movements, are set forth in certain specific requests. No law stands behind them. Their observance rests entirely upon honor and patriotism. There are violation, as a matter of course, and papers holding to the unwritten agreement have suffered injury from papers less careful and less honest, but on the whole the press has responded in the same spirit of unselfish service than animates the firing line. The bargain is the bargain of the press and it must of necessity provide its own discipline. As it is realized, however, that the requests of government are concerned with human lives and national hopes, as it is driven home that the passing satisfaction of a news item may endanger a transport or a troop train, the voluntary censorship grows in strength and certainty.

I was not in favor of a cersorship law in the beginning, nor am I now in favor of the enactment of any legislation. Aside from the physical difficulties of enforcement, the enormous cost, the overwhelming irritation, and the inevitable tendency of such laws to operate solely against the weak and powerless, I have always had the conviction that our hope must lie in the aroused patriotism, the nobler consciences, of the men who make the papers of America.

At every point our accent is on expression, not repression. From the Committee goes out the official war information, in each of the war-making branches we have sworn representatives whose duty it is to disclose our operations to public inspection as far as military prudence will permit. We believe that public support is a matter of public understanding. It is our job to take dead wood out of the channels of information, permitting a freer, more continuous flow. This is not the simplest thing in the world. On one hand is the press, impatient of reticence and suspicious of concealments, and on the other hand we have generals and admirals reared in a school of iron silence. Both, however, are in process of education. The press, I feel, is commencing to realize our honesty of purpose, and the military experts are growing to have an increasing faith in the power of absolute frankness. The Army and Navy, through this Division of

News, has pledged to the people instant and honest announcement of all casualties, all accidents, all disasters. Bear this in mind when the air fills with rumors about the sinking of a transport, the loss of thousands of soldiers in France, the destruction of the fleet. Brand them as lies, and publish the liar, for the government does not suppress such news or seek to minimize it. We do not conceal reverses because we fear not for the courage of America.

The committee prepares and publishes all war literature that is issued in pamphlet form. It commands the services of any writer that it may choose to call, and at its back stand over three thousand of the leading historians of the country, every man in the service. These pamphlets, covering every phase of America's position, purposes, aims, are printed in many languages and millions of copies reach not only the people of America, but go to every corner of the world, carrying our defense and our attack. Experts plan the most effective circulation schemes and experts direct the distribution in order that every printed bullet may reach its mark.

Another division has gathered together the leading novelists, essayists and publicists of the land, and these men and women, without payment, toil faithfully week after week in the preparation of brilliant, comprehensive articles that go into the Saturday and Sunday papers of the United States.

We are giving increasing attention to specialized appeals, and there is one department that pays particular attention to the rural press and to the plate matter service. Another is concerned entirely with women's part in war work, ministering to the women's pages of the press, and there are still others who look after the labor press, the religious press, and the periodical press.

The foreign language press is dealt with by a distinct division that has enlisted the services of over two hundred volunteer translators. Reports are made on virtually every paper in the United States that is not printed in English, and we try to fight ignorance and untruth with a steady stream of articles selected with particular reference to the race.

The Official Bulletin has a daily free circulation of 100,000, and although a seemingly prohibitive price was fixed, over $25,000 has been received in subscriptions in it's first year. There are other mediums of public appeal than through the printed word, and we are developing them to the fullest possible extent. The Division of Four Minute Men now commands the services of over 25,000 speakers who appear regularly in the motion picture houses, carrying messages from the government to the people.

The Division of Speaking has coordinated the efforts of all government agencies and of all the patriotic bodies, to the end that some order has been brought out of oratorical chaos. It is this division that arranges mass meetings or aids them, calls war conferences in the states, and sends picked individuals and groups on speaking tours that reach from coast to

coast.

The Division of Pictures prepares and distributes, advises upon and censors photographs and moving pictures to the number of more than seven hundred a day. As in the case of the press, there is no law that can be invoked, but the patriotism of the motion picture industry itself has enabled us to exercise an iron control in the interests of the national service.

Under the direction of Charles Dana Gibson, the artists of America have been mobilized for the production of posters, car cards, and every other form of pictorial appeal, and already over four hundred designs are being displayed carrying messages of the army, navy, food, ships, Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A. Where once we had the worst posters in the world, today we have posters that compare favorably with the best in the world.

A similar mobilization has taken place in the advertising forces of the nation, and from a central office here in New York a great army of experts is directed with almost military precision. These men put the idea and needs of government into proper and attractive form, arrange for its presentation in the daily and periodical press, on the bill boards of the country and in the cars, and in the coming year alone will furnish millions of

dollars' worth of space to the national service. Motion pictures have been given a deservedly high place in our activities, and our photographers cover the country, making a complete and running record of war work on land and water, in field and factory, in the cantonments in the United States and on the firing line in France. In addition to this, the great producers are preparing patriotic pictures to express the national purpose; and we are developing our own feature films that will flash before the eyes of all Americans the history and meaning of democracy.

