"The Strategy of Truth"
The consequences of building on a unity which does not exist are
serious. We have discovered that all war is total war; we have also
found that while our enemies lie to us, they do not lie to their High
Commands.
Total war requires total effort from the civilian and we have assumed
that, in America, this means enthusiasm for our cause, understanding
of our danger, willingness to sacrifice, confidence in our leaders,
faith in ultimate victory. We may be wrong; total effort in Germany is
based more on compulsion and promise than on understanding. But we
cannot immediately alter the atmosphere in which we are living. If we
could, if our leaders believed that total effort could be achieved
more quickly by lies than by truth, it would be their obligation to
lie to us. In total war there is no alternative to the most effective
weapon. Only the weapon must be effective over a sufficient length of
time; the advantage of a lie must be measured against the loss when
the lie is shown up; if the balance is greater, over a period of time,
than the value of the truth, the lie still must be told. If we are a
people able to recognize a lie too fast for it to be effective, the
lie must not be used; if we react "correctly" to certain forms of
persuasion (as, say, magazine ads and radio commercials), the
psychological counterparts of these should be used, at least until a
new technique develops.
This is a basis for "the strategy of truth" which Archibald MacLeish
set in opposition to the Nazi "strategy of terror". The opposition is
not perfect because the Nazis have used the truth plentifully in
spreading terror, especially by the use of moving pictures. Their
strategy, ethically, is a mixture of truth and lies, in combination;
practically speaking, this strategy is on the highest ethical plane
because it saves Nazi lives, brings quick victory, protects the State
and the people. It is, however, ill-suited to our purposes.
_Ethics of Lying_
Mr. MacLeish is being an excellent propagandist in the very use of the
phrase, "strategy of truth", which corresponds to the President's
"solemn pact of truth between government and the people"; there are a
hundred psychological advantages in telling us that we are getting the
truth; but propaganda has no right to use the truth if the truth
ceases to be effective. Lies are easier to tell, but harder to handle;
in a democracy they are tricky and dangerous because the conditions
for making lies effective have not been created; such conditions were
created in Germany; they came easily in other countries where no
direct relations between people and government existed.
Before propaganda can lie to us, safely and for our own preservation,
honorably and desirably, it must persuade us to give up our whole
system of communication, our political habits, our tradition of free
criticism. This could be done; but it would be difficult; no
propagandist now working in America is cunning and brutal enough to
destroy our civil liberties without a struggle which would cost more
(in terms of united effort) than it would be worth. We cannot stop in
the middle of a war to break down one system of persuasion and create
another; the frame of mind which advertising men call "consumer
acceptance" is, as they know, induced by a touch of newness in a
familiar framework; the new element catches attention but it has to
become familiar before it is effective.
Our propagandists, therefore, must use the truth, as they incline to
do, but they have to learn its uses. We gain prestige by advertising
the truth, even though the use of truth is forced upon us; but we have
not yet won approval of the suppression of truth. It is good to use
truth as flattery ("You are brave enough to know the truth") but truth
also creates fear which (advertisers again know this) is a potent
incentive to action. Finally, the use of truth requires the
canalization of propaganda; it is too dangerous to be handled by
everyone.
The propagandists of our cause include everyone who speaks to the
people, sells a bond, writes, broadcasts, publishes, by executive
order or private will; they vary in skill and in detailed purpose;
they blurt out prejudices and conceal information useful to the
citizen. They have not, so far as any one has discovered, lied to the
people of America, contenting themselves at first with concealing the
extent, or belittling the significance, of our reverses; presently the
same sources began to abuse the American people for not being aware of
the danger threatening them; and no one officially recognized the
connection between ignorance and concealment.
_Maxims for Propagandists_
It is easy to mark down the detailed errors of propaganda. The more
difficult work is to create a positive program; and it is possible
that we have been going through an experimental period, while such a
program is being worked out in Washington. A few of the requirements
are obvious.
_Propaganda must be used._ Our government has no more right to deprive
us of propaganda than it has to deprive us of pursuit planes or
bombers or anti-aircraft guns or antitoxin. Propaganda is the great
offensive-defensive weapon of the home front; if we do not get it, we
should demand it. If what we get is defective, we should protest as we
would protest against defective bombsights.
