The Foreign Mail Service

A1 the outset it was seen that the wireless and the cables, even used to the utmost, could not meet our foreign needs. It was not enough to give the world the daily news of America's war effort, our military progress, and the official declarations and expositions with respect to our war aims and determinations. There were lies of long standing that had to be met and defeated — lies that attacked America as "dollar-mad," that maligned our free institutions, that denied our liberty and our justice. What was needed were short descriptives of our development as a nation and a people; our social and industrial progress; our schools; our laws; our treatment of workers, women and children; a mail service, in fact, that could be taken by our foreign representatives, translated, rewritten if necessary, and pushed into the foreign press to the greatest possible extent.

Mr. Ernest Poole was given charge of this new undertalcing, and, with the assistance of Mr. Paul Kennaday, he gathered about him a volunteer staff of brilliant men and women writers.

One feature that would have justified the work, had it stood alone, was a series of weekly or monthly letters by such well-known authors as Owen Wister, Booth Tarkington, Gertrude Atherton, William Shepard, Ellis Parker Butler, Henry Kitchell Webster, Robert Herrick, Arthur

18 261 Gleason, Will Payne, Mary Shipman Andrews, Anne O'Hagan Shinn, and Walter Prichard Eaton. Other distinguished contributors were William Dean Howells, Ida Tarbell, Wallace Irwin, Meredith Nicholson, Fannie Hurst, Edna Ferber, Samuel Merwin, and William Allen White, also scores of government experts, university and college professors, and men and women of specialized abilities. The Foreign Press Bureau was, in effect, a "feature service" operating on demand. Our foreign representatives would cable, "Can use to good advantage one thousand words on American lumber industry," or on equal suffrage, or on university extension, or on unions, or on free-milk depots, or on the use of the schoolhouse as a community center, or the co-operative marketing of dairy products in Wisconsin, or the "honor and trust" system of Colorado prisons, or the jury system of the United States, or municipal bath-houses, or free legal-aid bureaus, or a short history of the United States for children, etc. And straightway the home office would get in touch with "the" authorities on the various subjects, and have them turn out the signed articles. For instance, we made Booth Tarkington drop everything to write "American Facts and German Propaganda," an article so virile and attractive that after millions had read it in the English papers the British government made arrangements with our London representative to reprint, and at its own expense distributed eight hundred and fifty thousand pamphlets in England. It was also widely used in other countries.

In describing war aims and national activities the Foreign Press Bureau took the statements of the President, of the Secretary of State, and of other government officials, material from several hundred newspapers, weekly and monthly magazines, also the pronouncements of prominent citizens and organizations throughout the country, giving every shade of opinion.

About one-half of the service consisted of news and feature articles, government bulletins, etc., describing the activities of the army and navy — war preparations of all kinds, the recruiting of volunteers, the method and operation of the selective draft, the work in the cantonments, the going of our troops to France, and the many increasing activities there. Also the making of munitions, the building of ships, the vast work of the United States navy, and the rapidly deepening spirit all over the United States of unity and determination in the prosecution of the war.

In addition we dealt with various fields of activities, such as agriculture and food conservation, industry and finance, labor, education, religion, and medicine, in relation to the work of the war and the growth of our democracy. These articles were a means of reaching a wider public abroad — for owing to the lack of paper the foreign newspapers were greatly diminished in size, and although a large amount of our material did succeed in gaining a place in their columns, we felt it urgent to go farther, and by sending many special articles and getting them published in the trade and other special journals and magazines of each country, we gradually widened our circle of readers.

On the staff, or working as volunteer helpers from outside, were men and women with a special knowledge of England, France, Italy, Russia, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Serbia, Spain, and Latin- American countries. With Hamilton Owens as editor-in-chief, it was their work to write or edit supplementary material of particular interest to each country. Prof. Arthur Livingston, the editor for Italy, could write colloquial Italian and had a good working knowledge of the principal newspapers in Italy. He wrote for such papers special news letters, which were sent by mail or cable, describing activities of Italians in this country, their support of the war, etc.; also editorial opinion here as it concerned our relations with Italy and the part that country played in the war; messages from administration officials here on Italian operations and comment from United States public men on Italian problems and events; also statements by various well-known Italians who visited this country during the war. The various official missions from Italy were in constant touch with this office; we supplemented the official programs arranged by other organizations, bringing the visitors into touch with people they desired to meet, getting publicity for them in various ways, and furnishing them with special material for use after their return to Europe. In this connection we instituted the plan for having a ship christened the Piave and for making the event an occasion for the exchange of official and popular expressions of esteem between the governments of Italy and of the United States.

More or less along these lines special articles were also sent to England, France, and Spain in large numbers, being written or edited either by staff editors or by volunteer helpers from outside. At first by Mr. Elias Tobenkin, and later by Dr. Francis Snow, similar work was done for Russia whenever that was possible, meeting Bolshevist and German statements against us by articles describing true conditions in this country, our democracy at home, and our purpose in the war, as well as the wide-spread friendliness here at first toward the Russian revolution and the willingness to support any effort which gave, in our opinion, hope of a real and lasting practical democracy there.

