of the leading schools for boys in Madrid. In the distribution of this and other material we were greatly assisted by Senor Amato, of the Fabra Press ' Agency. As a general proposition, pamphleteering had been overdone in Spain by both the Allies and the enemy em- ■ bassies and we did not deem it advisable to enter to any great extent into this branch of work. Furthermore it was the experience of the Madrid office that Spanish translations made in America were almost worthless because of mistakes in idiom. The enemy propaganda which we had to combat during the early period of our work in Spain consisted largely of slurs and ridicule directed against our preparations and the probability of our taking any efficient part in the war. These were printed in the subsidized press, but were .so worded that anyone who read could hardly fail to realize immediately that the material originated in Prince Eathbor's embassy. Although the greatest pressure was put upon me from various sources to answer these absurd misstatements, I was convinced that no good would come from con- • troversial arguments with the enemy. My policy was therefore to either ignore them or to answer in some indirect way. For example, when the enemy put out the charge that our Army was irreligious, controlled by the Masonic order and that Eoman Catholic chaplains were not allowed to wear their vestments, my answer was to secure a large photograph of a Eoman Catholic mass in the open air in one oTour camps and to publish it in some of the leading illustrated weeklies, as well as to include it in our window displays. Finally, I may say that one of the most effective methods of conducting such an educational campaign is by word of mouth. In this work, all Americans in Spain loyally assisted, but particular service was rendered by the gentlemen of the American Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, headed by Messrs. Brewer, Van Tress, and Preston M. Smith, all of whom could be relied upon to do any work that seemed necessary in their territory. And above all, the most effective argument was the work of our Army and Navy. As our campaign progressed and a delegation of Spanish newspaper men, under the leadership of the Marquis Vallegiesias, of La Epoca, returned from our front in France with the word that we had hardly told the story of our strength and efficiency, the pro-German tendency of Spain began to perceptibly fade, and when Spain sent its peremptory note to Germany regarding the sinking olf Spanish merchant ships we felt 'that the climax of our efforts had been reached. Two quotations may be given as evidence of the value of the committee's work in Spain. On October 23, 1918, the Madrid correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor says : A development of the popular attitude that has been most marked in recent months, and has become a significant feature of Spanish inclination, has been a sincere, anxious, and deep interest that Spain has begun to take in all that concerns the United States and especially on her productive and industrial side. * * * Demonstrations by cinema pictures and in other ways of how things are dee in America have been greatly appreciated. So have the object lessons of what the Americans have been doing in the way of metamorphosis in France in various directions. An indication of the new state of interest that Spain feels in regard to American institutions, systems, and so forth, is furnished by the long articles that continually appear about them in some of the daily newspapers, especially in the newer journals. Lectures on similiar subjects are increasingly popular, and multitudinous papers have been read before the members of literary and scientific institutions concerning different aspects of American development. In this connection it is of special interest to point out that at the present time Senor Miguel-Navarro, professor of Spanish language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, is in the country and has been delivering some pointed discourses which have received close attention and have been reported in detail in the newspapers. At Vigo, addressing a large gathering in the Escuela de Artes y Officios, the professor has just made a notable statement on the manner in which Spain was regarded abroad, and the intellectual and sentimental relations between her and the United States. He said that in his journeys in other foreign countries he had observed great hostility toward Spain, because foreign peoples iiad interpreted her history incorrectly and spoken badly of her because they did not know her. But in North America and especially in the Southern States, he had found quite a romantic feeling of attachment for Spain, due probably to the deep tracks that the Spanish work of civilization long ago had made in that part of the country, and where the work of their writers and savante and artists who had been there had served to intensify that affection. And on December 11, 1918, the Monitor said : What may be called the Wilson cult is truly making astonishing progress in Spain, as shall be shown. Three months ago the President of the United States was known but little to the general community. To-day there is hardly a city of any consequence in Spain whose newspapers are not devoting innumerable columns to articles upon his career, his views in general, and his present actions, with occasional personal details. I take the liberty of attaching a summarizing report in the form of a letter from Capt. (now Rear Admiral) Burton C. Decker. Finally, may I be permitted to add that in recognition of the work of the committee in Spain your representative was honored by being elected to membership in the Royal Academy of Arts and Science of Spain, of the Columbian Society of Spain, and to the Centro Cultural Hispano- Americana, of which he was named the American delegate. Frank J. Marion, C om/missionneT for S'pain. 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. Work in Russia: General Introduction ------------------------------------ [By BlDGAR SissoNj General Director of Foreign Section, Committee on Public Information.] The work of the Committee on Public Information in Russia and Siberia was the most arduous of the accomplishments of the organization, owing to the difficulties of Russia's immense area, as well as those of revolution. Time will continue to show the importance of the whole achievement. The chief credit goes to Arthur Bullard, who gave more than a year and a half of his time to the directorship of the committee's Russian enterprise, making sacrifices of every kind, including health. The report that follows is set forth in sections, beginning with the account of installation, and continuing with the record of the succeeding work in Russia proper, and of the building up of the great plant in Siberia. A few weeks after my own departure from Russia in the spring of 1918, it became definitely clear to me that the purpose of the Germans and of the Russian Bolsheviks was to bring about an untenable situation in Russia for all officials and citizens of Entente countries. The purpose was to limit their freedom and their activities more and more, and finally to expel them. It was my hope that all countries would see this and get their nationals out of Russia before they should be thrown out humiliatingly. But at that time the international political world could not believe that this outcome was inevitable. I was sure, however, that within a few weeks it would be impossible to get material into European Russia. Accordingly, I took the responsibility of ordering Mr. Bullard and his American group, save one man, to remove themselves from the Bolshevik area of Russia. Our chief office at Moscow, and even the office at Petrograd, remained open, the former in charge of Read Lewis, whose report is included, and the latter in charge of a Russian assistant. The Moscow office was finally raided and closed by the* Bolsheviks the first week in September, 1918. It was necessary to shift the organization as a whole to a place where it could have a dependable base of supplies. Obviously, this place was Siberia, affording the opportunity for a sound and steady penetration along the line of the Siberian railroad as fast as order was restored along this railroad line. The eventual goal Avould be Moscow. This whole project of transfer was successfully carried out. Two men, Malcolm Davis and William Adams Brown, worked their way out through Siberia, and in the early summer had opened new offices at Harbin and Vladivostok. Meantime, Mr. Bullarcl, accompanied by Messrs. Bakeman, Glaman, and Tajdor, secured passage from Archangel to Halifax and about July 1 reached the United States. This nucleus was at once equipped for the remainder of the journey around the world. The additional staff included translators, teachers, moving-picture experts, and office helpers. Seven hundred and fifty thousand feet of the best moving-picture film was sent, together with powered projecting machines. Four weeks after he set foot on American soil, Mr. Bullard was sailing with the first contingent from a Pacific port. Mr. Malcolm Davis' report (included) tells the story of the Siberian expedition. When my forecast of the spring was proved by the forced flight of all allied nationalities from European Russia in the late summer, Read Lewis, of the Moscow office, on reaching safety in Sweden was at once ordered to go to Archangel and open an office there. Mr. Harry Inman was also sent direct from New York to Archangel with moving-picture film. Both Read Lewis and Harry Inman did notable service there throughout the winter of 1918 and 1919. From Paris the first Sunday in February, 1919, I cabled around the world demobilization orders for all offices of the committee, except those of New York, London, and Paris. The offices demobilized by that order were Copenhagen, Stockholm,- The Hague, Berne, Prague, Rome, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, Colon, Mexico City, Peking, Vladivostok, Harbin, Irkutsk, Omsk, and Archangel. To the Siberian and Russian offices the chief leeway in time was granted, but it was impossible to allow them to operate beyond March 15. The last members of the group did not reach the United States until late in June, 1919. Here is the roster of the Eussian-Siberian organization: Arthur Bullard, Guy Croswell Smith, Malcohn Davis, Read Lewis, George Bakeman, Otto Glaman, Graham Taylor, jr., Harry Inman, Boris Lebedeff, Dr. Joshua Eosett, Franklin Clarkin, Edwin Schoonmaker, Robert Winters, George Bothwell, Sid Evans, Prof. William Russell, William Adams Brown, jr., William Games, Lem A. Dever, Phil Norton, Dennis J. Haggerty, H. Y. Barnes, Edgar Sisson. Edgar Sisson. Work in Russia: The Installation -------------------------------- (With instructions to install the Committee on Public Information's service in Russia, Mr. Edgar G. Sisson left the United States on October 27, 1917, and arrived in Petrograd November 25. His report follows:) The Bolshevik-Proletarian revolution had begun November 7, and the city was still under the closest Red Guard military control. I was told by the Americans on the scene that there was no possibility of any open governmental activity. This did not seem logical to me, but it necessitated a careful preliminary survey. In a week's time I had convinced myself not only that it was possible to go ahead, but that the best way was to go ahead openly. This plan, however, required the use of the mechanical facilities wholly in the control of the Bolshevik Government — telegraph agencies, printing shops, and, to a lesser degree, distributing agencies. As an example of the chaotic condition of affairs, the Bolsheviki had suppressed all the existing and opposing Bourgeois newspapers, leaving for the chief publications in Petrograd their official newspapers, the Isvestia and the Pravcla. Such other newspapers as appeared were being obliged to change their names almost with each issue, so fast did the suppressions come. When I left the United States our cable service was supposed to be ready to begin to feed into the Rusian governmental distributing organization, the Petrograd Telegraph Agency, which in Russia corresponds to the Associated Press in the United States. The revolution, however, had broken the service. Efforts to replace it had been made by the use of the wireless station at Lyon, France, the receivingstation being at Moscow. The project failed because the Moscow station itself was almost immediately put out of commission. In Kussia we would not have known of the effort had not a few sentences of one garbled message been picked up a few days before inefficient operators (or intent) finally wrecked the instruments at the station. The first job, therefore, was to restore the cable service. This was done after an interchange of cables with Washington, and after finding that the Petrograd Telegraph Agency desired to have and would use the cables. I called Arthur Bullard up from Moscow, where of his own initiative he had been acting as a volunteer in the consul's office in preparing a mail service for provincial papers, and made him the Director of the Russian News Division of the committee. I also commandeered Graham Taylor, jr., who had been engaged on work in the German prison camps in Eussia until we went to war, and put him in charge of the Petrograd office. This was done in order to enable Mr. Bullard to return to Moscow and organize an office there. We opened an office at 4 Gorokovaya for the receipt of cable messages, and put in a translating force. The messages, as soon as translated, were fed into Petrograd Telegraph Agency in Petrograd and theoretically were telegraphed all over Eussia, as well as released to the Petrograd uewspapers. Such was the disorganization of the telegraph lines, however, that in practice we found it at once necessary to install a courier service to Moscow, and to make the lai'ger part of the national distribution from there. In both phices we also released direct as exigencies required. In Moscow each week we assembled the cable material in pamphlet form, added to it educational mail and article material and distributed the pamphlets to the provincial piess, and to organizations where we deemed it useful. We adopted for ourselves the Eussian name, Amerikansky Kiireau Pachata (the American Press Bureau), and at- 'Mched a governmental symbol to indicate its official nature. l')oth the British and the French did 'their publicity work ^'s ()rivate organizations, and it was a matter of interest to j-i:-' i : 1 me that the head of the French department came to me before I left Petrograd and said that ours was the right way. The British organization, Cosmos, was raided and closed by the Bolsheviki the last week in December. The French never put out anything openly. We were not seriously interfered with throughout the winter. The middle of December found our news organization in operation. One of the first impressions I had got of Petrograd was of its billboard possibilities. Every street, including the Nevsky, was papered up and down with placards and proclamations, mostly emanating from the Soviet. The first of President Wilson's Russian messages came in early December. As I feared, after reading it, the official newspapers refused to print it in full, and misused and misinterpreted such parts as they did print. Other papers also used it insufficiently, so I made up my mind to put it on the billboard. I was advised this would be regarded as a challenge by the Bolshevik Government, but this view did not appear reasonable to me. I went about the matter openly, gave the job of printing to the biggest Government printing establishment in Petrograd, a plant that would compare favorably with all but a very few in the United States, and negotiated with a billposter agency to put up the message. The bill-posting man was the only person to show any fear of the outcome, but he heeded the business and decided to take a chance. He played " safety first," and hired soldiers to do the posting. The result was that 50,000 copies of the President's message were posted one morning throughout Petrograd without any hindrance whatever. This posting was followed by a street hand distribution of 300,000 copies^ in the street cars, in the theaters, hotels, stores, and to the street