British+War+Propaganda-+Pt.1

__**Development of Propaganda During WWI**__[[image:PHmasterman.jpg align="right"]]
The start of World War I marked a new definition for the term "propaganda." Before, it had been associated with religion, when 17th Century Catholic missionaries attempted to spread Catholicism. After WWI, Edgar Stern-Rubarth, a German writer, redefined the term to mean "**political activity used by states at war**" (ABC-CLIO). This was an appropriate definition, as the war was the first conflict where the use of propaganda became truly integral to the political efforts and morale of all involved. The most successful system was that which was set up by the British, and many other countries modeled their own propaganda organizations after it. Discovering that Germany had a Propaganda Agency, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, hastened to create the **War Propaganda Bureau** (WPB) and appointed **Charles Masterman** as its head. Masterman worked to create an alliance between newspapers, civilians, and the government. **The WPB employed commercial companies, as opposed to government agencies, to publish the material. This is perhaps what contributed most to the effectiveness of British propaganda, as the public was more willing to accept and trust the private companies than the government as unbiased reporters.** In truth, however, it would be proven that the information reaching the people was still a product of the government's desire to control the image of the war in the eyes of their citizens.

__Purpose of Propaganda During WWI__
Though at first propaganda was only directed toward the British elite, it soon became widespread in its purpose. **The most prominent concern of the British government was to boost morale within the country and give the impression of British victory abroad, though this victory was not a reality for the majority of the war. Before US involvement in the Great War, British propaganda was also aimed at the people of the US in an attempt to gain their support and possibly draw them into the war.** They tried to insight the Americans by writing of German atrocities towards the Belgians, and these accounts were often blown out of proportion. //The American Commonwealth//, by James Bryce, depicted the Germans as barbaric and evil beings, and is a perfect example of the British attempt at gaining American support through propaganda (Garraty).

__Use of Propaganda During WWI__
Propaganda soon began to appear in all forms of literature. One of the first projects was a **magazine** titled //Nelson's History of the War// and published in February 1915 by John Buchan, head of a magazine company named "Thomas Nelson." **Masterman's choice to use Buchan as the head of the magazine was exceptionally brilliant. Buchan already owned a magazine publishing company, and besides this, he was quite friendly to many of the army's officers. It would therefore be easy for him to obtain information from them, and he would be less likely to publish anything negative about the British, as he felt a kinship with these military officials.** This was exactly what the British needed. Propaganda **posters** and **cartoons** became commonplace during the war as well, and, by 1916, **films** containing government biases were released to the general public. **Postcards** were also often illustrated with images of British courage and success.

Over 1160 **pamphlets** were published by the WPB to encourage patriotism and support for the war, and among these were //To Arms!// by Arthur Conan Doyle and //The New Army// by Rudyard Kipling. Such pamphlets were widely distributed. **The picture below shows two pilots with pamphlets, which they would fly with and drop over ally, (and sometimes enemy), territory.** Two British pilots, Cpt. E Scholtz and Lt. HC Wookey, were even shot down by the Germans and sent to POW camps on the grounds that they were spreading harmful misinformation about the Germans (psywarrior). Events such as this, however, did not always discourage the British from the practice.



Often times, the WPB asked artists to make **paintings** of the wartime atrocities of their opponents. **In some cases, these artists had never truly witnessed the conditions they were assigned to paint.** The Dutch artist Louis Raemaker was asked to create drawings which would evoke anger from the British against Germany's actions in Belgium despite the fact that Raemaeker never actually traveled to Belgium. Overall, over 90 artists were commissioned for the purpose of propaganda during the war. They were thoroughly restricted in their art in order to be sure to appeal to the people. Some complained that their art was being too closely controlled. As the artist Paul Nash commented, "I am not allowed to put dead men into my pictures because apparently they don't exist" (greatwar). The following two paintings are by Nash. They are titled //We Are Building a New World// and //The Yp//r//es Salient at Night// respectively.




 * Photographs** were also important visuals associated with British propaganda. **However, only two photographers were allowed to travel with the army and take pictures. Anyone besides these two who took a photo could be sentenced to death by firing squad.** **The WPB was afraid that too many photographers would be too hard to regulate, and this would increase the chance of undesirable pictures of death and British suffering.** The government was trying to persuade people to enlist, and the risk of people observing the terrifying truth of the war was far too great. The picture below, which shows a group of dead French soldiers in the Argonne Forest, would never have been shown by the British, who tried to conceal the fact that the Allied Powers were suffering great losses.