For Austria and Germany articles were obtained by Doctor Groszmann, of our staff, from prominent German- Americans here loyal to this country and making an appeal to the people of Germany and Austria to throw off their old rulers and begin to re-establish themselves in the good opinion of the world. Such articles made it plain that the warfare conducted by the German and Austrian governments had made these countries hated, not only by native Americans, but by those of German birth. In this connection we also ran various articles exposing German methods of propaganda.

For the Scandinavian countries and Holland, a bureau under Mr. Edwin Bjorkman did such good work that it soon became impossible to pick up a Scandinavian publication of any kind without finding references to America, indicating an eager desire to understand what this country stood for and what it intended to do in the future. It was through Sweden, among others, that some of our material directed to the Germans was sent after the signing of the armistice.

A pictorial service grew up in response to increased demands from our agents in foreign countries. Under the direction of Mr. W. H. Whitton and Mr. Frank Tuttle, it provided each week photographs, cuts, and mats to illustrate our articles, photographs to the number of fifteen hundred per week for display upon easels in shop-windows, and some sixty thousand large news pictorials to be placed in the many thousands of shop-windows in foreign countries which were available for our use. Seven hundred and fifty wooden easels were made, each carrying twelve pictures, and the resident commissioners distributed them and provided for the weekly change of photographs that gave each easel the attraction of a "show." The pictorial service also distributed widely the war posters of this country and millions of picture post-cards showing forth our war activities. The window hangers were sent out in sets of six each week with captions in various languages, such as English, French, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch. Unimprinted display sheets were sent to Russia, China, Japan, Korea, some parts of India, etc. For the Oriental countries a special version was printed, with a wide margin on the right-hand side, thus allowing the space necessary for imprinting the language of the country receiving them. With all unimprinted material either English printed samples or English captions were inclosed.

Through various organizations of United States exporters to foreign countries an Export Service was established under Mr. Edward Bernays, beginning with Latin America and finally taking in a large part of Europe. Our articles and photographs were printed regularly in the several large export journals, and from our articles we made, in various languages, brief inserts telling of war aims and activities to be inclosed with business catalogues and also to be sent in tens of thousands of letters mailed weekly from the United States. In obtaining means of distribution, the confidential lists of many great commercial interests were used. The exporters put themselves solidly behind every resident commissioner, and the success of the pictorial service was entirely due to the fact that six hundred and fifty branches of American business houses scattered over the world put all their window space at the Committee's disposal.

The distribution of pamphlets was made by mail or direct delivery. Important utterances of the President and documents prepared in each country with a view to answering local questions were printed locally in numbers running from five to thirty thousand and distributed through co-operation with American, British, French, and Italian commercial and government organizations in each country.

The American reading-rooms opened by resident commissioners received their supplies from the Foreign Press Bureau, and lectures delivered in different countries by nationals were also based on material furnished by the home office. Data regarding the United States, including standard magazines, books, and periodicals, were furnished to public and private bodies and schools, and public libraries were supplied with American newspapers and periodicals, and in some cases particularly desirable books relating to public questions.

The Foreign Press Bureau, in conjunction with the Export Division, also devoted itself to the preparation of particular pamphlet and news material for South America, under the direction of Lieutenant Ackerman, U. S. N., attached to the staff. It furnished the headquarters in the different countries with posters from all the branches of the government devoted to war-work and aided the bureaus in forwarding campaigns for War, Savings Stamps, Liberty Loan, and Red Cross, and other activities in each of their territories. It arranged for the publication in all magazines in the United States having foreign circulation for such articles and editorials indicating our attitude toward world questions. In addition to serving the accredited commissioners of the Committee on Public Information, a Bureau of Latin-American Affairs sent pamphlet and news material, pictures, cuts, mats, and the pictorial news service to a large number of volunteer distributors throughout Mexico and Central and South America.

The Foreign Press Bureau, while setting forth in detail the aims and ideals of America, the determinations and war efforts of a free people, also put great emphasis upon acquainting the rest of the world with the facts of American life. We wanted other nations to know us, to understand us, and in consequence the work concentrated in certain great fields. For instance, with respect to education, we endeavored to reach the hundreds of thousands of teachers in foreign countries through the press and to bind them together more closely in friendship and good will. They represented a great international force hitherto unmobilized, but united by multiple bonds of similar aims and activities. Throughout the neutral and Allied world enemy propagandists had circulated among them every conceivable distortion of our education and ideals. These needed to be counteracted by truthful interpretations, which, however, sought to avoid tendencies toward superlatives, and to allow accurate statements of fact to carry their own story.

Each week we sent out articles on education, edited by Dr. William H. Hirt, which were forwarded to some thirty-five foreign countries, where our representatives received, translated, and passed them on to the press of the country in question. There, as a rule, they appeared either in the public, the literary, or the technical educational press. Many of these articles were especially written for us on request by leading educators all over the United States.

