---
title: The Matter in Hand
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/01-the-matter-in-hand/
description: The Matter in Hand, from Propaganda Technique in the World War by Harold D. Lasswell.
section: FRAME
---

![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg)

[Library](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/) · Book · [Propaganda Technique in the World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/)

# The Matter in Hand

This text

- **Work:** [Propaganda Technique in the World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/)
- **Author:** Harold D. Lasswell
- **Published:** 1927

Full details

- **Rights:** Published in London and New York in 1927, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States (works published in 1930 or earlier). Lasswell died in 1978, so the text may still be protected in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years; readers outside the United States should check their own law.

Chapters

1. [The Matter in Hand](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/01-the-matter-in-hand/)
2. [Propaganda Organization](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/02-propaganda-organization/)
3. [War Guilt and War Aims](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/03-war-guilt-and-war-aims/)
4. [Satanism](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/04-satanism/)
5. [The Illusion of Victory](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/05-the-illusion-of-victory/)
6. [Preserving Friendship](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/06-preserving-friendship/)
7. [Demoralizing the Enemy](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/07-demoralizing-the-enemy/)
8. [Conditions and Methods of Propaganda: A Summary](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/08-conditions-and-methods-of-propaganda-a-summary/)
9. [The Results of Propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/09-the-results-of-propaganda/)
10. [Note on Bibliography](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/10-note-on-bibliography/)

[← About this text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/) [Propaganda Organization →](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/02-propaganda-organization/)

**Content note:** Quotes First World War atrocity stories and abusive wartime language about the enemy, including "Hun", and period terms for racial groups, as examples of propaganda. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

There are abundant signs of interest in international propaganda since the War of 1914. Several books have been published by men who held responsible propaganda posts during the War. Cree^in the United States, Stuart in England, Nicolai in Germany, and Wahz and Tonnetet in France, have published much of their record to the world. Individual propaganda agents of high and low degree have written their memoirs, and international propaganda is alluded to in every reminiscence and apology of postarmistice times.

The professors and the graduate students and the publicists have swollen the flood of systematic speculation about, and systematic examination of, the subject. Among the conspicuous names in Germany, where the best work has been done, are Johann Plenge, Edgar Stern-Rubarth, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Kurt Baschwitz.^ Research monographs of some value have been prepared by Schonemann, who wrote in German on the United States, Marchand, who wrote in French on certain aspects of German propaganda, Wiehler, who wrote in German on special problems, and several others. D^martial dissected his own French and Allied propaganda during the War in a brilliant contribution to the de-bunking of world opinion. Members of the new propaganda, or publicity, profession have begun to rationalize their own practices. The books by Bernays and Wilder and Buell are pioneers in this direction. Universities have begun to offer courses of lectures upon the new technique, and vast collections of War propaganda have been assembled at Stuttgart, Paris, London and Stanford.

> ^ For the titles of their books, and the writings referred to elsewhere in this chapter, see the bibliography.

There are many reasons why the role of propaganda in international politics, and especially in war-time, is receiving more careful scrutiny to-day than heretofore. There is a new inquisitiveness abroad in the world. Some of the people who in the years before the War were disposed to accept the changing tides of international animosity and friendship as inevitable manifestations of the cosmic fate, which commanded the sun to rise or the rain to fall, have become suspicious of the supernatural or the impersonal character of these events. A word has appeared, , which has come to have an ominous ^lang in many minds — Propaganda. We live among more people than ever, who are puzzled, uneasy, or vexed at the unknown cunning which seems to have duped and degraded them. It is often an object of vituperation, and therefore, of interest, discussion and, finally, of study.

These people probe the m5^teries of propaganda with that compound of admiration and chagrin with which the victims of a new gambling trick demand to have the thing explained. That credulous utopianism, which fed upon the mighty words which exploited the hopes of the mass in war, has in many minds given way to cynicism and disenchantment, and with these earnest souls propaganda is a far more serious matter. Some of those who trusted so much and hated so passionately have put their hands to the killing of man, they have mutilated others and perhaps been mutilated in return, they have encouraged others to draw the sword, and they have derided and besmirched those who refused to rage as they did. Fooled by propaganda ? If so, they writhe in the knowledge that they were the blind pawns in plans which they did not incubate, and which they neither devised nor comprehended nor approved.

