---
title: War Guilt and War Aims
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/03-war-guilt-and-war-aims/
description: War Guilt and War Aims, 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/)

# War Guilt and War Aims

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/)

[← Propaganda Organization](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/02-propaganda-organization/) [Satanism →](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/lasswell-propaganda-technique-1927/04-satanism/)

**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)

So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defence against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate. The war must not be due to a world system of conducting international affairs, nor to the stupidity or malevolence of all governing classes, but to the rapacity of the enemy. Guilt and guilelessness must be assessed geographically, and all the guilt must be on the other side of the frontier. If the •propagandist is to mobilize the hate of the people, he must see to it that everything is circulated which establishes the sole responsibility of the enemy. Variations from this theme may be permitted under certain contingencies which we shall undertake to specify, but it must continue to be the leading motif.

The governments of Western Europe can never be perfectly certain that a class-conscious proletariat within the borders of their authority will rally„to the clarion of war.'» Before 1914 the growth of the Social Democrats in Germany, the vogue of anti-patriotism in France, and the rising star of the labourers in England, filled the governing classes with foreboding. It was freely predicted that mobilization could be paralysed by a general strike, and that social revolution might raise its ominous head.

To the uncertainties of proletarian sentiment must be added the vagaries of conciliatory opinion. When the crisis of 1914 arose in Great Britain, it was at once evident that powerful elements in the Cabinet, the Liberal Party, the literary and even the financial world were opposed to intervention to aid France. The columns of the Daily News, a Left Wing Liberal organ, the Manchester Guardian, another Liberal paper, and the Labour Leader were flooded with letters, editorials, and manifestos of protest against the idea of British participation in the impending struggle on the continent.

Let us remember, admonished the Daily News on the 29th day of July that the most effective work for peace that we can do is to make it clear that not a British life shall be sacrificed for the sake of Russian hegemony of the Slav world.

On the following day it wrote that the free peoples of France, England and Italy should refuse to be drawn into the circle of this dynastic struggle.

On the first of August, the News published a bitter protest against the policy of intervention, under the well-known initials, “ A.G.G.” The title was " Why we must not fight.”

For years under the industrious propaganda of Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Strachey, Mr. Maxse, and the militarists, this country has been preached into an anti-German frame of mind that takes no account of the facts. Where in the wide world do our interests clash with Germany ? Nowhere. With Russia we have potential conflicts over the whole of South-Eastern Europe and Southern Asia.

The Bishop of London, J. Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardie, Thomas Hardy, J. J. Thomson, Gilbert Murray, and scores of lesser celebrities protested against British aid to France and Russia on many different grounds. Most of these men were not proletarian internationalists, and they found reasons to object to war on grounds of the national interests of England. Most of them implied that war might, under some circumstances, be legitimate, but in the hour of decision they shrank from believing that the hour had come. Now, it is hard to conceive of an international complication in which divergent interpretations of national interest, nurtured by aversion to war and ruthlessness, will not precipitate dissent and controversy. The conciliatory frame of mind is prone to temporize and find good reason for delay.

Certain business and banking interests, when pulled up short by the prospect of imminent war, try to put on the brakes. That such international bankers as the Speyers and the Bonns were restraining influences during the first and second Moroccan crises is generally known. A less successful instance of such pressure upon those who wield political power is revealed by Wickham Steed, of the London Times. In the midst of the crisis in 1914 the financial editor of that paper, Mr. Hugh Chisholm, was urgently invited to call upon the head of one of the largest financial houses in the City. The financier told him flatly that the pro-war editorials in The Times must cease. They were hounding the country into war. The City of London was on the_yerge of a disaster, such as the world had never seen. Strict neutrality was the only course for England to adopt. He produced a message which he had just written to the head of the Paris house of his family, in which the alarming statement was made that the writer had only a billion pounds in the Bank of England and £800,000 in the Union of London and the Smith’s Bank with which to meet engagements, and that the margin about obligations was so slight that the Paris house must refrain from drawing cheques or bills upon him. The Times, it may be added, did not succumb to this pressure, although certain members of the Cabinet were strongly moved by it.*

Every resource must be exploited if such inconvenient currents are to be turned aside. The identification of a particular foreign nation as the enemy may be established by three lines of inference. It invariably mobilizes first, in the days of crisis (either openly or secretly), and commits acts of war, and by doing so, reveals a criminal anxiety to press matters to a finish. More than that, it invariably incriminates itself by endeavouring to manoeuvre our government into the position of an aggressor during the feverish negotiations preceding the final break. Behind aU this, there invariably stands a record of lawlessness, violence and malice, which offers unassailable proof of a deliberate intent to maim or destroy us.