Further, the educational press of the United States generously gave permission to use their current articles, and also signified a readiness to accept our proposed exchange service. This exchange program was based on the idea that only as people have things in common can they co-operate. Basic among these things is knowledge about one another. Unfortunately, the teachers of the world know little about one another. The great mass of the graded school-teachers have had little chance for travel or study of other peoples. So while we asked our educators to interpret our educational system and ideals and progress to others, we also asked foreign nations to interpret their systems to us, feeling that we had much to learn from these older cultures. In England, in Spain, and elsewhere the government authorized a native educator to mobilize such writings of his people for us.

For the purpose of translating such articles over here a large staff of volunteer translators offered their services without compensation. Special requests cabled from certain countries were met, and the articles, often illustrated with pictures of American school equipment and life, went by the next mail.

With respect to food, fuel, and textiles, our aim was to emphasize the position of the United States as the greatest source of the world's reserve supplies of food, fuels, and textiles, and to show this country's determination to keep the Allied fighting forces and civilian populations provided with the necessities of life. We emphasized throughout the patriotism, self-sacrifice, and good will toward Allied nations among the people of the United States as expressed in food and fuel production and conservation,

Also, at all times it was endeavored to reflect the spirit, progress, and development of the rural United States, especially in the direction of greater democracy, increased interest in co-operation, organization, and farmer representation in national affairs, and the application of principles of the larger internationalism to the life and interests of the farmers of America. Principles and measures whereby the government is co-operating with and assisting the farmer were also discussed, explained, and their significance pointed out.

The editor of this division, Mr. E. L. D. Seymour, sent out regular weekly letters on farm and crop conditions, Food Administration activities and achievements, and the fuel situation. Posters, administration bulletins, Department of Agriculture reports, and other illuminating publications were sent in considerable quantity.

With the generous co-operation of many trade and industrial journals and organizations, we set forth the manifold activities of the various trades and industries in support of the war. The editors of many of the leading trade journals in the country became regular volunteer contributors, giving us weekly or monthly reviews of the progress of war- work in their particular fields. These special news letters were sent to the foreign agents, together with a list of trade journals in each foreign country, asking our agents to try to place such special articles in special journals abroad.

In the field of finance, we described the financial strength of this country, the good will of the people, and the evidence of democracy in the various financial measures carried out by the government. We used reports from the Treasury Department, and also statements issued by that department from time to time; fully described the various Liberty Loan drives in popular news articles, and we obtained from the editor of The American Bankers' Magazine, Mr. Elmer Youngman, weekly financial articles, which in many foreign countries our agents readily placed in the financial columns of the foreign press. We also obtained from time to time statements especially written for us by well-known bankers and economists in this country.

From many angles the bureau established the warm support of the war by the labor elements in this country. Our editor, Mr. Norman Matson, used largely the reports and statements of government bodies dealing with labor, as well as those of the American Federation of Labor and various state and municipal bodies belonging to the federation. We ran statements of prominent labor leaders, and published articles describing labor activities in shipyards and other centers where war- work was carried on. We gave the workers' and the employers' sides, and showed the new relations and mutual understandings between employer and employed, which in many places were built up during the work of the war.

As for religion, Mrs. Shinn of our staff (better known as Anne O'Hagan) showed the churches of all denominations rallying to the support of the war. We made it a special point to answer in Catholic countries abroad the German false allegations that in this country the Catholic Church

1270 was being persecuted by the government and was hostile to the war. We ran statements by prominent men both in the Catholic and Protestant churches, and also by leaders of the Jewish religion. We described war activities of the churches, and ran extracts from sermons setting forth the ideals and war aims of this nation.

In medicine, we described both in popular and in more technical articles the activities of the medical profession in the war. Doctor Liber of our staff used largely the reports and statements from the Surgeon-General's office, also from the Red Cross, and from many non-government bodies having to do not only with strictly military work, but also with the public health.

The press material of the bureau, beginning with a weekly service of about 30,000 words and running as high as 80,000 in English and 20,000 in Spanish, was sent regularly to 17 foreign commissioners of the Committee, to 22 diplomatic and consular representatives in Countries where there were no Committee commissioners, to 10 United States citizens abroad co-operating as agents of the Committee, to the British ministry of labor, and to 18 accredited correspondents in this country of foreign newspapers. Close touch was maintained with all these commissioners and agents through letters sent out regularly once a week and through frequent cables. Advised through such correspondence of the openings in each country for articles along various lines, the service to each country became more and more specialized as the work continued. We were thus enabled, also, to serve as a clearing-house for methods of publicity that had been tried with success in each country, such as the distribution of quantities of small American flags, buttons carrying the flags of the United States and those of our allies, maps of Europe for window exhibition, showing the location of the American forces on the western front, sets of American band music, American newspapers, magazines, and books for the equipment of small reading-rooms in connection with our foreign offices.

The extent to which our press material was printed in foreign newspapers and magazines week after week was remarkable, testifying at once to the new interest of the world in things American and to the ability with which this office was able to meet this demand with newspaper and magazine material prepared by a corps of experienced writers on our staff and by a large number of volunteers, who generously and repeatedly responded to our appeals for articles on special subjects.