Next to the news service in importance was the influence exercised by the moving picture films, which everywhere won favor almost instantly, aroused the greatest interest, by their better quality crowded out the German films and in every country brought straight to the people such knowledge of Americans, of their every day life, of their purpose in the war and of their wonderful achievements for its prosecution as amazed them and greatly helped to turn the general sentiment as much in favor of as it had previously been against the United States. These pictures, on the civilian side, were gathered from every phase of American life, showing our cities, our agriculture, our educational institutions, our industries, our homes, our manifold efforts for social welfare, and were used to correct the deplorably mistaken conceptions about this country which had gained vogue almost all over the world. They were always followed by pictures of war work, such as training camp activities, aviation fields, ship building and other matters, with films also of our camps and troops in France.
A Foreign Press Bureau had the services of a long list of authors and publicists, many of them of wide reputation in our own and other countries. It sent every week to each one of the foreign representatives of the Committee a budget of matter that supplemented the daily news service and covered every phase of American life and endeavor. From the different countries came requests by cable for articles on specific subjects of the greatest variety which were prepared by specialists. One of these articles was reprinted by the British Government for use in England, where it distributed 800,000 copies. Through this Bureau and in connection with the matter it issued went posters, captioned in the language of each country to which they were sent, and millions of picture postals and photographs. The Committee representatives in the various lands commandeered the show windows of American business houses and kept up in them a frequently changed display of posters, bulletins and pictures.
In some countries reading rooms were established equipped with American newspapers, magazines and books and decorated with American posters and photographs, and in some cases classes were held in them for the study of English. Sometimes men of American citizenship and of thorough patriotism were sent back to their native countries to talk to and with the people concerning America. A company of newspaper editors from each of several countries toured the United States as guests of the Committee on Public Information and others from Spain, Switzerland, Holland and the Scandinavian countries were taken through the districts of American war works and camps in France. What they saw was so different from their preconceived and Germany-perverted ideas and made such a revolution in their minds that it changed the tone of their papers and had a notable influence upon public opinion in their respective countries.
German propaganda was busy against America even in the countries of our war associates where it sought to undermine confidence in us, create suspicion of our purposes and in each one instill the fear that the United States would join some other of the Allies against that particular one. This presented a problem easier to deal with than did the neutral countries because the Committee had the coöperation of the respective governments. The same means were used as in the neutral countries, the moving picture being a particularly efficient instrument in the work. Russia was the only country in which the Committee failed to win its purpose. Its representatives there worked hard and zealously, but Russia was so big and inarticulate, the German propaganda had behind it such vast sums of money and the Bolsheviki, as soon as they gained the upper hand, shut down so completely upon all freedom of expression except for their own ideas and purposes that they had finally to give up their struggle. But they had used the opportunity to spread information among the advancing German troops, to leave the seeds of some knowledge of America and her desires and aims, and they did achieve some worth-while results in Siberia and in the prison camps of Russia.
Some of the most interesting and valuable work done by the Committee in this war of ideas was in connection with its effort, in which it coöperated with the War Department, to inject some real knowledge of America into the enemy’s troops and into the country behind his armies. The Committee prepared most of the material for this purpose, among those engaged upon the effort to make it efficient being authors, historians, journalists, and advertising and psychological specialists, while the military forces undertook the job of distribution. Immense quantities of material, pamphlets, leaflets, short, pungent statements, speeches, facts about America’s war preparations and intentions, were dropped by the ton upon the troops of the Central Powers and behind the lines upon cities and towns and countrysides. They were carried by airplanes which spread the documents far and wide, they were thrown by rifle grenades, by rockets and by a specially developed type of gun. Balloons of various kinds rained literature upon armies and the country just behind them. Kites dropped leaflets upon the trenches. An American invention was a specialized balloon with a metal container for the literature and a control attachment governing the movements of the balloon and the distribution of the ten thousand leaflets it carried.
There can be no doubt of the effectiveness of this campaign upon the minds of the enemy’s people because, in the first place, both the German and the Austro-Hungarian governments went to the most extreme lengths in the effort to combat it, making death the penalty for touching the literature. Nevertheless, the majority of the prisoners captured by the Americans had it in their pockets. In the next place, the influence of it became evident after the war closed in the temper and attitude of the enemy peoples and their determination to discard crowns and thrones and set up democratic governments. President Wilson’s speeches were found to be especially effective, each one that was sent across the lines being followed invariably by increasing ferment and dissatisfaction among the people. Into Germany, when the German censor had mutilated one of these speeches and distorted its meaning, the Committee at once sent the entire speech in German with the omitted and distorted parts properly printed in red. The result was so evident that the German government soon began to print the President’s addresses correctly and in full.
It was a difficult fight that the Committee waged outside of the home country and the lands of our co-belligerents, for it had to meet a tricky foe who already held possession and would and did use all manner of insidious means and lying statements. But everywhere the Committee presented its claims frankly and openly, telling the authorities just what it wanted to do and what its methods would be, offering to the people plain and true statements and depending upon their honesty, intelligence and sense of justice. One large factor in its success was undoubtedly this openness and honesty of purpose and methods. The completeness with which public opinion in the neutral countries finally swung to the side of the United States and the Allies, the collapse of civilian Germany and the decay of morale among the German and Austro-Hungarian troops all helped to prove the importance and the success of its long, hard struggle. Just how great a portion of these developments was due to the Committee’s work can not yet be estimated. But, because mind and spirit dominate force and its weapons were wholly those of mind and spirit, it is already evident that it deserves no small measure of credit.
CHAPTER XXV
WAR-TIME CONTROL OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY
The entire commercial and industrial life of the country was established on a war basis very soon after war was declared. Trade had to be thus mobilized in order to defeat the efforts of the enemy to supply himself by roundabout and underground means with American products and in order to use efficiently the organization of commerce for the prosecution of the war. Industry had to be mobilized in order to make sure that it would produce all the enormous amounts of every sort that would be needed for war purposes. A people accustomed throughout their history as a nation to a minimum of governmental control of or interference in their business affairs and believing in and practicing the principle of individualism in business suddenly found themselves called upon to surrender that principle and submit to pervasive governmental regulation. It was a sharp and searching test of patriotism and of loyalty to national ideals and it put to thorough trial the mental elasticity, alertness and resourcefulness of the business life of the country.
These new conditions, limitations and controls were administered by War Boards of Trade and Industry. That for trade was instituted six months after the declaration of war as a more comprehensive and efficient successor of an Export Administrative Board. The purpose of the War Trade Board was primarily to carry out the provisions of the Act forbidding Trade with the Enemy and certain portions of the Espionage Act. It had under its control the whole of the foreign commerce of the United States, which it managed by means of a system of licenses for exports and imports. Not a pound of goods of any sort could be shipped out of or into the country without a license granted by the War Trade Board, and no license was granted by it without full knowledge of the character of the shipment, its destination if an export and its source if it were inward bound. It had its branch offices in a score of cities, its representatives in foreign countries, its trade advisers and distributors who were men of intimate and extensive knowledge of trade conditions in all commodities at home and abroad, its members who supplied information concerning war trade matters all over the earth, from Iceland to Cape Horn and from Siam round the world to Japan, its bureaus which studied the problems constantly arising and collected data for their solution and for the guidance of the Board. The applications made to the War Trade Board for export licenses, nearly all of which were granted, averaged over 8,000 per day. The transactions which passed daily through its hands represented values of from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000. It had 3,000 employees, most of whom were located in its Washington offices, although its representatives were to be found in every important trading post in the world outside of enemy countries.