A typical bill of indictment is the one drawn up by Le Petit Journal, one of the “ Big Five ” of the Paris Press, on the 3rd of August. It gave its version of the war under the heading, " Machiavellian Duplicity.” Germany secretly connived at the formulation of an unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia. She perfidiously protested her desire for peace. She tried to divide the Allies by urging France to apply the ^ Steed, Through Thirty Years, II : 8. pressure to Russia which she refused to apply to Austria. She tried to manoeuvre France into the position of an aggressor in the eyes of England, by asking France to denounce the Alliance with Russia, or to declare her willingness to fight with Russia. Germany opened hostilities against France and violated French territory before she broke off diplomatic relations. She violated the neutrality of Belgium in the face of a solemn promise to protect it. In so doing, she was acting in complete harmony with her historical traditions of ruthless and barbarous dealing. Frederick the Great and the robbery of Maria Theresa are earnests of this.

These indictments come with peculiar weight from historians and from other men who are credited in the public mind with the single-minded pursuit of truth. German scholarship leaped to the colours in the last War in the famous and unforgettable manifesto, signed by ninety-three of her most illustrious intellectuals. Attached to the document were such names as Ehrlich, Behring, Rontgen, Ostwald, Harnack, Schmoller, Brentano, Nernst, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Eucken, Wundt, Eduard Meyer, Lamprecht, Wilamowitz, Humperdinck, Reinhardt and Lieber-

• mann. Serious historians and journalists combined to elucidate the responsibility of Germany’s enemies in such co-operative ventures as Zum geschichtUchen Verstandnis des grossen Krieges by A. O. Meyer, Graf Ernst Reventlow, R. Nebersberger, C. H. Becker, G. Kiintzel and F. Meinecke (2 Aufl., Berlin, 1916). The forward policy of Russia in Europe, since her humiliation in the East at the hands of Japan, the lust for revenge in France, and the jealousy of in interpreting the War. The immediate diplomacy of the conflict showed that Russia, secretly encouraged by France, had seized upon the Serbian complication to provoke a general war. Russia had mobilized first, and had actually invaded German territory, as, indeed, had the French, before the severance of diplomatic relations. The envious English, ostensibly neutral, but bound by secret understandings, had grasped their opportunity to crush the competitor, whose naval and commercial supremacy must be forestalled at all costs of morality and decency.

> • Germany’s expansion by England were the cardinal points

The crisis burst on France and Belgium with such paralysing suddenness and such devastating consequences, that there was little need for elaborate rationalizations about the instigator of the War. The Germans had to explain the war in the West, because they were in foreign territory, and, therefore, prima facie the aggressor. It was in Britain, with its territory intact and the issue of war or peace undetermined for many agonizing hours after the die was cast on the continent, where discussion and rationalization played an influential part. Masterly appeals to the national interest, after the style of The Times on 31st July, were necessary to carry conviction to the more articulate elements of the community that Germany should be treated as an immediate and overwhelming menace. It argued :

A German advance through Belgium to the north of France might enable Germany to acquire possession of Antwerp, Flushing, and even of Dunkirk and Calais, which might then become German naval bases against England. That is a contingency which no Englishman can look upon with indifference. But if it is merely a contingency, why should England not wait until it is realized before acting or preparing to act ? Because in these days of swift decision and swifter action, it would be too late for England to act with any degree of success after France had been defeated in the North. . . . Even should the German navy remain inactive, the occupation of Belgium and Northern France by German troops would strike a crushing blow at British security. We should then be obliged alone and without Allies to bear the burden of keeping up a Fleet superior to that of Germany and of an army proportionately strong. This burden would be ruinous. ,

In the United States, where the issue of war or peace hung in the balance longer than in Great Britain, the disagreement over which group of belligerent powers was the enemy drew forth an unparalleled mass of rationalizations, suitable for circulation by the protagonists of either set. The historians and the other seekers of the truth were no more reticent than their German colleagues in putting the blame on the enemy for the calamity of war, once war came. The curious fact that in such emergencies the truth seekers find different truths, and that the differences are territorially segregated according to national boundaries, is once more exemplified in the Oxford War pamphlets, the Princeton symposium, or the Chicago war series, when they are placed side by side with the German literature alluded to above. The facility with which sincere and dextrous hands may shape cases on either side of a controversy, leaves no doubt that, in the future, the propagandist may count upon a battalion of honest professors to rewrite history, to serve the exigencies of the moment, and to provide the material for him to scatter thither and yon.

There are, no doubt, profound psychological dispositions, which facilitate the work of the propagandist in fastening war guilt upon the technical enemy. Just what these tendencies are is a matter of obscurity and dispute, but perhaps the most ingenious explanation is the one put forward by Baschwitz, who describes the mind of the public as in conflict between the disagreeable fact of war and the wish to believe that the good is triumphant in the universe. It must, therefore, be that one’s own nation is vindicating the right against the wrong.* Speculations of this sort are hazardous in the extreme, and the propagandist is content to accept the aid of his anonymous allies, while he busily multiplies the evidence of the responsibility of the enemy. He instigates or welcomes such a windfall as accrued to the cause of the Entente in the last War, when an eloquent volume, J’accuse (Lausanne, 1915), came from the pen of Richard Grelling, a native of Switzerland and close student of Germany. He bestirs himself to counter-attack against such telling thrusts, as did the Germans who brought Grelling’s son, Kurt, to publish Anti- J’aceuse at Zurich, in igi6. He scans the horizon for new material as the War evolves, as did the Germans when they scrutinized the captured Belgium archives for material, which might incriminate the Entente, and broadcasted everything which seemed to do so.

