Conditions and Methods of Propaganda:A Summary

Successful propaganda depends upon the adroit use of means under favourable conditions. A means is anything which the propagandist can manipulate ; a condition is anything to which he must adapt. A propagandist can alter the organization of his activities, modify the streams of suggestion which he releases, and substitute one device of communication for another, but he must adjust himself to traditional prejudices, to certain objective facts of international life, and to the general tension level of the community. Both the conditions and the methods of propaganda have been mentioned explicitly or by implication in the course of the present study, and the time has come to draw them together in more systematic form.

The achievements of propaganda are affected by the traditional prejudices of the nation and of each constituent group. The French had the advantage of a great historic friendship with America, a heritage of the gratitude which the struggling colonists felt for aid of the French in the Revolution. The Germans counted upon the sympathy of their former nationals, and of the Irish-Jewish blocs. The British could rely upon a very deep and pervasive community of feeling, which was so general that it was frequently ignored in the presence of more spectacular and less profound attitudes.

Propagandists are always likely to run foul of some deeply imbedded prejudice. Thus the Germans seized upon the alleged franc-tireur excesses of the Belgian people to justify their own acts to the world and to the German public. But when the Prussians began to circulate tales of Catholic priests who urged their parishioners to kill the invader with every means in their command, a cross-current was set up at home. The Catholics arose to contradict the rumours. The Catholics had organized a Zentmlauskunftstelle det kathoUschen Presse in 1900. This was revamped into the Rechtschutzstelle fur die katholische Geistlichkeit at Frankfurt in 1913. In 1906 another service was set up at Cologne, bearing the name Priesterverein Pax filr das katholische Deutschland. Both services began to cast insinuations and contradictions upon the Prussian versions of Catholic atrocities in Belgium, and these were snapped up abroad and used by the Allies to discredit the German tales about Belgium. ‘

Such, prejudices continually circumscribed the propagandist. His freedom is further restricted by the network of connections between nations. The British held the cable communications between America and Europe in the hollow of their hands, and this had far-reaching results. The Germans tried in vain to offset such a handicap by exploiting the wireless, but with mediocre success. Anyone who knew the history of American foreign attitudes could have predieted in 1914 that the British viewpoint stood an excellent chance of infecting America, for American public opinion has often been a cockle-shell, floating helplessly and unconsciously in the wake of the British man-of-war. After the Civil War the American nation was a warm friend of Russia and bought " Seward’s ice box ” as a gift of gratitude for the Tsar’s moral support during the conflict. In the supervening years, America had few direct contacts with Russia, but American friendship passed over into active hostility. The explanation is very simple : America was fed on the British Press and Britain was in conflict with Russia.

‘ See Albert Hellwig, Zur Psychologic des Belgischen Franktireurkrieges/* Pveuss, Jahrh., Bd. 174 : 361-388.

There are objective similarities and differences in social customs and institutions between two nations, and these cannot be waved aside. After all is said and done, it was true that Britain, France and Belgium were more democratic than Germany in their basic political institutions, and that Americans spoke English and read English, and not German. Americans knew Shakespeare and not Goethe, and they thought the Battle of Waterloo was won by the Duke of Wellington, and not by Bliicher. The basic patterns of American life were more English than German.*

There are often interpenetrations of population which make it difficult to control sentiment at will. The customs and habits and competitive power of various immigrant groups in America influenced the American attitude and the attitude of their countries of origin. Many of the Russians who returned home when the Revolution came, carried back tales of reeking tenements and twelve-hour shifts in the steel mills. When the American propagandists undertook to extol the virtues of American democracy, some embarrassing questions were always forthcoming from the audience.

1 For an able exposition of these points see the booklet by Professor 'Moritz Bonn, Amenka als Feind.

One form of population interpenetration, which is particularly important in war, is the quartering of invaders upon the inhabitants of a conquered territory. A foreign military occupation produces all sorts of friction between the authorities and the inhabitants, and the distressing incidents which abound in war are particularly common then. The Germans occupied Belgium and were embarrassed by compromising collisions with the civilians. The Allies were able to make tremendous play with everything thaj happened and a great deal that did not ; the Germans could only retort by repeating the horrors of the Russian occupation of Eastern Prussia, which was too far away to arouse the sympathy and pity of the Americans.

There may be important connecting links of an economic character between two countries. It is generally recognized as a principle of international politics that when a country has loaned money to another it is likely to come to the aid of its debtor, should a third party threaten its ability to pay. The Americans who loaned their money to the Allies during the period of American neutrality may have advanced it out of sentimental preference for the Allied cause (the House of Morgan was English in origin and affiliation), but once tied to the Allies, the cords of sympathy were strengthened by bonds of gold. The sequel confirms the axiom that the creditor is bound to the debtor.

