AMERICA

When we entered the war in September 1939 and the Ministry became charged with the conduct of overseas publicity, it was inevitable that it should be faced with an important question of policy with regard to its operations in and for the U.S.A. We were not starting there with a clean sheet. So much had been said and published in America during the inter-war years on the theme of British propaganda during the 1914-1918 war that there had grown up something like a legend to the effect that America would never have been plunged into that profitless European expedition but for the machinations of British propaganda and the American financiers, headed by Morgans who, it was argued, could only clear their advances to the Allies by bringing in America to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Not only had this legend its own intrinsic attractions but it was well suited to the purposes of the powerful Isolationist and pacifist groups that were dominant in the U.S.A. of 1939. Having regard to this background the Foreign Office, guided by our then Ambassador Lord Lothian, felt that any organised British publicity (or as it was then called “propaganda”) organisation in America could achieve little that was useful but would quite certainly be exposed on the other hand to a constant flood of suspicious and ill-intentioned criticism. Accordingly, we began the war with the policy decision that the British Government was not to conduct propaganda in the U.S.A. and the consequent deduction, which was not in reality quite the same thing, that the Ministry of Information was to conduct no operations of any kind inside America.

The Ministry of Information formed an American Division to work in the Ministry but its operations were to be confined to exercising as much benevolent influence as it could bring to bear upon the American correspondents or other publicity agencies working in this country. I will say at once that the American Division succeeded well in this task throughout the war: nor is it an unimportant one in the conduct of overseas publicity. But it is a delusion to suppose that, however skilfully the work is directed in this field and however excellent and informative the relations cultivated may be, such an activity can ever carry by itself the whole work of overseas publicity to the country 55 - 54 -aimed at. A correspondent is basically limited by the fact that he is working on defined duties for his editor at home and it is neither within his range nor within his power to cover the many aspects of the country that in fact make up an important part of its overseas projection. Speaking generally, the correspondent is in the country to cover the salient news and the current political and international events and his assignment does not allow him to move far outside these limits.

Other activities with which the American Division was connected were the encouragement of people from this country to visit America for public speaking, for which purpose the American Division was to supply them with advice and material, and the B.B.C. North American Service which was beamed to cover Canada and the U.S.A. on short wave at appropriate periods of the day. The B.B.C. North American Service was a good service and it included some fine features from time to time: but I think that it would be a mistake to suppose that a country so luxuriously equipped with its own radio systems as the U.S.A. and with high class overseas correspondents working for the big radio chains can ever be deeply influenced by the short wave service provided by the B.B.C. Putting other difficulties aside, there is a great natural handicap in the differences of style, technique and tempo that distinguish British and American broadcasting. The B.B.C's biggest channel for distribution inside America was the Mutual Broadcasting Chain. But after their New York office got going in 1941 they were able to extend their connections to a good number of independent stations all over the country.

Inside America itself the Ambassador was a notable propagandist and both in public speech and in confidential interchange he did a great deal to break down the force of Isolationist sentiment. Although he worked without any organised British assistance he was in touch with a number of British residents in the country, some of whom subsequently formed the nucleus of the British Information Services, and with the organised bodies of Americans who were themselves working to convert their countrymen to the view that American intervention in the war would ultimately prove both necessary and right. The most active of these organisations was the 56 - 55 -“Fight for Freedom” movement which was backed by many Americans in important positions.

In 1940 the strict Government policy of keeping ourselves clear of all internal working in America was evidently breaking down. Three separate lines of development could be noted, all of which were to be significant for the future. Firstly, after the fall of France, Mr. Stephen Childs, who had been working for the Ministry in the Balkans and in Paris, was sent to Washington with the Ambassador's approval to take up the post of Press Attaché . Secondly, Mr. Michael Huxley was sent to America to organise a propaganda body in that country to be formed by representatives of the European countries (mostly possessing counterpart American communities) then being threatened or over-run by the Germans. Thirdly, the American Division began the formation of an office in New York under the title “British Press Service” which was conceived in the simplest terms as an office for improving the service to American papers of the essential raw material of war news from this country, such as photographs, communiqués, news releases etc.

