Relations with Congress

SINCE the discussion of falsehood and slander has been commenced, it may be well to exhaust the subject before proceeding with the detailed story of the Committee and its activities. Let me make the statement, therefore, calmly and carefully, that domestic disloyalty, the hostility of neutrals, and the lies of the German propagandists, all combined, were not half so hard to combat as the persistent malignance of a partizan group in the Congress of the United States. From the very day of its creation to the day of its assassination, the Committee was compelled to endure an incessant fire from behind, working at all times under this handicap of a blind malice that had all the effect of treachery.

Our case, however, was neither isolated nor peculiar. Of all the war- work executives in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, it is safe to say that there was not one who did not go to bed at night with the prayer that he might wake in the morning to find Congress only the horrible imagining of uneasy slumber. It was not that any one resented criticism or inquiry or feared investigation. As a matter of fact, every man of them begged criticism, invited inquiry, and hoped with all his heart for a real investigation that would put an end to slanderous rumors. But Congress refused to do any of these things, confining itself entirely and enthusiastically to the business of attack.

Washington heard many absurdities, but most absurd of all was the frequent bleat that the trouble was due to "misunderstanding," and that the quick and easy remedy was to "establish closer relations with Congress — win their friendship and support by explanation." One might as well have babbled about establishing "closer relations" with a water-moccasin. Men like Penrose, Sherman, Watson, New, Johnson, and Longworth had no interest in "better understanding." Bushwhacking was their business. And while the Committee on Public Information was a favorite target, no war organization escaped their fire. Bernard Baruch and his associates on the WTar Industries Board were accused of using their positions to get inside information for Stock Exchange deals. John D. Ryan was held up to shame as a man who spent aircraft funds to enlarge his personal profits; Clarence Woolley was charged with manipulating the War Trade Board for the benefit of the American Radiator Company; Julius Rosen wald was regularly dragged in mud; Vance McCormick was branded as a rascal who made thousands out of our dealings with Russia; Col. E. A. Deeds was continually accused of secret corruptions, etc. To be sure, many of these men were Republicans, but that did not matter. They were part of the war-machine, and, since this machine was operating under the direction of a Democratic President, it had to be discredited.

There was no way in which effective reply could be made. Under the provisions of our Constitution a member of Congress cannot be held to account for any utterance on the floor of the Senate or House. It is the one place in the whole United States in which a mouth is above the law, and in which there is not only free speech, but immunity for speech. The heavens may fall, the earth be consumed, but the right of a Congressman to lie and defame remains inviolate. Even were this constitutional protection lacking, conditions would be about the same. It is Congress that makes the appropriations with which to carry on the business of government — the iron hand that holds the purse-strings. If denial of a Congressman's charge does manage to escape contempt proceedings, there is still his power to curtail or to deny requested funds.

Strangely enough, however, Congress is not a body without its strong, honest men. Fully 50 per cent, of the membership of the House and Senate are above the average in ability and conscientious purpose. The trouble is that these men seldom figure in public print. And they do not figure because the press has no interest in them. There are to-day, and have always been, two kinds of news : one is concerned with the fundamental significances of life and is educational, vital, and interpretative, the other deals entirely with the satisfaction of curiosity and dies with the day that witnesses the events which it chronicles. One is truth; the other is tattle. It is this second definition that is accepted by the press, and as a consequence the Congressman who gets into print is not the worker, but the blatherskite; not the man concerned with service, but the man concerned with sensationalism. It is this condition that puts a premium on blackguardism and places public servants at the mercy of reckless attack.