During the war-time the relative military strength of the contesting parties is a decisive point. Great movements of retreat cannot be concealed for long, and prolonged humiliation spreads the seeds of discord and defeatism. The German propagandists could invent no new hope to replace the disillusionment of midsummer, 1918 ; the appeal to arms had exhausted their credit, and destroyed the simple faith of the masses. Lord Grey has written some sage words about how easy it is to exaggerate the role of diplomacy in war-time, and what he says applies to propaganda, which is one of the tools of diplomacy. The pivotal front is the military front.

Even the battle of the Marne was, to outside opinion, rather the saving of Paris than a great victory, an arrest of the German advance rather than a turning of the tide in favour of the latter. Then followed the first battle of Ypres, in which the Franco-British line was brought near to another catastrophe. In 1915 there were no Allied successes of magnitude sufficient to counteract the deplorable impression made by the huge Russian disasters. In 1916 the Germans failed at Verdun, but the French suffered heavily, and the year was rather one of German failure than of Allied success, except the Brusiloff offensive. This brought the Rumanians in. Even the gaps in the Austrian line made by Brusiloff were completely stopped in a short time. The task of Allied diplomacy in Europe during the war was j; indeed uphill and thankless work.^

The preceding paragraphs have enumerated some of the connecting links which bind nations together and which condition the success of propaganda. These are, for the most part, quite tangible things which anyone can see on close inspection : the communication network, similarities and differences in customs and institutions, interpenetration of population, economic ties, relative military power. We now come to a limiting factor which is unquestionably present, but which is neither simple to describe nor to explain : the tension level.

^ Lord Grey, Twenty- Five Years, II : 165.

By the tension level is meant that condition of adaption or mal-adaption, which is variously described as public anxiety, nervousness, irritability, unrest, discontent or strain. The propagandist who deals with a community when its tension level is high, finds that a reservoir of explosive energy can be touched off by the same small match which would normally ignite a bonfire.

Some day it will undoubtedly be possible to connect the fundamental biological and psychological processes with this phenomenon, but to-day the field is a battleground of rival conjectures. Every school of psychological thought seems to agree, however, that war is a type of influence, which has vast capacities for releasing repressed impulses, and for allowing their external manifestations in direct form. There is thus a general consensus that the propagandist is able to count upon very primitive and powerful allies in mobilizing his subjects for war-time hatred of the enemy. The possibility also exists that there are physiological or psychological types which respond more readily than others to the bellicose stimuli circulated by the propagandist.^

It may be that further research will confirm the hypothesis of Clark Wissler, that there are special situations in the cultural life of a group in which definite psychological dispositions lead toward expansion. This anthropologist writes :

^ For the concept of the tension level in individual psychology, see the masterly essay by Pierre Janet in the TraiU de psychologic (edited by Dumas), Tome i. Applications of the notion of liberated repressions to war will be found in the books of such widely separated psychologists as Ernest Jones and George Patrick (Essays in Psycho-analysis and The Psychology of Relaxation).

when a group comes into a new solution to one of its important culture problems, it becomes zealous to spread that idea abroad, and is moved to embark upon an era of conquest to force the recognition of its merits.

He also says that the extension of the material culture zone beyond the zone of political control, is likely to produce irritations which lead to an attempt to enlarge the political zone to coincide. *

Certainly, there is reason for believing that the propagandist who works upon an industrialized people, is dealing with a more tense and mobile population than that which inhabits an agrarian state. Industrialism has apparently increased the danger from those secret mines which are laid by repression, for it has introduced both the monotony of machine tending, and the excitement of much secondary stimulation. The rhythm and clang of exacting machinery is no less characteristic of the industrial way of life, than the blazing array of billboards, window displays, movies, vaudevilles, and newspapers, which convey abundant and baffling possibilities of personal realization. The stage is set, and a coarse patriotism, fed by the wildest rumours and the most violent appeals to hate and the animal lust of blood, passes by quick contagion through the crowded life of the cities, and recommends itself everywhere by the satisfaction it affords to the sensational cravings. It is less the savage yearning for personal participation in the fray than the feeling of a neurotic imagination that marks Jingoism.® Both litetacy and the Press are offspring of the machine age. The Press lives by advertising ; advertising follows circulation, and circulation depends on excitement. “ What sells a newspaper ? ” A former associate of Lord Northcliffe answers :

^ Man and Culture, p. 339. ® Same, p. 174.

* John A. Hobson, The Psychology of Jingoism, Chapter I, I.ondon, 1900.

The first answer is “ war.” War not only creates a supply of news but a demand for it. So deep-rooted is the fascination in war and all things appertaining to it that . . . a paper has only to be able to put up on its placard ” A Great Battle ” for its sales to mount up.^

This is the key to the proclivity of the Press to aggravate public anxiety in moments of crises.

