CONNECTING PUBLIC RELATIONS AND FOREIGN RELATIONS

The debate over entry into World War II helped establish a lasting connection between public relations and foreign affairs. The public relations profession evolved rapidly through the early years of the twentieth century. As historian Richard Tedlow has argued, the profession of public relations in this period can be broadly defined as “controlling the news … by planned and organized effort through informing and cultivating the press and through encouraging the corporation itself to alter its policies in accord with perceived public desires.” Most importantly here, public relations experts worked closely with organizations to create policy. The profession therefore moved beyond the “press agentry” of the nineteenth century where externally hired publicists took orders from corporate management. It also offered a more subtle and sophisticated approach than simple advertising.Footnote ¹¹

The first significant encounter between the burgeoning public relations concept and foreign relations came with the wartime success of George Creel's Committee on Public Information during World War I. As Scott Cutlip has argued, the wartime success of Creel's short-lived Committee on Public Information and the Liberty Loan drives “created a widespread awareness and blind faith in the power of publicity” at the end of World War I. Creel's success was reinforced by the public campaigns for prohibition and women's suffrage that culminated at the end of the war. As a result, the era saw the rapid expansion of public relations as an industry, as well as seeing numerous studies on the concept of public opinion, most notably Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion in 1922, and Crystallizing Public Opinion by Edward Bernays the following year.Footnote ¹²

Most public relations firms focussed on domestic business accounts in the interwar years. Although exceptions arose in the 1930s, connections between public relations and foreign relations were strained as American politicians became increasingly wary of the work of public relations firms to promote foreign businesses and governments. The controversial nature of reports in 1934 linking American firms to Nazi Germany raised concerns with the US government about the relationship between public relations and foreign affairs, notably Ivy Lee's counseling work for German chemical firm I. G. Farben, and the work of Carl Byoir and Associates with the German Railroads Tourist Bureau. Fears that both firms acted as propagandists for the Nazi regime brought them to the attention of the new Special Committee on Un-American Activities in the House of Representatives, which heightened concerns over the influence of foreign propaganda in the United States. Those suspicious international connections combined over the next four years with further investigations into (and fears of) un-American activity, growing regrets over the nation's entry into war in 1917, and developing concerns over international stability, creating an atmosphere of noninterventionism. Americans increasingly remembered the Committee on Public Information with suspicion as an agency that had misled them about the nature of World War I. This historical memory led to a strong popular desire to avoid further foreign entanglements.Footnote ¹³

However, the growing crises in both Asia and Europe led a number of internationally minded American citizens to believe that an effort was required to persuade the rest of the country of the need to respond to overseas aggression. Troubled by the noninterventionist mood between 1938 and 1941, internationalists organized to alter that mood in the form of the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Fight for Freedom. They sought to limit the trade between the United States and aggressors, revise the restrictive Neutrality Acts passed by Congress between 1935 and 1937, and ultimately provide greater aid to victims of international aggression. They aimed to direct popular opinion at the government, in the hope of proving to a cautiously internationalist Franklin Roosevelt that American opinion supported greater international action, and to prove to a strongly noninterventionist Congress that American opinion was sympathetic to victims of aggression.

Such efforts were necessary because both the Roosevelt administration and Congress were increasingly aware of public opinion, as represented through the new social science of opinion polling, which highlighted just how much Americans wanted to remain aloof from world affairs. Polling only heightened the existing sense that public opinion mattered. In 1935, George Gallup created the American Institute of Public Opinion at Princeton and Elmo Roper started polling for Fortune magazine. Hadley Cantril followed both into public opinion research, creating Princeton University's Office of Public Opinion Research in 1940. The political significance of a measurable public opinion had never been greater.Footnote ¹⁴

With Roosevelt reluctant to create a national propaganda agency of any kind, the private internationalist movement led the way in terms of shaping public opinion. They organized and fought the public relations battle for opinion in a way the President could not, and in doing so they took full advantage of professional public relations assistance. The internationalists needed every possible tool to sway the strongly noninterventionist public, and the concept of public relations offered something new. Roosevelt was happy for the internationalists to lead the way, though he and the government then followed their lead once the United States joined the war. Of course, the great debate had two sides, and the noninterventionist forces felt compelled to respond. They too attempted to utilize public relations professionals to spread their message as widely and effectively as possible. The immediacy of the domestic debate over war allowed public relations professionals a route back into foreign policy considerations, moving beyond the idea that they simply offered propaganda for the US government or for foreign nations.Footnote ¹⁵