Now the task of the propagandist is just begun, when he fastens the guilt of willing the War upon an opposing nation. No sooner is the enemy located than the nation discharges its energies, churned in the crucible of hours and days of suspense, in instantaneous movements of defence and counter-attack. In the very act of delivering the blow the nation 1 See Baschwitz, Der Massenwahn, passim. calls for unity and victory. It is the business of the propagandist to amplify and repeat the call.

As early as the 29th of July, 1914, the London Times called upon all parties to ** Close Ranks.” The Kaiser united his people behind him, when he declared that he knew no party more. The Fascio came in Italy and the " Union sacrie ” was proclaimed in the French Parliament. The sensational appeal of Gustave Herve to the ranks of Labour was broadcasted far and wide. Herve was a notorious sans-patrie who had belittled patriotism as an implement of capitalistic exploitation. On the very brink of the War\' he changed the name of his paper, La Guerre Sociale, into La Victoire and pleaded with all the ardour of his fervent spirit for unity :

Amis socialistes, amis syndicalistes, amis anarchistes, qui n’etes pas seulement Tavant-garde idealiste de Thumanitc ; mais qui etes encore le nerf et la conscience de Tarmee fran9aise, la patrie est en danger !

La patrie de la Revolution est en danger

The call of the Empire — ‘‘ Your King and Country calls you ” — buried the hatchet in Ireland and brought recruits from all over the British dominions. The work of the Overseas League and the Victoria League in strengthening the ties of friendship and affection was vindicated.. In order to illustrate the unity of the Empire, a number of profusely illustrated volumes were put out, showing the history of British beneficence and the degree of Empire co-operation at the front. There is India Und the War, for example, edited with an introduction by Lord Sydenham (1915), which glorifies British rule in India, and has page after page of coloured pictures, showing Indian regiments in native uniforms^

> ^ La Guerre Sociale, July 31, 1914.

The call to unity is essentially a call to history, and the memory of a common past has powerful sentimental value. La Libre Parole for the second of August, 1914, thus admonished its readers :

Haut les coeurs ! La France de Jeanne d'Arc, de Louis XIV et de Napoleon, la France de Bouvines, de Valmy, de J6na, et de Montmirails n a rien perdu de ses antiques vertus.

None of the sentiments which are deeply imbedded in the social tradition can afford to be neglected in justifying belligerent idealism through murder and hate. To the historical may be usually added the religious vocabulary. Never have these chords been strummed with greater dramatic sense than by Kaiser William II., as he looked over the surging throng in the Lustgarten on that epochal July night and said :

A fateful hour has fallen for Germany.

Envious peoples everywhere are compelling us to our just defence.

The sword has been forced into our hands. I hope that if my efforts at the last hour do not succeed in bringing our opponents to see eye to eye with us and in maintaining peace, we shall with God's help so wield the sword that we shall return it to the sheath again with honour.

War would demand of us enormous sacrifices of property and life, but we should show our enemies what it means to provoke Germany.

And now I commend you to God. Go to church and kneel before God and pray for his help and for our gallant army.

Even such exuberance of sentiment as the Credo for France, prepared by M. Henri Lavedan, has its place :

I believe in the courage of our soldiers and in the skill and devotion of our leaders. I believe in the power of right, and in the crusade of civilization, in France, the eternal, the imperishable, the essential. I believe in the reward of suffering and the worth of hope. I believe in confidence, in quiet thought, in the humble daily round, in discipline, in charity militant. I believe in the blood of wounds and the water of benediction ; in the blaze of artillery and the flame of the votive candle ; in the beads of the rosary. I believe in the hallowed vows of the old, and in the potent innocence of children. I believe in women’s prayers, in the sleepless heroism of the wife, in the calm piety of the mother, in the purity of our cause, in the stainless glory of our flag. I believe in our great past, in our great present, and in our greater future. I believe in our countrymen, living and dead. I believe in the hands clenched for battle, and in the hands^clasped for* prayer. I believe in ourselves, I believe in God. I believe,

I believe.^

This sort of verbal delirium is capable of very remarkable things, as when Albert de Mun, the venerable Catholic leader, solemnly implored God to '' aid the sons of Clovis," alluding to one of the barbarous teutonic chieftains of early French history. ^ Graceful phrasemongers like Maurice Barres, who believed the spirit of France to be a " grave enthusiasm, a disciplined exaltation," can be trusted to furnish volatile words acceptable to less religious minds. /For the preponderating majority in any community the business of beating the enemy in the name of security and peace suffices. This is the great war aim, and in singlehearted devotion to its achievement they find that “ peacefulness of being at war/* of which Principal Jacks once wrote. ^ In 1915, he glanced back over the first twelve months of the Great War, and observed that '' the life of Great Britain has been acquiring a unitary aim of purpose. The aim itself is warlike ; but it has been attended with some increase of mental peace.** He cast a jaundiced eye upon the pre-war world and wrote, Regarded from the moral point of view, the scene was one of indescribable confusion. It was, in fact, a moral chaos. Our ' inner state/ in consequence, was marked by profound unrest.** People were once uncertain of life, but now they had found a mission. The propagandist, indeed, can always count upon the state of mind which is here so gracefully expressed. Men with uncongenial spouses, wives with uncongenial husbands, youths with suppressed ambition, elderly men with their boredoms and faint yearnings for adventure, childless women and some wifeless men, the discredited ones who pine for a fresh deal in the game of life ; all, and many more, find peace from mental fight in the intoxication of life in one historical hour and for one historic goal.