So much for the general factors which condition the success of propaganda. Success depends upon traditional prejudices, objective connections between nations, and the changing level of popular irritability. No matter how skilful the propagandist may be in organizing his staff, selecting suggestions, and exploiting instruments of transmission, his manipulative skill will go for nought if there is no favourable juxtaposition of social forces to aid him.

The degree to which the propagandist is master of his fate depends in part upon the method of organization which he adopts. A number of agencies always engage in greater or less measure in war propaganda work ; the Foreign Office, the Diplomatic and Consular staffs ; the War Department, the General Staff and Field Headquarters ; and the principal service departments of internal administration. Since propaganda is, by its nature, incapable of complete segregation in the hands of one staff, unity must be achieved by the devious path of co-ordination, rather than by the simple act of exclusive delegation. During the last War the nations sought to minimize the dangers of contradiction, malproportion and duplication by resorting to one of three main types of co-ordination : the Press conference (Germany) ; the committee of executives, each responsible for a principal branch of propaganda work (Great Britain) ; and the single propaganda executive, operating in the name of the principal departments (the United States). The Germans got no further than common Press conferences and sporadic efforts at co-ordination because of the excessive friction between their civil and military authorities. Except for special commissioners who were sent to certain of the most important foreign countries, the French relied upon their existing agencies of government. The British were finally constrained to set up a committee of executives of approximately ministerial importance, each one of whom was charged with some such important branch of propaganda as enemy, home, allied or neutral. By securing a man of prestige to head each important service, policy was itself occasionally modified for the better. Northcliffe brought the Cabinet to straighten out its policy toward the Italians and the Jugo-SIavs, and the results vindicated the maxim that policy and propaganda should go hand in hand. The United States solved its problem by creating an ex-officio committee of the heads of principal departments (State, War and Navy) and one earnest and aggressive man who did the effectual work. Integration in Creel’s hands was justifiable because of the comparative simplicity of America’s propaganda both at home and abroad. The British had to deal with such a complex of foreign problems that extreme integration might have stifled ready adjustment.

^ Kennedy Jones, Fleet Street and Downing Street, p. io8.

The war experience seems to warrant the belief that the directors of each important propaganda service should be men whose prestige equals that of the policy determining ofiicers, and that the staff should be selected from newspapermen — rather than proprietors — from popular writers, and from the members of the new propaganda profession.

The War abundantly demonstrated that the relation between the propaganda services and the legislature is a thorny problem. The executive arm of a democratic government may pervert a propaganda bureau to partisan, personal or class ends, ‘and it may bind the legislature in advance, by stimulating public opinion, to favour its own policy. The executive may use the bureau to popularize an erroneous picture of the facts, and the legislature, conscious of all this, may assail the executive in unmeasured terms and undermine public confidence in its leaders. The best adjustment here does not depend upon statutes or ordinances, but upon the cultivation of informal channels of acquaintance and communication through which legislators may be brought into closer contact with the facts of the service. If matters go badly, they can, and should, protest. But their remarks should be grounded upon something more tangible than mere mistrust. It was the failure to close the gap between the legislator and the administrator, which led to the undignified and unjust criticism of the Committee of Public Information in the American Congress. There is no doubt, of course, that democratic governments must assume the task, regardless of all complicating difficulties, of mobilizing minds as well as men and money in war.

The general form of propaganda organization is a variable one, which the propagandist may adapt to his purposes. His problem, however, consists principally in selecting the social suggestions best calculated to evoke the desired responses. In this he is governed, in the first instance, by the broad strategic aims of propaganda. There are four major objectives ;

(1) To mobilize hatred against the enemy ;

(2) To preserve the friendship of allies ;

(3) To preserve the friendship and, if possible, to procure the co-operation of neutrals ;

(4) To demoralize the enemy.

The general theory of the appeals to be employed to achieve each aim has been developed in the previous chapters of this inquiry, and may be summarized rather briefly at this point.

To mobilize the hatred of the people against the enemy, represent the opposing nation as a menacing, murderous aggressor. Represent the enemy as an obstacle to the reahzation of the cherished ideals and dreams of the nation as a whole, and of each constituent unit. It is through the elaboration of war aims that the obstructive role of the enemy becomes particularly evident. Represent opposing nation as satanic ; it violates all the moral standards {mores) of the group, and insults its self-esteem. The maintenance of hatred depends upon supplementing the direct representations of the menacing, obstructive, satanic enemy by assurances of ultimate victory.

To preserve fiiendly relations with an ally, the cardinal themes are our strenuous exertion in the prosecution of the war, and our hearty assent to the cherished war aims of the ally. This may be supported by demonstrations of respect and esteem and by all the themes of domestic propaganda.

