America emerged from the war disappointed at home and discredited abroad--so far as the heated propaganda of "making the world safe for democracy" was concerned. A more modest more calculated national propaganda effort would have helped forestall those attitudes which, in turn, made World War II possible. Creel and his fellow-workers did not remember that beyond every war there lies a peace, in its own way as grim and difficult as war. They did not understand that no war is the last war, that leeway must be left for propaganda to be effective _again_. They said that World War I would be the last of all wars; perhaps they believed it themselves.
=General Pershing's Headquarters.= The civilians of the Creel committee patronizingly claimed to have helped the G-2 men at A.E.F. Headquarters run psychological warfare. In the official history of Captain Blankenhorn's group, which centered from the very beginning on leaflet production, there is little reference to outside aid. Radio did not exist as a means of mass communication, and loudspeakers then surpassed an ordinary megaphone very little, if at all; hence communication with the enemy had to be through print. Leaflets were basic.
The Americans at A.E.F. concentrated on morale and surrender leaflets. They did work that was superb from the point of view of common-sense psychology. They used British and French experience in applying techniques of leaflet distribution, making inventions and improvements of their own. Balloons and airplanes were the chief methods for air distribution; the plane-borne leaflet bomb was a development of World War II. Extensive improvements were made in the procedures of leaflet distribution by means of mortars.
The morale leaflets used the anti-militarist, pro-democratic sentiments of the world at that time. The autocracy and inefficiency of the German government provided an excellent target. Since propaganda against the upper classes was not yet regarded as a Communist monopoly, considerable appeal was introduced for the common German soldier against his generals, nobles, officials, and capitalists. German nationalism was attacked by means of sectional appeals to Lorrainers and Bavarians. The news that America was in fact producing vast weapons, that the American army was truly in Europe, that the German retreats were really serious--these were used in morale form (see below, page 212) rather than as spot-news leaflets.