These developments merit a few words of comment. Firstly, the New York Office seems never to have been given any adequately defined relationship with the Embassy in Washington or Childs, the Press Attaché . Its sponsors were the American Division in London. Secondly, the emergence of this office threw up the distinction between Washington, the political capital, and New York, the publicity capital, of the U.S.A. These two factors were between them largely responsible for the feeling of opposition between Washington and New York that has always been an element in British publicity in the U.S.A. during this war. Thirdly, the introduction of an official British Press Service to the U.S.A. involved a re-consideration on the functions of the office known as the “British Library of Information” which had been located in New York under Foreign Office control since shortly after the end of the last war. This organisation, which had some good points and a few good contacts, was, as its name indicated, a library to which really pertinacious enquirers about British affairs could resort and a distributor on a modest scale of British official publications. It does not appear to have been particularly 57 - 56 -energetic or forthcoming. Lastly, the Huxley Mission. Although it had Foreign Office sanction it still seems to me to have been an extremely dangerous conception, having regard to the extreme sensitiveness of American opinion on the question of national minorities within the U.S.A. From it there grew the organisation known as the “United Nations Information Office” which was supposed to be an organ for handling the centralised publicity of the countries allied at war against Germany. This, too, centred in New York. Its activities have never been popular with the British Information Services and I doubt if it has represented a worthwhile concentration of effort.

I do not think that things went very well for our American offices between 1940 and 1941. The next step of note was Mr. Duff Cooper's decision in 1941 that British publicity in the U.S.A. must be organised in a big way and the consequent selection of Sir Gerald Campbell, at that time High Commissioner in Ottawa, for the post of Director General of what from that time on came to be called “The British Information Services”. Campbell, who had been for a number of years Consul-General in New York and then briefly Minister in Washington, was one of the most popular Englishmen in the United States and possibly the best known one. His appointment as our Director General, which became effective about June 1941, was certainly an indication that British publicity meant business in the United States. Much enlarged schemes were laid out for the development of the New York office and for the merger of the British Library of Information into the B.I.S. organisation (which subsequently came about). Sub-offices were formed in Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, of which Chicago and San Francisco, at least, proved to be conspicuous successes. But I think that even at that stage insufficient thought was given to the working out of a satisfactory relationship between our organisation in New York and the British representatives in Washington. Campbell was himself by experience and taste a New York man and I think that the Embassy must have gazed with distant disapproval upon this new and large-sounding development in a field so delicate as British propaganda and wondered how exactly the Ambassador's over-all responsibility was to be recognised in all these doings. Moreover, our own man, Childs, was still 58 - 57 -in Washington attached to the Embassy and his own relations with Campbell seemed to have been left perilously vague.

In January 1942 the American Government intervened. Perhaps it was just as well that it did. At any rate, the State Department presented a note to the Embassy alleging their concern at the maintenance of this large British publicity organisation in New York headed by persons of no diplomatic status or apparent direct responsibility to the Ambassador and throwing in for make-weight some misgivings about the propriety and purpose of the doings of the United Nations Information Office of which we were rightly regarded as being the dominating influence. The Embassy accepted this memorandum without any noticeable discomposure or reluctance. The difficulties were disposed of without an expenditure of anything worse than excitement by an arrangement under which Campbell and his number two Cruikshank, moved down to Washington to install themselves in the Embassy precincts with the rank of Minister for Campbell and Counsellor for Cruikshank, while they still retained their B.I.S. titles of Director General and Deputy Director General, A small information office was formed round them and attached to the Embassy, distinct from the sub-office of B.I.S. working down town in F Street. An appropriate smattering of diplomatic titles was accorded to the junior members of this Washington information office and the bulk of the B.I.S. continued to work as before in New York under Morgan, undiplomatic but now officially recognised. The United Nations Information Office affairs were cleared up by the chief B.I.S. representative on that Board, Donald Hall, passing over to become a member of the Embassy with diplomatic status, and subsequently the Chairmanship of the organisation was accepted by Elmer Davis, the head of the American Office of War Information. From that time on the doings of the United Nations Information Office ceased to agitate the feelings of the State Department.

At the beginning of 1942 Childs was still in Washington. It became obvious, however, that if Campbell was going to import a B.I.S. office into the Embassy Childs's functions would have to come to an end: nor were his personal relations with Campbell satisfactory. Accordingly, we had of necessity to inform the Embassy that we must withdraw him from 59 - 58 -Washington and he was subsequently posted to Tehran. With his departure the office of Press Attaché, as such, lapsed, although the services of Cruikshank, so long as he was in Washington, did all and more for the Embassy that a Press Attaché could have done. In effect the Embassy from that time on had an office for its Press Attaché rather than an individual.

