In France, on the other hand, the press was not allowed to pub lish the German bulletins. The French Government thought the French people might suspect it of hiding the truth if another than its own version of events were issued. Consequently a demand arose in France for the French-Swiss newspapers which contained the German bulletins. In this way their effect as propaganda was actually increased, and served to strengthen the direct influ ence of the subtle "defeatist" propaganda which the clandestine agents of Germany carried on among the French people.
When the Allied Governments, in their turn, decided to organise propaganda, they found themselves at a disadvantage. Their organisations had to be improvised, whereas the German organisation had been set up in peace time and per fected in the early months of the war. Moreover, German propa gandists understood that, in propaganda as in actual warfare, the initiative is precious and that the offensive is better than the de fensive. At first, Allied propaganda was everywhere on the de fensive. Its purpose was conceived as the correction of the mis statements sent out by the enemy. However truthful the denial of a misstatement may be, "a lie has long legs." The inferiority of Allied propaganda in this respect became evident to the public in neutral countries; and the position was not improved when the Allied and British organisations began to issue large quantities of dull literature to explain the purity of Allied intentions and the formidable character of British military preparations. To be effective, propagandist literature needs to be interesting. Compila tions of figures and declarations of lofty purpose can make little headway against news so attractively embellished as to kindle the imaginations of those who read it. In its early phases British war propaganda was not merely ineffective but inept. It failed to realise that appeals to enemy and neutral opinion must take ac count of enemy and neutral standpoints. It assumed that argu ments convincing to British minds would equally convince for eign minds.
Before 1914, war had been commonly looked upon as a legiti mate method of promoting national interests. Yet, in 1914, the chief belligerent countries felt, almost instinctively, the impor tance of proving that they were guiltless of having caused the struggle. Nobody claimed credit for having planned it or forced it on. The German imperial chancellor admitted from the outset in the Reichstag, on Aug. 4, 1914, that Germany was doing "wrong" by invading neutral Belgium. He claimed that "neces sity knows no law" and promised to make good the wrong "as soon as our military goal has been reached." Other German spokesmen and agents attempted to throw the blame first on England and then on Russia; while the Allied countries unanimously blamed Germany and Austria-Hungary. By degrees, the conquest of neutral opinion was seen to be almost as important as victory in the field.
With the recognition of this aspect of the struggle came the search for means of waging it. Here, again, Germany outdis
tanced her enemies. Neutral war correspondents were invited to accompany the German armies and to supplement the German military bulletins by ostensibly independent accounts of their own.
The Allied military authorities long hesitated to follow this ex ample. Strong pressure was needed to make them realise that the war was a war of peoples, and therefore of opinion, not solely a war between armies ; that even their own peoples' enthusiasm for a "war in the dark" might wane; and that it was expedient to counteract the effect upon neutral opinion of reports from the German front by equally graphic reports from the Allied fronts, attested by the names of writers whom neutral countries would trust. Thus, very tardily, regular war correspondents were at tached to the Allied armies for the enlightenment of the Allied peoples, while neutral correspondents of recognised standing were invited to see things for themselves. In this way the influence of German journalistic propaganda was gradually offset, and the sig nificance of the war as a war of opinion was recognised.
Yet it was not until the beginning of 1918, in the middle of the fourth year of the war, that the need for a propagandist offensive, not only in neutral countries but among. the enemy peoples •themselves, began to be felt by Allied Governments. Confronted with a position of stalemate in the field, and perplexed by the protraction of the struggle, they realized at last that propaganda, in itself, no matter how skilful its methods, would be futile unless it were the expression of a definite policy. Until then, the only policy of the Allied Govern ments had been to secure military victory. They had not seri ously attempted to express their eventual victory in terms of a lasting peace, so as to give enemy peoples something to hope for as well as something to fear. True, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, had taken a step in this direction when, in Dec. 1916, he had invited all the belligerents to define their war aims. The necessity of answering this invitation had com pelled Germany and Austria-Hungary, on the one hand, and the Western European Allies, on the other, to state broadly what they were fighting for, lest failure to respond to the American invita tion should influence adversely the opinion of the—still neutral— American people. But it was riot until more than a year later that the British prime minister, D. Lloyd George, spontaneously is sued a statement of British war aims on January 5, 1918, in the form of an outline of peace conditions. This statement, which was clearly propagandist, was followed, three days later, by an im portant American pronouncement. On Jan. 8, President Wilson delivered to a Joint Session of the American Congress an address containing his famous "Fourteen Points," or principles, on which the United States would insist in the negotiation of peace.