_Propaganda must be organized._ Otherwise it becomes a diffused babel
of opinion.
_Propaganda must be unscrupulous._ It has one duty--to the State.
_Propaganda must not be confused with policy._ If at a given moment
the Grand Strategy of the war absolutely requires us to offer a
separate peace to Italy or to make war on Rumania, propaganda must
show this need in its happiest light; if the reverse is required,
propaganda's job does not alter. Policy should not be made by
propagandists and propagandists should have no policy.
_Propaganda must interact with policy._ If at a given moment, the
Grand Strategy has a free choice between recognizing or rejecting a
Danish Government-in-exile, the action which propaganda can use to
best advantage is the better.
_Propaganda must have continuity._ The general principles of
propaganda have to be worked out, and followed. The principle, in
regard to direct war news, may be to tell all, to tell nothing, or to
alter the dosage according to the temper of the people. The choice of
one of these principles is of the gravest importance; it must be done,
or approved, by the President. After the choice is made, sticking to
one principle is the only way to build confidence. Except for details
of naval losses, the British official announcements are prompt and
accurate; the British people generally do not go about in the fear of
hidden catastrophe. The Italian system differs and may be suited to
the temper of the people; the Russian communiques are exactly adapted
to Stalin's concept of the war: the Red soldier is cited for heroism,
in small actions, the Germans are always identified as fascists, the
vast actions of the entire front are passed over in a formal opening
sentence. The German method has its source in Hitler; the
announcements of action are rhetorical, contemptuous, and sometimes
threatening; the oratory which accompanies the official statements
has, for the first time, had a setback, since the destruction of the
Russian Army was announced in the autumn of 1941, but no one has
discovered any serious reaction as a result. The German people have
been conditioned by action; and action has worked with propaganda for
this result. The concentration camp, the death of free inquiry, and
the triumph of Munich have been as potent as Goebbels' lies to prepare
the German people for total war; so that they have not reacted against
Hitler when a prediction has failed or a promise gone sour.
Each of these methods has been consistently followed. Our
propagandists on the home front began with the knowledge that a great
part of the country did not want a war; a rather grim choice was
presented: to frighten the people, or to baby them. The early
waverings about Pearl Harbor reflected the dilemma; the anger roused
by Pearl Harbor gave time to the propagandist to plan ahead. The
result has been some excellent and some fumbling propaganda; but no
principle has yet come to light.
_Propaganda must supply positive symbols._ The symbol, the slogan, the
picture, which unites the citizen, and inspires to action, can be
created by an individual, but can only be made effective by correct
propaganda. The swastika is a positive symbol, a mark of unity
(because it was once a mark of the revolutionary outcast); we have no
such symbol. Uncle Sam is a cartoonists' fiction, too often appearing
in comic guises, too often used in advertising, no longer
corresponding even to the actuality of the American physique. The
Minute-man has an antique flavor but is not sufficiently generalized;
he is a brilliant defensive symbol and corresponded precisely to the
phase of the militia, an "armed citizenry" leaping to the defense of
the country. With my prejudice it is natural that I should suggest the
Liberty Bell as a positive symbol of the thing we fight for. It is
possible to draw its form on a wall--not to ward off evil, but to
inspire fortitude.
_Propaganda must be independent._ It is a fighting arm; it has (or
should have) special techniques; it is based on researches,
measurements, comparisons, all approaching a scientific method. It
should therefore be recognized as a separate function; Mr. Gorham
Munson, preceded by Mr. Edward L. Bernays in 1928, has proposed a
Secretary for Propaganda in the Cabinet, which would make the direct
line of authority from the Executive to the administrators of policy,
without interference. The conflicts of publicity (aircraft versus Navy
for priorities, for instance) will eventually force some organization
of propaganda. The confusion of departmental interests is a constant
drawback to propaganda, even if there is no direct conflict.
_Propaganda must be popular._ Since the first World War several new
ways of approaching the American people have been developed. These
have been chiefly commercial, as the radio and the popular illustrated
magazine; the documentary moving picture has never been popular,
except for the March of Time, but it has been tolerated; in the past
two years a new type, the patriotic short, has been skilfully
developed. The full length picture has hardly ever been used for
direct communication; it is a "morale builder", not a propaganda
weapon.