In the summer of 1942 Campbell resigned and his place as Minister was taken by Mr. Harold Butler. Changes of personnel are only interesting in so far as they illustrate some point of principle. But there is no doubt that Campbell's resignation from the B.I.S. was a reflection of Mr. Bracken's feeling that the 1941 arrangements had been too ostentatiously presented to the American public and that we had drawn too obvious attention to the services that British publicity intended to render to the American people. He was anxious that the New York and other offices should devote themselves to attaining a high level of practical efficiency without attracting any avoidable attention to what they were doing, while he hoped that the Minister in Washington would keep his connection with the propaganda machine as little to the fore as possible and occupy himself in bringing direct personal influence to bear upon leading figures in the American publicity world.

The subsequent history is mainly one of the progressive development of the New York office as an information agency on these lines. It was thoroughly reorganised so as to achieve an effective merger of the B.I.S. and the British Library of Information into a coherent whole. In its activities it has seemed to be successful in striking the right mean between an aggressive thrusting of its wares on a possibly suspicious public and the quiet inertia of merely waiting to be approached. Working as it did in the country which has developed the arts of publicity more highly than has ever been done before; it modelled its system and methods as much as possible on American lines. In this it was much aided by the policy of the Ministry in allowing it a very free hand in all matters that affected actual operations, and the output of literature from the office, whether in the form of news releases, information papers or pamphlets, was habitually re-written on the spot in the form most suited to appeal to the taste of the consumers. But its two strongest lines were probably the development of 60 - 59 -contacts and the science of distribution. In Press and radio B.I.S. and its sub-offices had acquired by 1945 a wide and valuable field of contacts who were of much assistance in the furtherance of our work and who seem to have reposed a genuine confidence in the honest intentions of the B.I.S. That we did not go even further in the development of relations in Press, radio and other specialised branches of publicity, such as films, was due to the difficulty of enlisting and retaining in such a Government service men of really high professional standing in the branches concerned. Such men, if employed upon the regular routine of duties upon which the Civil Service system naturally expects them to be employed, lose most of their usefulness and I think that our efforts were handicapped to some extent by a certain rigidity of outlook on this subject. Press and radio were, of course, the background of our work but as time went on we found a great number of useful entries in films (particularly non-theatrical exhibition), magazines and periodicals with their huge figures of nation-wide circulation, universities and schools. From very early days in the war we had had good helpers in America among the religious denominations and the existence of a Religions Division in the Ministry made it certain that contacts in this important section of American life would be well maintained. I admit, however, to a feeling of uncertainty as to whether we were using contacts among religious bodies for the furtherance of British publicity or British publicity for the furtherance of contacts among religious bodies.

With the Ministry of Information maintaining a Minister in Washington, who was also the official head of all Ministry activities in the U.S.A., an adequate relationship was established between Washington and New York. Much of the intensity of feeling which the discussion of this relationship arouses from time to time is due, I think, more to sentiments of prestige than practical considerations. Washington has, of course, an important and special place in the American scheme of publicity but New York remains the essential publicity capital. If so, the central work of British publicity in the U.S.A. will always be carried on in New York. That it should be carried out on lines that are known to and in no sense objectionable to the Ambassador of the day is, of course, axiomatic. But I think that it indicates a misunderstanding as to the purposes to which 61 - 60 -British publicity can be applied in America to suppose that it can, or should be, closely harnessed to immediate political objectives which the Ambassador is pursuing or that it stands in any need of constant policy “directives” to be issued from the Embassy in Washington.

2. I have already mentioned the work of the American Division in this country in looking after and keeping touch with the American correspondents, either those working regularly here or the many whom the progress of war events brought over from time to time. After Mr. Bracken's arrival at the Ministry in 1941 its activities were developed further by our policy of inviting, transporting and paying for a number of selected visitors from the Press and radio field. By this means we were able to bring over to this country persons selected by ourselves who would not normally have made the journey, and to extend the knowledge of Britain under war-time conditions to parts of America to which it would not otherwise have penetrated. The dividends that this policy reaped were very handsome. It meant much more, of course, than the mere issuing of invitations. Such visits are not profitable unless care is taken all along the line to smooth the path of the visitor and keep him clear from the tiresome official restrictions that impede war-time travelling, as well as to see that when he reaches this country he is put in touch with the right people and the right things to leave a lasting impression on his mind. The organisation in the Ministry for arranging tours and facilities came into its own with this influx of American visitors: but, however lively the organisation at headquarters, we could never have introduced our visitors effectively to the country at large without drawing upon the services of our Regional Offices and their many contacts outside the Government machine. It is worth remembering, I think, that an organisation that wishes to bring home the real life of this country to select visitors is bound to maintain a numerous and diversified staff, or, at any rate, associates, in different parts of the country, unless it wishes its proceedings to relapse into a few routine expeditions.