To win the friendship of a neutral, lead the neutral to identify his own interests with the defeat of our enemy; In addition to the ordinary devices, seek to draw the neutral into active co-operation in some non-military capacity. If aU else fails, re-enforce pacifism, by portraying the horrors of war, and the unwillingness of the enemy to make peace, and stir up trouble between two neutrals.

To demoralize the enemy, substitute new hates for old. The edge of animosity may be somewhat blunted by direct counterstimulation, but diversion depends mainly upon spreading discouragement and instigating defeatism. The way is then paved for violent campaigns against allies, against the governing class, and among national minorities, against the unity of the state.

These themes were present in each war propaganda during the last War, but some of them were more effectively utilized by one belligerent than another. The British were amazingly successful in the development of humanitarian war aims. The Germans aroused much resentment and suspicion abroad by talking about a war of German Kultur, and by underplaying the humanitarian ideal. The British talked about a war to protect international law and to guarantee the sanctity of treaties, and they fought against a monster, known as autocratic militarism, in the name of democracy. British public men began to talk about a wg..^ tp end wrgx' long before the German statesmen learned this vocabulary. Indeed, the colourless and halting pronouncements of Bethmann-Hollweg seemed more like concessions wrested from an unimaginative soul than programmes promulgated by a determined leader. Wilsonian phraseology touched the imagination of powerful elements throughout the world. In the duel of words the Germans fought with pasteboard against steel.

The Germans were never able to efface the initial impression that they were aggressors. This was due in part to the stupidity of their own appeals. They continued to talk about “ Einkreisung ” in America, where the danger of encirclement is a theoretical conjecture for which there is no counterpart in recent American tradition. They never dramatized the aggressiveness of their enemies as did the Allies, who invented the myth of the “ Potsdam Council.” They never succeeded in getting over the idea of a war hatched by a vain and dissolute uncle (Edward VII.) in a fit of pique at the success of his nephew (William II.) ; they failed to humanize and dramatize the diplomatic game, and held fast to diplomatic jargon and German catchwords, which lacked fire and fury in America.

Much of the German propaganda proved to be a boomerang. It is appalling that responsible directors of propaganda should have, done everything in their power to circulate the charge that the Belgians were sniping. The Kaiser went so far as to make a public protest to President Wilson. The truth is that the report that the Belgians were sniping aroused admiration in America. It seemed to show how plucky these little Belgians really were, for the American public was a civilian public, and it knew that Belgium was little and that Germany was big, and it cheered whenever the underdog bit.

The explanation of the maladroitness of the German propaganda is partly the influence which the military mind had upon it. To the soldier it is utterly inexcusable for a civilian to shoot a man in uniform. He has a strict code of ethics, which is dictated by consideration for his own skin, and he distinguishes sharply between what is permitted a man in uniform, and what is permitted a man out of uniform. These elementary distinctions are vague, and nearly meaningless to the public mind in such a country as the United States, where military training is the exception and not the rule. The American cartoonists reflected the civilian mind when they lampooned the big, coarse German, who howled to heaven that the little fellow whom he was beating had stung him with a pebble from a sling shot. The failure of the Germans to neutralize the Cavell incident has already been alluded to, and it typifies a military mind which is opaque to the civilian point of view.

Instead of complaining about the snipers in Belgium the Germans would have been better advised to have appointed a distinguished jury of neutrals to investigate the Welfare of the Belgian people, and to have broadcasted its report all over the world. As it was, they never neutralized the effect of the Bryce report.-f“

The Germans cast no anchors to windward during the opening weeks of the War. They talked about the invincible German army, and predicted victory on a definite date.* They did not advertise the invasions in East Prussia, and their march through Belgium and northern France seemed to belie any theory of unpreparedness.

^ The reason their propaganda began rather late and lost many openings was that they expected an early mihtary victory.

The French propaganda was lucid and simple. Her retiring armies told a prima facie story of who had been prepared for the War (after the early cloud of false news had blown aside), and her chief propaganda was that of simple Satanism. The Germans were never able to popularize so striking an epithet as Hun or Boche and their clumsy exhortations to hate or their sneering references to the All-lies,'' were much less powerful and invidious. The French vocabulary had powerful words like humanity and democracy, which reverberated with a tremendous clang abroad.

Little attention has been paid here to that aspect of influencing, which is often called propaganda of the deed." By this is usually meant some isolated act of violence, which is intended to produce a powerful impression. The dropping of bombs upon enemy cities was less for immediate military and strategic purposes, than for propaganda purposes. It was supposed that civilian moral would crack under the strain of perpetual fear. This, besides the propaganda of frightfulness and other acts of frightfulness, was supposed to produce discouragement and defeatism.