Of all the assaults made upon the Committee by Senators and Representatives, not one was ever prefaced by any attempt at investigation, not one was ever followed through, and not once was I ever allowed to appear before a committee to make answer to specific accusations. Throughout the Fourth-of-July furor and the aircraft mess I was not seen by a single Congressman or allowed to state the facts in the case at any hearing. Charges of partizanship, dishonesty, and disloyalty were hurled regularly at the Committee, and when I asked to be heard I was told, invariably, that "the incident was closed." 5 53 As an instance of procedure, a Representative from Massachusetts named Treadway emerged from obscurity one day by charging that the soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force were not able to get letters because the "Creel Committee filled the mails to France with tons of pamphlets." Others joined in the attack and the result was a resolution calling upon the Postmaster-General to report the amount of matter sent to the American soldiers abroad by the Committee on Public Information. Mr. Burleson, naturally enough, was not able to find any records on the subject, inasmuch as the Committee had never sent a single pamphlet of any kind to any member of the American Expeditionary Force. In order to make assurance doubly sure, he asked me for specific information, and in my letter of reply I finished by saying that Mr. Treadway had made "an assertion the absolute baselessness of which could have been ascertained by telephone inquiry."

Because of this paragraph the House declined to receive the report. At a time when the war hung in the balance virtually a day was wasted on this absurd debate and then the report was referred to a special committee to decide whether or not I should be brought before the bar of the House on a contempt charge. To the very last, Mr. Treadway insisted that he could "produce evidence in this House that there have been placed in the hands of the soldiers abroad tons of the Creel reports." There the matter dropped. The special committee never reported, Mr. Treadway never produced any such evidence, nor was I given the chance to face him.

Representative Fordney, a perfect type of a partizan, rose in the House one day and made the flat charge that I was issuing pamphlets in support of Free Trade and other Democratic heresies. The one specific instance he cited was a pamphlet by a writer named Burt Etheridge Barlow. The attack was vicious, and after it had continued for quite a while another Congressman managed to obtain a copy of the pamphlet and this dialogue ensued:

MR. GANDY. I just wanted to know if the gentleman meant to leave the inference by the statement he made that the publication he referred to, which I have in my hand, was a government document?

MR. FORDNEY. I think so.

MR. GANDY. Will the gentleman look at it.

MR. FORDNEY. I think it was sent out by George Creel. There is a slip pasted on the first page, headed, "Committee on Public Information, George Creel, chairman"; and I think undoubtedly George Creel induced Burt Etheridge Barlow to write the article.

MR. GANDY. If the gentleman will look at that statement he will find that it is simply a statement by Mr. Creel that that publication has passed the military censor. It is not a government publication and does not purport to be a government document, and it is not sent out by the Committee on Public Information.

MR. FORDNEY. You cannot make me believe that George Creel can send that out broadcast without it costing the government some money.

I wrote a letter to Mr. Fordney at once stating that not only had the Committee never sent out one single copy of the pamphlet, but was without other knowledge of its existence than the mechanical act of returning it to the author after his submission of it to the Division of Military Intelligence out of an over-scrupulous desire not to print anything that might reveal military information. Mr. Fordney refused to retract his falsehoods and continued them at every opportunity.

Another Congressman, Knutson of Minnesota, charged that the pamphlets issued by the Committee were Democratic doctrines from cover to cover. These pamphlets, prepared by American historians of the highest standing, were not only going into every home in the United States, but were being circulated by the hundreds of thousands in neutral countries. A work of fundamental importance, yet this petty malignant did not scruple to attempt its discredit and destruction. And they shoot a soldier for a passive act like sleeping at his post!

Our motion-picture activities were a constant source of attack. Any "movie" man angered by our refusal to give him special privileges for money-making could slip up to Congress in full confidence that his lies would be shouted from the floor. The usual procedure was the making of the charge, the introduction of a resolution, and then futile efforts on my part to get a hearing. Once when I had secured permission to testify before the House Committee on Military Affairs, the chairman immediately gave out a statement that I had "refused to appear," and when I duly presented myself the committee declined to hear me on the usual "closed incident" grounds. This method permitted free circulation of lies even while it denied me the right of answer.

