The Work in Holland

HOLLAND must be regarded as having offered the main avenue of attack upon the public opinion of the German masses. It was not, like other neutral countries adjacent to German territory, the scene of international conferences or sinister outside influences, but presented a clear and homogeneous field for the dissemination of information. The information provided was therefore designed to gain direct circulation in Holland, but the content was always chosen with regard to the ultimate effect on the German masses.

Henry Suydam, European correspondent for The Brooklyn Eagle, was the man decided upon to serve as commissioner for Holland. It was not only that his work stood out by reason of its strength, breadth, and analytical keenness, but personal reports placed even larger emphasis upon his personality. It was a difficult post to which Mr. Suydam was called, and it is a deserved tribute to say that he carried the work forward to success without a single blunder. The following excerpts from his report will show the manner in which the Dutch situation was handled:

The general problem confronting the Committee on Public Information in the Netherlands was twofold: (1) To enlighten Dutch public opinion with regard to the fairness and detachment of the United States, as well as to provide an adequate picture of American war effort as a factor in international affairs, and (2) to use Holland, as far as that might legitimately be done without committing a belligerent act, as a means of approach to all classes of Germans, who were to be convinced that the United States was strong and would use that strength for the common good. The effort was to obtain facts emphasizing these points, and to present these facts to Dutch and Germans with due force and precision.

When my work in Holland began, the Dutch press — through which the German press maintained a large degree of contact with the United States — was without adequate American news. American editorial comment appeared in the Dutch press when it furthered the peculiar interests of some foreign news agency, and not often otherwise. American news was frequently selected by these agencies for interested reasons. Reuter and Havas were, in the opinion of Dutch editors, nothing more than the mouthpieces of the British and French governments, and as such, little better, in effect, than the German Wolff Bureau. It was perhaps unavoidable, but none the less unfortunate, that many of the earlier of President Wilson's speeches reached the Germans first through these agencies. With the co-operation of John W. Garrett, American Minister at The Hague, I never ceased to insist that these speeches should reach the Germans first either through an American or Dutch source. In two or three instances the text of such speeches was telegraphed direct to me, and distributed to a Dutch news agency, which either telegraphed the text direct to the German press or handed it to German correspondents, who telegraphed it to their newspapers, as notably in the case of the Frankfort Gazette. The Frankfort Gazette was the organ of the Reichstag majority parties, and publication of the President's speeches therein, in correct text, some hours previous to publication in the semi-official German government organs, such as the North German Gazette and the Cologne Gazette, forced them to publish accurate, unaltered versions. This method not only purveyed them to the German masses without outside interference, but often had the effect of forcing the German government to issue the full text. When the method was finally adopted of issuing the President's speeches on the American wireless, the text appeared fully and quickly in both the Dutch and German press, and the question was solved.

Although Reuter's Telegraph Agency offered very great and very unstinted assistance at all times, I felt that, however irreproachable its motive for the common cause, it had identified its service too exactly with the British government to be of exclusive value to the United States in a neutral country, and therefore, although I did not discriminate against it, I saw no reason why Reuter should be favored over the two Dutch agencies. These were the Hollandsche Nieuws Bureau (The Hague) and the Persbureau M. S. Vas Dias (Amsterdam), and although the former especially was under some suspicion as having too close German connections, I felt that its full use for our own purposes was justifiable, especially as it was the one Dutch news service of consequence. A regular service of American news, selected by the Committee on Public Information in New York, under my constant correction and advice, was telegraphed to me daily, together with a special service from general headquarters of the American Expeditionary Forces. Both of these services were edited and issued, in various forms and through various means, direct to the Dutch press. I was also furnished with a daily copy of the American news wireless from a Dutch receiving station, and issued sections of these items to such Dutch agencies as did not operate a wireless receiving station and, in many instances, to Reuter as well.

Although there were no Dutch newspaper men in the United States, all the larger Dutch dailies maintained men in London and Paris. It was my plan to have these men in close touch with American official sources of information in those capitals. While in England on an official mission, I gave a dinner, in the mess of the American Embassy in London, to the four Dutch editors resident in England (representing Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, Handelsblad and Telegraaf of Amsterdam, and Nieuws van den Dag of The Hague. There were present representatives of the American army and navy and of all other departments of the government functioning in England, all of whom expressed willingness to provide information for the Dutch editors on demand. From subsequent information coming from official sources I learned that the effect of this entertainment on the Dutch editors was to give them a new conception of Americans and Americanism.