_Propaganda must be measured._ At the same time the method of the
selective poll has been developed in several forms and a quick,
dependable survey of public sentiment can be used to check the
effectiveness of any propaganda. Recent refinements in the techniques
promise even greater usefulness; the polls "weight" themselves, and,
in effect, tell how important their returns should be considered. The
objections to the polling methods are familiar; but until something
better comes along, the reports on opinion, and notably on the
fluctuations of opinion, are not to be sneered away. To my mind this
is one of the basic operations of propaganda; and although I have no
evidence, I assume that it is constantly being done.
_Who Can Do It?_
An effective use of the instruments is now possible. We may blunder in
our intentions, but technical blunders need not occur; the people who
have used radio or print or pictures are skilled in their trade and
they can use it for the nation as they used it for toothpaste or
gasoline. And the people of America are accustomed to forms of
publicity and persuasion which need not be significantly altered.
Moreover, we can measure the tightness of our methods in the field,
not by rejoicing over "mail response", or newspaper comment, but by
discovering exactly how far we have created the attitude of mind and
the temper of spirit at which we aim.
The advertising agency and the sampler of public opinion can supply
the groundwork of a flexible propaganda method. They cannot do
everything, because certain objectives have always escaped them. But
they are the people who have persuaded most effectively and reported
most accurately the results of persuasion. They cannot create policy,
not even the policy of propaganda; but they can propagandize.
All of this refers to propaganda at home. It need not be called
propaganda, but it must _be_ propaganda--the organized use of all
means of communication to create specific attitudes, leading to--or
from--specific action.
_What Is Morale's Pulse?_
This is, of course, another way of saying that morale is affected by
propaganda. I avoid the word "morale" because it has unhappily fallen
into a phrase, "boosting morale", or "keeping morale at a high level."
We have it on military authority that morale is an essential of
victory, but no authority has told us how to create it, nor exactly to
what high level morale should be "boosted". The concept of morale
constantly supercharged by propaganda is fatally wrong; it confuses
morale with cheerfulness and leads to the dangerous fluctuations of
public emotion on which our enemies have always capitalized.
Morale should be defined as a desirable and effective attitude toward
events. As despair and defeatism are undesirable, they break up
morale; as cheerfulness leads at times to ineffectiveness, it is bad
for morale. To induce cheerfulness in the week of Singapore, the
burning of the Normandie, and the escape of the German battleships
from Brest, would have been the worst kind of morale-boosting; to
prevent elation over a substantial victory would have been not quite
so bad, but bad enough.
There is a "classic example" of the effect of belittling a victory.
The British public first got details of the Battle of Jutland from the
German announcement of a naval victory, including names and number of
British vessels sunk. The first British communique was no more subdued
than usual, but coming _after_ the German claims and making no
assertions of victory, taking scrupulous care to list _all_ British
losses and only positively observed German losses, the announcement
pulled morale down--not because it gave bad news, but because it put a
bad light on good news; it did not allow morale to be level with
events. The best opinion of the time considered Jutland a victory
lacking finality, but with tremendous consequences; and Churchill was
called in as a special writer to do the Admiralty's propaganda on the
battle after the mischief was done. The time element was against him
for a belated explanation is never as effective as a quick capture of
the field by bold assertion and proof. Mr. Churchill was himself
belated, a generation later, when he first defended the Navy for
letting the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst escape and then, a day later,
asserted that the ships had been compelled to leave Brest and that
their removal was a gain for the British. The point is the same in
both cases: the truth or an effective substitute may be used; but it
has to correspond to actuality. The Admiralty underplayed its
statement at Jutland. Churchill over-explained the situation at Brest.
Both were bad for morale.
_The Hypodermic Technique_
The "shot-in-the-arm" theory of morale is a confession of incompetence
in propaganda. For the healthy human being does not need sudden
injections of drugs, not even for exceptional labors; and the
objective of propaganda is to create an atmosphere in which the
average citizen will work harder and bear more discomfort and live
through more anxiety and suffer greater unhappiness _without
considering his situation exceptional or abnormal_.