A chief offense of the Committee was its attitude in regard to "atrocity stories." From the very first we held that unprovable accounts of "horrors" were bound to result in undesirable reactions, for if the Germans could manage to refute one single charge, they would straightway use it to discredit our entire indictment. This view was shared by the War Department, and once on the authority of General Pershing, and a second time by direction of General March, we issued denials of gross exaggeration. Senator Poindexter, who made up in voice what he otherwise lacked, was the "atrocity expert of Congress," and because of these denials he charged the Committee with the circulation of German propaganda and devoted much of his time to a direct attempt to discredit our work. We sent him two of our pamphlets, German War Practices and German Treatment of Conquered Territory, perhaps the most terrible indictment ever framed against a nation, and explained to him that these established facts were preferable to baseless rumors, but it changed his malice in no degree.

In the Senate, however, most of my trouble came from enmities of long standing. The persistent attacks of Johnson of California and Reed of Missouri were in no sense due to what the Committee did or did not do, but were absolutely and entirely personal. Back in 1913 I wrote an article for Everybody's Magazine in which I tried to give a fair and dispassionate study of Johnson as a presidential candidate. It was not a flattering estimate and the abnormal vanity of the man never forgave it. The Johnson wattles swelled and reddened to a state of chronic inflammation as far as I was concerned, and my assumption of public office gave him the chance for which he had been waiting. As for Reed, I had known the fellow from the start of his career, and during the ten years in which I lived and wrote in Kansas City there was not a week in which I did not try to hold him up to the contempt and ridicule that were deserved by his character and abilities.

Another ancient foe was "Jim" Watson of Indiana. At various times in my writings I had voiced the opinion that the "Mulhall exposures" should have retired Watson from public life. His anger, coupled with malignant partizanship, made him at all times an unscrupulous enemy. Reed and Johnson contented themselves with daily abuse, but Watson was more thorough. One of his dignified activities was to send to Denver for a thorough investigation of my "past." Unfortunately, however, his agents in Colorado were not able to develop anything that shamed my character or general reputation, and were forced to rely entirely upon editorials that I had written in The Rocky Mountain News between 1912 and 1914. At that time I was supporting certain initiated measures that gave us the right to recall officials, including judges, and the phraseology in many cases reflected the heat of a bitter campaign.

In the midst of an important debate Senator Watson wasted hours of time by reading these editorials, written seven years before, and, what was worse, he did not scruple to separate passages from the context in order to produce false impressions. For instance, he recited certain charges in which I was made to appear as having alleged a diabolical conspiracy between the Supreme Court, President Taft, and the Vatican in order to sway and deliver the Catholic vote. As a matter of fact, the charges were not made by me, but by others, and I recited them merely in order to disapprove them. What he did, maliciously and dishonestly, was to put the charges in my mouth, carefully omitting the disproof.

Senator Sherman of Illinois charged on the floor that I had given a monopoly of war films to one moving-picture concern, and others accused me repeatedly of having turned over valuable motion-picture rights to Hearst. I spent two days trying to get before some committee to answer these plain, downright lies, but failed absolutely in the attempt. This, however, was about the only specific attack that ever came from Senator Sherman. As a rule, he confined himself to billingsgate directed against me personally, devoting whole days to speeches in which he characterized me as a "toad-eater," a swollen "rake hell," and other gentlemanly epithets. As a matter of fact, Sherman always aroused pity in me rather than anger. We were in the middle of a great war, with civilization hanging in the balance, and here was the Senator from a great state without ability to make any other contribution to the national service than dreary maunderings.

In open debate, Senator Penrose made the specific charge that the Committee on Public Information, after establishing certain rules of censorship, "shocked and surprised the censorship authorities" by its own violations of the rules. He cited the case of a despatch filed by the manager of the Central News in New York which was stopped by the censors until they learned that the information came from the Committee. Of his own volition, Mr. Edward Rascovar, president of the Central News, wrote a letter to The New York Times in which he said that "no such story was ever filed," and Captain Todd, head of the Naval Censorship, also branded the Penrose charge as absolute fiction. Penrose kept insisting that he "had the proof," but we were never able to make. him produce it.