Since much of the talk about frightfulness during the last War was sheer propaganda against the enemy, the effect of overt acts of this kind can be judged by the influence of such propaganda. On the whole, its chief result was to stiffen the determination of the people to defend themselves. It may be unreliable, but there is a story with a flash of insight which tells about the German aviator who objected O to dropping any more bombs on London, because he had not entered the War to be a recruiting officer for the British army. Civilians become habituated to raids, as Londoners did to the Zeppelin raids, and humour and ridicule soften the trial. The London stores advertised all sorts of accessories for “ Zeppelin parties,” and one is even supposed to have offered a special line of “ Zepp nighties.”

The Allied propaganda of discouragement made little impression on the Germans until 1918. Indeed, the British wasted some of their early effort on vain boastings, when the German army was actually in victorious march against them. The American propaganda against the Germans was essentially a propaganda of discouragement and revolution. It was the British who did most of the propaganda of dissolution against Austro-Hungarian armies, and they scored notable successes. Success in propaganda of this kind depends much more upon the existence of strains and stresses in an enemy state than does success in propaganda among neutrals.

The preceding paragraphs have contrasted the strategy of some of the principal War propagandas, and rehearsed the general theory of how to select powerful appeals for the achievement of the four propaganda aims. There are humbler » criteria tactical nature, which the working propagandist applies to each suggestion. The tactical objectives may be summarized thus ;

1. To arouse the interest of specific groups ;

2. To nullify inconvenient ideas ;

3. To avoid untruth which is likely to be contradicted before the achievement of the strategic purpose. Effective propaganda is catholic in its appeal. It ignores no loyalty inside a nation. , Protestants, Catholics, Jews, workers, financiers, farmers, merchants, city dwellers, and rutalites, sportsmen and philosophers, men of affairs and ' academicians,^ women and men, old and young ; every possible line of cleavage in the nation is appealed to by some direct or indirect device.^

R. J. R. S. Wreford exactly described this process when he said that the expert propagandist must decide as to the public which is most likely to be, or to become, sympathetically disposed toward the interests which he represents ; he must then select the aspects of those interests best calculated to appeal to the predilections of this public ; and he must then present these aspects in an attractive manner.'

Propaganda material must reach the meanest as well as the keenest intelligence. In the case of the crude prophecies of victory which were made during the War, it was safe to predict that they would carry reassurance to the most superstitious and credulous strata of the population, but that the sophisticated would pass them contemptuously by. It is perfectly safe to launch the crude and sophisticated together, for the people capable of reacting to the latter will not be estranged by the former ; they will merely remain indifferent and condescending. Ajcock-and-bull story about »' the Kaiser’s lust for war, as revealed by his habit of spitting three times whenever the Union Jack was displayed, would probably not win Belgravia, no matter how popular it might b^ in Poplar. But a learned tome, prepared with all the dexterity of the trained academician, could defend the same general theme to the satisfaction of an intelligent public. Part of the superiority of British propaganda during the War was due to its amazing suppleness. In 1917 the journalist Arthur Bullard commented on this fact and wrote,

^ For an example, see the description of Lithuanian propaganda on page Ii8.

® Propaganda Good and Evil/* igth Century and After, 93 (1923) : 514-524. He patly defined propaganda as “ the dissemination of interested fact and opinion.’*

The appeal which brought the first wave of volunteers was Bleeding Belgium/' the duty of the strong as good sportsmen to defend the weak. Then the attempt was made to stir national pride by posters quoting the Kaiser's alleged insulting reference to ‘‘ the contemptible little English Army." An effort was made to frighten the people by the supposed danger of invasion. Somewhat later, pictures were displayed of the famous treaty which had been called a " scrap of paper." Every note was sounded from rage against " the baby killers " to fidelity to the pledged words as the basis of international relations. But by far the greatest response came on the appeal to democratic idealism, the issue between popular rule and military despotism.^

Every suggestion must have an interesting appeal to a definite group, but some suggestions must be expressly designed to nullify inconvenient ideas. This brings us to the second tactical standard of good propaganda, which appears in the conduct of war influencing. When a government undertakes to influence the people within its own boundaries, it is usually able to control the cable, telegraph, telephone, Press, postal and wireless services, while war lasts. But psychological frontiers never coincide with geographical frontiers, . and summary suppression is never a complete success. Governments leam to ntillify rather than to conceal undesirable ideas.

1 Mobilizing America, p. 44.

Part of this technique is the control of emphasis. Underemphasis may be procured in the Press by relegating an item to an obscure column with an inconspicuous headline, by incorporating in another story, by omitting detail, by contradiction on the part of the writer or “ witness,” by quotations which cast doubt upon the assertion and related devices. Conversely, favourable ideas may be given prominent columns, striking headlines, independent treatment, circumstantial detail, impressive corroboration and ceaseless repetition.