crowds. Similar plans were started in Moscow, but rioting broke out and prevented success. The third process of printing, the turning of the speech to pamphlet use, was done at Moscow. The experience on this message enabled us to do the big job on the President's message of January 8 with its statement of terms of any possible peace. We had learned the machinery. The January 8 speech began to reach us January 10, but did not come complete mitil January 11. It was used in full in the Isvestia, the direct organ of the Soviets. This in itself gave a complete all-Russia circulation among the Soviets. There was liberal use of the message ift nearly all of the newspapers. The Petrograd posters were up January 13. The street distribution, again of 300,000, followed a few days later. The Moscow distribution was done almost simultaneously. On this message German distribution was essential. One million copies were printed in German. Of this quantity 300,000 were put across the northern line into the German line, and 200,000 similarly at the central and the southern front. A half million went to German prison camps in Russia, for the reason that these prisoners were expected soon to return to Germany. The German distribution was done by an organization of soldiers through the help of Jerome Davis, of the Young Men's Christian Association, who had used them for package distribution. The Young Men's Christian Association as a body had nothing to do with the work. This soldiers' organization was later made a part of our own machinery, and was used with high effectiveness in the distribution of German and Hungarian versions of President Wilson's speech of February 11. It worked along the line of the German advance into Russia, and fulfilled its instructions to scatter the messages in territory about to be occupied by the German Army. The head of this organization was B. Morgenstern. The details of the distribution of the message of January 8 will show the general method : President Wilson's Message of January S, 1918. Petrograd : Russian posters printed, posted np along streets 100, 000 Russian handbills printed — Distributed to theaters, etc 300, 000 To Davis-Morgenstern for Russian soldier line 600, 000 German handbills printed ^ 1, 000, 000 2, 000, 000 Fiom Petrograd : Text telegraphed to — Chita : Representative of International Harvester Co., from vphom no word has come. Omsk : Gray, of International Harvester Co., who reported that he was pushing distribution. Ekaterinburg : Palmer, of International Harvester Co., who reported that local situation prevented an immediate start, but that now the work was progressing well to distribute 10,000 posters and 150,000 handbills ■100,000 Kiev : To Jenkins, American consul ; text in Ukranian ; letter from Jenkins said he planned to distribute 50,000. American consul at Vladivostok reported that he received uK^ssjigt; by direct cable from United States. Moscow : Posters printed — Pasted up along streets 45, 000 Pasted up in rooms of house committees 20,000 Sent to Voronesch 1, 000 Handbills printed — Gonetz to theaters, etc . 235, 000 Young Men's Christian Association 286, 000 To Voronesch 10, 000 To Lubertzi (International Harvester) 2,000 To town in Tamboff 1,000 Factories within 150 versts . 300, 000 Manufacturers' Association for its 30 branches in Russia 18, 000 All-Russian Trade and Industry Association for its 450 branches in Russia 45, 000 To^ 700 cooperatives in Russia 150, 000 To 2 individual soldiers who wanted them for their regiments ^ 2, 000 Muir and Mirriles • 1,000 Committee of escaped prisoners To Kharkoft 50,000 To houses throughout Moscow, distributed by the Society of Municipal Employees 125,000 I»aniplilets printed, in bulletin No. 3 12,000 Total 3, 403, 000 From Moscow : Text sent with order to print and distribute to — American consul at Odessa. American consul at Tiflis. American consul at Kiev. American consul at Rostov for— Rostov. Taganrog. Novocherkassk, and district north of the Caucasus. Had the Germans entered Petrograd in late February they would have been greeted by posters in German, both of the President's messages of January 8 and February 11. One hundred thousand copies of the former were run the middle of February to provide for this contingency. In the last week in February we encountered our first definite Bolshevik stoppage. The colored cartoon poster, showing the arm of German force stabbing the people's hand, and tramping upon the people's banner of liberty, was confiscated on the press by order of the Bolshevik Government. Why? Smolny laughed at us when we asked it. We asked in order to see whether Smolny would laugh. . The News Division moved into larger quarters on the Nevsky the last week in February, the week that saw the exit from Petrograd of the embassies, consulates, and the missions, including the American Embassy, the American consul, the American Military Mission, and the American Red Cross. The change had been planned for weeks earlier. We concluded to be found going ahead until we could go no farther. So large American flags were draped across the windows, and the division moved in. The Film Division headquarters were on the Kazansky, half a block from the Nevsky, facing the cathedral. It was in charge of Guy Croswell Smith as director. The machine stood ready to receive new films by January 1. The failure of Hart, of the Young Men's Christian Association, to bring through a quarter of million feet of film intended for us kept us from saturating Russia with American films in the early winter. The second allotment of films given into the custody of Bernstein had reached Stockholm when the Finnisli Revolution of the last days of Janiiarj^ closed the gates into Russia. No couriers came into Petrograd after February 1. Smith and I found both the Hart and the Bernstein films still in Scandinavia in April. With such films as he had — the Uncle Sam Immigrant film and the Presidential Procession in Washington — Smith did fine work. The Uncle Sam Immigrant film was put out with a camouflage title "All for Peace." The finished title would have read "All for Peace Through War," but we left it to the audiences to find that out for themselves. The biggest moving-picture theater in Petrograd ran both films, and they fed rapidly throughout the whole of Russia. We traced them from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea and far into Siberia. I arranged for an option on a Petrograd theater, and the purpose was to lease similarly in Moscow and after a run for advertising purposes, to turn the films into trade channels, to add incentive to circulation. It is the method to use in Russia and, in general, nearly everywhere. In my opinion, the best individual work done in Russia for the United States was that of Arthur Bullard in writing the pamphlet " Letters to a Russian Friend," an interpretation of the highest order of America. We published it in Russian as a Red, White, and Blue book. Three hundred thousand copies were distributed. The Moscow office continued the distribution of the January and February messages in the remote sections of Russia after March 1. The total distribution, including the Hungarian and German text, was more than four million. Three hundred thousand handbills containing both messages were distributed ahead of the German advance in Ukraine. The President's Baltimore speech was printed in Irkutsk, Omsk, Samara, Petrograd, Moscow, and Ekaterinburg. An American Bulletin was issued weekly. By issue No. 6, the Bulletin had reached a circulation of 40,000 in all parts of Russia. It went to all newspapers, zemstvos, schools, Soviets, commercial and manufacturing associations, and universities. It was also sent to 10,000 cooperative societies which form the backbone of the practical liberal element. Edgar Sisson. Work in Kussia — Summer of 1918. [Report of Read Lewis.] Stockholm, Seftemher 2Ii-^ 1918. Mr. Edgar G. Sisson, Director Division of Foreign Work., G omifnittee on Public Information.^ W ashing ton .^ D. G. In accordance with your instructions, I returned from Archangel to Moscow June 30. From then until August 26, when I started for Stockholm, I had charge of the Compub work centering in Moscow and Petrograd. During these two months I was busy in building up and revitalizing the organization which we had left on May 4 and in extending the work. Despite the absence of American associates, our inability to communicate with the outside world, and the entire failure of news cables and publicity material to reach us, as well as the handicap of an acute political crisis threatening daily the future of the work, we were able to reach a steadily increasing public. After the consulate general on August 5 placed American interests under the protection of the Swedes, it seemed more than ever important to continue Compub as the only agency which remained to express President Wilson's affirmed policy of friendship and helpful cooperation with the Eussian people. There was need for even more vigorous effort by us to offset the assiduous anti- American German propaganda, and to interpret in democratic fashion the Entente policy at Archangel and in Siberia. As long as the work was permitted by the Soviet Government, I believed it should be carried on. The possibility that Americans might be held as hostages seemed to me no reason for withdrawal. On the western front the chance that a soldier may be taken prisoner has never been a reason for keeping him from the fight. It was accordingly under protest that I left Moscow with the consulate staff. I left Moscow reluctantly, but with the hope that if the wor]^ could be continued I should receive authority to return. Following my arrival in Stockholm, however, I learned by cable through the Swedish consulate general at Moscow, as I have already cabled you, that on September 2, a week following my departure, the Soviet had closed our offices and that the work was being liquidated. During July and August the principal work of the Russian Press Division was the publication and distribution of the American Bulletin. This 16-page pamphlet, designed for the general reading public, was issued weekly and distributed free of charge to a mailing list of 40,000 names. Its cost, including printing and paper, was 10 kopecks, or 1 cent, al a cost (according to the second-class mailing rates first obtained in August) of only 7 kopecks per month for each subscriber. The Bulletin contained the cable news dispatches, so long as they were received, and articles and paragraphs descriptive of the different phases of American life. The Bulletin mailing list included all newspapers and publications, 800 cooperative unions and their more than 10,000 constituent societies, thousands of schools and libraries, all the Soviet and Government institutions of the country, trade-unions, teachers' associations, the old zemstvos, commercial and manufacturing associations, many business houses and individuals. The building up of this mailing list was a matter of continuous and careful work. Our attempt was to reach not only the sources of public opinion but at least some part of the people themselves. Lists of their cooperative societies, representing in their membership the great substantial and forward-looking masses of the Russian people, had in response to our letters been sent- us by the cooperative unions. In response to letters to the educational divisions of provincial and district governments we had secured lists of local schools, people's houses, libraries, etc. Every mail brought many letters from persons and organizations v^^ho had seen the Bulletin and asked to be placed on our mailing list. Not a day went by without at least one letter from a provincial Soviet, or one of its departments, expressing interest in our work, forwarding names of local organizations, and requesting sometimes as many as 50 copies of each issue for its use. Thus despite the territory impossible to reach on account of civil war, we were distributing 50,000 copies of each issue of the Bulletin. In addition to the American Bulletin the bureau also issued during the summer a translation of " How the War Came to America," and a pamphlet collecting several of the speeches of President Wilson, principally those of January 8 on terms of general peace, of February 11 repljdng to the Central Powers, and of April T at Baltimore. Of each of these two pamphlets 100,000 copies had been printed and were being distributed. We continued to print and distribute the very successful " Letters of an American Friend." Of this 400,000 copies had been printed and distributed and a new order was on the press. It is interesting to note that these letters were reprinted in full by one of the Astrakhan newspapers, and the inability to report similar instances may be due to the very few provincial papers it was possible to obtain. In the form of leaflets we issued and distributed 100,000 copies of both the President's Eed Cross speech of May 18 in New York, and his speech of June 11 to the Mexican editors. To the earlier speeches more general distribution had already been given. Four million copies, indeed, of the speech of January 8 were distributed throughout the country and at the front. Copies of it for posting had been sent to all railroad stations in Russia. In default of a greater variety of literature for general distribution we printed of the last several issues of the Bulletin a second 50,000 for distribution outside of its regular mailing list. To pampMets like " Letters of an American Friend " and the speeches of President Wilson, the bureau aimed to give a far more general distribution than to the weekly bulletin. Copies of such pamphlets were of course sent to the Bulletin mailing list. In addition the bureau maintained a staff of 11 couriers and messengers for the work of distribution. Two, foi; example, devoted their entire time to daily distribution at the railroad stations in Moscow ; two more to distribution at the factories and cooperative societies in the Moscow district. A special effort was made to reach personally with our literature each of the many congresses and conferences held in Moscow (and even in some of the provincial cities) with their delegates from different parts of the country. To these meetings and conventions our messengers carried subscription lists and in this way were able to add to the Bulletin mailing list. The rest of our courier staff, were employed in making regular trips to the Provinces. The complete breakdown of the transportation system in Russia made it essential, if we were consistently to reach the provincial cities and districts with our literature, that we should have our own system of distribution. The trips for our provincial messengers were carefully planned, each man being given a list of the organizations, factories, persons, etc., to which he was to distribute literature in the several cities which he was to visit. Nearly all men engaged in this department of our work were members of the Society of Escaped Prisoners; that is, they had been common soldiers in the Russian Army and subsequently prisoners in Germany, from which they had escaped. No little part of the success of the distribution work was due to their loyal interest in it and their ingenuity in dealing with the difficulties of transportation and the obstacles in the way of opposition from some local authority with which they had frequently to contend. The bureau was also arranging at important points on the Volga like Nizhni j -No vgerod and Saratov to have a regular employee who would distribute bits of literature on all boats stopping at the port. Through its department of distribution the bureau had thus distributed, during the month from July 15 to August 15, 10,112 pieces of literature at congresses and conventions; 51,600 at railroad stations in Moscow; 55,951 at factories, to works' committees and trade-unions; 38,007 to cooperative societies and shops in Moscow and vicinity ; and 167,950 in the Provinces by the bureau's couriers. This, in addition to a small miscellaneous distribution at the offices of the committee in Petrogracl and Moscow and in addition to the distribution of the Bulletin by post, made the total distribution for the month 479,333. It is obvious, of course, that if we could have supplied to arid had published by the Eussian newspapers the