FINDING FIGHTING OBJECTIVES: ORGANIZED INTERNATIONALISM

The outbreak of war in Asia in 1937 and Europe in 1939 saw a considerable increase in advocacy for victims of international aggression. Americans became increasingly concerned with international events, and that concern led activists to create new organizations to promote aid to victims of aggression and greater engagement with world affairs. To help turn the tide of public opinion and heighten awareness of the developing conflict in Asia, the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression formed in 1938. The Non-Partisan Committee for Peace through Revision of the Neutrality Law organized the following year after the outbreak of war in Europe. After the Nazi blitzkrieg in 1940, the best-known citizens’ organization of this period, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, was established. All sought to sway American opinion, in terms of both mass popular opinion and governmental opinion, and they all recognized the need for public relations advocacy to strengthen their message in the face of a public wary of foreign entanglements. As a result, all three utilized the assistance of the John Price Jones Corporation, the public relations firm at the heart of internationalist efforts to resist fascist aggression. The fact the internationalists turned to a public relations company for assistance was a natural result of the previous two decades.

John Price Jones founded his eponymous corporation in 1919. A former reporter and advertising executive, Jones made his name during World War I heading up publicity for the Liberty Loan campaigns that raised almost $14 billion for the US government, and he followed this with a similarly successful enormous fund-raising campaign at his alma mater, Harvard. Building on his achievements, Jones incorporated his own firm “to give council and service in organization and publicity to business houses, institutions of public, semi-public, and private character, and to individuals.” Jones intended to build a business that dealt with both public relations and fund-raising, and while the corporation became best known as a fund-raising organization rather than a public relations specialist, it continued to work in both areas.Footnote ¹⁶

The corporation's effectiveness was largely due to its systematic and standardized approach to its fund-raising and public relations campaigns. While conceding that each individual campaign was different, the corporation had a broadly standard procedure based on an eight-point plan: from defining the campaign; to investigating, analyzing and planning for the campaign; to assisting with, overseeing, evaluating and recording the success of the campaign. To support its campaigns, the corporation relied on its own historic records, reference books and research, and most notably a classified list of some 38,500 individuals known to have donated over $850 million to various causes (described boastfully by the corporation as “perhaps the most comprehensive ‘who's who in philanthropy’ existent”). In order to judge the potential influence of individuals, the corporation also boasted of a special file “showing not only the business associations of many prominent New Yorkers, but also their family relationships by blood and marriage.” This socially scientific approach to fund-raising and public relations was perfectly suited to the post-World War I era where numerous public relations firms thrived. While the corporation's claim to have been the “largest public relations corporation in America” may only have been technically true in terms of its number of personnel and accounts, its reputation for fund-raising helped it continue to expand.Footnote ¹⁷

Most of the corporation's efforts in these early years dealt with domestic matters, and fund-raising for higher education continued to be its most significant area of business. However, the corporation's first significant campaign in support of international issues was its work for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Announced in June 1921 and led by Independent editor Hamilton Holt, the foundation furthered Wilson's ideals, and world peace through justice and international organization in particular. By supporting the ideals of Woodrow Wilson, the corporation became a representative of the eastern establishment internationalist elite. While nothing stopped the corporation from taking on clients for whom it had little natural sympathy, the corporation's staff clearly reflected what historian Robert Divine called the homogeneity of interwar internationalists. Largely drawn from or educated in the Northeast, the majority were white, Anglophile, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The corporation clearly highlighted the education of its staff in its literature, and, as of 1936, more than half had been educated at Ivy League institutions while many others had attended northeastern liberal-arts colleges such as Amherst, Bowdoin and Williams. By 1939, they worked closely with like-minded internationalists dedicated to stopping aggression overseas. The first links between the corporation and the internationalists came in response to Japanese aggression in China.Footnote ¹⁸

The American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression (ACNPJA) was formed in 1938 by a group of Americans who felt the United States was not doing enough to help China following the outbreak of conflict with Japan in 1937. Henry Stimson took the role of honorary chairman but the daily running of the committee was left to chairman Roger Greene and the committee's main impetus, Executive Secretary Harry B. Price. Frustrated with the lack of economic sanctions against Japan, they felt that the United States needed to stop providing material to Japan because doing so supported Japanese aggression. Yet even with such a clear political objective, the ACNPJA sought professional assistance from the rapidly developing field of public relations to maximize its effectiveness. In January 1939 the ACNPJA obtained the assistance of the John Price Jones Corporation, initially for just two weeks to raise awareness of the committee. However, the ACNPJA asked the corporation to go further and provide advice and suggestions for the committee's future organization, publicity and fund-raising.Footnote ¹⁹