Senator Lodge, in the course of a tirade, made this statement: "The question before us is that of Mr. Creel, a man to whom Congress refused to give power. The office he holds is created under the one-hundred-million-dollar fund given to the President for the general defense of the country. Mr. Creel, apparently, is part of the general defense of the country, and the little government publication which he is publishing, and the scores of people whom I am told he has employed to do what might be done by a stenographer and a couple of clerks, are being paid for out of that fund."

Either he was premeditatedly untruthful or else incredibly ignorant, for at the time the Committee's foreign activities were well known, its pamphlets were in circulation by the millions, the Four Minute Men were already famous, our motion pictures filled the theaters, and every Washington correspondent was receiving the official news from our office. I was always inclined to give Senator Lodge the benefit of the doubt, crediting him with ignorance rather than dishonesty. As some one once said, the Lodge mind was like the soil of New England — highly cultivated, but naturally sterile. An exceedingly dull man and a very vain one — deadly combination — his vanity fosters his ignorance by persistent refusal to confess it. More than any other Senator he has the conviction of omniscience, and his solemn expression and conservative whiskers persuade many people to accept him at his own valuation.

This "sniping" kept up steadily throughout the first year of the Committee's existence, each day bringing new charges and fresh abuse. Congressmen refused to see me and I could not get an opportunity to see Congress. We made attempt after attempt to establish a basis of understanding, if not friendship, for it was not only that the continual sharpshooting interfered with the workers, but it hurt the work itself. In virtually every foreign country we were preaching the gospel of an honest, idealistic America, and the task was difficult enough without having German propagandists quoting American Senators to the effect that the Committee on Public Information was a "pack of liars." And then in May, 1918, there came the explosion that brought things to a climax.

After a speech at the Church of the Ascension in New York, I yielded to the custom of Doctor Grant's forum and submitted to questions. The majority of the audience were "radicals," out of sympathy with the war, and their rapid-fire interrogations had the spat of bullets. At the end of an hour, when the questions were getting fewer and weaker, and when fatigue had robbed me of mental quickness, some fool asked what I thought about the "heart of Congress." A titter swept the crowd, and because the absurdity was so plain, I made the quick and thoughtless answer that "I had not been slumming for years." The moment the words left my mouth I could have bitten my tongue out, but I did not dare to give the incident point by attempting any withdrawal. It was one of those arrant, incredible stupidities for which there is no excuse. I suppose that the mention of Congress evoked instant thought of Reed, Penrose, Watson, Longworth, and others of their kind, and that the retort slipped out before my tired mind could call a halt.

As a matter of course, the morning papers ignored the carefully prepared speech of an hour, and made no comment upon the second hour of serious questioning, but put entire emphasis upon the "slumming" remark. My enemies in the House and Senate rallied with a cry of joy, and the dictionary was brought into play to prove that I had accused Congressmen of being "poor, dirty, degraded, and often vicious." The hatreds and accusations of the whole past year were resurrected, the inevitable Treadway introduced a resolution to institute contempt proceedings and the clamor rose high above the noise of the war itself. My one decent, honorable course was an open apology, for nothing had been farther from my thought than insult or defiance. My soul ached to make the flat statement that I was not referring to Congress as a whole, but had only Reed, Penrose, Watson, et al., in mind. I swallowed the impulse, however, and wrote as follows to Mr. Edward W. Pou, chairman of the House Rules Committee:

May 11, 1918. MY DEAR MR. Pou:

While the Rules Committee has not yet indicated any course of action with respect to the resolution of Mr. Treadway, I cannot permit myself to remain under the imputation of having passed public and insulting criticism upon the Congress of the United States.