same or jnaterial equivalent to that which we ourselves printed and distributed, we should have employed a far more economical and extensive method of publication and distribution. The publication of our own pamphlets, and especially of our weekly paper, however, seemed essential, not only because of the utter demoralization of the Russian press, but as a concrete evidence and expression of America's policy of friendship and helpful cooperation with the Russian people. Following the assassination of Ambassador Mirbach early in July all of the bourgeois press were permanently closed, and until I left Moscow none but a few Bolshevik newspapers appeared. The same condition was true in the provincial cities except for a few left S. E. papers. The editorial offices of these papers, particularly in Moscow and Petrograd, were definitely unfriendly to America. The bureau, on the other hand, not only was without the American staff but entirely lacked the material which would have enabled it to furnish these Bolshevik papers with news and a special press service which, I am convinced, would in large part have overcome their hostility and intolerance. On the contrary we were cut off from communication and most of the material needful to counteract the anti-Aiiierican German propaganda in the Russian press. Following the nonreceipt of our own cable dispatches, much of the American neAvs in the press showed unmistakable evidence of having been made in German3\ Most of it was cleverly selected in order at the same time to appeal to the particular sympathies and prejudices of the Bolsheviks and to discredit America. As an example of the chief American news items published widely throughout the country I may cite stories of Negroes hung in Iowa, a cage for cowards in Alabama, the sentence of Lochner, a reported scandal in the Quartermaster's Department of the Army over supplies and contracts, ammunition explosions in Syracuse, the persecution and judicial brutality exhibited toward Socialists and pacifists, the occupation of two towns in Panama by American troops, the story that the French were dissatisfied because one-half of the American troops in France were Negroes, a Socialist in Washington sentenced to 10 years because he had in his room a placard " Don't be a soldier, be a man," etc. This shows the supreme importance of the communication to Eussia by us of American news. But from early in July we were cut off from all cable and telegraphic communication with the outside world. The last Compub cable received was No. 10144, of July 2, describing the preparations for Independence Day. Subsequent Compub cables up to 10183 were dispatched but none of them except for 10155 were ever received. Although I tried to send you word of our situation, first through Archangel and later via Petrograd and Stockholm, I presume my cables never reached you. One indeed sent by neutral courier early in August has overtaken me in Stockholm. While we were thus without cable news, we also lacked, the necessary general material. Our latest American newspapers dated from December and January. Since the first 400 numbers of the Foreign Press Bureau's service we had received none of its material except for two installments early in July, one dating from December and the other the first week of April. These proved of great assistance but were speedily exhausted. After the Compub cables stopped the contents of the Bulletin was limited to general informative articles about America, its life and war activities, and to such news notes as I could get from the few English and French papers at hand. Nearly all of this material had to be personally prepared by me. While our work with the newspapers was thus actually so limited, I was convinced of the supreme importance of establishing a special and exclusive service for the newspapers quite apart from the Bulletin, and to this end preparatory work was carried on. We had thus in practically all the 20-odd Governments with which it was possible to communicate secured a local correspondent. This was some person who was known to us or who had expressed his wish to help in the work and who as a result of correspondence seemed suitable. These agents were employed at nominal salaries. It was their duty to send us the names and addresses of all newspapers in their Government or district, to keep us informed of the local newspaper situation, to supply us with clippings showing the attitude of these papers toward Ameiica and their use of our material, and to send us names of local persons and institutions for the Bulletin mailing list. We thus tried to keep on hand ready for use an up-todate list of Russian newspapers. If the cables had started to come through again it had been my intention to send them either by post or artel to each of these newspapers, forwarding them sufficiently in advance of their release in Moscow so that they would reach the provincial cities ahead of the Moscow papers publishing them. I planned also to send out semiweekly as soon as the necessary material could be accumulated to start the service, two or three galley sheets containing notes, articles and paragraphs and fillers suitable for reprinting by the newspapers. Concerning the A, B^ C book, the primai y^ book which the committee had planned to issue and distribute as a gift from American to Eussian school children, 3,000 advance copies were printed. A meeting of educational experts representing the leading teachers and educational organizations was held under the bureau's auspices and a plan worked out for the most effective method of distribution. These advance copies were never sent out for two reasons. First, there was delay due to the necessity of obtaining the consent of the authors to the substitution of the old by the new spelling in the final edition, a change which was judged expedient in view of the attitude of the Government. In the second place as the cost of the A, B, C book would have been 120,000 rubles per 100,000 copies, I hesitated with limited funds at hand and the xlifficulties of communication and obtaining more funds, to use the money which might be needed for more general propaganda. Up to the time of my departure from Moscow August 28, there had been no interference by the Soviet authorities with our work.^ All publications had to be licensed by the commissar of the press, but all permissions for printing and distribution which we asked for, had been granted. There was, however, in the face of the threatening attitude of the Entente in Siberia and Archangel toward the Soviet Government, indications that our work might be regarded as hostile propaganda. In the latter part of August various articles appeared in the Moscow press calling attention to the propaganda character of our work. There were also one or two fantastic tales published ia a paper unmistakably German in its ownership suggesting that our employees were engaged in our offices in making bombs and explosives. The commissar of education had before my departure communicated with the university where we had our offices since April on the question of our removal and we had been trying to find and move to new quarters. The commissar's position that as the university was supported by Government funds the presence of the press bureau of a foreign Government .was improper, although we had been invited by the university management, seemed an entirely correct one, and did not in itself, I believe, indicate any animus against us. In regard to the events humediately lead- ^ The office was raided and closed by the Bolsheviks Sept. 6. ing up to the closing of our work by the Soviet and that event itself, I have received no information except that the work of liquidation has been moved from the university to our original offices opposite the consulate general. When I left Moscow I placed Mr. Lebedev in charge of the work under instructions to continue it. In the event that the work should be stopped Mr. Lebedev was under instruction to retain such help as he required to complete and place our accounts in proper shape, to put our files in order, and to have our mailing list ready for future use, but to pay off all our other employees with two months' salary in advance in accordance with the Russian custom. I have since sent word to Mr. Lebedev that if possible he and two other of our Russian staff in Moscow should, if they could secure the necessary passports, proceed to Stockholm in order that they might join me in Archangel. It seemed likely that under present conditions I would otherwise be unable to obtain the . experienced and competent Russian help in Archangel so essential to the success of our work. In regard to the PetrogTad office I have sent instructions that it should be given up and our property stored in the embassy. During the summer the Petrograd office served only as a distributing point, with a staff limited to Mr. Younger and a couple of messengers. It was my wish to organize there a local distribution service similar to that which we had in Moscow, but the urgency of the political situation was such as to prevent me from going to Petrograd to accomplish it. All through July and part of August while the Russian press was fuming at Anglo-French imperialists, never a word was said about America, although it was well known that we w^ere also parties with England and France to the treaty with the Murmansk Soviet. The different attitude which the Russian newspapers and Government have taken toward America, as distinguished from the other Allies, has been due not only to what America is, but also, I believe, to our propaganda, and the efforts we have made to make America understood. It has been clue to the fact that our propaganda was distinguished from that of the English and French, has aimed at reaching the broad masses of the Russian people. We have tried to make friends with the people themselves. That we have at least in a small measure succeeded is attested by many letters of appreciation received from simple people, often from scarcely literate peasants and working-men. I quote the following foreword to several pamphlets we were preparing to issue when I left Moscow, as showing the spirit not only in which I tried to carry on the work, but also in which I believe it must be carried on to be permanently successful. This little pamphlet is printed and given to you by the Government of the United States of America. You may well ask v^^hy it should take the trouble to go halfway around the world to give it to you, a citizen of the new Russia. The Government of the United States of America, which is only another word for the people of America, believe in democracy, in government by and for the great masses of the people. It believes that only when such government exists everywhere will its own democracy, and democracy throughout the world, be safe. So at a time when you are forming the institutions of the new Russia, it wishes to extend "to you the hand of good-will, and to bear witness to its faith in democracy. It wants you to believe in democracy, in making and keeping democracy for Russia. Probably you already do. Perhaps, further, you think that the Government and people of the United States, who are even now speaking to you, are undemocratic, imperialistic, and hostile to the ideals of equal opportunity, industrial democracy, and internationalism, which stir so much of Russia to-day. We see, indeed, the faults • of our democracy, the many places where we have failed, but in our hearts we believe- in those ideals, and we know that we are struggling toward them. Because we are fighting for them we believe that they are the most real thing about us. Even now we are engaged in a great war, not one of enmity to any people, not to gain any material thing, but to bring nearer the realization of those ideals. We do not see how there can be any guarantee of political, let alone industrial, democracy, any lives of free and equal opportunity, any brotherhood of mankind in a world where one government seeks to dominate other nations and refuses to acknowledge the right of other peoples to self-determination. But whether or not you agree with us about the war as a necessary step toward their realization, we want to work together with you for those ultimate ideals of equal opportunity for all, industrial democracy, and internationalism. Hoav can we work together if we do not believe in each other's good faith? How can we trust each other if we do not know each other? So the purpose of the following pages is to tell you a little about ourselves— to show you that we are working with the same problems, striving toward the same goals as yourselves. The solidarity of mankind can be built not out of wishing, but only out of actual friendships. By helping to establish a common understanding between us we want to lay the basis for sucli a friendship and mutual helpfulness between the peoples of Russia and America — ■ a friendship that will be one of the bulwarks of that future world of peace and liberty in which we both believe. If you are interested in reading more about America than is contained in the following pages, in which we print some articles already published in the American Bulletin, please write to the Amerikansky Bureau Petchate and it will be glad to send you the future issues of the Bulletin and its other literature. Respectfully, yours, Read Lewis. Work in Russia: Siberian Activities ----------------------------------- [Beport of Malcolm Davis to Arthue Bullaed, Russian Director.] INTRODUCTORY, This rej)ort on the Siberian activities of the Russian Division of the Committee on Public Information must necessarily be a report on a work not developed to its full possibility because of the necessity of liquidation. The main work really began only in August and September, when the opening up of the Siberian railroad line by the Czecho-Slovaks made it possible to develop a campaign of public information in what had been Bolshevik Siberia. The orders for demobilization inevitably following the end of the war came in the middle of February, when the organization had been under way about six months and when it was just reaching full effectiveness in the telling distribution of its information material, and the results were just beginning to show. All the staff recognized the inevitability of the ending of the work and understood the reasons for it; yet there was not a member of the organization who did not feel that it came at a most unfortunate time, considered from the point of view of Siberia and of Russian relationship generally. Other nations were developing energetic propaganda campaigns; and the American engineers were finally taking up the task of railroad reorganization and the American Red Cross extending its relief activities. These considerations, together with the fact that it was a critical time in the discussion of Russian- Allied relations, made the withdrawal of the American Information Bureau regrettable. That this was not merely the feeling of men engaged in the work, but that it was a view shared by impartial representatives of the Government of the United States of America as well as by Russians and by representatives of some of the other Allies, is evidenced by the messages to Washington of Ambassador Morris, who was in Vladivostok on a special mission from Tokio, from Consul General Harris and all his consular staff, by the telegram of Motosada Zumoto, head of . the Japanese Information Bureau, and by letters from Russians, all urging the continuance of the work, if possible. Report On Spring Campaign In 1918. This next section will cover the period from arrival in Omsk, on the assignment given in Moscow in March, 1918, by the director, Arthur Bullard, to William Adams Brown, jr., and myself, to canvass the field for an American campaign of public information in Siberia and to begin the development of a Siberian Department, reporting later to Moscow. We were to visit Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Chita, Harbin, and Vladivostok, to find, if possible, suitable Russian representatives in each of the places where we stopped, who could be relied upon to receive telegraph news and printed literature, push the circulation of both in his district, and keep the central office informed upon conditions in his district affecting our work and upon needs for