After two weeks of preliminary investigation, the corporation produced its report on suggested steps for the ACNPJA. In terms of organization, the corporation suggested creating local committees in order to create a nationwide response, rather than simply relying on the leadership of the National Committee. The corporation also noted that the ACNPJA's leadership needed strengthening to include “at least one man or woman from each of the social, economic, racial, religious, political or geographic groups” to be asked for support. This strong call for thematic breadth of representation in addition to numerical depth was a consistent message from public relations professionals throughout this period, as it would help organizations prove their legitimacy to the public. Ultimately to its detriment, the ACNPJA chose largely to ignore this advice, rejecting a mass-membership approach to organization, although some particularly active supporters felt strongly enough to create local and largely autonomous committees of their own.Footnote ²⁰

With regard to publicity, the corporation's main advice was the rather obvious point that the ACNPJA “urgently” needed publicity counsel to publicize its activities, whether this was promoting addresses from speakers, endorsements from prominent individuals, committee expansion, or statements from Washington on the volume of popular support for the ACNPJA's program. Finally, with regard to its operating schedule, the corporation advised that the ACNPJA devote two weeks to clarifying its program, leadership and budget, and finding a “solution of its financing problem.” On the last point, it recommended that the ACNPJA concentrate on finding a few prospective large donors; unsurprisingly, it also proposed that “the services of an organization competent to direct this fund-raising should be obtained.” The ACNPJA did not take the hint, and the relationship with the corporation did not continue, largely because the corporation wanted more money than the limited existing ACNPJA funds could provide.Footnote ²¹

With limited help from public relations professionals, the ACNPJA worked through 1939 and 1940 to spread the message about Japanese aggression across America. Looking back from the autumn of 1942, Harry Price believed that the committee helped to “crack the isolationist front” on the issue of supplying war materials to Japan. However, without a mass membership, the ACNPJA ultimately had a limited public impact. Congress never passed the full embargo legislation demanded by the committee. This was in part because the war in Europe soon became far more significant for Americans than the war in Asia. Yet it was also in part because the ACNPJA failed to follow the basic lessons of public relations laid out by the John Price Jones Corporation. John Price Jones himself hinted at the limited impact of “proper advocacy” with regard to the war in Asia. Writing in 1939, Jones argued that the amount given by Americans for Chinese relief was “woefully small, probably because there was lack of adequate advocacy or sponsorship for the cause.”Footnote ²²

By far the closest, longest and most effective relationship between a public-relations company and a citizens’ committee at this time was between the John Price Jones Corporation and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA). The CDAAA had its immediate origins in a short-lived organization created immediately following the outbreak of the European war. A desire to amend America's strict neutrality laws and aid victims of aggression quickly led to the creation of the Non-Partisan Committee for Peace through Revision of the Neutrality Act (NPC). Run by League of Nations Association and American Union for Concerted Peace Efforts director Clark Eichelberger and chaired by Emporia Gazette editor William Allen White, the NPC went public on 2 October 1939. Like the ACNPJA before it, the NPC recognized the need for public relations support and used the John Price Jones Corporation for public relations advice in promoting its campaign for neutrality revision.Footnote ²³

This advice was reflected in the methods used by the NPC organization and its methods during its brief existence. The NPC sought legitimacy by making itself as representative as possible and including leaders from all walks of life. It also utilized all possible media channels of promotion to rally public opinion behind the cause of neutrality revision. That public support was then reflected back through media coverage and public pressure to Washington to ensure prompt legislative action. In the end, that legislative action was surprisingly prompt. The NPC achieved a considerable amount of publicity in its first two weeks, by which time much of the Congressional battle had been won. While the NPC played its part, the main factor in securing neutrality revision was the outbreak of war in Europe. However, while the NPC quickly dissolved, the CDAAA built upon its experience the following spring as events in Europe rapidly deteriorated.Footnote ²⁴

The CDAAA formed in May 1940 as an immediate response to the German blitzkrieg on Western Europe. Based in New York City, the CDAAA was again chaired by William Allen White and directed by Clark Eichelberger. By the year's end, the CDAAA had become a well-known national citizens’ organization with close links to the Roosevelt administration, and members and local chapters in every state of the union except North Dakota. It was the dominant internationalist organization in 1940 and 1941, because it focussed on both an immediate political issue, and one that had significant popular support. The CDAAA's high profile was due in part to publicity created by its direct competition with the leading noninterventionist organization of the era, the America First Committee. A major part of its success was also due to its relationship with the John Price Jones Corporation.Footnote ²⁵