In the defeated countries, such as Germany, the military people have seized upon propaganda to save their own faces. They declare that their army was never defeated by the battering of Allied battalions, but that the nation collapsed behind their lines because all the alien and radical elements in the population were easy marks for the seductive bait of foreign propaganda. This is plausible to the public because people were everywhere warned during the war tq^beware the noxious fumes of enemy propaganda. The Germans were wrought up over “ Reuter, the fabricator of War lies,” Northcliffe, “ The Minister of Lying,” and the Allies, the “ All-lies.” They were, therefore, predisposed to attach very great importance to propaganda. Since the War Germany has been shorn of military strength, and must, therefore, rely upon subtler means of protecting and advancing its interests than armed coercion. Patriotic Germans are anxious to understand the nature of the noncoercive weapon which was wielded so successfully to their discomfiture in war-time, and there is to-day a more luxurious flowering of treatises upon international propaganda (its nature, limitations and processes) in Germany than anywhere else.

In some measure the present occupation with propaganda is due to the outright pacifists. There is a widespread belief that fighting is due to ill-will, and that, if war is to cease, there must be a “ moratorium on hate.” Can propaganda furnish a weapon of direct attack upon the psychology of nations, and expose the ways and means of sowing confidence where mistrust rankles ?

This whole discussion about the ways and means of controlling public opinion testifies to the collapse of the traditional species of democratic romanticism and to the rise of a dictatorial habit of mind. As long as the democrats were in opposition, they were free to belabour the fact of an ^infallible though almighty king with the fantasy of an all-wise public. Enthrone the public and dethrone the king ! Pass the sceptre to the wise !

Familiarity with the ruling public has bred contempt. Modem reflections upon democracy boil down to the proposition, more or less contritely expressed, that the democrats were deceiving themselves. The public has not reigned with benignity and restraint. The good life is not in ]^e mighty rushing wind of public sentiment. It is no organrc secretion of the horde, but the tedious achievement of the few. The lover of the good life no longer consults Sir Oracle ; he pulls the strings of Punch and Judy. Thus argues the despondent democrat. Let us, therefore, reason together, brethren, he sighs, and find the good, and when we have found it, let us find oufi how to make up the public mind to accept it. Inform, cajole, bamboozle and seduce in the name of the public good. Preserve the majority convention, but dictate to the majority !

To the sombre curiosity of the discouraged democrat must be added the analytical motive of the social scientist. The division of social thinking has at last reached a point which enables a few people to achieve a fixed preoccupation with the explanation of how the social wheels go round, wholly apart from any pressing anxiety to steer them in any particular direction. Their business is to discover and report, not to philosophize and reform. They are more anxious to gratify their curiosity than to follow the footsteps of the deity who created man in his own image. f The people who probe the mysteries of public opinion in pohtics must, for the present, at least, rely upon something other than exact measurement, to confirm or discredit ^ their speculations. Generalizations about public opinion stick because they are plausible and not because they are experimentally established. They fall by the wayside, when others, who have had experience with the kind of fact which they purport to describe, disagree with the original observer. Sometimes this disagreement is sharp and emphatic, because it comes from people who have tried to use existing notions about public opinion in their efforts to control it. This is the engineering test. It is employed by propagandists and publicity-men of all sorts and shapes.

Conjectures in the field of public opinion are particularly susceptible to engineering tests. But much of the literature of public opinion is of such abstruse and indefinite character that it defies empirical verification. There is_a plethora of\ theories about something known as public opinion in general, and a paucity of hypotheses about public opinions in particular. When the field of public opinion is split into the problems of explaining and controlling opinions about policies, attitudes toward persons and groups, and attitudes toward the various modes of political participation, some more tangible progress may be expected.

The role of opinion in international politics is peculiarly worthy of study, because it is a matter of growing importance. We are witnessing the growth of a world public, and this public has arisen in part, because international propaganda has at once agitated and organized it. Interests overlap boundaries. It is a mere fiction that the citizens and the governments of each country refrain from meddling in affairs which are technically within the competence of another. In the summer of 1925, for instance, the German Reichstag was engaged in considering a proposal to levy protective duties upon agricultural and manufactured commodities. Theoretically, this is a domestic question, and is reserved for the exclusive determination of whoever happens to live inside the boundaries of the juristic entity called Germany. But in point of fact, external interests were affected, and they brought pressure to bear in their own behalf. American manufacturers, whose goods would be barred if the tariff went into operation, joined forces with British, French and German interests and sent their agents to Germany. They sought to reach the Press and to strengthen the hands of the elements inside Germany, who stood out against the bill.