specially adapted material. It is unnecessary now to go into the matter of the sentiment of the individual newspaper editors. It will suffice to say that we found the press under the strict control of the Bolshevik regime. No papers with a political color were being published in any town visited except the official Bolshevik organ and one or two others of the jnost radical Socialist revolutionary tendencies. In general, there was less freedom for the press in Siberia under the Bolshevik regime than in Petrograd and Moscow under the same regime. The separate peace had just been concluded between the German Government and the "Russian Federated Socialistic Soviet Republic." We proceeded on the same policy which had won a measure of success in Moscow and Petrograd, since we were under orders to attempt to continue publicity in Bolshevik Eussia and Siberia. It had been decided not to attack Bolshevism or discuss political questions in Russia directly, and to get across as much information as possible about the principles of democratic government, the aims of America and the Allies, the war organization of America and the growing supremac}^ of the Allied arms, the actions of the German Government, in Russia and other occupied territories and spheres of influence, and as much general news and special article material as possible about political and social conditions and ideas in the United States. This work was regarded as tending to strengthen every sane democratic movement existing in the country, to give information that might serve as a basis for working out new problems of government in the country, and to create as much of friendly feeling and understanding as possible among the common people in Russia. We met with varying attitudes on the part of the editors and of the leaders of the " Soviets " or " Councils " which were in charge of affairs everywhere. While frankly antagonistic to America as a " capitalists' country," they had no objection to our carrying on a campaign of information so long as they were sure they knew what we were doing and that we were not doing anything directly against Bolshevist organization. Siberians were engrossed in their own political difficulties, and Siuj question of renewing a war on the western front was out of their minds. We found that we could use material on general social and political institutions and on agriculture in America to best advantage, getting in occasionally some information showing the growing war strength of America and the increasing certainty of the defeat of the Central Powers. Posters. — We had at this time the war anniversary speech of President Wilson, and this we had printed as a wall poster, in 50,000 copies, for posting in and around Omsk and for mail distribution. The circulation was carried out, after our departure, by a Russian assistant whom we engaged, under the supervision of American Consul Thomson. An additional 10,000 copies of this poster were later sent to Vice Consul Thomas in Krasnoyarsk for display and distribution there. We also arranged at once for the distribution of about 15,000 copies each of Mr. Bullard's pamphlet " Letters of an American Friend," which had been very successful, and also of the weekly American Bulletin from the Moscow office. Going on to Krasnoyarsk, we stayed long enough to form an impression of all the editors and Soviet leaders there, and to engage a local Russian representative, who was to work in contact with the American vice consul. We also arranged for the circulation of material through the cooperative unions; and for the regular forwarding of telegraphic news and printed literature from the central offices in Moscow. There was a considerable interest in the possibility of receiving American motion pictures at Krasnoyarsk, on which we reported, and which we intended to satisfy upon receipt, of equipment at Vladivostok. ^In Irkutsk we had from the start the cordial cooperation of the American Consul MacGowan, whose advice and assistance greatly facilitated the work. We had hardly got fairly started on the printing and distribution of the 50,000 copies of the war anniversary speech, however, when the work was cut short by formal instructions from Washington, via Moscow, to leave the field. Since the Easter holidays were at hand, offering the best sort of opportunity for getting attention for the President's address, we decided to stay long enough to make effective use of the 25.000 copies which had already been run off the presses. We arranged through a local distributing agency to have these put up all over town just at the holiday time, and also to have them distributed among the crowds who gathered in the central square for the games held in celebration of the holidays after Easter. About 6,000 copies were also sent to Chita to American Consul Jenkins for circulation in Chita and the Trans-Baikal region. In connection with the distribution of this speech there was an incident which illustrates the conditions under which work of this sort was done in Siberia, at that time, and the attitude which often had to be met on the part of the Bolshevik officials in control. In order to circulate copies of this address of the President at all, we had to get the official permission of the Irkutsk commissars who were determining entirely what should be published m the city at the time. We went to call on Yanson, the commissar for foreign affairs of the Siberian administration, which was located in Irkutsk. He was at first absolutely opposed to publication of anything representing an American or Allied point of view. " You know," said the commissar, " we regard all established governments with antagonism, for we aim at a world-wide revolution which will overthrow the power of the capitalists everywhere." " Do you mean," asked we, " that you recognize no difference between such a Government as the Government of the United States of America and the Prussian military government of Germany" ? "Absolutely none," replied the commissar. "America is one financial imperialism and Germany is another. Both systematically exploit the working class and the people. So far as we are concerned they are one and the same; and we are against them both ! " We pointed out to him that the address which we proposed to publish and to circulate in and around Irkutsk was an official utterance of the Chief Executive of our Nation, that it represented the point of view of the Government of one of the great powers both with regard to the issues of the war in general and with regard to Russia, and that as such it should be published as news, not as propaganda. We got the necessary rubber-stamped permission to circulate the copies of the address on the strength of this argument, and proceeded to plaster the town with copies of the address. Populm^ interest. — It is essential to state that in the course of doing the work in Siberia we got constant evidence of friendly feeling for America and confidence in her intentions on the part of the common people not allied with the Bolsheviks. These people were completely suppressed for the time being, however, and they could not make their point of view effective, since the Bolsheviks had all the guns. They did take our material and circulate it. We got such expressions of feeling from the railroad men along the Trans-Siberian line, and from the students, members of professional unions, and cooperative society . workers in cities where we stopped. This feeling was also evidenced m an incident which occurred after we left Irkutsk. We had left all our printed material and special article material with the American consul, asking him to give it as much circulation as possible since we were ordered out of the region. He gave the material to a representative of an American firm in Irkutsk. There the material was displayed on a counter, and in a very short time it was all gone. The consul afterwards related to us how people would come in and ask for copies and also for permission to circulate them among their friends. Representatives of the railroad workers' unions also came in and asked for permission to reprint at their own cost some of the material about America, for distribution among their members. This they actually did; and reported a wide interest m the propaganda. c-u • We next turned to the question of getting out of Siberia. At the time there was some question as to the possibility of passage to Vladivostok around by the Amur Railway line, inasmuch as the Semeonov fighting with the Bolsheviks was. very close to the line. The line to Harbin was absolutely closed. Furthermore, the Allied consuls were forbidden at the time the right to telegraph to their Governments any reports in cipher code. There was a convenient Chinese telegraph station at the border point of Maimatchin, near Kiatkhta, about three days' travel by train and then by boat up the Selenga River from Verkhne-Udinsk. We, therefore, decided to go that way and to slip across the border and send, for a representative of the British consulate who was in Irkutsk at the time, a code message to Pekin which he was very anxious to get out. Then we were to drive through Mongolia and across the Gobi Desert to Peking, taking official mail from the American consul to the American Embassy and from the British consul to the British Embassy at Peking. Following out this plan, we reached Peking on May 31, having crossed the desert in Ford automobiles running on the caravan route. Harbin Work. Upon arrival in Peking, we cabled to Washington, expecting to I'eturn to America. We got instructions, however, to proceed to Harbin, Manchuria, on the line of the Chinese Eastern Eailway, managed by a Russian directorate and forming an important link on the Trans-Siberian line from the west to Vladivostok. The towns along the route of the Russian railroad concession zone were full of Russian refugees from Bolshevik territory. The city of Harbin, at that time, formed what might be called the external political capital of Russia, having as residents influential members of the Russian business and political groups most strongly opposed to the Bolshevik regime. It therefore offered a very fertile field for publicity, combining in its population the elements above mentioned with the Russian workers in the large railroad repair shops of the Chinese Eastern Railway. We purchased a few office supplies in Peking and started for Harbin on the 10th, arriving there two days later. The state of public opinion in Harbin and in the general section around it and reached by its newspapers was very uncertain. The German advance on the western front was still in full progress, and the fresh forces of the American Army had not yet been thrown into action. The submarine campaign was continuing, and the facts of American shipbuilding were not known as they needed to be known in this part of the world. The Allies had not yet adopted a policy of active aid to loyal Russians against the Bolsheviks and German-Mag3^ar exprisoner forces, so no one knew what would be the issue of the political situation in Siberia and Russia. Consequently, there were a great many people who were listening to the incessant German propaganda, that the Russian Bolshevik revolution had destroyed the last chance of the Allies to win, that the entrance of America into the war was too late to save the situation, that at least the Allies would be forced to a compromise peace in which Germany would gain the main advantages or else that Germany would actually win the decisive victory in the war and thus dominate the international situation. In Russian circles there were many who believed that a monarchy supported by an alliance with the Prussian monarchy would be the best thing for Eussia; and there were many others who believed that any force which could bring order in Kussia would be beneficial, and who, consequently, were ready to turn to Germany for that result. Matenal. — We had arranged before leaving Peking for the forwarding from the American Legation there of the daily news cable service of the Committee on Public Information from Washington. We also found in the American consulate's care some cases of motion-picture films, about 60 different films in all, some of them in duplicate and triplicate. There were also some books and pamphlets from America about American conditions and war organization, sent by the committee in Washington. The committee had also sent to the American consul, Mr. Moser, the sum of $5,000 to finance a campaign of publicity in and around Harbin. This sum had just come to hand; and Mr. Moser, who was working under great pressure in the complicated situation in Harbin, had engaged H. Curtis Vezey, formerly editor of the Russian Daily News in Petrograd, to act as publicity agent. We retained Mr. Vezey as an assistant, moved into the temporary office which he had engaged, and started to work at the job of changing public opinion regarding the v> ar. The sum of $5,000 was turned over to us by Mr. Moser. Telegraph nsios. — We began to flood the neAvspapers with telegrams, translated ready into Eussian and furnished free, regarding the numbers of American troops being transported each month to France, the numbers of new ships being built for the battle fleet and merchant marine, amounts of Liberty loans and other subscriptions for the war, amounts of foodstuffs shipped to the Allies, and refutations of rumors about paralyzing strikes in the United States and proofs of the unity of the people in the effort against the Central Empires. Fortunately, the newspapers were either friendly to the Allies or open-minded ; and further, they were comparatively poor and had no good telegraph news service. The appearance of the free American service was a boon to them. They printed nearly every line of news that we gave to them, as the filed record of clippings from the Harbin office will show. Articles. — We also began to translate special articles on American national institutions and organizations, on labor conditions and the labor movement and the reasons why labor was supporting the Government in the war and would continue to support it, on various aspects of the life of the people in America, political, social, economic, tending to show what advantages they already have and what powers they have to change conditions constantly for the better, all intended to show the reasons for American unity and loyalty. Many of these articles were also printed, despite the comparatively small size of Russian newspapers. The changed tone of editorial utterances regarding the war showed the cumulative effect of the propaganda. All utterances by the President were also translated and sent to the papers, and they were invariably published and commented on. During all of this period our assistant, Mr. Vezey, whom we employed on a part-time arrangement, was publishing our news in English in his Russian Daily News, transported from Petrograd for the consuls and members of the foreign colony. Occasionally, when especially important news arrived, an evening telegraph bulletin in Russian was gotten out by the Russian Daily News and sold on the streets, which made a very useful and effective form of quick-action publicity. We had the full cooperation of Mr. Moser, the American consul, and his assistants from the start, the consul having felt the need for American publicity in Harbin for a long time and greeting the arrival of special men for this work with generous cordiality. FouTtJh of July. — We cooperated with the consulate in the arrangement of an Inter- Allied celebration of American Independence Day, which was held with considerable success. There were some American sports, organized by the local representatives of the Young Men's Christian Association, a short j)rogram in solemnization of the day, with the reading of the Declaration of Independence in English and Russian -and also of a special message to the Russian and Allied community in Harbin from Secretary of State Lansing, forwarded from Washington. We had programs for the day printed, with the text of the Declaration of Independence in English and in Russian. These were read with noticeable interest, very few Russians being familiar with the principles uj)on which the foundation of the American Eepublic was based as expressed in the Declaration. The program closed with some American music. Uncle Sam, in