To "boost morale", to give the public a shot of good news (or even a
shot of bad news), is an attempt to make us live above our normal
temperature, to speed up our heart-beat and our metabolism. War itself
raises the level; and all we have to do for morale is to stay on the
new level.
The principle that the citizen must not consider his situation
exceptional is one of the few accepted by democratic and autocratic
States alike. Hitler announces that until the war is over he will wear
a simple soldier's uniform; Churchill refuses to accept a hoard of
cigars; the President buys a bond. In every case the conspicuous head
of a nation does what the average citizen has to do; and because each
citizen is like his leader, all citizens are like one another. A unity
is created.
_Re-Uniting America_
This completes the circle which began with our need for unity, and
proceeded through propaganda to morale. For the foundation of our war
effort has to be unity and the base of good morale is the feeling of
one-ness in the privations and in the triumphs of war. We can now
proceed to some of the reasons for the breaks in unity, which
propaganda has not seen, nor mended.
First, the propagandists have rejected certain large groups of
Americans because of pre-war pacifism; second, they have failed to
recognize the use to which isolationism can be put; third, they have
not thought out the principles of free criticism in a democracy at
war. To rehearse all the other forms of separatist action would be to
recall angers and frustrations dormant now, just below the level of
conscious action. Moreover, a list of the causes of separation, with a
remedy for each, would repeat the error of civilian propaganda in the
early phases of the war--it would still be negative, and the need now
is to set in motion the positive forces of unity, which have always
been available to us.
_The accord we need is for free and complete and effective action, for
sweating in the heat and crying in the night when disaster strikes,
for changing the face of our private world, for losing what we have
labored to build, for learning to be afraid and to suffer and to
fight; it is an accord on the things that are vital because they are
our life: what have we been, what shall we do, what do we want--past,
present, future; history, character, destiny._
The propaganda of the first six months of the war was not directed to
the creation of unity in this sense; it was not concerned with
anything but the immediate daily feeling of Americans toward the day's
news; the civilian propagandists insisted that "disunity is ended"
because all Americans knew what they were fighting for, so that it
became faintly disloyal to point out that reiteration was not proof
and that disunity could end, leaving mere chaos, a dispersed
indifferent emotion, in its place. The end of dissension was not
enough; unity had to be created, a fellow-feeling called up from the
memory of the people, binding them to one another because it bound
them to our soil and our heroes and our myths and our realities; and
the act of creation of unity automatically destroyed disunion; when
the gods arrive, not only the half-gods, but the devils also, depart.
_Myth and Money_
Faintly one felt a lack of conviction in the propagandists themselves.
They were afraid of the debunkers, under whose shadow they had grown
up. They did not venture to create an effective myth. Myth to them was
Washington's Cherry Tree, and Lincoln's boyish oath against slavery
and Theodore Roosevelt's Wild West; so they could not, with rhetoric
to lift the hearts of harried men and women, recall the truth-myth of
America, the loyalty which triumphed over desertion at Valley Forge,
the psychological miracle of Lincoln's recovery from self-abasement to
create his destiny and shape the destiny of the New World; the health
and humor and humanity of the west as Roosevelt remembered it. At
every point in our history the reality had something in it to touch
the imagination, the heart, to make one feel how complex and fortunate
is the past we carry in us if we are Americans.
The propagandists were also afraid of the plutocrats--as they were
afraid of the myth, they were afraid of reality. They did not dare to
say that America was an imperfect democracy whose greatness lay in the
chance it gave to all men to work for perfection; they did not dare to
say that the war itself must create democracy over again, they did not
dare to proclaim liberty to this land or to all lands; in the name of
unity they could not offend the enemies of human freedom.
Moreover, the propagandists for unity had to defend the
Administration. The rancor of politics had never actually disappeared
in America, during wars; it was barely sweetened by a trace of
patriotism three months after the war began. As a good fight needs two
sides, defenders of the President were as happy as his opponents to
call names, play politics, and distress the country. The groundwork
for defeating the nation's aims in war was laid before those aims had
been expressed; and one reason why we could make no proclamation of
our purpose was that our purpose was clouded over; we had not yet gone
back to the source of our national strength; and we had not yet begun
to use our strength to accomplish a national purpose.