The advantage thus gained was quickly followed up. On June 5, 1918, I escorted Dr. Peter Geyl, editor in England of Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, and Mr. E. W. de Jong, editor in England of Handelsblad (Amsterdam), to Queenstown for an inspection of the American destroyer base, engaged in convoy and anti-submarine work. Upon returning from Queenstown, the correspondents had a long interview with Admiral Sims, who explained with great frankness the methods and policies of our anti-submarine campaign. On June 14th we arrived in Paris, proceeding thence to the French coast at St. Nazaire, and following the American lines of communication to the front in Lorraine. Thus the representatives of the two most important newspapers in Holland had followed the course of an American soldier from the moment his transport was picked up by the convoys until he had arrived in a front-line trench. From this trip, which was one of the first excursions of neutral editors to the American front, there resulted nineteen long telegrams and eight mail stories in the Dutch press, all of which were copied extensively in the German press, and thus provided the first independent neutral testimony of the size of American effort. The interview with Admiral Sims on the success of our anti-submarine measures provoked much protest from German naval experts, and Mr. de Jong's telegram, "The American phase of the war has begun," was produced in all the important German newspapers and circulated by the semi-official Wolff Bureau.

From confidential information which reached me through a direct source which I do not feel can yet be disclosed, I learned about August 1, 1918, that when Mr. de Jong's figures regarding the size of the American establishment in France were published, both the German Foreign Office and the General Staff summoned the Berlin correspondent of the Handelsblad and demanded to know whether Mr. de Jong was the type of man who would allow himself to be bought by the American government. It was apparent that the German authorities were simply staggered at the direct revelations made as the result of this excursion, which I regard as one of the most important single contributions of our whole work in the Netherlands.

Arrangements were later made for the Dutch editors in Paris to make similar trips, under the auspices of the Paris office of the Committee on Public Information.

To summarize, then, our solution of the problem of providing adequate American news to the Dutch press, through Dutch or American sources, I was able to accomplish the following: (1) To provide direct telegraphic and wireless news and comment from the United States to Dutch news agencies and newspapers; (2) to establish contact between Dutch editors in Great Britain and France with American news sources, and, furthermore,

(3) to maintain close personal contact with the more important Dutch editors in Holland; and (4) later to issue, in the form of a daily bulletin, translations of the more significant news items and comment appearing in the American press during each twenty -four hours — a service that was sent regularly to some seventy-six Dutch newspapers. Through these means I was not only able to reduce the suspicion of Dutch editors of American news served through non-American sources and censorship, but to establish direct news communication be een the two countries.

The German government — whether the Imperial government before the armistice or the Republican government afterward — maintained a very elaborate organization on which millions of marks were expended. It was, of course, impossible for me to fight such an organization with its own weapons. Frequent attacks, however, were made on the United States, either by means of deliberate lies or perversions of the truth. These were constantly contradicted in the Dutch press by means of special information telegraphed from Washington, at my request, from the government department concerned. The German propaganda fell into well-reorganized lines of policies, such as questioning the intellectual sincerity of American war aims, belittling our physical effort, and attempting to corrupt relations between the Allied and Associated Governments. We were able to fight the Germans along these same lines, and by insisting, time after time, on a given point, to induce them ultimately to abandon the gesture as worthless.

The German so-called "intellectual propaganda" in Holland was very effective. Prof. Hans Delbrueck, professor in the University of Berlin, and leader of a group of German Moderates, made frequent excursions to Holland, for the purpose of lecturing at the universities and talking with prominent Dutchmen. He was usually accompanied by Kurt Hahn, a young German educated in England, who was believed to provide the lines of attack to the German "intellectual propagandists" in Holland.

This form of German propaganda was very successful. Although my remedy for this — the establishment of a two-year lectureship at the University of Leyden in American history, held by a prominent American academician, who was to have revived historical Holland-American unity with a living sentiment— was not adopted, we were able to make considerable progress. Lieut. Leonard van Noppen, U. S. N. R. F., former Queen Wilhelmina Professor of Dutch in Columbia University, and assistant naval attache at The Hague, was of very great service in reaching the intellectual aristocracy of Holland. I myself made it a point to know as many important Dutchmen as possible, to meet them frequently, and to set them right, in short conversations, on many points of American policy which they professed to misunderstand. John C. Wiley, second secretary of the American Legation in The Hague, and Paul L. Edwards, commercial attache, were of very great assistance in this difficult work.

Although the use of the pamphlet as an educational measure had been very general in Europe during the war, I was convinced that, for our work, the extensive printing of such matter would be a waste of money. We issued only one booklet — a collection of the pronouncements of President Wilson concerning the League of Nations, comprising excerpts from his speeches and statements from February 1, 1916, to September 27, 1918. Of these, ten thousand copies were printed, and distributed to universities, schools, public libraries, editors, members of both Houses of Parliament, members of the government, and other persons of importance. The residue, after such distribution, was sent to various persons on the mailing-list of the German propaganda in Holland, a copy of which had come into my hands.