> ^ Translated in John Buchan, History of the War, Chapter XXH.

> * Le Gaulois, August 5, 1914.

This simple cry for unity and victory (with accompanying peace) is not enough. What form shall the victory take ? There are inquiring minds who push behind the formula of victory and seek to prescribe what shall be meant thereby. Indeed the whole function of war aims is to arouse ambition and to fortify the resolution of the community to overcome every resistance to fulfilment. The enemy must be made to^ appear as more than a menace to the social heritage ; the ^ New Republic, September ii, 1915. enemy is an obstacle to the realization of new national values. For the diplomatically-minded the war may become a war to expand the national influence in terms of lands and concessions and ports. This section of^opinion in Ger- • many gorge^ itself upon visions of a humiliated Britain, shorn of her fleet, and upon dreams of a partitioned France and Russia. In Britain the most popular war aim among these circles was the scrapping of the German Navy. For the French Victory meant the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine, and the partition of Germany.

But the propagandist must never permit himself to forget that in the complex communities of our time there are minds who find no peace in war. Graham Wallas testified not for himself alone, when he commented on Professor Jacks’ article and said, “ I should choose the unrest of thought because I desire that the war should come to an end the instant its continuance ceases to be the less of two monstrous evils, and because I believe that our national policy should, even during the fighting, be guided not only by the will to conquer, but also by the will to make possible a lasting peace.”,.

Here is the mind for which war is a loathsome abomination, and which steadfastly refuses to believe that the defeat of a particular enemy is enough to make it worth getting on with. The primitive man, overtaken by catastrophe, hunts high and low for a scapegoat and a messiah. The scapegoat is the person who got him into the mess and the messiah is the person who will get him out. History is the story of the struggle of devils and deliverers. This primitive pattern of thought leads to the interpretation of war as the struggle between a good and a bad collective person. Cleave to the good and punish the bad. Such a formulation is by no means acceptable to the sophisticated few, who have come to believe that persons (individual or " collective ”) act as they do, because of the tenacious grip of circumstances. If things have gone badly in the past, the explanation is to be found in impersonal forces. If it is hoped to produce better behaviour in the future, some fundamental forces must be adjusted. It is no good wreaking vengeance for the past ; it is only profitable to take precautions for the future and to modify the conditions which have played havoc with the past.

The propagandist who deals with this new pattern of thought, must be subtler than when he copes with the punitive pattern of mind. If the adherents of the former are to join in condemning the enemy, it must be because they see in him the most powerful obstruction in the path toward the realization of new world conditions. If their allegiance is to be won for the war, they must be furnished with war aims of a highly rationalized and idealistic type.

Propaganda of this sort played a decisive role in the late struggle for world supremacy, and the reasons are evident. If we examine the currents of public opinion in England during the weeks immediately preceding the crisis of 1914, we cannot fail to remark the numerous signs of specifically anti-war agitation. In the London Daily News for the 15th of July an editorial was printed under the title, the " Octopus of Militarism,” which declared the business of the armament makers to be cosmopolitan in its operations and soiilless in its motives.

It works upon the fears and hates of ignorant people, uses the Press as the instrument of its purposes, and makes tools of the diplomats and statesmen, many of whom are financially interested in its success.

A few days later it addressed itself to the subject again, asking

Why has the one (the duel) been abolished, and the other (war) left ? There is only one answer — that there is money in armaments and no money to speak of in duelling.

During the same weeks the new book by H. N. Brailsford, called The War of Steel and Gold, was running the gamut of the reviews. Polemic had not yet subsided over Norman AngelTs thesis in The Great Illusion,'^ The quiet influence of John A. Hobson and of many other publicists in Liberal and Labour ranks helped to drive home the economic interpretation of war. Their writing was less tinctured by doctrinaire formulas than the corresponding work on the continent.

If anything, the socialists of France and Germany were more vociferous than the English in denouncing war and war-makers. But when the crucial moment came, the evidence of the culpability of the enemy was so overwhelming, that they joined the War. This decision split the Social Democrats in Germany, and left a discontented fraction in France, and as the War wore on, the discomforts ^ of combat favoured the recovery of the old uncompromising attitude. The Socialist and Democratic papers in Germany became thorns in the side of the Imperial Government. A similar evolution went forward in France. Such Liberal elements as those associated with the personalities of L^on Bourgeois and Estoumelles de Constant were allied to the workers in their very keen regret at the turn of affairs, and after the first shock of battle wore away, a certain recovery set in, much as it had in Germany.