The John Price Jones Corporation greatly enhanced the CDAAA's strategy because Jones now directed the public relations lessons he learnt in Washington promoting Liberty Loans back at the government. The CDAAA hired the corporation in May 1940 and retained its services until August 1941. Originally hired for both public relations assistance and fund-raising from June through November 1940, the corporation then had its role officially reduced to fund-raising assistance, although the line between the two blurred. Across the whole fifteen-month period, the corporation provided detailed advice on fund-raising, publicity, organizational planning, and the CDAAA's strengths and weaknesses, as well as weekly situation reports. The corporation strongly recommended adapting CDAAA strategy to target “weak spots” and finding existing organizations with similar objectives with whom to cooperate. However, their advice went beyond organizational strategy and into the realm of policy and ideas, helping the CDAAA to clarify and tailor its message for the American people.Footnote ²⁶

Beyond publicity and strategy, the CDAAA initially retained the corporation to supply assistance in the areas of fund-raising, administration and organization, and business management. The corporation's fund-raising ability was crucial: by its own estimates, the corporation claimed that it would have cost the CDAAA at least $15,000 to compile the lists available as part of the corporation's services. More convincingly, the corporation also estimated that over three-quarters of the CDAAA's funds came from individuals on corporation lists. But the corporation also provided essential support in terms of administrative personnel. From 17 May to 30 November 1940, the corporation assigned between nine and twelve of its staff to the CDAAA under the supervision of John Price Jones himself. Corporation director and vice president Robert Duncan codirected the account at the beginning, but long-time staff member Alex W. Burger assumed control by the end of August. The additional staff served in a number of key executive roles for the CDAAA, including business manager, publicity director, director of the New York chapter, and director of the National Women's Division. Crucial tasks performed by the corporation's staff included development of the CDAAA's general plan of organization, establishment of its office organizational systems, preparation of publicity materials, and provision of nationwide lists of donors, as well as control of all fund-raising activity. Working with the corporation also allowed the CDAAA to meet its personnel needs without the need to interview candidates for positions.Footnote ²⁷

From late May onwards, the corporation worked with the CDAAA to develop its national organizational structure, putting together a plan for the CDAAA's organization from the executive committee down to local and cooperating committees. The corporation inspired the CDAAA's attempts to develop relationships with other like-minded organizations, as it insisted the CDAAA analyze the programs of existing organizations to see how their objectives matched those of the CDAAA. In addition, the corporation strongly urged that particular sectors of society be targeted for representation, particularly agricultural, labor and religious groups, in order to enhance the organization's legitimacy.Footnote ²⁸

The corporation specifically suggested organizing a women's auxiliary, a labor section and a “negro section,” and the CDAAA acted on this advice by creating national divisions to bolster representation in areas of perceived weakness. They specifically adopted a “qualitative approach … to develop support in these ‘weak spot’ areas in which opposition is most likely to take root.” Three sections of society targeted due to their divided opinion of the growing international crisis were youth (particularly students), women and labor. By October 1940 the CDAAA had established four national divisions: the Youth Division, the College Division, the Women's Division, and the Labor Division. Of the four, the most developed was the College Division, which had sixty-eight chapters by June 1941.Footnote ²⁹

The corporation also urged the CDAAA to approach the African American community, albeit with extreme caution. Reluctant to be seen as overly liberal with respect to domestic racial politics or interfering in local politics, CDAAA leaders never considered a separate division because it was unlikely to achieve mass support and could lead to the loss of political support elsewhere. However, with a genuine sense that African American representation was important, the John Price Jones Corporation emphasized that African Americans needed targeting as they were particularly vulnerable to fifth-column activities. This concern was based on a number of factors: African Americans had been heroes in France during World War I but received no recognition for it, they suffered from a lack of employment opportunities, they lacked support from labor unions, and there was a sense of bitterness among those who had moved north since World War I only to find segregation even more pronounced than in the South. As a result, the CDAAA leadership appealed to individual African American leaders, such as A. Philip Randolph and Ralph Bunche, to join them.Footnote ³⁰