Special articles on various American subjects from American magazines and reviews were translated, however, and issued to the Dutch press or to individual editors, and these, in my opinion, were of far greater value than any cheap pleading by pamphlets scattered about in barber shops and bars.

The second most important aspect of our work was education by means of motion pictures. Upon my arrival in Holland from England I found several consignments of very old and unsuitable films, dealing mostly with current events in the United States. Furthermore, there was no co-operation between the British, French, and Italians. Mr. George F. Steward, representative of the British Ministry of Information in Holland, aided me in establishing an inter-Allied cinema committee, which functioned in connection with an inter- Allied blockade committee, composed of the commercial attaches of the four Allied legations. As the Dutch exhibitors, to say nothing of the Dutch audiences, had been subject to war films for almost four years when the Committee on Public Information in Holland arrived on the scene, it was my conviction that only the most unusual American war films would have effect. Moreover, it was our opinion that straight American commercial films of superior sort would be a new and invaluable form of education for the Dutch public. I therefore cabled to Washington, pointing out the shortage of good Allied war films, together with the dangers arising from an adequate German supply, and requesting a large consignment of straight commercial films as well. As a result of this telegram, Mr. Llewellyn R. Thomas of New York, a motion-picture expert, was despatched to The Hague, and arrived with several hundred thousand feet of war, educational, and commercial film, all of which was sold, not given, to the Dutch exhibitors, for the total sum of $57,340 . 80, with a very considerable profit to the American producers, for whose future benefit, moreover, an American market was thus established.

On November 4, 1918, a private performance of "America's Answer" was given to the general staffs of the Dutch army and navy in The Hague. The Dutch officers expressed themselves as greatly impressed, and many in the audience showed their appreciation by rising when President Wilson and General Pershing were thrown on the screen.

A regular supply of photographs dealing with American war-making was received from Washington and general headquarters of the American Expeditionary Forces. These were exhibited in shop-windows in the larger cities and towns throughout Holland. They were regularly sent to Dutch photographic agencies and published in the Dutch illustrated press. The Dutch agencies also sent them to German agencies in Berlin and Vienna, and many of them were printed in the German illustrated journals.

There was a noticeable absence of books and magazines in the Dutch libraries concerning American topics. Apart from the distribution of American newspapers, reviews, magazines, and trade publications, four complete sets of books were obtained from the Foreign Section of the Committee on Public Information in Washington. These books, written by American experts in international law, politics, history, economics, social conditions, and various other aspects of Americanism, were presented to the Nieuwe of Litteraire Societeit, the largest club in Holland, situated in The Hague, and frequented by all important governmental officers and business men, to the Royal Library in The Hague, to the University of Leyden, and to the State University of Amsterdam. There were about twenty-five volumes in each set.

It was a settled policy to act in very close co-operation with the Legation, and more especially with Mr. John W. Garrett, the Minister in The Hague. As the Committee on Public Information was in a general sense the mouthpiece of the United States government in Holland, I considered it of the utmost importance to acquaint myself with the general business of the Legation as far as it affected relations between the two countries. Although the Committee on Public Information was a separate organization, I maintained close contact with the diplomatic situation as conceived by the Legation, and in return received the advice and assistance of the Minister. Our relations were always most cordial, and both of us were able to perform services for the other which ordinarily would have lain outside our regular duties.

Through the kindness of the Minister in allowing us to install a motion-picture projector in his residence, we were able to reach many of the influential members of the Dutch government and of the Allied and neutral diplomatic corps who otherwise would never have been available for our motion-picture educational campaign.

I wish to record my own opinion that the activities of the Foreign Section of the Committee on Public Information had throughout a certain definite constructive value in helping to create that firmest assurance against the sudden passionate crises that so often lead to war — namely, mutual understanding and sympathy between Europe and America, based upon the freest possible interchange of exact and continuous information, in the form of news. This, it seemed to me, was an effort that could be made incredibly inspiring. That it often proved so in the case of important official and non-official Hollanders to whom I presented Holland-American questions, and indeed the general international situation, in that light, was sufficient justification of my own policy of stating facts about the United States, instead of resorting to the essentially weaker European method of special pleading.

In conclusion, I wish to state that the work of the Committee on Public Information in Holland was designed to show to the Dutch, and, as might be, to the Germans, what Americanism, as a moral force in operation, really meant. My work started at a very critical time, when neither the dignity of President Wilson's position nor the strength of our Americanism that supported it was credited either in Holland or within the German borders. The details of what was accomplished remain a matter of record. In giving to the Dutch public an array of facts through American sources, we appealed to both their reason and sentiment — not through a blatant propaganda, but through restrained presentation of the truth — to a degree which must have lasting effect on the good relations between the Netherlands and the United States.