> ^ See, incidentally, his forcible letter in the Times of August i, 1914, against intervention.

While concessions were actually made to this type of sentiment in France and Germany, it was in England and in America that the most notice was taken of it. In both countries there was a period of hesitation before battle. H. G. Wells may be taken as an example of the pacifistically inclined Liberal, more gracefully articulate than most, whose support of the War came at the cost of inner struggle, and whose enthusiastic aid in a prolonged contest depended upon an elaborately rationalized cluster of war aims. Writing in the London Daily Chronicle for August 20th, 1914, he said :

A war that will merely beat Germany a little and restore the hateful tension of the last forty years is not worth waging. As an end to all our efforts it will be almost an intolerable defeat. Yet unless a body of definite ideas is formed and promulgated now things may happen so.

Wells, of course, saw in “ German militarism ” one of the most colossal obstacles to the achievement of a better world order. His attitude of mind is precisely the one to be striven for by the inventor of war aims ; set up an ideal which will arouse the enthusiasm of those elements in the nation whose support is desired, and make it clear to them that the chief immediate stumbling block is the mihtary enemy. This permits the scrupulous to kill with a clean conscience ; or, at least, to admonish the younger to do so.

When the Bolsheviki published the diplomatic correspondence which they found in the archives of the Tsar’s government after the second revolution, a most embarrassing situation confronted the Allied Statesmen. For the Bolsheviki revealed for the first time to the world that the Allied governments had carved up large blocks of the world and raffled them off to one another. This raised some very disconcerting questions for those who had been talking about this War as different from every other war, since it was a war to end war and to make the world safe for democracy. By treaties signed in 1915, and subsequently, the possessions of the enemy powers were allotted to their future owners, without so much as a pretence at plebiscite or international control. In spite of the efforts of the Allied governments to suppress the knowledge of these incriminating documents in Great Britain, word soon reached the British labour leaders, and they bestirred themselves to force a show-down from the government. Mr. Lloyd George made a sensational speech on the fifth of January, 1918, in which he came out four-square for a peace acceptable to the conciliatory elements of the public. The secret history of this speech was not generally known until the publication of Woodrow Wilson’s papers after the War. Among them is published a secret cablegram from Balfour, British Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the American State Department. Here is the despatch : ,

Following for information of the President, private and secret : —

Negotiations have been going on for some time between the Prime Minister and the Trade Unions. The main point was the desire of the Government to be released front’ certain pledges which were made to the Labour leaders earlier in the War. This release is absolutely indispensable from the military point of view for the development of man power on the Western Front. Finally the negotiations arrived at a point at which their successful issue depended mainly on the immediate publication by the British Government of a statement setting forth their war aims. This statement has now been made by the Prime Minister. It is the result of consultations with the Labour leaders as well as the leaders of the Parliamentary opposition.

Under these circumstances there was no time to consult the Allies as to the terms of the statement agreed upon by the Prime Minister and the above-mentioned persons. It will be found on examination to be in accordance with the declarations hitherto made by the President on this subject.

Should the President himself make a statement of his own views which in view of the appeal made to the peoples of the world by the Bolsheviki might appear a desirable course, the Prime Minister is confident that such a statement would also be in general accordance with the lines of the President’s previous speeches, which in England as well as in other countries have been so warmly received by public opinion. trSuch a further statement would naturally receive equally warm welcome.^

A point to be remembered by the working propagandist is that Liberal and middle-class people are likely to give their approval to war aims of a political or juristic character. The Labour ideology is more or less coloured by philosophies of economic determination which wound the property sentiment of the possessing classes. If the problem of reconstructing the world is to be shorn of an apparent class bias, it must be conceived as a problem of a politico- juristic nature, for talk about world legislatures and courts tends to ingratiate itself where proposals for the administration of raw materials by world action, and for the use of the world taxing power to level up existing inequalities of opportunity, are suspect. Phrases like '' World Organization,’* The United States of the Earth, '' The Confederation of the World, “ A World Union of Free Peoples,” or

> ^ R. S. Baker, Woodvow Wilson and the World Settlement, 1 : 40.

A League of Nations,” slide trippingly from the tongue.

A war to vindicate international law thus has the sanction of bourgeois morality about it and avoids anything which tinges of a class issue. In the last War this idea figured heavily. Those who were arguing for British participation in the War, on grounds of national self-interest (vide The Times) chucked this article of faith out of the window, and transformed the War into a holy crusade for the Law of Nations when the news came that the Germans were marching into Belgium. The French organized a Committee for the Defence of International Law, headed by M. Louis Renault, of the Institute. The Germans were staggered by this outburst of affection for international law in the world, but soon found it possible to file a brief for the defendant. The cross-bill alleged that Belgium had not really been neutral, for the papers captured in her archives had revealed secret military conversations with the French and the British. The British, moreover, were reckless of the law of contraband and were invading the rights of neutrals on the high seas. The Germans, therefore, discovered that they were really fighting for the freedom of the seas and the rights of small nations to trade, as they saw fit, without being subject to the bullying tactics of the British fleet. The Allies had already declared a war for the liberation of oppressed peoples, by which they understood at first no more than Belgium and Alsace and Lorraine. Later, the implications of this phrase were extended to cover the nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Poles in Germany. The Germans replied by saying that they, too, were fighting to liberate the oppressed, and, by this, they meant Ireland, Egypt and India.