In practice, the simplest mode of nullifying important reports is by the device of compensation. It is ridiculous to pretend that the enemy never wins a point. The depressing news of an enemy gain should, however, be counterbalanced by a simultaneous gain. This was what Winston Churchill used to do at the Admiralty, for he would hold on to a bit of bad news for a time on the chance of getting a bit of good news to publish as an offset, and I must say that it not infrequently came off.'

When American preparations began to assume disquieting proportions, the German Press played up the collapse of Russia.

Compensation sometimes takes the form of pointing out that the enemy is as badly off as the home public. At one time during the War, the food administration in Berlin announced that 50 grammes of fresh lard would be distributed on a certain day, but circumstances intervened and it became impossible to make good. The disappointment of the people was somewhat appeased by the publication of impressive statistics of the huge losses of lard, to which the enemy had been subjected by the U-Boat campaign.

^ Brownrigg, Indiscretions of a Naval Censor, p. 13.

The most convenient mine of counter-propaganda material, is the opposition Press inside a foreign country. The German Press greeted the appointment of Foch to the supreme command by reprinting some articles in the French radical Press, which interpreted the appointment as a last straw, admitting that bad leadership had brought about the present plight at the front.

Unfavourable intelligence may be nullified by a flat denial, but defence by denial is not of itself efficacious when alarming news is abroad. Defence by admission and justification usually accomplishes more, especially when placed in the form of a counter-attack. Certain losses at the front may be covered by ostentatious hints at a great plan to draw the enemy from his base of supplies and snare him. Poison gas may be justified by assaulting the cruel, inhuman and illegal methods of warfare to which the enemy has resorted.

The public should be prepared in advance for the occurrence of an event, which might otherwise produce an undesirable repercussion. Thus precautions should be taken to discredit an authority which is to render an ultimate verdict, and which is almost certain to be unfriendly. The Germans looked with open contempt upon the panel selected to inquire into the Belgian atrocities, and they blackguarded both its integrity and its technique before pubhshing its results.

The public may have bad news " broken ” to it gently by publishing a disquieting question, followed by a few facts, and then by the worst. Panic is thus circumvented, since the processes of discounting the future have produced a certain stability of response in the public mind.

When it is proposed to inaugurate a policy to which there may be some objection, it is possible to instigate a demand for the very policy which it is intended to introduce. This is the indirect initiative, or, as a Belgian student of propaganda^ has christened it, the initiative eventee (the fanned initiative). He observed its operations at the time of the Brest Litovsk negotiations between Germany and Russia. There was a great deal of objection in Germany among the parties of the Left to a downright policy of annexation, so the Government proceeded cautiously. The Kolnische Volkszeitung published a report that the English were negotiating with Russia for the right to occupy the Riga Islands. Instantly there were spontaneous editorials throughout Germany, demanding prompt action by the Imperial Government to forestall the accursed British. The Government took the islands.

Bad news and unwanted criticism may be nullified by distracting the attention of the public from them. A distraction is managed by springing a sensation which is unrelated to the inconvenient focal point of attention. The arrival of the Deutschland served this purpose in Germany at a dull moment during the War.

Yet a third general tactical standard has emerged in the course of our analysis. It is concerned with the relation of propaganda to truth. To what extent is it necessary for the suggestions employed in propaganda to conform to ¥ ^

^ He occupies an official position at present.

^the canons of critical veracity ?

Actual propaganda, wherever studied, has a large element of the fake in it. This varies from putting a false date line on a despatch, through the printing of unverified rumours, the printing of denials in order to convey an insinuation, to the staging ** of events. One of the world war fakes was the use of pictures of the Jewish pogrom of 1905, somewhat retouched, as fresh enemy atrocities. Of a similar type was the following : the London Daily Mirror of August 20th, 1915, published a picture of three German officers, who held various vessels in their hands. The sub-title was.

Three German Cavalrymen loaded with gold and silver loot,'* which they had taken in Poland. This was, in fact, a defaced reproduction of a picture, which had originally appeared in the Berliner Lokalanzeiger for the 9th of June, 1914, and which had shown the winners of the cavalry competition in the Griinewald. The officers had cups and trophies in their hands. The sub-title read :

Vom Armee-Jagdrennen in Griinewald. Von links : Lt.

Prieger, Zweiter : Lt. v. Egan-Krieger. Dritter : Lt., v.