costume, received his guests. The whole affair left a pleasant impression ; and we felt that the comparatively small sum of money we gave in meeting certain extra expenses not covered by voluntary subscriptions was quite justified by the value of having helped to create friendship in an Allied meeting under American auspices and having spread a knowledge of the meaning of the American anniversary. Motion pictures. — Finally, we sorted our motion-picture films into programs and arranged for a week of American official motion pictures in one of the Harbin theaters for the benefit of the Russian Eed Cross. The pictures which we had were mainly military and industrial, with a few travel pictures of America and some weekly news review films. We had the excellent film, " The Eemaking of a Nation," and also much other film showing Army training in the United States. We divided the films off into programs as well balanced as possible ; and then covered the town with advertisements and distributed handbills for- the week's program, which we entitled "America for the Allies." - The pictures were well attended by mixed audiences and made a considerable impression. We had quite as many Japanese as Russians in the theater usually ; and the Japanese often stayed through all the performances making notes of their impressions on the military and naval films. Indeed, the Japanese always took an intent interest in all our publicity. The motion pictures showing the efficient drilling of the new army of America, and the power of the battle fleet, however, seemed to impress them most of all. The impression which we were trying to make constantly was that America was with the Allies, and for them, heart and soul, and that she was throwing into the fight every bit of strength and resource that she could make effective, a fact which was making the ultimate triumph of the Allied arms sure. The motion pictures, consequently, counted at the right time as corrective to any German propaganda of Allied defeat. The pictures also served as an excellent prelude to the news which we were able to give shortly afterwards about the first victorious American drive at Chateau-Thierry, and the turning of the tide of battle which developed into victory. Charging off to propaganda the cost of the posters and pamphlets which we had printed in connection with the film shows, and also of the newspaper advertising and printing of tickets, we had a balance sufficient to donate 1,500 rubles to the Harbin Chapter of the Russian Red Cross after repeating the performances in a second theater in another part of the city. If we had not made this donation we would have above covered expenses, including the theater rental and the city stamp tax on tickets. On the other hand, we would have forfeited the friendly feeling created by the gift and by the fact that in the city it was known that the pictures were not given for the sake of any profit to the American Information Bureau. The pictures had English flash titles, so we arranged to show them with a lecturer who explained each picture in Russian and who answered any questions about it from the audience. After finishing the showings in Harbin, the pictures were sent out along the line of the Chinese Eastern Railroad in Manchuria to the Russian theaters in Tsitsikar, Hailar, and Manchuria Station. On their return they were sent to the office which had by that time been opened in Vladivostok to have Russian titles put in. Extent of -field. — When we first arrived in Harbin the lines to Vladivostok and to Siberia were, of course, closed. The Bolsheviks were still in control and fighting between them and Semeonov was going on along the line between Manchuria Station and Chita. The Harbin newspapers, however, were the only ones in Russian in Manchuria, and were sent to every Russian community. Consequently, by placing material in these papers, we were reaching all Russian newspaper readers. The Harbin papers were also sent through whenever possible, by various individual ways, to Vladivostok, to Habarovsk, to Blagovestchensk, and to Chita ; and there they were read and often reprinted by the editors of local papers. In this way, consequently, we were reaching as much of the Siberian field as possible at the moment. When a paper was established at Station Manchuria, we started sending our telegrams and special articles there ; and when another was started in Sakhalan, just across the river in Manchuria from Blagovestchensk, we began sending material there. We also arranged with a Russian in that town to act as a local representative and to get printed material across the river into Blagovestchensk whenever possible. We also tried to send material down the Sungari River, to Habarovsk. Pmnphlets. — The President's speech at Mount Vernon, which we printed in a pamphlet to the number of 10,000 copies in Harbin, in addition to securing publication in the newspapers, was distributed in Harbin and through Manchuria in these various ways. The American proclamation of August 3, regarding Russia, caused a very animated discussion in the Harbin press. We printed 20,000 copies of the statement and distributed them as well as possible in Harbin and Manchuria, sending some to Sakhalen for Blagovestchensk, and some to Vladivostok. In this distribution, the American Railroad Mission was very helpful. We also had selections from the announcement made into plates for projection on the moving-picture screen and showed them in two motion-picture theaters. Post cards.- — From the. large number of photographs sent us from Washington by the committee 25 were selected, and after some difficulty we arranged to have cuts made of them and have them printed in the form of post cards for sale in railroad stations and stationery stores. MAIN SIBEPiIAN CAMPAIGN. Eepokt on Organization of V/oek in Vladivostok Tliis section of the report will take up the development of the Committee on Public Information service from the time of the opening of the Siberian Railroad by the Czechoslovaks in the summer — first of the road to Vladivostok from Harbin, where we were located for Compub work in June, and afterwards of the road through to the Urals, giving a chance for general Siberian work. The first survey of the field in Vladivostok y^F^s made by William Adams Brown, jr., who was sent do^n from Harbin in July to arrange the first showings of Afmerican propaganda motion pictures in Vladivostok. Mr. Brown arranged two successful showings of the films in the Summer Garden. He also canvassed the field in the city generally and telegraphed his conclusions as to the need for establishing Compub work in Vladivostok. Our instructions from Washington M^ere only to go to Harbin and to start Compub work there. It seemed obvious, however, that the more centers in which publicity work could be organized, the better; and since it was possible to finance some work in advance of the arrival of the director, Arthur Bullard, with his party, telegraphic instructions were sent to Brown in Vladivostok to make preliminary arrangements and to engage a Vladivostok Russian assistant. He tentatively engaged Mr. Tilicheieff, who was formerly with us in Irkutsk, and returned to Harbin to report. I went to Vladivostok from Harbin early in August. The need of work was being urgently pointed out by the consulate and by Admiral Knight, commander of the cruiser Brooklyn^ as well as by Americans generally who passed through the district. No representative of the Committee on Public Information had ever been stationed there. The cruiser Brooklyn was doing everythiiig possible to spread American information, giving the wireless reports of news received daily to the American consulate, which in turn distributed the dispatches to the daily papers. This was all that these already overbusy representatives of the American Government could do. This was the situation at the beginning of the Compub campaign in the middle of August. We made the first tasks to secure offices and a staff, get the telegraph news service organized to furnish authorized translations for the press, get a special article service started, continue the showing of American motion pictures, and start the printing of the pamphlet, "Letters of an American Friend," which has been successful in Russia and for which we" had the text. Our idea was to have two bases in readiness for the director on his arrival, in working order, with the necessary initial staff in the offices, so that either one could be developed as a main Otiice if necessary, or continued as a branch office. The choice fell to Vladivostok, the Harbin work being continued as subsidiary. Preliminary loork. — Through the courtesy of the Russian- American Chamber of Commerce my Russian assistant and I were given the temporary use of one room in an office at 6T Svethanskaya (the main street), until we coukl find more suitable permanent quarters. This became the American Press Bureau until about the middle of September. In it we started to issue a daily English bulletin of the telegrams for the Allied consulates and officials, and this also went to the French Red Cross for translation for the French troops. The daily bulletin was also translated into Russian and distributed to the Russian newspapers in Vladivostok, Nikolsk- Ussurisk, and Harbin, which latter city received the English dispatches daily over the Railroad Mission telegraph wire free, the service from Peking being discontinued. A repetition of the American motion pictures was arranged for the benefit of Czecho-Slovak wounded, and the pictures were run ofi' to good audiences. Selections were also made from material of the Foreign Press Bureau, brought from Harbin, and a series of special articles was started out to the editors of the various papers for reprinting. The service was coordinated with that sent out from Harbin, and the articles were well received and often published by the papers. These were the activities under way when I left for Japan at the end of August to meet Mr. BuUard's party, leaving instructions to keep up the search for a larger permanent office on the main street and to continue to get in touch with translators and typists, and have a list ready for an office staff if needed on our return. This work Mr. Carl E. Krantz did very efficiently and faithfully. I could not give him better credit for his activity and loyal work in my absence than by stating the results of it. On my return early in September with the bulk of the Bullard party— Mr. Bullard himself having gone to Harbin by way of Korea before coming down to Vladivostok — Mr. Krantz had ready a list of about 25 qualified translators and typists, and had followed up one of the various possible office propositions on which he had been working so that we secured these offices in the store of Konovaloff, at Svetlanskaya 10, equipped them, and were able to move shortly after the middle of September into well-located and roomy offices with a large window on the main street where maps and display bulletins could be shown. We had also in the meantime arranged for the use of two living rooms in the house where he was staying, and this was later extended to the use of five rooms, which were adequate for the temporary needs of the committee men passing through Vladivostok, thus solving the difficult problem of living space in this extremely congested city. Eight to ten men, for the period of a month or six weeks, slept and breakfasted together in these rooms, using one as a central living room. Motion Picture Division. — The first problem upon arrival from Japan, aside from the closing of the contract for the press office on Svetlanskaya, was the securing of adequate space for the development of a motion-picture laboratory. The following memorandum of G. S. Bothwell, technical director, indicates some of the difficulties encountered in establishing in Vladivostok the Motion Picture Division of the Committee on Public Information up to January 18, 1919: We arrived in Vladivostok early in September and started immediately to find a suitable building. We were switched about from place to place by the local government until we were entirely disgusted. Filially we got a requisition for No. 7 Suifunskaya. The tenants in this building were practically out of business on account of the war. In the first place, we had brought no apparatus or chemical supplies along to make titles, as we did not expect to do this work and we knew nothing about the water or climatic conditions. As it was almost impossible to get any of this apparatus from the United States within a reasonable time on account of transportation facilities, we decided to buikl our own stuff out of raw material, siich as could be foimd here, and buy our chemicals in Japan. It might be well to mention that up to this time no one had been able to make moving pictures or moving-picture titles in Siberia. The English tried it at Archangel and failed and the Young Men's Christian Association and Red Cross tried it in Vladivostok and failed. The biiilding we worked in is like most other buildings in Vladivostok. It neither has water supply nor sewerage systems, as this is almost unknown in this place. In order to turn out any quantity of these titles we found it necessary to have running water and at an expense of 25,000 rubles, we put in a water supply and sewerage system which meets all requirements of the city's laws. However, after this system was completed and all arrangements had been agreed upon, the city authorities refused to turn water on and kept us three weeks or more without running water. We had employed about 30 people in the Film Division and only one in the whole bunch ever saw a moving-picture film before. Experienced help in this line is simply out of the question. A]l goods shipped liere were considerably damaged in transit in Japan or by the customs people, possibly both. We found it necessary to establish a machine shop, and as the Russian Government had many lathes lying on the wharves rusting and fast becoming worthless we tried to requisition one. We were switched - from one party to another by the Russian authorities until we were fighting mad and at last pinned them down to facts. We were informed 'that if we deposited 16,000 rubles in a bank a commission would let us know how much they would charge us for a lathe worth at the most $50. Despite these obstacles, for the past month we have been turning out about 2,500 feet of completed titles each day, quite a number of still pictures, and some motion pictures, both negative and positive. Shortly after we arrived, about October 1, 1918, we received 70 reels of film — weeklies, current events, and news pictures. These had been sent to Harbin, Manchuria. We loaned them to the cruiser Brooklyn and People's House (Narodni Dom). The Brooklyn exhibited to Czecho- Slovaks and Russians as well as American troops. The People's House was an all-Russian audience and they used an interpreter. The Young Men's Christian Association had a number of pictures belonging to us. Around the 1st of October, we secured some of this •film and loaned it to the Cooperative Society, and they sent it intO' all the towns and villages they could reach. Transportation was simply terrible. It is beyond me to describe it. The Cooperative Society sent a lecturer-translator on these trips, as our film had English, titles and was almost as understandable as it would be if you showed motion pictures with Russian titles In the United States. Union of Amur Cooperatives also used most of our educational film in the schoolhouses in and around Vladivostok. About the middle of October we received our shipment of machines and film that we brought to Japan and the Japanese held up when we reshipped from Kobe to Vladivostok. This is a long story, and it is not possible 'to exactly place the responsibility. However, after we received this film, we mad(> many attempts to get distribution and found it most discouraging. The picture houses - would not use these pictures without Russian titles and graciously offered to show them for us if we would insert good Russian titles and pay them for exhibiting first-class American films. We then got the Vladivostok Zemstvo (Russian self-government for local districts) interested with fine results. They agreed to take our industrial and educational pictures throughout