The problem of the foreign born is not the least of the difficulties that beset us. Nothing is more true than that people "do not live by bread alone." The great majority live on catch phrases. For years we have discharged our duty to the alien by mere reference to the melting pot, and yet it has been years since the melting pot has done any melting. These hopeful thousands, coming to the land of promise with their hearts in their hands, have been treated with every neglect and indifference, and only in the most haphazard way have they been brought into touch with the bright promise of American life. To meet the needs of the hour, we have organized the various foreign language groups into loyalty leagues and through the foreign language press, through their societies, through their leaders, are carrying on daily work to give them the understanding that is the only sure foundation for love and loyalty.

These activities that I have mentioned concern themselves entirely with the domestic situation, but beyond the United States are countries that are just as much a part of my job as any commonwealth in the Union. It is our right and our necessity to fight for public opinion in every other country in the world, and we make this fight in print, in speech, and on the screen.

We found that America was dependent upon foreign press agencies for our intercourse with other nations, that the volume of information was small, and what was worse, concerned only with the vile and unusual in our national life. To remery this evil situation we devised cable and wireless services, and each day one

thousand words go out to every foreign capital for distribution to the press of the particular country. From Tuckerton we send to the Eifel Tower, and from France the service is relayed to Berne, to Rome, to Madrid, and Lisbon. Our cable service to England meets the needs of Scandinavia, Holland, and Russia. From Tuckerton a service in Spanish goes to Darien for the South American countries, and from San Diego we leap to Cavite, and from Cavite to Shanghai and Tokio. all of the great capitals we have offices and staffs for the handling of this press service, for the distribution of a feature service that goes out by mail, for the selection and assignment of speakers, and for the exhibition of the motion pictures that set forth America's social, industrial and war progress.

In

In Russia alone, as an illustration of activity, our organization stretches from Petrograd to Vladivostok, one great printing plant is employed for our work alone, the principal theatres are hired for the exhibition of our pictures, and our speakers and printed appeals, in every one of the varied languages of AustroHungary, go into the country wherever possible, along the firing line, into cities and villages, and particularly into the prison camps. The enemy countries themselves are invaded through the air. Bombardment planes, loaded with leaflets and pamphlets that tell the truth to a deluded people, go regularly over the firing lines and far into the land both on the eastern and western fronts.

There is no activity of the committee that we are ashamed to reveal, no dollar that is sent on a furtive errand, but peculiarly is this true of our work in other lands. No paper is subsidized, no official is bought, no corruption is employed. From a thousand sources I am told of the wonder of German propaganda, but my original determinations have never altered. Always do I try to find out what the Germans are doing, and then I don't do it. Even if the very loftiness of our war aims did not command honesty at every point, I have the conviction that corrupt methods work their own destruction. German propaganda failed in this country, it failed in Roumania and in Italy, it has failed in South and Central Amer

ica and in Mexico, not because millions were not spent, but because honest, decent people inevitably turn against dishonesty and indecency.

These divisions do not fully cover the activities of the Committee on Public Information. The broad field of its work cannot be expressed in the terms of organization. By the logic of events and the necessities of the public requirements which called it into being, its functions have grown until it touches at times nearly every part of the great machinery which now coordinates the forces of the republic for war purposes.

Public opinion is not controlled entirely by what is spoken, written, painted or photographed, but is oftentimes dependent upon what is or is not done. Because of this, we are as jealous of inefficiencies and neglects as any citizen and not the least part of our duties is the discovery and remedy of conditions that make for discontent and bitterness. While we are fighting for democracy abroad, we must see to it that free institutions are not undermined at home, and as far as we are able, the committee guards against the reactions of war.

It is a tremendous fight that the committee is waging, and to its banners it calls all that is fine and ardent in our civilian population. This fight for public opinion, both here and over all the world, will not be won until every man, woman and child enlists as a soldier, standing squarely behind the war, believing passionately in its justice, and combatting lies, prejudices and misrepresentations just as our men in France combat the Hun.

Let us fix it so that we will not have to wear gas masks here at home. Each month sees new thousands pouring across the sea to join the American Expeditionary Force in France. No man left behind has any right to consider his lot save in comparison with the lot of those who have gone forth to offer their lives on the altar of liberty. Here in America the worst that may befall us is discomfort, inconvenience of money loss, but our soldiers and sailors face daily the danger of death and the horror of those wounds that are worse than death.

This is the thought with which we must lie