My estimate of your honorable body is expressed in the pamphlet issued by the Committee on Public Information in October, 1917, under the title, First Session of the War Congress. So remarkable did the record of achievement appear to me that I had it summarized for general distribution, and in the signed preface I tried to bear testimony to the courage and patriotism of the men behind the record. Even were it not the case that I am so committed by the frank and uncompelled expression of an honest conviction, I beg you to believe that I am not so lost to the proprieties as to indulge in attack upon the legislative branch while I myself am in the service of the government.

At a time like this I would take shame to myself if I attempted to weaken in any degree the public confidence in any public body, much less the great legislative body of our nation.

At the Church of the Ascension, I had spoken for an hour, and for more than an hour answered questions bearing upon every phase of public misunderstanding. The question under discussion seemed so utterly silly, and its silliness was so well understood by the audience, that I made a quick and thoughtless answer that lent itself to exaggeration and distortion. I admit the indiscretion and regret it deeply.

I have given my thought so wholly to the service of this war that I have, perhaps, been careless in the matter of guarding every word of my utterances against the possibility of misconstruction. But I have the feeling that sincere men see down to the heart of intent and will appreciate my desire at all times to avoid anything that might create the dissension and confusion so dangerous to our necessary unity.

Please let me take this opportunity to assure you of my willingness at all times to co-ordinate the work of the Committee with the wish and thought of Congress. What we have done and are doing is always open to the inspection of the individual member or committee, and I cannot but feel that our task here would be wisely strengthened by more intimate contact and co-operation.

The fair-minded members of Congress accepted the apology in the spirit in which it was written, but those who hated me refused to be placated, and conceived an attack that had every promise of success. At the outset of the war the President had been voted the sum of fifty million dollars to be used for the National Security and Defense, a mobile body of money designed to meet emergencies and for the support of organizations whose necessities were too immediate to wait on red tape. The Committee on Public Information operated from this fund, and here was the spot at which the opposition struck. Word went to the President that he must discharge me if he expected to have the appropriation renewed on June 30th.

It was a blow that menaced the proper prosecution of the war, and as a matter of course there was but one thing for me to do. I saw the President at once and offered my resignation. He refused to accept it, generously insisting that one indiscretion was not heavy enough to weigh against a year of effective service. It was also the case, he pointed out, that the Committee was so peculiarly my own creation that its manifold and important activities would suffer hurt if transferred to other hands. Moreover, he was of the opinion that my "manly letter" met the situation, and that the unfortunate incident would soon be closed.

While deeply grateful, the position in which I found myself was unendurable. It was a certainty that the President would be attacked for keeping me, and while I had no doubt of his ability to win out on the issue, the fight constituted another burden that no one had the right to impose. What I suggested was this — that he should cut me loose from his fund as far as the domestic work of the Committee was concerned, letting me go to Congress with my own request for an appropriation for the Committee. This, I urged, would give me the longsought opportunity to make full and official report on the work, meeting accusers and accusations squarely and in the open. If I failed I would have had my day in court, while if I succeeded there would be an end to the cry that the President was "defying Congress" by his maintenance of the Committee.

I carried my point, filed my request for an appropriation, and on June llth presented myself before the House Committee on Appropriations to justify my official existence. Among those who faced me I did not find a friend. Mr. Sherley and Mr. Byrnes, the two Democrats, were of another school of political thought, while of the Republicans, Mr. Gillett and Mr. Mondell had only horror for my economic beliefs. As for "Uncle Joe" Cannon, he was on record with the statement that I "ought to be taken by the nape of the neck and the slack of the pants and thrown into space."

All Washington had its eyes on the hearing, and gossip had but one verdict. The Committee "was going to be exposed as a worthless, partizan body," not a dollar would be granted, nor would continued existence be allowed. For three days, eight hours a day, the Committee's activities and personnel were subjected to the most searching examination, and while the general attitude was critical to the point of hostility, they gave me a "square deal" every step of the way. Division by division, man by man, dollar by dollar, we offered the Committee for scrutiny, and when this inspection was finished, I insisted that every charge of partizanship, inaccuracy, and dishonesty should be taken up. One by one we nailed the lies that had bedeviled the Committee, laying down our proof, submitting to cross-examination, and inviting contradiction of our facts. The Fourth-of-July story, the aircraft publicity, the political affiliations of executives, my speeches, every published criticism and attack — all were considered in turn, and at the end there was a verdict in our favor with not even "Uncle Joe" raising his voice in dissent.