In terms of policies, the corporation recognized that the CDAAA was most effective when it had specific policies to support and mobilize opinion behind. To maximize public support, the corporation constantly urged the CDAAA to adopt a more active program, and to stop relying on the Roosevelt administration for initiatives. Throughout the latter half of 1940, the corporation pushed the CDAAA to develop its future plans by producing new policy statements on issues. The corporation even suggested specific issues to promote, such as the transfer of planes to Britain, or to oppose, such as the Axis Tripartite Pact of September 1940. Of course, the CDAAA rejected a number of suggestions from the corporation, especially on matters of policy. Notably, the CDAAA did not adopt the suggestion (made as early as June 1940) to promote an immediate declaration of war on Germany prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The CDAAA did not adopt the suggestion to promote Atlantic convoys until March 1941. The committee refused to follow the suggestion to shorten its cumbersome name to the more elegant “Committee to Defend America,” although it did tinker with its name in 1941. The more advanced nature of the suggestions emanating from the corporation suggested that the public relations firm was in fact more belligerent than the CDAAA itself. While the bolder policy suggestions may have simplified the debate for the public and been preferable from a public relations and communications perspective, they nonetheless would have been harder to sell politically.Footnote ³¹

The most notable CDAAA policy objective in the late summer of 1940 was to support the Roosevelt administration in its efforts to provide the British Navy with fifty recently reconditioned overage American destroyers. By mobilizing public opinion behind a transfer, countering the legal arguments against a transfer, and ensuring Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie would not speak against it, the CDAAA helped to convince the President to move ahead with the destroyer–bases exchange. Roosevelt subsequently asked press secretary Stephen Early to contact William Allen White to “thank him and the organization for all they have done.” It was arguably the CDAAA's finest hour. The CDAAA's executive committee subsequently recorded their gratitude to the John Price Jones Corporation for helping them achieve their aim of aid to Britain.Footnote ³²

Over the next two months, the corporation continually pushed the CDAAA to provide a more explicit policy statement, as the CDAAA continued to propose all possible aid to Britain but with little specific policy detail. This was a significant concern for the public relations firm. A corporation assessment of the CDAAA's strengths and weaknesses revealed additional challenges facing the CDAAA on the eve of the 1940 election. On the positive side, the CDAAA was clearly the leading organization supporting aid to those fighting fascist aggression; indeed, it was the only national organization with a network of local committees mobilizing support for a more active foreign policy. That established position brought with it a certain amount of prestige and, on a more practical level, volunteer personnel and financial support. The committee also clearly benefited from the nationwide respect for William Allen White and from the “crusading” leadership of Clark Eichelberger.Footnote ³³

However, the corporation highlighted a number of weaknesses with the CDAAA. Regarding its central message, the CDAAA now lacked a clear “fighting objective.” Where it was once out ahead of general public opinion, the events of the previous six months had overtaken the committee and seen it fall behind, a criticism highlighted by the fact that both presidential candidates were in support of maximum aid to Britain. In fact, the concept of aid “short of war,” so important at the committee's beginning, had become a liability that was increasingly difficult to define. The most logical course was the one most likely to ensure the nation's “ultimate national safety,” although it was impossible to tell whether that course could be pursued without recourse to war. The corporation also acknowledged that the CDAAA lacked an obvious successor to take over the leadership if White could not continue, especially as it relied far too heavily on White for its public statements. More broadly, the CDAAA lacked both a clear plan of action and a cohesive “brain trust” group to develop a future program. Subsequent months proved that all of these perceived weaknesses were very real, with only a limited amount of success in overcoming them.Footnote ³⁴

The lack of new initiatives and policy direction meant that the CDAAA's financial situation become increasingly uncertain through October and November 1940 as donations dried up, and the committee became increasingly concerned with its reduced income. At the end of November, the CDAAA leadership decided to restrict the corporation's services to fund-raising only. Despite the expense of retaining the corporation's services, the CDAAA acknowledged after consultation with local groups that the only alternative to professional fund-raising assistance was to attempt to rely on a small number of individuals who might in turn seek to control CDAAA policy.Footnote ³⁵

The decision was untimely as the CDAAA immediately encountered its most significant public relations crisis with the resignation of William Allen White. On 23 December, the national press quoted White as saying, “the only reason in God's world I am in this organization is to keep this country out of war.” He added that the CDAAA was not in favor of repealing either the Neutrality Act or the Johnson Act. It quickly became clear that because his beliefs clashed with those of most of the CDAAA membership, he could not carry on as chairman, and he resigned on 2 January 1941. Given the circumstances, the corporation conceded that publicity progress at this point was “not in our hands.” The corporation acknowledged that one result of the controversy over White's statement was that the CDAAA was very much in the public eye, suggesting that all publicity was good publicity; however, it also acknowledged that the rift in the committee led to public confusion. Fortunately, the public's attitude toward the organization quickly became more sympathetic as the CDAAA offered its full support for Roosevelt's Lend–Lease bill, which offered virtually unlimited aid to Britain. The committee played a significant role in the popular debate over the bill, countering the strong opposition of the America First Committee.Footnote ³⁶