Herder. Sieger. ^

Sir Campbell Stuart, looking back upon the British propaganda from the vantage ground of a victorious peace, has written that '' only truthful statements " should be used in propaganda. This seems, in the hght of practice, an impracticable maxim. It was not unusual during the War to invent a great deal of material out of whole cloth. One of the best examples of this sort of thing was the famous cadaver story. Two captured photographs chanced to come to the desk of the Chief of the British Army Intelligence, Brigadier General J. V. Charters. One of them showed dead German soldiers being hauled away for burial behind the lines, and the other showed dead horses on the way to the soap factory. Knowing the reverence of the Chinese for their ancestors and the uncertainty of Chinese opinion toward the Germans, he thoughtfully interchanged the titles of the two pictures, and sent the edited material to Shanghai for release. German cadavers on way to the soap factory,'' soon found its way to Europe and America and spread distaste and contempt of all things German.

^ Ferdinand Avenarius exposed several of these falsifications during the War in the booklet, als Verleumder, the enlarged, post-war edition of which is named Die Mdchie im Weltwahn. A French rejoinder was named L* imposture par V image, ^

This was, of course, a plain lie. But it was plausible, and it was incapable of complete refutation during the War. During war, plenty of horrors are sure to occur. They grow dank and rank on every hand, and a mustard seed of truth may blossom and bloom. Indeed, a very sophisticated British soldier, a literary man, who was not one to be taken in by this sort of thing, related something in his own experience which might have given rise to a story of this kind. Shortly after having heard this tale for the first time, he was engaged in active fighting in Bellicourt. A British shell squashed a German field kitchen, and what he saw when he went to inspect the ruins, gave the clue to the '' corpse factory."

' Seethe N.Y. Times, 20 October, 1925. Will Irwin, the able journalist who took the trouble to try to verify the atrocity tales of the War, has described several versions of the story that German soldiers cut off the hands of Belgian babies and carried them along as souvenirs. He found them all unproved and wildly improbable. Admiral Sims has categorically declared that the reports of the terrible inhumanity of submarine com* mandera was, with a single exception, pur® fabrication.

A quite simple case. Shells had gone into cookhouses of ours, long before then, and had messed the cooks with the stew.‘

The truth about the relation of truth to propaganda seems to be that it is never wise to use material which is likely to be contradicted by certain unconcealable events before the political objective of propaganda is attained. It is foolish to promise victory on a definite date in the imminent future, because the prediction may be falsified by the event and lead to a certain backwash of discouragement and suspicion. It is perfectly permissible to assert that ultimate success is sure, even though no criticaUy-trained intelligence could accept such a statement as proved, because it is impossible to disprove this proposition before the attainment or the total eclipse of all hope of attaining the political objective.

It is evident that propaganda must avoid self-contradiction in the same context addressed to the same group or to groups in intimate contact with one another. There is cornparatively little danger in telling the Protestants through their official organs that the war is a great Protestant crusade, and in encouraging the Catholics to regard it as a great Catholic movement ; but it would be absurd to mix the appeals to the same audience. Every special group tends to make the war over in its own image, and the task of the propagandist is usually to facilitate, rather than to fabricate.

The three tactical principles which have just been recapitulated, may be stated in these words :

I. Suggestions should be circulated which promise to arouse the interest of specific groups, 2. Suggestions should be chosen to nullify inconvenient ideas which cannot be suppressed.

1 C. E. Montague, Disenchantment, p. 93.

3. Suggestions should be used which are likely to pass uncontradicted until the propaganda aim is realized, and this implies, in particular, that self-contradiction in the same context to the same public must be avoided.

The successful choice of propaganda material according to these standards presupposes accurate prediction, not only of the immediate results of its circulation, but of the countercurrents which may be instigated. If methods of prior testing can be devised, the propagandist will approximate somewhat closer to the omniscience once imputed to him by a New York newspaper, which wrote, the public mind to the trained propagandist is a pool into which phrases and thoughts are dropped like acids, with a foreknowledge of the reactions that will take place, just as Professor Loeb at the Rockefeller Institute can make a thousand crustaceans stop swimming aimlessly about in the bowl and rush with one headlong impulse to the side where the light comes from, merely by introducing into the water a little drop of a chemical. ‘

Thus far, our survey of the means of propaganda has covered the methods of organizing and the criteria for selecting suggestions for strategic or tactical reasons. There remains the problem of choosing from among the numerous instruments of transmission which are available. Suggestions may be spoken, written, pictoriaP or musical, and the possible variations in the form of the stimulus-carrier are infinite. The soundest method for the propagandist to follow is to cultivate the habit of identifying himself imaginatively with the subjects to be influenced, and to explore all the possible avenues of approach to their attention. Consider, from this point of view, a group of people who are riding in a street car. They may be influenced by placards posted inside the car, by posters on the billboards along the track, by newspapers which they read, by conversations which they overhear, by leaflets which are openly or surreptitiously slipped into their hands, by street demonstrations at halting places, and possibly by yet other carriers of suggestions.