We were effecting a combination of individual capacities--not a unity
of will. We were adding one individual to another, a slow process: we
needed to multiply one by the other--which can only be done in
complete union of purpose.
Some of the weakness of propaganda rose from its mixed intentions: to
make us hate the enemy, to make us understand our Allies, to harden us
for disaster, to defend the conduct of the war, to make us pay, to
assure us that production was terrific, and then to make us pay more
because production was inadequate; to silence the critics of the
Administration, to appease the men of violence crying for Vichy's
scalp or the men of violence crying for formulation of war aims. All
these things _had_ to be done, promptly and effectively. They would
have to be done no matter how unified in feeling we were; and they
could not be done at all unless unity came first.
_Call Back the Pacifists_
Small purposes were put first because the propagandists suffered from
their own success. They had gone ahead of all and had brilliantly been
teaching the American people the meaning of the European war; they
were among the President's most potent allies and they deserve well of
the country; the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies and
the other active interventionist groups were a rallying point for the
enemies of Hitler, and a strong point for attack by all the pacifists.
But the moment the aim of these committees was accomplished and war
was declared, the first objective must have been the re-incorporation
of the pacifist 40% of our population into the functioning national
group. The actual enemies of the country soon declared themselves; the
hidden ones could be discovered. The millions who did not want to go
to war had to be persuaded first of all that _we_ understood why
_they_ had been pacifists; we could not treat them as cowards, or
pro-Germans, or Reds, or idiots. We needed the best of them to unite
the country, and all of them to fight for it.
Our propagandists did not know how to turn to their advantage the
constant, native, completely sensible pacifism of the American people,
especially of the Midwestern Americans. If the history of the United
States has meaning, the pacifism of the Midwest is bound to become
dominant; our part in the first World War achieved grandeur because
the people of the Middle West, at least, meant it to be a war to end
war, a war to end pacifism also, because there would be no need for
it. The people of the Middle West want our position in the world to
keep us out of the wars of other nations; they saw no wars into which
we could be drawn. They were wrong--but their instincts were not
wrong. They do not believe that the wars of the United States have
been like the wars of other nations; nor that the United States must
now look forward to such a series of wars as every nation of Europe
has fought for domination or survival. This may be naive, as to the
past and the future; but it is a naivete we cannot brush aside. It
rises from too many natural causes. And the people of the Middle West
may, if need be, fight to make their dream of peace come true; they
will have to fight the American imperialists, whom they have fought
before; and this time they will have new allies; for the pacifist of
the Midwest will be joined by the pacifists of the industrial cities;
and the great hope of the future is that the pacifists of America will
help to organize the world after the war.
_They will not help if they remain isolationists; and they will remain
isolationist, in the middle of a global war, until they are certain
that a world-order they can join is to be the outcome of the war._
Again, our propagandists have to understand isolationism, an historic
American tradition in one sense, a falsehood in another. Our dual
relation to Europe is expressed in two phrases:
We _came from_ Europe.
We _went away from_ Europe.
For a time we were anti-European; now we are non-Europe; if Europe
changes, we may become pro-European; but we can never be part of
Europe. Isolation is half our story; communication the other. On the
foundation of half the truth, the isolationist built the fairy tale of
physical separation; the interventionist, on the basis of our
communication with Europe, built more strongly--the positive overbore
the negative. Yet the whole structure of our relation to Europe has to
be built on both truths, we have to balance one strength with the
other. We cannot make war or make peace without the help of the
isolationists; and to jeer at them because they failed to understand
the mathematics of air power and sea-bases is not to reconcile them
to us; nor, for that matter, is it peculiarly honest. For few of those
who wanted us to go to war against England's enemy warned us that we
should have to fight Japan also; and none, so far as I know, told us
that the task of a two-ocean war might be for several years a burden
of losses and defeat.