> ^ See August Forers pamphlet. Die Vereinigten Staaten der Erde, Bern u. Lausanne, 1914/ 15.

> * See Louis Junod, La confid&ration mondiale : Une alliance pour Vunification d. peuples, Gendve, 1914.

A propagandist must always be alert to capture the holy phrase which crystallizes public aspiration about it, and under no circumstances permit the enemy to enjoy its exclusive use and wont. There are some holy phrases which have subversive connotations, unless they are promptly interpreted in a broad sense. When the members of the Union of Democratic Control in Great Britain began to say that they wanted the War to end secret diplomacy and to democratize foreign policy, they were talking about conditions in England as much as about conditions elsewhere. But the phrase was caught up by astute men, and turned into a criticism of the enemy. ‘ It is the business of idealistic war aims to be invidious at the expense of the enemy.

Should there be a next general war, war aims of an idealistic character will probably be just as important as oti the thesis that every war may be analysed into a war of £Kd.t at least is a struggle between the sordid pretext of strengthening then^ng, loyal, courageous and stigmatize any group of nations, therCc. incredibly nar.ow, this group would be the target of a very dangerous V- of the propaganda. It should have little trouble, however, in explaining to the satisfaction of its own people, at least, that it is fighting for a more elevated conception of public right than its enemies.

> * The Union of Democratic Control was organized in England by E. D. Morel, A. Ponsonby, and several others shortly after the outbreak of the War. It was instigated by indignation at the fact that the ^ftitish Cabinet had secretly entered into engagements on the side of France which constituted in fact a commitment in advance to join in the War against a supposedly attacking Germany. It is interesting to note that the Bund Neues Vaterland, which was organized about the same time in Germany, spoke exactly the same language, and was quite unaware that the Union of Democratic Control in England was in existence.

So much for the war aims intended to appease the scruples of a Liberal conscience. Another class of war aims of a general character, can reach a wider constituency. The collective egotism, or ethnocentrism, of a nation, makes it possible to interpret the war as a struggle for the protection and propagation of its own high type of civilization. When a nation is engaged in battle with a people whose technological equipment is less destructive than its own, this form of self-flattery is obviously founded upon clear differences. The " Whiteman’s burden ” has been carried lightly on the shoulders of the British in India and Africa, and of the Americans in Cuba and the Philippines. But at first sight it would appear paradoxical that a war between nations of Western Europe should also assume the form of a war to save civilization. Their similarities are so much more fundamental than their differences that a visitor from another planet would undoubtedly bracket them together.

The explanation is to be found in the rise of literacy. Literacy and elementary instruction have opened the cultural heritages of the nation to a larger portion of the community than ever before. It was the “ Yellow Press," which the bullying tactics of the British fleet. The Allies had already declared a war for Un tue peoples, by which they unH^- Evening Standard shouted Belgium and Als^^^ ' theme reverberated ever of thic 'vjtierre contre les barbares/' was simultaneously declared in France, while in Germany, the defence and nurture of Kultur became a duty and privilege of all good Germans. The consensus of German opinion is set out in a swollen flood of print, from which the following worthy specimens may be culled :

Karl Lamprecht, Krieg und Kultur (Leipzig, 1914).

Otto von Gierke, Krieg und Kultur (Berlin, 1914).

Eugen Kuhnemann, Vom Weltreich des deutschen Geistes (Miinchen, 1914).

Oskar Fleischer, Vom Kriege gegen die deutsche Kultur (Frankfurt, 1915).

Ernst Troeltsch, Der Kultur krieg (Berlin, 1915).

In this list appear, among lesser luminaries, the foremost jurist and two of the most brilliant historians of the world. They were all convinced that the traditional Germany of philosophers and poets {Denker und Dichter) had of late added unto it, the practical gifts of political sagacity, exemplary fecundity, unremitting industry and monumental research, all of which compared more favourably with the atheism, sterility and giddiness of the decadent Latins, not to mention those sordid sportive, dawdling British. A brilliant example of this sort of thing is the volume called Handler und Helden, by Werner Sombart, the distinguished authority on modem capitalism. The title of the book explains its animus : Traders and Heroes. The former are the British and the latter are the Germans, He advances the thesis that every war may be analysed into a war of beliefs. The present War is a struggle between the sordid British and the self-sacrificing, loyal, courageous and obedient Germans. The Englishman is incredibly narrow, utterly incapable of rising above the realities '' of the moment, as a glance at their philosophers from Bacon to Spencer will prove. To the trader life is but a series of bargains, and even science is commercialized. The whole empire is a great trading enterprise and the empire^s wars are wars of pecuniary calculation. The Germans will never be conquered by this damning taint of commercialism, and their spirit will stamp it from* the world. The war is a war of German Kultur, which must not be denied and cannot be denied by the trader.