The one question remaining was as to my "temperamental qualifications." The editorials that I wrote in Colorado in 1912 and 1913 in support of the Initiative and Referendum, the right of the people to recall elected officials, etc., were read at length, and on the following morning the press carried the statement that I had "recanted." While it is true that I regretted certain phrases, I recanted no belief, but asserted my continuing faith in these words:

MR. CREEL. I want to say that every single thing in which I have believed and every single thing for which I have fought — and this is without exception — is to-day law, either in federal statutes, state statutes, or in municipal charters. There is not a single advocacy of mine that has not been approved by American majorities. My crime is that I fought for these things before they became fashionable. I think it is significant also that it has never once been charged that I have intruded a single pre-war enthusiasm into the discharge of my duties here; that no allegation has been made that I have allowed the specific reforms in which I believed before the war to influence me or even to appear in my work since our declaration of war. They go back ten years to things I wrote, but avoid carefully any investigation of my activities since April 6, 1917.

THE CHAIRMAN. Aside from the character of the editorials themselves, the charges that have been brought, in large measure, are that they show the viewpoint, touching the Presidency, touching the Constitution, touching the Supreme Court, and touching the Congress, of one who believed that these various institutions were of such a character as to prevent the man holding such views from being now the advocate of this government and of democracy in its warfare against autocratic government. That is the essence, is the gravamen of the charge, as I understand it.

MR. CREEL. Never at any time have I urged any instrument of change except the ballot; it is true that I have urged constitutional changes, nor do I feel that this was sacrilege. I think it is one of the greatest documents ever written, but times change, new needs arise, and I hold it well within the rights of citizens to alter and advance. Never at any time have I preached any doctrine of revolution, only the propriety of change. I have always held steadfastly, and to-day more so than ever, to the belief that this is the greatest government in the history of the world; that its institutions represent all that is best in human thought and all that is best in human endeavor. My animating impulse has been the belief in larger civic intelligence and enthusiasm; my effort to get citizenship, the electorate, to take a more active interest in governmental affairs — to vote honestly and solemnly almost. As a consequence, I have urged all those things that would more closely identify people with government, seeking to intensify interest in public business and public affairs. I do not believe there is a man in the United States who has a firmer belief in our form of government and in our institutions than myself, and if I made attacks upon them it was because I felt there were certain things which were the proper subjects of change.

MR. MONDELL. You realize, I assume, that the German propagandists could make very effective use now of these utterances of the gentleman who, at the present time, is at the head of the publicity of the government and is leading the propaganda to express and prove the splendor and justice of our institutions?

MR. CREEL. I feel that if the gentleman who introduced these editorials into the Record had troubled to make some investigation of my present work, instead of going clear out of Colorado to find out what I wrote seven years ago, probably the German propagandists would not have any chance for exploitation, Mr. Mondell.

At the close, character witnesses" were put on the stand, as it were, in an effort to develop my "temperamental" fitness or unfitness. Mr. Blair and Mr. Byoir, business men and Republicans, were asked as to my executive abilities, and Professor Ford, as a Republican and as one holding the sane and conservative post of dean of the University of Minnesota, was told to give his frank opinion of me. The statement of Professor Ford contains points that lift it above the personal:

MR. FORD. I never saw Mr. Creel until I came down to Washington in response to a telegram from him. It was through no personal connection of any kind, so that my view of him has been to that extent simply that of a man dispassionately watching him. He was directing what seemed to me to be one of the most important functions that had been created as a result of war activities. I feel that I can say now that it seems to me that Mr. Creel has really succeeded in this work. Apparently he lacked all of the qualifications that most of us would have put together as making up the ideal man to do this job. He succeeded because he lacked most of the qualities and all of the experience that an average wiseacre would have said were essential to success. If anybody had asked me to sit down and say what kind of man should be put in such a position, I should have said, "This man must have certain ideas about administration and organization; he must have worked in organizations; and he must be a man who sits down and thinks out plans and then has the plan of an organization all charted out with which to execute his plans." I should have said that he must be a man who would be able to drive those other men in the organization as the usual so-called executive type drive other men.

