George Creel

Asia. Creel also persuaded the motion-picture industry and large
corporations to create newsreel films that showed America in a
positive light. In so doing, Creel used some of the modern techniques
of persuasion that were being developed by the advertising
industry. To encourage public support for the military draft,
for example, Creel asked movie theaters across the country to
show patriotic slides and interrupt their shows for brief speeches
by recruiters who were called “Four Minute Men” (this was a
clever phrase that not only described the brief recruiting pitches
but also called to mind the patriots in the American War of
Independence). The campaign was highly successful.
The CPI also invited Allied journalists to visit military
bases, shipyards, and munitions factories in the United States
so that they would write positive articles about the American
war effort and boost morale in their own countries. “Before the
flood of our publicity, German lies were swept away,” Creel
later wrote. The CPI also reached out to many ethnic groups in
the United States to make sure that recent immigrants supported
the American war effort and not that of their former
homelands in Europe. The CPI even opened offices in Europe
and set up a worldwide cable and wireless network to distribute
articles, speeches, and other information favorable to the
United States and the Allied cause. “For the first time in history,”
Creel later wrote, “the speeches of a national executive
were given universal circulation” and within twenty-four
hours were translated into every modern language. “Our war
progress, our tremendous resources, the acts of Congress,
proofs of our unity and determination, etc., all went forth for
the information of the world.”
Unlike some of his counterparts in other Allied
nations, Creel refused to distribute stories of German atrocities
(extremely brutal acts), even though some people criticized his
decision on this point. Instead, he tried to combat anti-German
feelings in the United States, maintaining that the CPI “has
never preached any doctrine of hate, for it is not our duty to
deal in emotional appeals but to give the people the facts from
which conclusions may be drawn.” When Wilson formulated
his Fourteen Points plan providing a framework for peace in
the postwar world, Creel transmitted it to Russia and Germany
and “plastered [the Fourteen Points] on billboards in every
Allied and neutral country.”
George Creel 31