The war can likewise be a war of race. Not only did the Germans of certain strata declare a war of Kultur, but they declared a war of race, and in this they were joined by certain elements elsewhere. The elements of the extreme right in France cherished the myth of a pure Gallic race, and La Croix, in its issue for August 15th, 1914, found that the heroic exertions of war are the ancient clan of the Gauls, the Romans and the French resurging within us. The Germans must be purged from the left bank of the Rhine, These infamous hordes must be thrust back within their own frontiers. The Gauls of France and Belgium must repulse the invader with a decisive blow, once and for all. The race war appears.

Urbain Gohier published La race a parle at Paris in 1915*

While war aims of this species are certain of a general vogue, they need re-enforcements of a more tangible and intimate kind. The nation as a whole, is divisible into an almost infinite number of constituent groups, which are in possession of special aspirations of their own. The war ought to be interpreted to them as something in which they have a stake, not only as members of the general group. The war ought to be fought to save business, famUy and church, and to add to prosperity, security and faith. Each interest should be encouraged to formulate war aims which point to the enemy of all who is, in fact, quite as much the enemy of each.

For the sake of the business men the war must appear as a profitable enterprise. L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., published a statement in the London Daily Chronicle for August loth, 1914, which is a pattern for this sort of thing. He wrote :

Our chief competitor both in Europe and outside it will be unable to trade, and at the conclusion of the War the unmistakable antagonism which German aggression is everywhere arousing will help us to keep the trade and shipping we will win from her.

> 'Sidney Whitman published a pamphlet, called The War on German Trade. Hints for a Plan of Campaign (London, 1914). Meanwhile, the economic groups of Germany swarmed with visions of tangible expansion in every direction. The Bund der Landwirte, der Deutsche Bauerfibund, der Vorort der christlichen Bauernvereine, der Zentralverband deutscher Industrialer, der Bund deutscher Industrialer, and der Reichsdeutsche Mittelstandverband, joined in a monster petition on May 20th, 1915, to the Chancellor, in which they explained what they wanted.

The annexationist claims were ; the whole of Belgium, Northern France to a line established from the mouth of the Somme straight eastward to the Belgian boundary, along the Maas, to its juncture with the Mosel in the Pagny-Toul region, thence through Luneville east, along the Vosges to Belfort. The Departments of Pas de Calais and du Nord, half the Meuse Department, the greatest part of Meurthe and Moselle, part of Vosges and the Territory of Belfort, were thus contemplated additions to Germany. In the East a part of Livland, the largest and most densely inhabited part of Kurland, most of the Kovno district, the entire district of Suwalki, half of Lomza, all of Ploczk, a small slice of the Marschau district, half of Kalisch, a fourth of Pietrokoc, a small piece of Kieice — a total of 80,000 square kilometers, and five million people — were the annexationist claims. Adding this to the 50,000 square kilometers and the eleven million people demanded in the West, it appears that the German industrial and agrarian organizations were committed to the incorporation of 130,000 square kilometers and sixteen million non-Germans into the Imperial jurisdiction. The inhabitants of these areas were to be deprived of any political participation in the internal politics of Germany, and the large and middle-sized properties were to be transferred to German citizens at the cost of the defeated cipponents of Germany.

Since the flaming vocabulary of religion still has the power to move the hearts of many men, it is a poor propagandist who neglects the spiritual and ecclesiastical interpretation of the War by the spokesmen of every sect. Each religious body must be brought to see in the discomfiture of the enemy, a triumph for its gods and priests and dogmas. Copious examples of the formulas which are appropriate to this end are to be found in the rehgious Press of every belligerent country. La Croix, the organ of the French clericals, identified the progress of France in the late War with the Kingdom of God. Writing in the feverish days of ^ August, 1914, shortly after the alleged capture of Mulhouse by the French, it shouted,

- The story of France is the story of God.

Long live Christ who loves the Franks

The Holy War, '' La Guerre sainte,'* had been proclaimed the day before by L Echo de Paris y when it reported how waves of spontaneous applause had broken out during solemn services at the Madelaine. La Croix published an interpretation of the War on August 15th. It is first of all a war of revenge, this revenge which we have desired for 43 years.

It is a colossal duel between the Germans against the Latins and the Slavs.

It is a contest of public morals and international law.

And, as a final climax.

Is it not a war of Catholic France against Protestant

Germany ?

The Catholics of France were so zealous in the prosecution of the War that they aroused the suspicion of the radical

1 “ L’histoire de France est Thistoire de Dieu,

. Vive le Christ qui aime les Francs ! August 8. elements in the country and quite a controversial literature sprang up. The pamphlet, Les cures ont-ils voulu la guerre ? (Did the priests want war ?), precipitated an acrimonious controversy. ^

The German Catholics bitterly resented the attempt of the French clericals to monopolize the War. A literary relic of this dispute is the volume of able essays edited by Georg Pfeilschifter, Deutsche Kultur, Katholizismus uni Weltkrieg, Eine Abwehr des Buches '' La Guerre allemande et le catholicismey (Freiburg, 1916.)