This war has put most such standards of judging men entirely out of business. What Mr. Creel really was — I saw it at once — was an educator running what might be called a war Chautauqua. Now, for the purpose of doing that, the man who has fixed ideas, and who has had an experience that makes him discard everything except certain "safe and sane" things, would have followed his own rule-of-thumb methods, and would never have exhibited the ideals and encouraged the development of the things that have gone on here. The "safe and sane" type could have kept himself out of the press and free from criticism, but the Committee would have early made its appearance in the obituary column. The thing wanted in this work was not any definable administrative experience or any set of fixed ideas about organization. What you want are two things: You want a man with the right spirit, and that spirit can be covered in just one word, and that is "service." The second thing is that you want a man who is open-minded and responsive and quick to accept suggestions and see possibilities beyond the vision of the man who makes them. I think that Mr. Creel possesses pre-eminently these two essential things.

That is the reason why this Committee has grown so flexible, has met situations that none of us foresaw, and has done a work so big that none of us could ever conceive for a moment it was within the range of possibilities in twelve months. The Committee has done big things and worked effectively. Mr. Creel took things that the normal routine mind would have discarded. I know what my reaction was when a man came from Chicago to suggest to us that we take the Four Minute Men. I hesitated, but Mr. Creel said, go ahead. Nothing like that had ever been done. It was a perilous experiment in many ways to organize men all over the country to speak for the government with something like the authority of the government. They had never had such responsibility and one could easily imagine indiscretions that would keep us in hot water. Mr. Creel took it as a form of service to meet something that had never occurred before, and he was right, and the thing has worked out well.

A man who had worked in the government in the ordinary way would have said at once, "The government cannot go into the motion-picture business." But here was a man who saw what others had not seen clearly enough in the past, that such a thing has infinite possibilities for good if it is organized in the right way, and that you can teach through the eyes and through these pictures what neither the printed nor spoken word can teach. He caught the idea and he pushed it; and its possibilities as an instrument in patriotic education are evident. I could go from point to point, but I want to emphasize this fact, that he has constantly kept before his mind the idea of service and just doing the job and thinking of everything simply in relation to the great task. Notwithstanding the extraordinary situation which confronted him in an office which brought endless strain and ceaseless labor, he has made decisions that were right in the long run and which have been extraordinarily fruitful in results. He has made them quickly, made them advisedly, and he has done the work of a real executive. We have had a sense of responsibility, but everything we have done has been under his supervision. It may be said that this Committee, in its spirit of service, in its willingness to get behind any good thing and claim no vainglorious credit, has really shown the spirit of service that has animated the chairman. All of us had this spirit, of course, or we would not have gone into the work and stuck to it through misrepresentation and misunderstanding; but that spirit of service would not have been dominant in the Committee on Public Information except under a man who clearly was above self-seeking and pettiness.

When it was all over I had the feeling that the Committee had won respect and approval. Developments bore me out, for, while cuts were made, an appropriation of $1, 250,000 was voted. The committee members were unanimous in allowing it, and, as I have stated in a previous chapter, Republicans and Democrats were equally generous on the floor of the House, reporting that the work was important and that it had been discharged competently and patriotically.

All of us had the hope that this would end our troubles, but the respite was brief. The press generally ignored the hearing, and after a lapse of time sufficient to dull memory the same old lies were brought forth again and put through their spavined paces. 6