by

Lauren Roberts

 

The military-industrial complex that is a major part of American government today did not even exist prior to the end of World War II. However, there was a War Department, also called the War Office, that existed from 1789 until September 18, 1947 at which time it was renamed the Department of the Army and made part of the joint NME (National Military Establishment). The War Department had been a cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the U.S. Army as well as naval affairs until the establishment of a separate Navy department in 1798. It also had responsibility for land-based air forces until the separate Department of the Air Force was created, also in 1947, and merged into the NME.

When America entered the two world wars in 1917 and again in 1941, existing businesses switched their production lines from consumer goods to war supplies—and the government cranked up its propaganda machine to rally civilians to the cause as much as the officers mobilized the troops.

It began with the Committee on Public Information, organized on April 13, 1917, by President Woodrow Wilson, and headed by a muckraking journalist named George Creel. The CPI studied the various ways that information flowed to its targets, and used that information by combining mass-marketing techniques with psychological studies to unleash masses of material intended to sell an unpopular war in the form of films, cartoons and speeches. It was an intensive campaign, and a deadly serious one. Public opinion was, for the first time in history, viewed as a major force in war and it was exploited ruthlessly.

The CPI had nineteen domestic sub-divisions, each focused on a particular aspect of propaganda. One was the Division of Pictorial Publicity, headed by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (creator of “the Gibson Girl”). Its advertising illustrators and cartoonists worked closely with publicity experts in the Advertising Division to create 1,438 psychologically powerful designs  for posters, window cards, newspaper ads, bookmarks, cartoons, seals and buttons,  all of them urging people to buy bonds or enlist in the army.

The weekly Bulletin for Cartoonists, geared primarily to newspaper and magazine cartoonists, put the intent of the Committee perfectly in the issue dated September 28, 1918: “The floating of Liberty Loans is largely a problem of education. It is a question of bringing home to the mass of people the fact that it is their patriotic duty to invest all the money they can in Liberty Bonds . . . Consider yourself a Liberty Bond salesman actually talking to your readers . . . Study out the psychology of every cartoon carefully and try to make each sell the maximum number of bonds.”

They did. So did everyone connected with the CPI. Even today, their work is breathtakingly potent. Much of the propaganda panders to the lowest common denominator, but it is undeniably authoritative and strong, and it did its job well. Each of the four Liberty Loan drives were oversubscribed, and it is easy to see why when you view the posters.

And at the head of the propaganda efforts (though they were not called that, the name being reserved for German-issued materials) was George Creel, Born in 1876, Creel began his career as a newspaper reporter for the Kansas City World. Within five years, he was publishing his own newspaper, the Kansas City Independent. His reputation was an investigative journalist was already growing when America entered World War I in April 1917. In addition, having been an outspoken supporter of Woodrow Wilson, he was a natural candidate for the leadership role on Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI). In that role he devoted his time and energies to gathering and strengthening public support for the war effort, including film, posters, music, paintings, cartoons, and the unique “Four-Minute Men” group of volunteers who agreed to speak around the country (for four minutes each time) in favor of the war effort.

In his 1920 memoir, How We Advertised America, Creel was  firm in his conviction that public support had at least as great a role in winning the war as men and arms.

Back of the firing-line, back of armies and navies, back of the great supply-depots, another struggle waged with the same intensity and with almost equal significance attaching to its victories and defeats. It was the fight for the minds of men, for the “conquest of their convictions,” and the battle-line ran through every home in every country.

It was in this recognition of Public Opinion as a major force that the Great War differed most essentially from all previous conflicts. The trial of strength was not only between massed bodies of armed men, but between opposed ideals, and moral verdicts took on all the value of military decisions. Other wars went no deeper than the physical aspects, but German Kultur raised issues that had to be fought out in the hearts and minds of people as well as on the actual firing-line. The approval of the world meant the steady flow of inspiration into the trenches; it meant the strengthened resolve and the renewed determination of the civilian population that is a nation's second line. The condemnation of the world meant the destruction of morale and the surrender of that conviction of justice which is the very heart of courage.

The Committee on Public Information was called into existence to make this fight for the “verdict of mankind,” the voice created to plead the justice of America's cause before the jury of Public Opinion. . . . In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of concealment or repression. Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive. At no point did it seek or exercise authorities under those war laws that limited the freedom of speech and press. In all things, from first to last, without halt or change, it was a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world’s greatest adventure in advertising.

Under the pressure of tremendous necessities an organization grew that not only reached deep into every American community, but that carried to every corner of the civilized globe the full message of America’s idealism, unselfishness, and indomitable purpose. We fought prejudice, indifference, and disaffection at home and we fought ignorance and falsehood abroad. We strove for the maintenance of our own morale and the Allied morale by every process of stimulation; every possible expedient was employed to break through the barrage of lies that kept the people of the Central Powers in darkness and delusion; we sought the friendship and support of the neutral nations by continuous presentation of facts. We did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption. Our effort was educational and informative throughout, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that no other argument was needed than the simple, straightforward presentation of facts.

There was no part of the great war machinery that we did not touch, no medium of appeal that we did not employ. The printed word, the spoken word, the motion picture, the telegraph, the cable, the wireless, the poster, the sign-board—all these were used in our campaign to make our own people and all other peoples understand the causes that compelled America to take arms. . . .

What we had to have was no mere surface unity, but a passionate belief in the justice of America's cause that should weld the people of the United States into one white-hot mass instinct with fraternity, devotion, courage, and deathless determination. The war-will, the will-to-win, of a democracy depends upon the degree to which each one of all the people of that democracy can concentrate and consecrate body and soul and spirit in the supreme effort of service and sacrifice. What had to be driven home was that all business was the nation's business and every task a common task for a single purpose.

But selling Liberty Bonds required more than posters and bookmarks, however compelling. William Gibbs McAdoo, Wilson’s son-in-law, was Treasury Secretary from 1913 until 1919. He was largely responsible for the financing of the U.S. war effort by issuing Liberty Bonds, which raised nearly $21 billion by the end of the war. That money was needed. According to a War Department statement, it cost $156.71 to equip an infantryman for service in France. His clothing cost $101.62, eating utensils etc., cost $7.73 and fighting equipment $47.36. And the selling of Liberty Bonds was a relatively painless effort—especially considering that separate attempts to raise funds via direct or indirect taxation were met with stiff and successful opposition.

What McAdoo did was create a policy of “capitalizing patriotism” by using leaders from, among others, Wall Street, the Boy Scouts and Hollywood, including stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin, to sell the bonds. The prevalence of patriotic themes (and xenophobic images of “the enemy”)  coming from the CPI created enormous social pressure to buy them while at the same time discouraging and preventing opposition voices from being heard. With that kind of assistance—assured, sound, dominant, well-funded, even reassuringly safe and familiar—it would have been hard to fail to sell them. Nevertheless, this was the campaign that changed the focus of war from combat to advertising. A revolution had come, and it would stumble only once, in Vietnam, before regaining and tightening its control upon the image machine that now flows so smoothly. 

Bookmark specifications: Liberty Bonds, Lend Him a Hand
Dimensions: 5 1/2" x 2"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: U.S. Government
Date: circa 1914-1918
Acquired: eBay

Bookmark specifications: Third Liberty Loan Bonds
Dimensions: 6" x 2"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: U.S. Government
Date: circa 1914-1918
Acquired: eBay


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately the same number of books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.