With the passage of the bill in March however, the public increasingly questioned the need for the CDAAA. After all, as the Lend–Lease Act offered all possible aid to the Allies, it appeared the committee's work was complete. The corporation was all too aware of this sentiment, and from the beginning of April it acknowledged that the public felt the CDAAA was “no longer needed” and did not understand why the organization might need further financial donations. The CDAAA's finances urgently needed a boost. Despite having raised $343,244·16 since 17 May 1940, the available balance as of 14 April 1941 was a paltry $561.86. With an estimated $150,000 required for the next six months of operations, weekly expenses were considerably higher than weekly income, and the CDAAA considered drastic staffing reductions. Donations rose at the end of April, but by June the committee's financial situation was again in a state of crisis, and remained that way until December 1941.Footnote ³⁷

The corporation led the efforts to respond to the CDAAA's financial crisis by targeting specific sectors of society for funds. Throughout the spring the corporation solicited money from supposedly new and untapped markets: women, southerners deemed to be particularly supportive of the internationalist cause, and the international business community of “exporters and importers.” By June, the corporation had adopted a more individual approach of “personal solicitation” to pursue specific wealthy donors for larger gifts, with selected “business men” approached in a similar vein in July. However, it had little lasting effect on the CDAAA's finances. The lack of a prominent national chairman and figurehead to replace William Allen White was also a significant handicap.Footnote ³⁸

Public support for the organization declined between the passage of Lend–Lease and July 1941. While aiding Britain was still a popular idea, suggesting that American ships convoy that aid across the Atlantic was a far less acceptable idea. The decline in interest led to a further reduction in donations and subsequent alarm within the CDAAA about its falling income. The CDAAA's executive committee decided to terminate the corporation's service as of 16 August. Despite the CDAAA's need to raise funds, it could no longer justify employing such an expensive fund-raising corporation. Although the relationship between the CDAAA and the corporation ended with a whimper, the corporation had clearly enhanced the CDAAA's bank balance. The bottom line was that by 18 August 1941, the corporation had helped the CDAAA raise $457,521·34. By way of comparison, the America First Committee's national headquarters received approximately $370,000 during the longer period from July 1940 to February 1942.Footnote ³⁹

Still, the ongoing importance of good public relations counsel was reflected in the fact that the CDAAA recognized that it still needed external support, and through the latter half of 1941 it looked for cheaper options. In October, it approached the New York-based Allen-McIntosh Company, who urged the CDAAA to focus on a specific policy and to gain publicity through a large public forum event. Although a contract was signed at the end of October, the CDAAA's connection with Allen-McIntosh was fleeting and never as close as it had been with the John Price Jones Corporation. In addition, in June the CDAAA developed its own in-house committee on public relations, led by Chester LaRoche, president of the advertising firm Young and Rubicam. However, the CDAAA clearly missed the all-round organizational, strategic and fund-raising expertise offered by the John Price Jones Corporation in the three months immediately preceding the Pearl Harbor attack.Footnote ⁴⁰

The John Price Jones Corporation greatly assisted the CDAAA through 1940 and 1941, from the provision of personnel to the organization's national headquarters, to the way the corporation organized and structured the CDAAA and sought support from different sectors of society. It was clear from the fund-raising efforts that kept the organization afloat, and also in the way the corporation helped the internationalists refine their message and spread it to the American people. Public relations activity and support unquestionably enhanced the national profile of the CDAAA, a fact that the internationalist leadership clearly recognized.

However, the corporation could not solve all of the CDAAA's problems. The corporation's insider critiques of the CDAAA – and indeed the wider internationalist movement – are in many ways more effective than that of the noninterventionist opposition such as America First. Paid to find weak spots in the internationalist movement's organization, the corporation did exactly that, effectively highlighting its organizational limitations. Following White's resignation, the CDAAA never found a leader of comparable standing, let alone one to match the America First Committee's Charles Lindbergh. The CDAAA also failed to consistently target and counter pockets of noninterventionist strength in the country, choosing the easier path of building on areas of existing strength. The corporation highlighted the drawbacks to the limited rhetoric of the CDAAA, and its reliance on the Roosevelt administration for a program of activity. The unwillingness of the CDAAA leadership to move in advance of Roosevelt's policies, or to suggest specific ideas for fear of undermining the President, ultimately left the organization with too few specific policies to support and too little to rest (what the corporation called) “a case” upon. This unwillingness led to a serious reduction in fund-raising in 1941, and the rise of the more belligerent Fight for Freedom committee, which advocated direct entry into the war.