Siberia and show them in the towns and villages if we would supply the complete outfit consisting of generator, motion-picture machine, etc., which we gladly did, and the results were most satisfactory. The first show was for the agriculture districts and the reports were simply great. The village commune is common all over Siberia, and these people in many instances want to buy tractors and other farming implements collectively. They ask no end of questions and beg for farming instructors from America. They are also considering sending some of their own people to the United States to learn how to raise the tall stalks of corn we shSympathies of the Russian people toward America have always been great ones, and acquaintance by Russians with political and economic life of America have had a positive influence as to development of democratic ideas in Russia. The democratic institutions and structure of life of the United States always attracted the broad masses of Russian people. If the American Committee on Public Information would continue to exist and would enlarge the scope of its activities, it would be of great importance in bi'inging near America and Russia. Chita, March 1, 1919. To Mr. Clarkin, Chita, D. S.: I am glad to fulfill your proposal to write you my sincere opinion about the publications that you had been so kind as to send me, as well as to tell you whether they have been of any utility for Russians at the present crisis. That is rather a difficult task, for it is eqiiivalent to the evaluation of the importance of activities of the American Press Bureau and its Siberian branches for the population of Siberia. It seems to me) that the United States of America through their Press Bureau have made the first attempt in the world to speak immediately with the people and not with the Government and its agents. I don't know whether it has been their intention, but it has proved to be so. Notwithstanding the comparatively close neighborhood of America and Siberia, broad circles of Siberian population did not know America. Even the intelligenzia did not know this country, although they had studied in schools the denominations of American rivers, lakes, and cities. More precise representation about the industrial force of America had only two groups of population — traders and industrials, and workmen, followers of social democracy, the theoretics of which followed very attentively the economic successes of the trans-Atlantic Republic. But this knowledge was partial. The representation about American social life, about American schools, about the life of agricultural population, about ties of American public thought, etc., were very fragmental by all shades of Siberian population, and frequently even false. A most insignificant correction brought into this false representation about America Russian emigrants who returned from America after the February revolution. Most of them had no general view on the many-folded and many-sided life of America ; they evidently knew only one corner of America, and a very narrow one. The first American publications in 1917 and 1918, in general, did not attain their end, and augmented very little the acquaintance with America among broad masses of Russian people. They were being sent mainly to governmental and public institutions, i. e., to a group of city inhabitants who were very deeply engaged in social-political affairs and strife and paid very little attention to publications which they were receiving from time to time. That is perhaps a generalization which is not quite true, but it was so in Irkutsk and trans-Baikalian Provinces in 1917 and in the first half of 1918. The circumstance that the material of the publications of the American Press Bureau was a very official one, and I would say dry, attributed to such an attitude toward them. Toward the end of 1918 circumstances changed fully. On the one side the Importance of America in the economic life of the world and its decisive and crushing part in the World War became not merely plain and sensibly clear, but the consciousness of that penetrated to the very bottom of illiterate Siberian villages. At the same time over the Siberian population was pending the threat of a strong - and undesirable political and economic influence on the part of Japan. This especially alarmed the population, for the Japanese Government was supporting and helping monarchical and reactionary elements that appeared on the surface after the overthrow of Soviet power by Czecho-Slovaks. All that raised an intensive interest toward America which could not be sufficed by far by official telegrams and declarations. Just at that time started appearing the Friendly Word, which had put to itself much broader tasks than previous publications. But the new journal would not have acquired such a pi;blicity as it enjoyed if the bureau would not have come near to the population by opening branches in Siberia, and particularly in Chita. Through cooperative societies, which number only in the eastern part of trans-Baikalia reaches 500, the publications of the bureau were being distributed among the masses of rural population, and owing to the above-mentioned general interest in America they have been welcome visitors. But have they been useful to Russians? If utility will be evaluated by rubles and copecks, then of course not. But if one means utility, that knowledge precise representation about 'near and remote neighbors give us, then obviously they have been very useful ; from the chaos of fantastic representations about the land of dollars and trust companies has emerged the real America. But except the service that the publications of the bureau have rendered to Siberia and its population America itself has profited by them ; it has raised its authority and popularity. It is to be said that especially during the last time, perhaps owing to the wide information activities of the bureau, the period of indefinite sympathies or unsympathies toward America on the part of the whole population has ended, and the position of certain public groups has proved to become definite. The turning point, without any doubt, has been the project of the league of nations, the decision of the peace conference concerning conference on Princes Island, and partly also the Habarovsk incident. Reactionary monarchical groups headed by various nominal governments of separate Provinces of Siberia have realized that America is not intended to back them in all their desires, that it does not thirst to cover European Russia with blood only with the end to suffice ' dark and exasperated masses and political parties of maximalists doctrine by the rule "for one eye two, for a tooth a jaw" as it is being applied now in Siberia; but they are sincerely striving to establish perhaps a bad but nevertheless a civil peace, and want to diminish useless bloodshed (Habarovsk). These groups are now showing their wrath toward America that they were hiding before. Counting with the physical power of America (these gentlemen are always acknowledging only physical force as a dog a stick) they have limited their actions with a few excesses only. Trading and industrial circles were for a long time unconditional partisans of America following their traditional, since 1905, feeling of enmity toward Japan. During the last time one begins to perceive also here a hesitation. I will not try to find out the reasons of this phenomenon, the more so for they are not difficult to understand, I only will mention the fact that President Wilson, about whom the representative of these groups, the Kadet Party, was speaking with respect, has suddenly become "Mister Wilson," and all his projects have proved to be "theoretical" ; briefly, the right Siberian press have made the same turning to the right as the Paris reactionary papers. Partisans of the fallen Soviet power who railed before the American militarism not less than the Anglo-French one practically have begun to confess the point of view of America, although officially they have not changed their position. In cases of crying violences workmen and peasants were striving to find protection, or at least sympathy, not at Frenchmen or Italians, but at representatives of America. These groups represent an insignificant minority of Siberian popiilation, while the great majority of Siberian peasants, a considerable part of workmen, and middle classes of city population — are true friends of America., And I think I may say that these sympathies are based upon a solid material foundation. The Siberian peasant needs agricultural machines which he may have quickly and comparatively cheap only from America. If Siberia has to become the arena of activities of foreign capital it would not be indifferent to the Siberian workmen and intelligenzia whether this will be Japanese, French, or American capital. Russian population has enough experience to know that Japanese capital would come not only with its machines (oftentimes imported from other countries), administration, but also with their own workmen and employees, that French capital would do the same (except importation of workmen), while American business men would not do that. Meantimes on Russian soft-bodied business men close connection witli American spirit of enterprise does not smile. The Siberian democracy is headed by two organizations — cooperatives and Zemstvo and city self-governments. By informing them the American Press Bureau and its branches were informing the whole organized population. In Trans-Baikalia this has bee.n attained rather completely and even perfectly. The publications of the bureau interested but did not satisfy always. One was feeling lack of information about American cooperatives, municipal and workmen life, about social-political grouping. The last numbers of Friendly Word show the tendency to discuss also these sides of life of America. In connection with the departure of the branches of the American Press Bureau among Siberian readers of its publications arises the question whether the information activities of the bureau would continue, and if it would so, in what a form. It is difficult to suppose that nations after this four years' slaughter just finished would be, satisfied by unorganized, incomplete, and oftentimes pursuing practical aims, information of newspapers party and sometimes commercial interests of which impede them from being objective. It seems to me that big weekly newspapers, like the London Times, the Paris Temps and Matin, the New York Tribune, Herald, and others, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, etc., are giving little real representation about the life of their respective country as a lively street of some large city about domestic life of these people and their public and scientific interests. On the other side, one has to fear that these papers would swallow the whole flora of the terrestrial globe. . . Therefore, I think that such brief reviews of life of the country which the Friendly Word started to give to Russian readers one should prefer to huge bunches of newspaper paper overheaped with bagatelles and information of transitory interest. While closing the branches of its Committee on Public Information America would, perhaps, continue issuing yearbooks or monthly papers that might be published in languages of the whole civilized world. For immediate collaboration in such publications might be admitted representatives of all ties of social, economic, and political life and thought, as by this the authority and wealth of contents would be augmented. I think that I am not mistaken when I say that, owing to the approaching activities of representatives of the American Press Bureau, democratic America will never again become a strange country of industrial kings to the population of Siberia, and that Siberian and American rural population and workmen will establish in the next future, through their economic organizations, the cooperatives, a close business and spiritual collaboration. Yours, truly, K. Lux, Secretary of Trans-Baikalian Union of Cooperative Societies. 2 a ■n •ON ^RaaAV !:::;;:;:: o o ;::;;; ;g g ; ; ! 1 1 1 lo" o" ■ON ^RsaAV 'i6,'666' 10,000 •21 •ON ^H99AV 10,000 10,000 10,000 1 10,000 •11 •ON ^H99AV •siaiqd -niBd snqdi?x ! 1 ! '. ! ! ! 1 o ■ ! ! ! I '. 1 I ! o • t^ ■ 1 I ! 1 1 ! ! ' o '.'.'.'.'.'.'■'■ o ■ON ^R99Ai "i6,'666' 10,000 •6-0NA2199AV 10,000 10,000 •8-0N^R99AV "ii,'666" 11,000 •^•onA5I89jW 9,000 9,000 •9^onA3199M !!'.!!! 1 1 !o ;:::::::;§ 1 1 ! ! ! I I 1 ioj 1 ! ! ; ! I ! ! o III!!!!! o ~ I 1 1 ! 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III!!!!! 0 I :::::: : g_^ III!!!!! co" •puauj UBO ] a 9 ni Y UB jb SJ9^ia'i ooo ■ • • • ■ ■ ooo O O O 1 • 1 ; ; ; ^"c^-o" ■;;;;; i i I : i 1 i I ° III 1^ Ill '^ Nov. 25 Dec. 10 Dec. 18 Dec. 26 Jan. 3 Jan. 10 Jan. 17 Jan. 24 Jan. 31 Feb. 13 Feb. 20 Feb. 28 Mar.2 Mar. 10 Mar. 17 Mar. 24 Mar. 31 Total 'is 0 ■ m l> t-T' >> • ■^o ,I>j'^ oo" rn" o" O O C5 S "^ 03 — ^►2 CO tH s^ . o o 5~ 3°° o o CC !N S d OO > . o o 3'" S 6 o o o o !^:z; oo" r-T oT y^ o o 3© 0) „• § 8 8^ oo" r-T oT h ■ o o o 3'-''. o o o (M 00 O S ^ IC '^ >. . o o 3 '^ Im Os S d lo" i-T t^ >> . o o 3" o o (N 00 2 5 Itf CO" ■|1i a 03 o 8 S § 1 C-l 00 o c lO' C> . o o 3-^. o o o» 00 S d ic" to" eri- Acsin ria. o o o o ' (N 00 S C S el S.Q rjT ocT -^ *> o" *^g-;3m rH )-f Tf ,d cstj o o o o .23 D.'^ t- CO cq stters fan meri- 3an lend. »0 O lO o (N O t:^ O »o o ^ o (n" i-h" o" iM o o ^°^ e T-l C^ rt C^l Lh Vj -»-3 rt CO 5b SjO ft to ft ri _g ft ft +J .— 1 +J a> 't^ p. OT ^i .a : xi ft an . 3 ' o o 3 , o j3 S 5 o • "o 3 fl+f M d'c^ 3 e °3s^a^ai 4^g^.^-„^,io c (^ O J pq ^ .9 t^ p o'-2 o bM W CO h^o CO £ o!^ o K S h^ e e :s .9 .3 o cc P -S fH tf rt N pi K? S ^ i S t^ 1 ?= 3 S^ t! ^""S ^ 2 ©■^."S .> a SS ^ > ra ^ H 03 r-'^ 4^ Ct gS g S q .2 ■^ a.* '-' Oj Qj ^i >;■" gT3.S3 « [£; M s ^'^ ^ ©•-T3 ra " '^ >> S ■" ® d A^ o > -rt>^ , >> .• O O It « -H OS Amer can Activi in Russi t~ CO Si ff) lO C-d o 'I > • ft '-< a £ a| xl ~o +J Oj , •S ill ■g °^ 1 ii ■-S 111 "cS .2 ft.- "3 (>■. TO j3 J2 ±! •■" .2 o § He E- Committee articles printed in the Ekaterinl)urg papers between Dec. 12 and Feb. 11, 1919. Uralskaya Jizni : Economic Help in Russia.* Land Reform in California. How War has Effected Schools in America. Night Schools in America. How Wilson Brought Industrial Peace. Wilson's Explanation of His Third Peace Point.* Agricultural Finance in America.* History of Tanks. Prohibition of Child Labor in America. Mrs. Wilson to Allied Women. Public Education in America. The Steel Mule. Otetchesvennia Viedomosti : Work of American Red Cross.* How the American Army is Chosen.* Work of Prof. Russell. Quotation, first editorial in Friendly Word. Activity of Y. M. C. A.* Note on Dr. E. J. Billion.* Wilson's Explanation of His Third Peace Point Significance of recent Congressional Elections in America.* Gorni Krai : American Policy in Siberia.* How the American Army is Chosen.* Living Conditions of American Worknjen. Eight Hour Day in America. Growth of League of Nations Idea.* Ural Economy : Life of the American Farmer.* Financial Facilities of the American Farmer.* Education of the American Farmer.* A complete analysis of all material in the Ekaterinburg papers touching America will be found in my report letters in my ofiice files. Wm. Adams Beown, jr. Articles sent to Svobodnaya Perm. Various News. Freedom of Religious Worship. Newspapers in America. Wholesale Ship Building. Telephone System. Y. M. C. A. Pamphlet. Farmers Non-Partizan League. 