President Woodrow Wilson formed the Creel Committee on April 14, 1917, to mobilize public support for American entry into World War I. Prior to the war, there was widespread support for the nation to maintain its neutrality in international conflicts. Although many prominent public figures supported American intervention, others vocally championed pacifism. Among both radical and progressive organizations were voices that urged that the war raging in Europe was nothing more than a fight between competing capitalist factions and that the United States should isolate itself from the conflict. Isolationist and pacifist sentiment was strong enough that, in seeking reelection in 1916, President Wilson ran on the slogan “He kept us out of war.”
In order to mobilize public support for American involvement, the Wilson administration launched an allout propaganda campaign headed by the Committee on Public Information, or the Creel Committee. Headed by journalist George Creel, the committee was created on April 14, 1917. Although Wilson had run on the promise of keeping the country out of the war, the administration had sided with the British and French from the outset. As a result, part of the mission of the Creel Committee was to persuade the public that Germany was responsible for the war. The pro-war, anti-German efforts of the Creel Committee neglected few venues for propaganda, including renaming sauerkraut “liberty cabbage” and German measles “liberty measles.” It encouraged public high schools to drop the instruction of the German language and supported banning German books and music.
Poster for Pershing's Crusaders, the first official American war film released by the Committee for Public Information
(Library of Congress) songs. The committee produced pro-war movie shorts and distributed thousands of pamphlets exhorting the need for vigilance against German aggression at home as well as abroad. In many overt and subtle ways, the Creel Committee fueled anti-German sentiment. Such national prejudice frequently spilled over into discrimination or even hostility toward German Americans.
The Creel Committee had the additional objective of undermining the legitimacy of those who opposed the war. It did so by churning out propaganda that portrayed the war as a “Crusade for Democracy.” In order to combat radical organizations that opposed the war, the efforts of the Creel Committee were reenforced by the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. The Espionage Act prohibited the distribution of leftist antiwar material and imposed a $10,000 fine and/or prison term of up to 20 years for those who violated the law. Although controversial, the law was upheld by the Supreme Court in SCHENCK V. United States (1919). Similarly, the Sedition Act made it a crime to “willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government or to “willfully urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war. . . .”
The Creel Committee was largely successful at mobilizing support for the war. Within months, more than 10 million men had signed up for the military draft; and defense production and liberty bond sales skyrocketed during the war. The committee effectively silenced critics of the war with its campaigns. Between 1917 and 1919, it spent more than $2 million and helped create a rising tide of pro-war patriotism. Many foreign-born workers came to believe that the war was one for democracy at home as well as abroad, and they carried the spirit of industrial democracy into postwar labor struggles, such as the Steel Strike of 1919. In contrast, conservative politicians and business leaders, many of whom viewed strikes as threats to democracy, tapped into this wave of patriotism once the war had ended. They argued that Bolshevik sympathizers and supporters of the Russian Revolution inflamed worker discontent and incited political demonstrations. By the end of the war, under the influence of such propaganda, many had come to believe that all dissent was “un-American.” The conservative backlash was largely effective in its support for the Red Scare and other postwar labor repression. By 1921, political radicals, liberals, progressives, and labor unions were all in retreat.
Further reading: George Creel, How We Advertised America (New York: Arno Press, 1920, 1972); Paul L. Murphy, World War I and the Origins of Civil Liberties in the United States (New York: Norton, 1979).
—Robert Gordon
World History
