Memorandum to Mr. Gifford from Mr. Clarkson

C O P Y

Memorandum to Mr. Giffordfrom Mr. Clarkson.

During the past few weeks I have been thinking a good deal along the following lines:It seems to me that this Government either has mobilized, or is on the way to mobilizing, every element of the nation's life save that emotional or spiritual element which, in the last equation, must raise the troops, pay the bills, make possible and endurable the sacrifices that are before us, and win the war.

There has been too much said in this country in my judgment about the drab and unemotional aspects of modern war, and too little said about the underlying reasons for the present conflict and about why we have gone into it. The mechanics of war has changed, but human nature has not changed. The industrial mobilization of the nation, the tapping of new sources of energy, is fine, is imperative, but it is worth nothing unless the heart of the nation is stirred. Cold facts, the marshalling of data, the taking of a national balance sheet all these things are but a skeleton of accomplishment if not related to and interwoven with the great fundamental emotions which win wars.

And this country is not awake. He who thinks it is merely deceives himself ; he is not acquainted with the temper of the hour. There is no sense of oneness in America toward the war. The country is not welded. This is a mere fragment of what is in my mind, and I give it to you thus informally because I feel very firmly that the Council and Advisory Commission will have no real and enduring place in the history of this country unless they concern themselves with other than the material aspects of this war unless, as official bodies, they show vision of the kind that lifts such bodies beyond mere perfunctory administrative agencies, soon forgotten and little deplored, to a conception of scientific government in the true and conclusive sense.

The remedy to counteract the dormant state of the country? It is obvious. An appeal by the Administration itself to the people. The enlistment of men as speakers who can fire the nation, men who are genuinely representative of the varying lights and shades of the country's philosophy men like Roosevelt, Borah, Frank Vanderlip, Samuel Gomers, Bryan for his section of the country; Elihu Root for his, John Sharp Williams (perhaps) for his, and by all means Secretary Lane, than whom very few men in the country can get a fuller hearing in the newspapers. It is a great pity that Dolliver of Iowa is not alive. A central theme for such speakers? The President laid down a pretty good one a year or so ago when he said, "Carry the flag in your heart, and the heart of America shall interpret the heart of the world."

Press propaganda should be prepared by men of vision and power of expression, not by men of the social-reformer type, most of whom mean well, but very few of whom have the driving power and balance to carry through in such a situation as this. I have in mind such men as Frank Cobb, Editor of the New York World, and Carl Synder. If there is an H. G. Wells in this country, then he should be found and put in the front rank.

Thirdly, a more generous attitude toward the women of the country the taking of them unreservedly into the national family. Women are more than ever forming the opinions of the homes of America. Why not utilize now the tremendous force for national unity which they represent? A year or two of real war will bring the vote to women anyway. Why not mobilize them now, as they are entitled to be mobilized? No business concern of high intelligence would fail to take advantage of such an opportunity to increase its selling power. After all the present job is very largely only a selling job with the Government on one side of the counter and the people on the other and the country is only half sold today. Why should not a government now going into the arena, after years of unpreparedness, with the greatest military nation on the globe, seize upon this easily translatable asset? Some day it will seem almost elementary.

We put the aviation programme through without a hitch because we went to the country on it, and went in organized fashion from the day I got the thirty leading newspaper and magazine men of the United States together at Delmonico's on June 8. It was probably the swiftest drive of the sort ever made in this country. And I will tell you why it worked. Because I hammered and asked the newspaper men to hammer on the picturesque, romantic side of the story as well as on the irresistible logic of the facts. In short, we made the human appeal.

Note. 1930. I had nothing to do with all this after Creel and the Signal Corps took it over, and I deprecated officially the claims later made, as well as the suppressions of fact.

GC

If we are going to quicken the spiritual fibre of this country so that it shall become the mighty power of the State that it should become, we must do it by utilizing the human appeal in the most intelligent and candid way in every nook and cranny of the nation.