The defeat of pacifist isolationism was not accomplished by the
interventionists, but by Japan. The interventionists, because they
were better prophets, gained the appearance of being truer patriots;
they were actually more intelligent observers of the war in Europe and
more passionately aware of its meaning. But they can be trusted with
propaganda only if they recognize the positive value of their former
enemies, and do not try to create a caste of ex-pacifist
"untouchables." That is the method of totality; it is Hitler declaring
that liberals cannot take part in ruling Germany, and Communists
cannot be Germans. Unity does not require us to destroy those who have
differed with us, it requires total agreement as to aims, and
temporary assent as to methods; we cannot tolerate the action of those
who want Hitler to defeat us, just as the body cannot tolerate cells
which proliferate in disharmony with other cells, and cause cancer. We
cannot afford the time to answer every argument before we take any
action, so temporary assent is needed (the Executive in war time
automatically has it because he orders action without argument). In
democratic countries we add critical examination after the event, and
free discussion of future policy as correctives to error. None of
these break into unity; none requires the isolation of any group
except the enemies of the State.
The purpose of unity is effective action--more tanks and planes,
delivered more promptly; more pilots, better trained; more people
helping one another in the readjustments of war. It is part of the
groundwork of morale; in a democracy it is based on reconciliation,
not on revenge.
_The Limits of Criticism_
The pacifists and the isolationists are being punished for their
errors if their legitimate emotions are not recognized as part of the
natural composition of the American mind. Criticism presents a problem
more irritating because it is constantly changing its form and because
no principle of action has been evolved.
At one of the grimmest moments of the war, a correspondent of the _New
York Times_ wrote that "for a while not politics but the war effort
appeared to have undergone an 'adjournment'". At another, the
President remarked that he did not care whether Democrats or
Republicans were elected, provided Congress prosecuted the war
energetically, and comment on this was that the President wanted to
smash the two-party system, in order to have a non-critical Congress
under him as he had had in 1933.
Both of these items suggest, that propaganda has not yet taught us how
to criticize our government in war time. The desirable limits of
criticism have not been made clear. Every attack on the Administration
has been handled as if it were treason; and there has been a faint
suggestion of party pride in the achievements of our factories and of
our bombers. Neither the war nor criticism of the war can be a
party-matter; and no party-matter can be tolerated in the path of the
war effort. All Americans know this, but the special application of
this loyalty to our present situation has to be clarified. It has been
left obscure.
For the question of criticism is connected with the problem of unity
in the simplest and most satisfying way. The moment we have unity, we
can allow all criticism which rises from any large group of people.
Off-center criticism, from small groups, is dangerous. It does not ask
questions in the public mind, and its tendency is to divert energies,
not to combine them; small groups, if they are not disloyal, are the
price we pay for freedom of expression in war time; it is doubtful
whether, at present, any American group can do much harm; it is even a
matter of doubt whether Eugene V. Debs or several opposition senators
were a graver danger to the armies of the United States in 1917. Small
groups may be tolerated or, under law, suppressed; large groups never
expose themselves to prosecution, but their criticism is serious and
unless it is turned to advantage, it may be dangerous.
The tendency of any executive, in war time, is to consider any
criticism as a check on war effort. It is. If a commanding officer has
to take five minutes to explain an order, five minutes are lost; if
the President, or the head of OPM, has to defend an action or reply to
a critic, energy is used up, time is lost. But time and energy may be
lost a hundred times more wastefully if the explanation is not given,
if the criticism is not uttered and grows internally and becomes
suspicion and fear. Freedom of criticism is, in our country, a
positive lever for bringing morale into logical relation to events.
The victims of criticism can use it positively, their answers can
create confidence; and best of all, it can be anticipated, so that it
can do no harm.
But this is true only if the right to criticize is subtly transformed
into a duty; if, in doing his duty, the citizen refuses to criticize
until he is fully informed; if the State makes available to the
citizen enough information on which criticism can be based. Then the
substance and the intention of criticism become positive factors in
our fight for freedom.
Since it is freedom we are fighting for.
Freedom, nothing else, is the source of unity--our purpose in the war,
our reason for fighting. On a low level of survival we have forgotten
some of our differences and combined our forces to fight because we
were attacked; on the high level which makes us a nation we are united
to fight for freedom, and this unites us to one another because it
unites us with every American who ever fought for freedom. Most
particularly our battle today unites us with those who first
proclaimed liberty throughout the land.