The churches of practically every description can be relied upon to bless a popular war, and to see in it an opportunity for the triumph of whatever godly design they choose to further. Some care must, of course, be exercised to facilitate the transition from the condemnation of wars in general, which is a traditional attitude on the part of the Christian sects, to the praise of a particular war. This may be expedited by securing suitable interpretations of the war very early in the conflict by conspicuous clericals ; the lesser lights will twinkle after. It was of some advantage to the war party in Britain to have such a statement as the following, from the Bishop of Hereford :

Such a war is a heavy price to pay for our progress toward the realization of the Christianity of Christ, but duty calls, and the price must be paid for the good of those who are to follow us. That better and happier day when the people now under militarist rule shall regulate their own life is doubtless still so far away that an old man like myself can hardly hope to see it dawning, but amidst all the burden of gloom and sorrow which this dreadful war lays upon us we can at least thank God that it brings that better day a long step nearer for the generation in front of us.^

> ^'Sec Edouard Poulain, Refutation decisive (i, glohale, 2, detailiee) ; onze rumeurs inflammees sur le clevge frangais (Paris, 1916) ; Paul Feron-Vrau, Les catholiques et la presse.

The patriotic chorus of the gentlemen of the cloth in Germany reverberates again through the pages of the anthology prepared by Professor Bang during the War, and called Hurrah and Hallelujah! (New York, 1917.) Bang was a Danish professor of theology and took the pains to collect some of the German gems. Pastor Traub, P. de Lagards, and scores of other clericals unwittingly contributed to this book. All of it seems to be the grossest blasphemy to the enemies of Germany and the sincerest reverence to the friends of the German cause. Only the Liberal minority protests in Germany or elsewhere against the outpourings in its own behalf. *

The number of possible re-interpretations of a war is limited only by the number of special interests whose allegiance is offered or sought. To the economic and ecclesiastical groups already referred to could be added a constellation of artists, scientists, teachers, or sportsmen without end. The members of the talkative professions (preachers, writers, promoters) depend for a living upon their ' capacity to arouse an emotional response in the breasts of their clienUle, When the public is warmed up to fight, the clerical who treats the matter coldly is committing suicide, just as is the writer or the promoter. The circularity of response is established, for one interstimulates the other. The actor is the slave of his audience, though the audience is bound in ^mporary servitude to the actor.

Promoters can be relied upon to re-interpret the war aims of the groups with which they are identified. Thus certain musical promoters discovered that the War was really a war between German and British music. As Isidore de Lara wrote :

> 1 London August 12, 1914-

> • See Hans Fiilster, Kirche und Krieg, Heft 8 in Kultuf und Zeitfragen

The hour has come to put aside and to veil with crape the scores of the men who have crystallized in so unmistakeable a manner the spirit of the modern Huns. . .

The future belongs to the young hero who will have the courage to exclude from his library all the works of Handel, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Brahms and Richard Strauss . . . who will draw from the depths of his own being tone pictures of all that is beautiful in the wonderful poetry of Great Britain, and find the vigorous rhythms that will tell of the dauntless spirit of those who go to death singing '' Tipperar}^"^

Under the stress of war the nurses of the scrawny infant known as Opera in English,'' were able to procure solid nourishment for their charge. To them, opera in German was a profanation, and the Ring" was pronounced with the accent of Belgravia or not at all.

Certain American educators took advantage of the War to gather steam behind their pet projects of educational reform. The baneful influence of the German common school model upon American education was held up for universal execration, and the war for these educators became a sort of crusade to make the world safe from the volksschule and for the Junior High School.* Over in Germany the tailors and dressmakers declared war upon the immoral fashions of decadent Paris and perfidious London. No longer was the matchless frame of the Fraulein to appear ridiculous in the simpering fluffs of Paris. She must be free and independent of the passing whims of Parisian mistresses.

> ^ “ English music and German masters,*’ Fortnightly Review, 103 : 847-853.

> ^ Friedrich Schonemann in Die Kunst der Massenbeeinflussung in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, Berlin and Leipzig, 1924, shows how every agency was mobilized to carry propaganda in the United States during and directly after the War. The school, the church, the women’s club, the newspaper, the movie, the business club, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Defense Society, the National Security Leagu^ the x\merican Legion, the “hereditary” patriotic societies (Sons ot tlie American Revolution, etc.) all played their active part. Although the book is written in evident bitterness of spirit, it is an excellent piece of pioneering. Thi^ study avoids duplication as much as possible.

In short, the active propagandist is certain to have willing help from everybody, with an axe to grind in transforming the War into a march toward whatever sort of a promised land happens to appeal to the group concerned. The more of these sub-groups he can fire for the War, the more powerful will be the united devotion of the people to the cause of the country, and to the humiliation of the enemy, i.

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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/).