Fight for Freedom (FFF), created in April 1941 following the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, had a much more direct “fighting objective” in arguing that the existing war in Europe was already America's to fight. With Senator Carter Glass as honorary chairman and Bishop of Southern Ohio Henry W. Hobson as chairman, the organization grew in prominence and attempted to replace the CDAAA as the main internationalist – indeed, outright interventionist – organization. Its director, Ulric Bell, had previously been Washington correspondent for the Louisville Courier-Journal, and his efforts drove the organization forward through 1941. Like its predecessors, Fight for Freedom recognized the need for advice and assistance on getting its objectives out to the public. For public relations assistance, FFF looked to the New York firm of Tamblyn and Brown, building on a connection set up by Fight for Freedom's informal predecessor, the Century Group, back in the summer of 1940.

Created in 1920 by two members of the fund-raising firm Ward, Hill, Pierce and Wells, Tamblyn and Brown focussed on a mix of fund-raising and publicity, much like the John Price Jones Corporation. However, the publicity created by Tamblyn and Brown existed almost wholly to facilitate the fund-raising, not for broader strategic purposes. Nevertheless, with George Tamblyn focussed on fund-raising and John Crosby Brown in charge of publicity, the New York firm attempted to bring Fight for Freedom the level of national visibility held by the CDAAA and the America First Committee. However, they were largely unsuccessful, due in large part to the limited popularity of the organization's call for war, and the related fact that the organization had restricted funds.Footnote ⁴¹

Tamblyn and Brown's assessment of FFF's public relations effectiveness in June 1941 was extremely critical, much like the John Price Jones Corporation's view of the CDAAA. It acknowledged that the organization had a publicity department and was effective in dealing with newspapers. However, its national organizing job was “badly done” and it had no effective fund-raising at all. Tamblyn and Brown effectively acted as the committee's fund-raising arm, with an office at FFF headquarters in the Rockefeller Center. It organized regular promotional and fund-raising events with diverse sectors of New York society: November's meetings included the Princeton Club, a group of lawyers, and representatives of the paper industry. By 10 December, Tamblyn and Brown had sourced contributions to the value of $68,401·60, over one-quarter of FFF's total contributions.Footnote ⁴²

Despite this success, FFF director Ulric Bell was unsatisfied and became increasingly frustrated with what he saw as a lack of fund-raising from the very organization he was paying to raise funds. In August, clearly frustrated at FFF's limited resources, he denounced the “preponderous [sic] claims about money raised by Tamplyn [sic] and Brown, when in fact most of the contributions claimed to your activity are from sources you have nothing whatever to do with in soliciting.” Yet despite his frustrations, Bell kept the firm on right up to Pearl Harbor, clearly recognizing the need for greater resources and publicity. In the end, its overall impact was largely limited to fund-raising, and Tamblyn and Brown unquestionably had an impact on the finances of Fight for Freedom. However, FFF lacked the clear organizational structure of the CDAAA (even though FFF's limited organizational structure and strategy drew heavily from the CDAAA's example). This organizational weakness combined with FFF's more provocative policy stance to limit its effectiveness through 1941.Footnote ⁴³

To varying degrees, public relations professionals provided advice, support and structure to internationalist organizations fighting to break down American resistance to international engagement. When collaboration worked best, as with the CDAAA, public relations support sharpened internationalist messages, raised funds, organized and manned offices and created the appearance of a broad base of national support for action in the face of international aggression. Other collaborations were less successful, dependent in part on the amount of public interest and support for a particular issue. Regardless of the level of success, all of the organizations knew that public relations support was necessary to spread their message effectively in the fight against noninterventionism.

FAILING TO ARTICULATE SENTIMENT: THE AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE

The noninterventionist movement also recognized that public relations assistance was essential in spreading its message as widely and successfully as possible to the American people. The America First Committee, established in September 1940 to counter the CDAAA and mobilize public opinion for a greater emphasis on American national defense, recognized that it urgently needed public relations advice. Yet while the use of public relations assistance clearly helped the internationalist movement on the eve of war, the America First Committee failed to develop a close and effective relationship with public relations specialists. This was not for lack of trying, but America First failed to secure the assistance of its preferred public relations firm because that firm recognized that it would be bad public relations to formally associate with the “isolationist” organization.

