[19] See Harold Lasswell's Propaganda Technique in the World War, New York, reissue 1938, Chapter II, "Propaganda Organization," for a description of the attempts to coordinate policy and propaganda in World War I.
[20] Chicago, 1946. The discussion of what censorship authorities regarded as propaganda material possessing value for the enemy, of the wartime OC-OWI relationship, and of censorship of short-wave broadcasts are of particular interest to the student of psychological warfare.
[21] In a somewhat different context, it is interesting to note that Chinese Protestant churches, made up of Chinese church members, like to hire ministers who mouth their Chinese with a strong American accent. The American missionaries established the American accent as part of the liturgical paraphernalia of Protestantism, and the Chinese preachers trained under them accepted the American mispronouncing of Chinese as a part of the religion. It is odd to see a church full of Chinese using absolutely unbelievable tones while singing hymns or making appropriate individual responses. At that, they are no funnier than the Chinese Buddhists, who memorize long Indian sutras without understanding a single syllable.
[22] On World War I, see Harold Lasswell's Propaganda Technique in the World War, previously cited; George Creel's How We Advertised America, New York and London, 1920, the very title of which is an indication of its chief shortcoming; Lt. Col. W. Nicolai, Nachrichtendienst, Presse und Volksstimmung im Weltkrieg, Berlin, 1920, by the German general staff officer chiefly responsible for staff work on propaganda and public opinion, a very thoughtful though prejudiced book; Heber Blankenhorn's enjoyable little classic, Adventures in Propaganda, Boston, 1919 (Blankenhorn was the only American officer to see field service in propaganda in both wars, as a Captain in I and a Lieutenant Colonel in II); and George G. Bruntz' scholarly monograph Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918, Stanford, 1938. Readers desiring further references should consult the bibliographies by Lasswell, Casey and Smith, cited above.
[23] Colonel Nicolai, book cited in footnote 1, pages 160-161.
[24] For a pro-Hitler view of the world, see Wyndham Lewis' Hitler, London, 1931, if a copy is to be found. The author would probably prefer for the book to disappear. It is an eloquent, very pro-Nazi book, putting the Hitlerite terminology into the English language and—what is more important—infusing into the clumsy German pattern of thinking-and-feeling a lightness of touch which makes Naziism more palatable. The book converted no one in its time, and is not apt to do harm at this late date; but it will make the English-reading reader understand some of the novelty, the revolutionary freshness, the bold unorthodoxy which made millions of people turn to Hitlerism as an escape from the humdrum heartbreak of Weimar Germany. Much of the book is devoted to the problem of power—street-fighting, mass demonstrations, slogans, symbolisms—which so fascinated the Nazis.
[25] See Carl J. Friedrich, The New Belief in the Common Man, Brattleboro (Vermont), 1945, chapter III, "Independence of Thought and Propaganda," pp. 81-120, for a cogent discussion of this mentality. The present author, in Government in Republican China, New York, 1938, pp. 18-23, describes in epitome the method whereby the ancient Confucian leadership of China, while propaganda-conscious, used ideology as an economical, stable method of control and avoided its maleficent features. In one of the few poorly argued passages of a great work, Arnold J. Toynbee overlooks this peculiar characteristic of Confucianism and merely equates the Confucian dogma with those of other "universal churches" (A Study of History, London, 1939, vol. V, especially pages 654-5).
[26] People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotzkyite Centre ..., Verbatim Report, Moscow, 1937, page 111. These trials were themselves propaganda; in this particular instance, propaganda of a rather poor order, since they failed to convince the foreign public and presumably persuaded only those portions of the Russian public who were so gullible that they needed no further persuading. For a brilliant illumination of them in terms of a readable novel, see Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, New York, 1941; the same author also has a book of essays on the totalitarian mentality under the rather fancy title, The Yogi and the Commissar, New York, 1945. On the same subject, see Louis Fischer's Men and Politics, New York, 1942.
[27] This document establishing the COI, along with the other major documents pertaining to American psychological warfare, may be found in J. P. Warburg's book cited above, Unwritten Treaty.
[28] In the course of a routine day of work on overseas propaganda in 1942, the author, who was then in SSG of MIS, found it necessary to get in touch with Military Intelligence proper, Naval Intelligence, the State Department, the office of the Assistant to the President, the Office of Facts and Figures, the British Political Warfare group (which was vainly seeking its American opposite number), the Office of Civilian Defense, the Research and Analysis Branch of the office of the Coordinator of Information, the office of the Librarian of Congress, the Foreign Information Service, and the Department of Agriculture. Each of these either operated propaganda, or had policy or intelligence contributions to make. The Board of Economic Warfare naturally came into the field too. This was during a period of German and Japanese victories, so that even if propaganda had been coordinated, it probably would not have been much more effective than it was. From what could be figured out later, no real harm was done at this time. Nor was much achieved.