The converse activity to the deliberate importation of visitors lay in the export of speakers to America. During the war no one could hope to secure transport or other facilities to reach America without the positive 62 - 61 -support of some Government Department that was prepared to affirm that his visit would be in the national interest. Persons intending to speak or indulge in publicity were thus referred to our sponsorship. Considering the large business that had been maintained before the war in the export of speakers from this country to lecture for commercial agencies on American circuits, it was not surprising that, when the war began, the Ministry should have given its backing to the continuance of a number of these lecture tours. I doubt if they did a great deal of harm but one trouble was that with the advent of war the best normal speakers tended to be unavailable and the residue who were left had little intimate or useful knowledge of the country's war effort. At any rate, one of Mr. Bracken's first decisions in 1941 was that no British lecturers should thereafter be sent to America. What he had in mind was that the Ministry was not to give any support to the routine commercial lecturer from this country. He did not mean, nor was his decision ever applied by us as meaning, that no person should be able to leave this country if he was going to speak on a public platform in the U.S.A. On the contrary the export of speakers from this country to be handled by the B.I.S. was a brisk activity from time to time. The line that we went on was that they should not merely be persons selected and approved by ourselves but that their visit should be initiated by a genuine invitation from an American body (other than a lecture agency) on the other side. The inviting body might take numerous forms, universities, religious bodies, Rotarians, legal or medical conventions etc., and what we were anxious to secure was that knowledge of the various phases of our war effort and of the country's reaction to it should be conveyed indirectly by personal contacts during the tour rather than by set speeches themselves. This policy of vocational exchange was, I think, a good one and we made it our business to draw on as wide and diverse sections of the community as we could. But in deciding whether to back an invited speaker or not we did expect that the person sent should have personal experience of some significant phase of war-time conditions, the shape and colour of which he could communicate during the course of his tour. In time the B.I.S. acquired considerable 63 - 62 -influence in the stimulation of invitations to people whom we wanted to see in America and once a person was launched on the fulfilling of his engagements as invited it was easy to arrange other facilities for him such as meetings with influential groups, Press conferences, talks over the radio etc. In effect, having got a speaker, we made it our business to exploit him for what he was worth.

The commercial lecturer is bound to start again. No doubt the time has now come to accept this fact. There never has been any means by which persons affecting to possess knowledge of this country who reside in America can be prevented from accepting lecturing engagements on the spot. Such persons are not good expositors of war-time or post-war Britain, if only by reason of their expatriation. If they are going to be available to discourse on the country anyway it is better that their ranks should be supplemented by lecturers from this side who will at any rate have had more intimate and more recent experience of what they are talking about.

3. In 1941 or 1942 Congress passed an Act entitled “The Foreign Agents Registration Act”, the effect of which was intended to be to prevent foreign agents conducting any propaganda in the U.S.A. except under conditions that labelled them as such. The conditions are elaborate and hampering. They apply to all speakers or writers for foreign principals who work in the U.S.A. and cover the activities of an office such as the B.I.S. Their muddled and ungracious rules compare unfavourably with the complete liberty and, indeed, friendly assistance with which the American Office of War Information has worked in this country. Such as they are, however, they have to be complied with and the American Department responsible for their administration is the Department of Justice. One of the conditions which the Department of Justice has imposed upon the offices of overseas Governments is to disclose to it the amount of money that they spend annually on their American operations. The figures so disclosed are made public in a report by the Department of Justice to Congress. The recent report which Attorney General Biddle submitted disclosed the figures of B.I.S. expenditure which, as presented, showed that we spent in America considerably larger sums than any other Government on our publicity. It is a significant test of the success and acceptability of that work that the disclosure of these figures seems to have produced neither comment nor criticism either in Congress or in the Press generally in America. I do not think that at the beginning of this war anyone would have dared to foretell such a result.