1 Articles written or prepared by Wm. Adams Brown, jr. Organizing Three Million Farmers. Wliy Farmers Supported the War, Land for Returned Soldiers. Industrial Peace. Justice to Workers. Influence of War on American Education. Democratic Education. United States and Poland. Polish Heroes. Use of American Fleet after the War. Articles sent to papers in other cities than Ekaterinberg. Sent January 20 : Tieumen, Svobodnoe Slovo— American Activity in Siberia. Special Government Loans to Farmers. Tractors in Agriculture in America. Difficult Position of American Socialists. Tobolsk, Tobolsk Peoples Word — American Activity in Siberia. Schools of America are Clubs for the People. Why Farmers Supported the War. Learning Agriculture on these Farms. Petropavlosk, Edinstvo — American Activity in Siberia. Article of Walsh on Democratic Principles in Industry. Land Allotments for Returning American Soldiers. Rotation of Crops. Irbit, Irbutski Viestnik — American Activity in Siberia. Article of Walsh on Democratic Principles in Industry. Tractors in Agriculture in America. Public Opinion in America. To be sent two weeks later: Tieumen, Svobodnoe Slovo— A Country League of Nations. Rotation of Crops. Land Lots for Returning Soldiers. Y. M. C. A. Soldiers. Tobolsk, Tobolskoe Norodnoe Slovo — Article of Walsh on Democratic Principles in Industry. Rotation of Crops. Various News. Y. M. C. A. Pamphlet. Petropavlosk, Edinstvo — United States and Labor. Effort Toward Democratic Education in the United States. Why the Farmers Supported the War. Y. M. C. A. Pamphlet. Articles sent to out-of-town papers. Irbit, Irbitski Viestnik: Insurance of Soldiers' Health. Steel Mule. School Rooms Help in Industrial Democracy. Special Government Loans to Farmers. Y. M. C. A. Pamphlet. Articles given to , of the Russian Information Bureau, to take to Omsk for the newspaper " Russian Army.'" What the American Soldier Reads. Kinematograph Accompanies the Soldier. Armament for tlie American Soldier. Trying out Airmen in America. Soldiers in Camp Read. Taft on Training Camps. One Hundred and Fifty Students under Arms. Further, asked him to ask Winters for the draft system article. Letter from Mrs. lanchevetski reporting on the work done for the committee in Cheliabinsk : Cheliabinsk. February 12. Dear Mr. Beown : I beg to advise you that up to the present time vv^e have not received Nos. 4 and 5 of the journal Friendly Word. The other journals and brochures sent by you were received in the . following amounts: Copies. (1) Friendly Word, No. 1 2,500 (2) Friendly Word, No. 2 3,000 (3) Friendly Word, No. 3 1, .500 (4) American Activity in Siberia 3,000 (5) German Attempt to Control Russia 2,500 (6) 14 Peace Points of President Wilson 1,500 (7) Young Men's Christian Association.- 1, 500 (8) Posters of the League of Nations; Speech of President Wilson, Sept. 27, 1918 8,000 (9) Letters of an American Friend 2,500 (10) America and Peace 1, 750 (11) German peace offer posters 1,000 The literature received is distributed in Cheliabinsk and the surrounding district among teachers, priests, schools, liigh scliools, cooperative societies, hospitals, military hospital stations, newspaper offices, libraries, reading rooms, army staffs, and private individuals. A part of the literature received is sent to Zalotoust to the Zemskaya Uprava for similar distribution among the population of Zalatoust and the surrounding district. In Cheliabinsk an office has been organized where all who wish to may receive daily the free literature of the committee. This office is open from 9 to 12 and from 3 to 6 daily. For the work of this office there has been engaged a secretary, Mr. Sokolof, a journalist, weU acquainted with publicity work. The literature of the committee interests every one very much. There are received daily new requests for sending literature and expressions of gratitude for the sympathetic attitude of America toward Russia. For the expenses of the office and mailing I gave Mr. Sokolof 550 rubles, for which he will account. He will also account for the distribution of the literature. A full account of the expenses incurred by Mr. lanchevetski we can give only in Omsk, where he is now. In the absence of Mr. lanchevetski, the office will be in charge of Mr.' Sokolof. Yours, truly, M. Ianchevetski. Letter from M. E. Dementief, Tiumen: Jantjaey 24 1919. Deak Sik : With sincere thanks I confirm the receipt of the journal the Friendly Word, Nos. 1 and 2, several copies, and several pamphlets which I will try to distribute among the population. Many replies were received to the proposition made in your circular with regard to the receiving of the journal by individuals here, and there will be many more, so that it will hardly be possible to satisfy all who desire the journal, and as it will hardly be convenient to trouble you with sending the journal to many individual addresses, wouldn't it perhaps be better to do as follows : Send a lai-ger number of copies to my address, and then I, as director of the Tiumen Public Bank, member of the Householders' Committee, president of the Association of the Clergy, and acquainted with many different classes of the population, can distribute them, thus relieving you of the inconvenience of sending to a large number of addresses every week. At present you may send 50 or more copies weekly. Yours, etc., M. E. Demetief. Letter from the Teachers' Union of the Ural : January 17, 1919. Deae Sik : On the 14th of the present month I had the pleasure of receiving 50 copies of the journal Friendly Word, kindly sent by you. Expressing my thanks for the consideration shown our organization by you, I am glad to testify to the real interest on the part of the members of the union in your serious and interesting journal. The number of members of our union is more than 150 in Ekaterinberg, and I was able to give your journal to only a part of them. Very sincerely, yours, E. Stoeogi, Chairman Union Teachers. Letter from the Ekaterinberg Educational-Economic Association (Kulturno-Ekonomiclieski Soiuz) : Januaey 18, 1919. Deae Sir: The Executive Committee of the Educational-Economic Association of Elcaterinberg expresses its deep gratitude for Nos. 1 and 2 of the Friendly Word that were sent to it. The committee fully shares the thought that a friendly union of peoples is possible only when there is the fullest and most many-sided mutual acquaintance with the conditions of life and the ideals of the peoples. The committee takes advantage of the opportunity to say that in this connection the Friendly Word fully accomplishes its end. Therefore the committee is taking every measure toward the distribution of the journal among its members and asks you, if possible, to increase the number of copies sent. Yours, etc., D. , Vice Chairman. Letter from the divisional traffic superintendent of the Perm Railroad (receiving 200 copies) : January 10, 1919. Dear Sir : By the present I inform you that the copies of the Friendly Word sent us are being given out by hand to the employees and the workmen, and have won the sympathy of the readers, and I therefore respectfully ask the bureau to send 800 copies every week. Yours, etc., , Superintendent. Work in Russia: Archangel ------------------------- [Report by Read Lewis.] Archangel, Becemher ^6", 1918. Edgar Sisson, General Director.^ Foreign Section.^ Committee on Public InforTnation.^ Washington. I have established on the basis of half support the American Sentinel, published at Archangel for the American troops in northern Russia. The paper was started and is edited and published by Capt. Roger Lewis, of the American Red Cross, formerly Associated Press representative in Petrograd, and myself. Its cost, which amounts to the equivalent of about $150 a week, is borne jointly by the Red Cross and the Committee on Public Information. I found on my arrival here a very real need of some medium which would furnish the American forces with regular news. Everyone in Archangel feels pretty much cut off from the rest of the world, and the tropps at the front had no way of getting even such news as was available in Archangel. To keep the men in regular contact with the outside world and the important events taking place there, as well as with home news, seemed essential if their spirit and morale were to be maintained through the isolation and rigors of the long, dark winter months. The difficulties of getting together enough English type to print any kind of a paj)er and of finding typesetters were in a manner overcome and the paper was started. Shortage of paper makes it possible to print only about 2,500 to 3,000 copies a week. These are distributed to all American units and all English units. The paper thus serves in a small way as a channel of American propaganda with the English, and will, I trust, be one means of creating better feeling between the English and American forces in north Russia. The Sentinel is carried on quite independently of my regular Russian work, to which my chief energies are devoted. Respectfully, yours, Read Lewis. The Work in China ----------------- The very remarkable success of the committee's work in China was due to the inspiring cooperation of Dr. Paul Reinsch, the American Minister, the brilliant and devoted services of Mr. Carl Crow, the Compub representative, and the effective and unstinted assistance of patriotic American residents in China. "While not completely descriptive of the work or achievements, there is pride and interest in the following niemorial to the President of the United States unanimously adopted by the American Chamber of Commerce of Shanghai, China, indorsing the work of the Committee on Public Information: Until the outbreak of the war the only American and European news received in China was sent out by Reuters and by the German agency, Ostasiatische Lloyd. The latter agency, which was discontinued on China's entrance into the war, made no pretense of being other than a German agency devoted solely to German news. While Reuters is the most international of existing news agencies, it is edited in London primarily for tlie Britisli colonies and paid little attention to American affairs. The American news published by Reuters consisted very largely of reports of crimes and corruption and American policies were seldom referred to except when British interests were affected. (Some specific examples of this are given in Appendix A.) Through the connection between Reuters and the Kokusai (the official Japanese news agency) the Japanese are able to present their views in China, as news sent from Tokyo is distributed by Reuters. This means that when there is a controversial issue between Japan and America, Japanese views are given the widest publicity in China, while American opinions are learned here only after they have been edited in London. In the past when there has been an issue between Japan and America only the Japanese side has been fully presented in China. This arrangement betwe'en the Kokusai and Reuters is similar to the arrangement between the Associated Press and Reuters with this important difference — that Japanese news is sent direct to China while American news sent by the Associated Press must come through London. In addition to this arrangement with Reuters the Japanese have organized a semiofficial news agency which supplies Far Eastern news to Chinese publications. Japanese consuls act as correspondents for this agency, the dispatches being sent in code. From time to time prominent Americans who visited the Far East have noted this condition and have thought to remedy it by organizing an American news service. But very high cable tolls across the Pacific and the small number of publications in China able to subscribe to a news service always made such an organization impossible. As a commercial proposition an American news agency in the Far East could not be made profitable for many years. Reuters with its long established connections is able to operate here only because of the support it receives from organized British commercial interests and the British Government. This situation has been partly remedied by the Committee on Public Information which, at the beginning of the war, arranged for the interception in Shanghai of a daily news report sent by wireless from San Diego and later from San Francisco. This service has helped to keep Americans in China in touch with the war activities of their homeland and has informed the Chinese of the part America has taken in the war. Had it not been for this report, Chinese would never have learned of the very important part America has played in the war, for Reuters report has been devoted very largely to telling of British victories and has steadily minimized the part played by the Americans and French. (See Appendix B.) During the last few months of the war the Committee on Public Information was very active in China and during that time conducted most effective war propaganda and has also perfected plans Avhich if carried out will serve to make American influence in China stronger than it has ever been before. We will mention a few of the activities of the committee : (1) An American news agency has been organized to take over the work of translating American news and distributing it to the Chinese papers. This news agency is now supplying the news to more than three hundred Chinese newspapers, some of whom are paying for the service. American news now predominates in the Chinese papers, and this American agency, though only a few months old, is now supplying the bulk of the foreign news and comment published in the Chinese press. As this agency develops it will be able to (a) develop into a news distributing agency which is partly if not wholly self-supporting, (6) supply American officials and firms with translations of comment from the Chinese papers, (c) disseminate commercial and other news which will be of benefit to America's interest and of special help to Americans doing business in China, (d) help the Chinese newspapers to develop and expand their influence, thereby creating vehicles for the expression of public opinion and bringing China in line with the political development of the rest of the world. It is the first agency of its sort to be organized in China and has started with the hearty support of the Chinese publishers. It may be pointed out that the Chinese newspaper publishing industry is still in its infancy, but is the most rapidly growing business in China. While 10 years ago there were less than a dozen there are now more than 400 dailies published in the Chinese language. (2) The publication of the war addresses of President Wilson, in both Chinese and English, has been arranged with Chinese publishers. These are to be used as textbooks in the Chinese schools. (3) More than 400 volunteer agents located in every province of China have been secured. These agents undertake the work of distributing literature and of reporting on Chinese opinion. They are all Americans, either American missionaries or employees of American firms. Although only recently organized they form an effective and efficient force and are able in the shortest possible time to distribute throughout China any literature it is thought desirable to send out. It is the most efficient organization of its kind in the Far East. No other country has now and none can form an organization of this kind, for no other country is so ably represented in the interior of China. (See Appendix 0.) (4) A mailing list which will comprise the names of prominent Chinese in every locality in China is now being compiled. This list when complete will contain the names of 50,000 of the most important citizens of the Chinese Republic. If kept up to date it will enable the American Government to speak directly to the Chinese people. (5) The representative of the Film Division of the Committee on Public Information has just arrived in China. The work this division of the committee can do will be very valuable, and doubtless it can be carried on without expense to the Government, for the rental of the films will cover the cost of operation. (6) The representative of the committee has in mind many other plans for advancing American interests and influence in China. Among them we may mention the promotion of tlie publication of trade magazines, the translation and publication of American books, the preparation of suitable textbooks for the Chinese schools, the collection of crop reports, the distribution of American seed to Chinese farmers, the distribution of American school and college catalogues, etc. Many of these activities will be carried out without expense to the United States Government and only need the attention of the committee representatives. In conclusion, the American Chamber of Commerce, representing more than 100 American business firms and individuals doing business in China, most heartily indorses the work the Committee on Public Information is doing in China, and expresses the earnest hope that it will continue its work here and will be suppUed with funds sufficient to carry out its program. Unless this is done, America's influence in China may not be felt to the extent that America deserves because her voice will not be heard. Appendix a Eeutees and American News The following excerpts were selected at random from Reuters report of July and August, 1912. They give a fair idea of the character of American news Reuters has always circuLited. Reuters has always emphasized American crime, political graft, and commercial hypocrisy. Until the Committee on Public Information began work in China this was the only news about America received in China and it was from this news alone that the Chinese formed their opinions of current American affairs. The excerpts referred to above follow : New York, July 26.