Such private influencing as this is no longer the exception, but the custom. Corporations, for instance, find it convenient to subsidize newspapers abroad ; and influencing is by no means confined to unofficial persons. Governments take an active hand in the game. The prestige-propaganda of the Japanese on the exclusion question, the “ myth of a single guilty nation ” propaganda of the Germans against the Versailles settlement, and the Soviet propaganda for American recognition are current cases. The new organs of international government are in close touch with interests inside each nation. The International Labour Office co-operates with those who wish to procure the ratification and the enforcement of the draft conventions of the International Labour Conference.

Official propaganda often takes the form of encouraging patriotic societies with branches abroad. The League of Germans Abroad claims to have 150 locals in Germany and in foreign countries, and the Union for Germanism Abroad says that it has over a million members in Germany and Austria. There are special organizations for Austria, Schleswig, the Saar Territory, Danzig, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, the Tyrol, the Danube and overseas. Thes6 associations exist to keep alive a sentiment of cultural unity and may, in times of emergency, go further.

Governments smile benevolently upon certain international societies, such as the Alliance Francaise and the English-Speaking Union. They keep open channels of * influence, which may be valuable in times of strain. There are innumerable official and unofficial propagandas to instigate revolution, secession, or racial, cultural, geographical and religious unity. Such are suggested by these words : Communism, Irish Independence, Pan-Islam, Pan- Slav, Pan-America, Pan-Europe, League of Nations Union. There are propagandas on behalf of political personalities, for it is important to procure a favourable reception for every ambassador at a new post.

It is public opinion and propaganda in war-time which calls forth the most strenuous exertions. The conduct of war, conceived as a psychological problem, may be stated in terms of moral. A nation with a high moral is capable of performing the tasks laid upon it because of a prtain momentum, which can only be measured when serious resistances appear. The conventional signs of high moral are enthusiasm, determination, self-confidence, absence of carping criticism and absence of complaint. Almost every fact may have its implication for moral. The calories in the official ration, the supply of cigarettes, the opportunities for recreation, the confidence of officers and public men, the smart demeanour of the troops, the mode of inflicting discipline ; aU this, and more, affects the fighting vim and tenacity of the military and civil population.

The problem of maintaining moral is only in part a problem of propaganda, because propaganda is but one of the many devices which must be relied upon. Its scope is limited though important. By propaganda is not meant the control of mental states by changing such objective conditions as the supply of cigarettes or the chemical compoation of food. Propaganda does not even include the Stiffening of moral by a cool and confident bearing. It refers solely to the control of opinion by significant symbols, or, to speak more concretely and less accurately, by«tories, rumours, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication. Propaganda is concerned with the management of opinions and attitudes by the direct manipulation of social suggestion rather than by altering other conditions in the environment or in the organism.

Propaganda is one of the three chief implements of operation against a belligerent enemy : —

Military Pressure (The coercive power of^^||rland, sea and air forces).

BlSfinomic Pressure (Interference with^'access to sources of material, markets, capital and labour power).

Propaganda (Direct use of' suggestion).

Negotiation is a method of influencing foreign states with which one is not in active combat. By negotiation is meant the official exchanges which look toward agreement. Mediation between contending parties and submission to arbitration are both commonly invoked. A government influences its own people by legislation, adjudication, policing, propaganda, and ceremonialism. For the soldiers, whom it has under the most complete control, it must make adequate provision of necessities and relaxation on pain of trouble. It drills them into a unified missile of destruction.

During war much reliance must be placed on propaganda to promote economy of food, textiles, fuel, and other commodities, and to stimulate recruiting, emplo5anent in war industries, service in relief work, and the purchase of bonds. But by far the most potent r61e of propa|;anda is to mobilize the animosity of the community against the enemy, to maintain friendly relations with neutrals and allies, to arouse the neutrals against the enemy, and to break up the solid wall of enemy antagonism. In short, it is the significance of propaganda for international attitudes in war which renders it of peculiar importance.

International war propaganda rose to such amazing dimensions in the last war, because the communization of warfare necessitated the mobilization of the civilian mind. No government could hope to win without a united nation behind it, and no government could have a united nation behind it unless it. controlled the minds of its people. The civilians had to be depended upon to supply recruits for the front and for the war industries. The sacrifices of war had to be borne without complaints that spread dissension at home and discouragement in the trenches.

