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Allied propaganda. To U. S. citizens who remember the mighty machinations of George Creel's Committee on Public Information, the Allied propaganda may seem pale in comparison. But it was all pervasive and continuous, and it dated from before the War. The U. S. was used to considering London "not only the cultural and social capital of our wealthier and more influential classes; so far as European events were concerned it was our newspaper capital as well." And, though such tall stories as the famed German "corpse-factory" were pure fabrications, the mass of Allied propaganda carried the weight of sincerity. "One of the greatest of the qualities which have made the English a great people," says Millis. "is their eminently sane, reasonable, fair-minded inability to conceive that any viewpoint save their own can possibly have the slightest merit."
The day after England declared war on Germany the German cables were cut; from then on there was "nearly absolute Allied command over all channels of communication and opinion." Sir Gilbert Parker, head of the British bureau "responsible for American publicity." handed out to delighted U. S. correspondents free articles from such noted writers as Kipling, Wells, Galsworthy. Arnold Bennett; distributed propaganda material broadcast to U. S. libraries, educational institutions and periodicals; "was particularly careful to arrange for lectures, letters and articles by pro-Ally Americans rather than by Englishmen." German-atrocity stories spread like tares. A group of U. S. war correspondents (Harry Hansen. Irvin Cobb, John T. McCutcheon et al.) who had been caught by the German advance in Belgium and went on with the German armies sent a combined cable to the Associated Press. ("In spirit fairness we unite in declaring German atrocities groundless . . . unable report single instance unprovoked reprisal . . . investigated rumors proved groundless ... to truth these statements we pledge professional personal word.'') But when the Bryce Report on atrocities w:as issued by the Allies, its findings carried much greater weight.
A startling instance of the power of Allied propaganda appeared in the campaign to save the starving Belgians. "Americans did not know that the threat of starvation came, at the moment, not from the Germans—but from the British Navy! . . . Mr. Whitlock was working earnestly, in co-operation with the German authorities and a Belgian committee, to rescue starving Belgium from the British blockade." In 1915 a book called Defenceless America, by the brother of Sir Hiram Maxim, machine-gun inventor, raised goosebumps on thousands of U. S. necks. It was made into a cinema called The Battle Cry of Peace.
Its theme: the invasion of the U. S. by Germany.
German attempts at counter-propaganda mostly misfired. Most spectacular were the visits of the Dentschland, commercial submarine, to Baltimore, and the U-53 (which sank nine merchantmen off Nantucket) to Newport. As sporting events, both these voyages appealed to the U. S. imagination, but in retrospect they soon seemed a threat.