— There is rioting in the Paint Creek mining district of West Virginia. The miners have cut off telephones and telegraphs and in the absence of the news the papers are publishing the wildest report of flghting with bombs, machine guns, and rifles. The most creditable is that two private detectives were killed. New "York, July 28. — Communications with Paint Creek the coal mining district of West Virginia, has been restored. One miner was killed in the riots. Many shots were fired, but nobody else was injured. New York, July 30. — There was a sensational climax to the Rosenthal case yesterday evening when the grand jury indicted Police Lieutenant Becker on a charge of murder. Becker was arrested at the police station and brought to the Criminal Court where he was arraigned. He was remanded, bail being refused. The indictment of Becker followed the evidence of three gamblers who have been detained for some time charged with complicity in the killing. New York, July 31.— A man who lias been arrested in tlie Rosenthal murder case has sworn to an affidavit that three police, officials and a city official divided graft to the amount of gold $2,500,000 during the past year from gambling and other illegal resorts. New York, August 12. — A negro and six Italians were electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison yesterday, the largest number for one day hitherto. New York, August 12. — The provisions of the Panama Canal bill excluding ships owned by the American railroads from the use of the canal is arousing the fiercest opposition in railroad circles, which declare that the provision has established a monopoly of the coastwise trade. The American press has combined to attack the bill in the warmest language as an act of incredible folly and wanton selfishness. New York, August 15. — In connection with the police graft investigation. District Attorney Whitman has unearthed bank accounts showing that high officials have accumulated as much as a million dollars. Lieutenant Becker, whose salary is $2,000 a year, has deposited $68,845 since November. New York, August 22. — A thousand pounds sterling reward has been . anonymously placed' at the disposal of the district attorney for the arrest of Lefty Louis and Gyp-the-Blood who are wanted, and for a complete round-up of persons suspected of complicity in the murder of the gambler Rosenthal. The police are not eligible for the reward. The district attorney is receiving written threats of death. Washington, August 22.— There are indications of a hot political campaign owing to allegations made in the Senate by Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania that the trusts contributed large sums to Mr. Roosevelt's political campaign in 1904. Mr. Roosevelt has published letters showing that he had forbidden the acceptance of such contributions. New York, August 25. — Julia Curran, an Irish governess, who was found dead in a low-class hotel here, is believed to have been murdered by a man who lured her there. The police describe the death as due to natiiral causes. The coroner's surgeon suggested that the police were trying to hush up the crime in order to save the reputation of a graft protected house. London, August 26. — The papers emphatically decline to accept President Taft's argument anent the canal bill, which they regard as a mere legal quibble and worthier of a pettifogging attorney than the President of a great Republic. Appendix B Reuters reports since the war began have been widely published around Canton, the Chinese papers copying them from the British papers of Hongkong. In view of this fact the following excerpt from a report by an American official in Canton is significant : " I think it will interest you to hear that I have been told by a well-educated Chinese friend that he has not seen any news in the local press of the arrival of the American troops in France, and that the Germans here have been spreading reports that the A,mericans have no heart in fighting against them." Appendix C The volunteer agents of the committee recently distributed 50,000 posters, copy of which is attached. These posters were placed on city gates, at the entrances to Yamens and in other prominent places. In many cities they enlisted the help of local officials, who lent. the services of the police. A large number of these agents have reported to the Committee on Public Information as to the reception accorded the posters. These agents are in frequent communication with the Shanghai office of the Committee on Public Information and it is believed that they supply more complete and accurate reports on Chinese opinion-, than can be secured from any other agency. Counting the selUng stations of the Standard Oil, Singer Sewing Machine Co., and British-American Tobacco Co., together with chapels, reading rooms, and mission schools, the committee now has at its disposal more than 2,000 places for the display of pictures and posters. These cover every important point in China. Work in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay ---------------------------------------- (By H. H. Sevier, Commissioner.) On June 19, 1918, your commissioner assumed tlie direction of the activities of your committee in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, taking over the headquarters offices which had been opened by your representative, Lieut. F. E. Ackerman, U. S. N, E. The inauguration of an educational, campaign along the lines decided upon by your chairman and the then director of your Foreign Educational Division immediately followed. The preliminary organization effected by Lieut. Ackerman was perfected and arrangements for the carrying out of the work on a broad and comprehensive scale were made. Most attention, at the outset, was devoted to the mobilization of the press of the three republics and the establishment of such relations with each individual newspaper as would insure the widest publicity for informative reports of America's effort in the great war, our war aims and peace purposes, the magnitude of our preparations, and the determinatioii of the American people to engage their entire resources, if necessary, to bring about complete victory for the cause to which they had committed themselves. Your commissioner was at once convinced that the most effective means of securing the attention and respect and sympathy of the most of the peoples of our sister republics was to tell them our story, day after day, as forcefully as possible, through the medium of their newspapers. The percentage of literacy in Argentina and Uruguay, particularly, is remarkably high, and every newspaper of any importance at all in those countries has a considerable following. The good will and cooperation of the leading journals was secured at the beginning, and within a reasonable length of time 90 per cent of the publications, of all classes in the countries named, were receiving and using our service. The newspapers of the cities and towns carried daily a specially prepared cable service covering official announcements from Washington, the development of our war preparations, and the extent of our participation in the acutal fighting; the progress of our shipbuilding, munitions manufacture, and the financial, moral, and other aid extended to our Allies. These news stories were frequently played up with illustrations of our air and sea craft, our camps, cantonments and trenches, our factories, and our guns ; and with photographs of our statesmen, soldiers, and citizen workers in every branch of war activity. Weekly and class publications were regmlarly supplied with special articles and illustrations, carefully prepared to meet their particular requirements and style. The triweekly, semiweekly, and weekly press of the Provinces was furnished with condensed news stories assembled from the more important developments of the period between publication. It should be mentioned that all news stories and special articles were translated by experts in our offices, and always in the language of the publication receiving our service. During the periods of important military operations and through the exciting times preceding the armistice a day and night service was maintained, with our offices in constant touch with the great newspapers of the three countries. In submitting our matter we invariably stipulated that it was offered for reproduction either in total or in part, at the discretion of the editor, and that no credit to the committee was necessary. In many instances, however, our credit line was carried, and in no instance, to our knowledge, was our, matter garbled or falsely construed. The value and importance of such a service may be more fully appreciated if it is understood that before the advent of your committee the amount of news of any character concerning the United States carried by South American publications was practically negligible. The European news agencies occupied the field without opposition of consequence. The French and English associations naturally devoted their services to the interests of their own countries. The affairs of the United -States, even our war activities, were treated lightly. Under subsidies of the German Government and German capitalists three daily newspapers were published in Buenos Aires. One, written in the Spanish language, was a positive force, because of the skill with which it distorted the facts and the cleverness of its editorial misrepresentation of the cause of the Allies. The other two, printed in German, gave aid and comfort to the Teutonic element. Fortunately, there are now two American news associations— ^the Associated Press and the United Press — operating successfully in South America with a rapidly increasing clientele. They are furnishing an excellent and comprehensive service and will undoubtedly prove indispensable in carrying on the campaign, for the permanent establishment of mutual knowledge, understanding, and friendship which your committee conceived and placed in operation. An important feature of the work of your Buenos Aires office was the preparation, printing, and distribution of pamphletSj posters, circulars, etc. A list of all American business concerns was secured. A card index indicated how much matter each could eff-ectively distribute. The packing houses, banks, shippers, merchants, and selling agencies cheerfully agreed to inclose our literature in their daily correspondence. Many patriotic institutions and individuals took from us copies of the speeches of President Wilson and other leaders by the thousands, forwarding them to their representatives and customers in all sections of the country. The ever increasing demand from these sources indicated the interest with which America's message was being received. The photographs sent from Washington were captioned and catalogued on their arrival. They were used in profusion in newspapers and magazines both with and without explanatory articles. In addition, and perhaps most effective, were the exhibitions of the pictures in public places. For such displays some 100 or more light, attractive frames were designed, each frame carrying 12 photographs. These were placed in the show windows of the largest business houses, the lobbies of the leading hotels, and the reading rooms of various social, commercial, and workingmen's clubs. In every city or town of any importance one or more of these frames was conspicuously located. By a carefully workedout system we were able to change these displays once a week. In the offices of the committee files of such American newspapers, magazines, trade journals, etc., as were sent us or could be purchased, were kept. These, together with our Government reports, the Official Bulletin, authoritative articles on banking, industrial, manufacturing, agricultural, and other subjects by American experts were at the disposition of the general public. From them data was obtained by educators, journalists, and students. We wrote articles on given subjects and assembled facts and figures for addresses delivered to various organizations and societies. Editors of Argentina, Spanish, French, Italian, and British publications were constantly supplied with material which was desired in order to answer statements of enemy writers. Personal association with leaders of South American thought, was not overlooked or neglected. Your commissioner was frequently extended the privilege of addressing the universities and schools in response to requests from the student bodies for information concerning " North America." -A sincere desire on the part of many students to attend universities in the United States, in order that they might perfect themselves in the English or " North American " language and study our life, our laws, and our business methods, was developed, and at the suggestion and with the assistance of Dr. Ernesto Nelson, of Buenos Aires, and Dr. Galves, of the University of Chili, a plan for an exchange of North American for South American students was worked out and about to be placed in operation when the activities of the committee were suspended. The moving-picture feature of the committee's work did not develop until the arrival of Mr. Ernest L. Starr, who arrived in October. No films of any consequence had been received from the Division of Films up to that time. Mr. Starr was assigned to both Argentina and Chili by your commissioner, and later to Uruguay. It should be stated that Mr. Starr achieved remarkable success with his exhibitions, conducting the film campaign with energy and ability. In view of the early closing of the committee's activities it was agreed that Mr. Starr would report direct to the committee, covering all phases of film propaganda. Your commissioner is under obligations to Mr. Frederico Crocker, of Montevideo, who acted as local representative in Paraguay; to William Dawson, Esq., American consul at Montevideo, and to the American colony of Uruguaj'- in general. The assistance of Hon. Daniel Mooney, American minister, and the American residents of Asuncion, was of much value in our efforts in Paraguay. The committee's activities in Chili are covered by the reports of Mr. A. A. Preciado up to October, 1918. Mr. Presiado served as the committee's representative until that time, when the writer assumed charge of the Santiago office under instructions from Washington. The armistice shortly followed Mr. Preciado's retirement, and the activities from then until the close were mostly in the handling of the important news incident to that event. 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. Other Work in South America --------------------------- The activities of the Committee on Public Information in other South American countries followed the same lines as those described by Mr. Sevier and Mr. Griffis. The committee's representatives were: Brazil: Hon. Edwin V, Morgan, United States ambassador. Chile: A. A. Preciado. Panama, Costa Rica, Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia: S. P. Verner. Venezuela: Hon. Emil Sauer, Maracaibo, and tlie Hon. Preston McGoodwin, American minister, Caracas, Venezuela. To all of these is due a debt of appreciation for work faithfully, brilliantly, and effectively performed. Work in Sweden and Norway ------------------------- Mr. Eric H. Palmer was the commissioner of the Committee on Public Information for both Sweden and Norway, and the results achieved were remarkable for the completeness ;->f their success. Mr. Guy Crosswell Smith, after inaugurating the film campaign in Eussia, was appointed director of films for all Scandinavian countries and was the directing genius in the campaign that eliminated the German propaganda film. Respectfully submitted, GEORGE CREEL,