Now the civilians cannot be subjected to the same discipline as the soldiers. The effect of the drill to which the soldier is subjected is thus described by Maxwell : —

the individual becomes highly imitative, conforming his movements in every respect to those of the drill-sergeants. He is not permitted to make the slightest alteration in the movements which he is shown, and is stopped again and again until at last his movements are satisfactory. At this stage in a soldier’s training his behaviour is almost mechanical, and the unity achieved throughout the group is very little higher than that displayed by a machine. . . . The mere fact that each man acts like his neighbour enables the individual to rely upon the co-operation of his fellows with reference to the common end. On the parade ground each man soon discovers that every member of his unit is co-operating with him in the evolution in progress. In the trenches he is confident that the men on either side of him are doing the same, and that the divisions on the flanks of his own divisions are co-operating for the common end. It is through discipline that it is achieved (this co-operation) in the Army, and the mutual trust engendered has the effect of welding what might otherwise be only a mechanical organization into a living unity.*

Active service brings with it a tendency to relapse to the primitive. Many observers have said that it is the simple bed-rock things that matter most. It is food and drink and smokes and sleep and warmth and shelter and creature comforts that bulk largest at the front. The human values and sentiments are left to atrophy for want of stimulation. The quiet influence of the presence of friendly scenes and faces is lost. The influence of certain of the more complex forms of religion is less.*

Military life approximates the aggregation of disciplined men in a dehumanizing environment. The civilian lacks the automatic discipline of drill and remains in an environment in which his sentiment-life (his human life) continues. Civilian unity is not achieved by the regimentation of muscles. It is achieved by a repetition of ideas rather than movements. The civilian mind is standardized by news and not by drills. Propaganda is the method by which this process is aided and abetted.

The intentional circulation of ideas by propaganda helps to overcome the psychic resistances to whole-hearted participation in war, which have arisen with the decay of personal loyalty to chiefs. Peace, has come to be regarded as the normal state of society, and not war. There are ideologies which Condemn war either as something bad in itself, or as the product of a detested order of society. Propaganda is ’ the war of ideas on ideas.

> ^ A Psychological Retrospect of Ihe Great War, p. 162.

> * See Maxwell, as cited, 100.

This study is a preliminary and highly provisional analysis of the group of propaganda problems connected with the control of international antipathies and attractions in wartime. How may hate be mobilized against an enemy ? How may the enemy be demoralized by astute manipulation ?

' How is it possible to cement the friendship of neutral and allied peoples ?

It is not proposed to write history, but to describe technique. When the war has receded further into the past, it will be possible to write at least a fragmentary history of the international propaganda of the time. The aim of the present inquiry is at once more modest and more ambitious than this. It is more modest in that it has chosen but a few of the facts which will be included in a comprehensive history. It is more ambitious in that it has undertaken to evolve an explicit theory of how international war propaganda may be conducted with success. It relies almost exclusively upon American, British, French and German experience.

Why not postpone the theory of method until the history is finished ? The answer is that we knew enough about the history to justify a provisional study of technique, and a technical study at this time will perhaps improve the quality of the forthcoming history. After all, the relation between the student whose main interest is in the mechanism and the student whose chief concern is what happened in a particular circumstance is reciprocal. In a sense, the scientist and the engineer ask questions for the historian to answer, and the historian reports upon the probable influence of specific factors in a definite set of past circumstances. The lines are never mutually exclusive, for the historian is continually uncovering a new example of method, while the technical student is often able to plug a gap in chronology through his researches.

The procedure in this investigation has been to stick close to common-sense analysis. There are many seductive analogies between collective behaviour and the behaviour of individuals in a clinic, ‘ but the analogies are too easily strained in the making. Clinical psychology is too rudimentary to carry an imposing superstructure. The present study goes no further than to develop a simple classification of the various psychological materials, which have been used to produce certain specified results, and to propose a general theory of strategy and tactics, for the manipulation of these materials. Subsequent inquiry and criticism may find other categories which are at once more accurate and suggestive.

> ^ See, for example, Miss Playne's book called Th& Neuroses of Nations,

[← About this text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/) [Propaganda Organization →](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/02-propaganda-organization/)

Propaganda Technique in the World War, Harold D. Lasswell. Published in London and New York in 1927, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States (works published in 1930 or earlier). Lasswell died in 1978, so the text may still be protected in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years; readers outside the United States should check their own law. [Provenance and rights](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/).