^ New York Tribune, July 12th, 1918. Cited in Military Intelligence booklet on Propaganda in its Military and Legal Aspects, p. 93. Stern- Rubarth has named the Priifung der mdglicher Ruckivirkung ** among his five principles. See his Propaganda als politisches Instrument.

2 The literature of caricature, cartoon and illustration during the War is reviewed in L. M. Salmon, The Newspaper and the Historian. See especially p. 381 and after. Karl Demetcr dealt with the film propaganda of the Entente in the Archiv f. Politik u, Geschichte, 4 (19-25) : 214-231.

Of possible occasions for suggestion there is no end. People walk along the streets or ride in automobiles, trams, subways, elevated trains, boats, electrical or steam railways ; people congregate in theatres, churches, lecture halls, eating places, athletic parks, concerts, barber shops and beauty parlours, coffee-houses and drug stores ; people work in offices, warehouses, mills, factories and conveyances. An inspection of the habit patterns of each community reveals a web of mobility routes and congregating centres, which may be taken advantage of for the dissemination of interested fact and opinion.

No obiter dicta about the comparative values of a given system of transmitting stimuli can have the same importance as the habit of mind which enables the propagandist to test each given situation for its inherent possibilities. The forms of - suggestions are few and elemental, but the possible occasions and carriers are infinite. The technical literature on advertising is full of the most precise information on the effect of different colours, sizes, shapes and elevations of outdoor posters on suggestion. All this is indispensable to the working propagandist, but it is distinctly ancillary to the problem of achieving and preserving a perspective on the problem of control, which uses broad and rather flexible categories of analysis. These are the leading questions : What are the proposed subjects of stimulation doing ? How many separate occasions can be isolated ? How many spoken, written, pictorial, musical or demonstrative suggestions can be interposed ? What are carriers by which they may be transmitted into the experience-world of the subjects?

For the sake of suggesting the more common instruments of propaganda, Mr. Creel's summary of the work of the Committee on Public Information may be quoted

Thirty odd booklets were printed in several languages. Seventy-five million copies were circulated in America, and many million copies were circulated abroad. Tours were arranged for the Blue Devils (French soldiers), Pershing's Veterans, and the Belgians, and mass meetings were arranged in many communities. Forty-five war conferences were held. The Four Minute Men commanded the volunteer services of 75,000 speakers, operating in 5,200 communities, and making a total of 755,190 speeches.

With the aid of a volunteer staff of several hundred translators, the Committee supplied the foreign language Press of America with selected articles. It planned war exhibits for the state fairs of the United States, a series of inter- Allied war expositions, and secured millions of dollarsworth of free advertising space from the Press, periodical, car and outdoor advertising forces of the country.

It used 1,438 drawings prepared by volunteers for the production of posters, window cards and similar material. It issued a daily newspaper with a 100,000 circulation for official use. It ran an information service and syndicated feature articles for the Press. Plate-matter for the country Press, and specialized material for the labour, religious and women's Press was supplied. Moving pictures were commercially successful in America and effective abroad, such as Pershing’s Crusaders,” ” America’s Answer,” and ” Under Four Flags.”

^ Adapted from George Creel, How We Advertised America.

Over two hundred thousand stereopticon slides were distributed. Still photographs were prepared, and a stream of 700 pictures per day of military activities were censored. Cable, telegraph and wireless were employed by an official news service. A special mail and photograph service was also built up for the foreign Press. Reading-rooms were opened abroad, schools and libraries were fitted out, photographs were displayed prominently.

Missions were sent to the important districts of the world to look after American propaganda on the spot.

The service cost the taxpayers $4,912,553, and earned $2,825,670-23 to be applied on expenses.

As we have seen, the problem of penetrating the enemy’s country with propaganda material was solved during the last War by an ingenious device, the free balloon. After employing the Press of adjacent neutral countries, stationary balloons and aeroplanes, this mode of transmission was finally perfected and substituted. The Allies had the benefit of the prevailing westerly winds, and they laid down a barrage of print over the German lines.

One of the lessons to be drawn from the success of British propaganda in the United States is the cardinal importance of persons as means of carrying suggestion. No avenue of approach can safely be ignored, but the powers behind the impersonal agepcies must be reached, and this is best managed by personal contact. The British were astute enough to work chiefly through Americans, and none of their agents came to the premature disgrace and humiliation that befell Dr. Demburg.

This completes our brief summary of the conditions and methods of propaganda. Success, it may be reiterated, depends upon the astute use of propaganda means (organizations, suggestions, devices) under favourable conditions.