The Foreign Service Journal, June 2009

76 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 9 Our First Official Propagandist Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda Alan Axelrod, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, $26.95, hardback, 244 pages. R EVIEWED BY J OHN B ROWN I have yet to meet a student who, before taking a course I give at George- town University, “Propaganda and U.S. Foreign Policy: AHistorical Overview,” can identify George Creel (1876-1953), the head of the Committee on Public Information — the first U.S. govern- ment propaganda agency. The book under review, while not in-depth scholarship, tells much about the little-known Creel and his organi- zation. At a time when the federal gov- ernment was far smaller than today, the Committee on Public Information em- ployed more than 100,000 people in its many activities (e.g., Division of News, Division of Women’s War Work, etc.). Creel, a muckraking journalist who was a confidant of President WoodrowWil- son and had worked on his political campaigns, set up this huge bureau- cracy almost single-handedly following Wilson’s 1917 executive order. It oper- ated until 1919. Critical of the “iron silence” de- manded by the military in wartime, Creel believed that “expression, not suppression, was the key.” He thus fa- vored the dissemination of positive in- formation to the media, rather than outright censorship, to gain public support for U.S. engagement in World War I. While focused primarily on the home front, the committee also oper- ated overseas. As Axelrod notes, citing Creel: “The mission was to produce and disseminate propaganda on a global scale and through every medium —not ‘propaganda as the Germans de- fined it,’ but ‘propaganda in the true sense of the word, meaning the ‘prop- agation of faith.’” The media used were multitudinous, ranging from the tradi- tional — books, pamphlets — to the newly invented, such as film. Creel, who called his recollections Rebel at Large , does not fit the con- ventional image of the period’s foreign policy establishment. He came from modest roots, had little formal educa- tion, and spent his newspaper career mostly in Kansas City and Denver. Given Creel’s outsider background and closeness to the president, whom he venerated, it is not surprising that Sec- retary of State Robert Lansing, among others, complained about the power Creel wielded. He was also the subject of much congressional criticism, even during World War I. But Axelrod paints a largely sympa- thetic portrait, praising Creel’s “re- markable integrity” and the Committee on Public Information’s overseas suc- cess (except in Great Britain), as well as his ability to recruit talented agents of influence from among writers, scholars and artists. At the same time, Axelrod does not sugarcoat his assessment of the “impul- sive, mercurial” Creel or his activities. For instance, he claims that the Nazis were inspired by the committee’s suc- cess as a propaganda operation — though, regrettably, he does not identify a specific source for this assertion. And it was largely due to Creel, Axelrod says, that “the CPI converted the commer- cial instruments of public relations and advertising into weapons of war.” One of Creel’s contemporaries, Col- lier’s editor Mark Sullivan, offered an even less generous evaluation. Creel, Sullivan wrote, recognized just “two classes of men: There are skunks and the greatest man that ever lived. ... His Creel favored the dissemination of positive information to the media, rather than outright censorship, to gain public support for U.S. engagement in World War I. B OOKS