In the wake of the Nazi blitzkrieg of May and June 1940, Yale student R. Douglas Stuart sought a way to ensure that the United States stayed out of the European conflict. As the summer progressed, Stuart contacted General Robert E. Wood, chairman of Sears Roebuck and Co., about developing a noninterventionist organization to rival the CDAAA. Formally announced in September, the day after the destroyer-bases exchange was confirmed, the America First Committee immediately engaged in the national foreign policy debate. With Wood as chairman and Stuart as national director, America First relied heavily on politicians for publicity, regularly utilizing Congressional figures such as Gerald Nye and Burton Wheeler. Its most prominent member was not a politician but Colonel Charles Lindbergh, whose personal history and fame made him the most popular member of the America First Committee, even though he only formally joined the national committee in April 1941. Nevertheless, America First rapidly grew in popularity, developing chapters across the country, with particular strength in the Midwest and around Chicago.Footnote ⁴⁴

Despite the fact the America First Committee is better-known than any internationalist organization of this era, and the fact that it claimed to have hundreds of thousands of members, it was in fact a relatively small-scale operation in terms of its national executive office. America First leaders focussed on organizing chapters to show volume of grassroots support rather than showing the quality of that support through connections to politicians or well-known Americans. Despite efforts to secure it, America First never had professional fund-raising support. While America First was reasonably effective at securing publicity through advertising and radio programming, it focussed on getting its message out as frequently as possible with no overall public relations strategy. This (lack of) strategy reflected the fact that a number of key advisers to the America First executive committee were advertising men rather than public-relations men, including Bruce Barton (of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn), and William Benton and Chester Bowles (of Benton and Bowles). Nevertheless, Stuart later described Benton as a “master of public relations,” as well as acknowledging the work of publicity director Sidney Hertzberg and vice chairman Hanford MacNider. However, the America First leadership recognized that self-help was not enough.Footnote ⁴⁵

The fact that America First knew it needed more effective public relations is evidenced by assistant director of organization Harry Schnibbe's heavily annotated copy of Edward Bernays's Speak Up for Democracy in the America First archives. Stuart acknowledged that they had to make it seem that public opinion was swinging their way: “we must use Roosevelt's old trick of making it appear as if public opinion is powerfully with us.” Yet for the committee's first six months, it had no external public relations support. The idea of contacting Bernays was raised but never explored, and initial attempts in late 1940 to work with the Chicago-based firm of William Harshe Inc. fell through. In the spring of 1941, desperate for assistance in the aftermath of the passage of the Lend–Lease Act, the committee approached James Selvage of the New York firm Selvage and Smith.Footnote ⁴⁶

James Selvage had previously undertaken public relations work for the National Association of Manufacturers in the 1930s, attacking Roosevelt's New Deal for its excessive governmental intervention into business affairs. This anti-Roosevelt stance made Selvage a natural fit for the America First Committee in a similar way to how the internationalist-minded John Price Jones Corporation was ideally suited to working with the CDAAA. National Committee member and former undersecretary of state William Castle urged Stuart to secure Selvage, as “we have got to have much better organization than we have at present, and it is pretty late to get it.” As the Lend–Lease debate came to a close, Selvage wrote a vivid and detailed memo on the need for America First to broaden its vision and “to pitch its efforts upon a more dramatic plane, reaching for the type of semi-hysteria that makes people want to join up and do battle.” He urged the committee to build up Herbert Hoover and Charles Lindbergh as patriotic leaders, to provide assistance to sympathetic Senators and Congressmen, to target women as the mothers and wives of those men who would be called to fight, and to look for the support of young men who would defend their own country “but are not anxious to go on a Holy Crusade to sell the New Deal ideology over the world as against the ideologies of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.”Footnote ⁴⁷

Stuart approached Selvage in late March 1941, arguing to Robert Wood that “we need the skill, the experience, and the ability of Selvage's firm. This is not a two-bit operation … without any question we need Selvage.” Stuart described securing Selvage's services as “imperative.” Yet while Selvage was very sympathetic and offered informal advice to the America First executive committee, he refused to provide his services to America First formally. Selvage initially highlighted that the committee simply did not have the funds to pay the five or six thousand dollars per month required for a nationwide public relations program. Instead, Selvage provided America First with free advice when possible, most notably trying to convince the committee that “too much effort is being spent upon building chapters and membership when there isn't time.” Instead, he argued it should focus its efforts on “propaganda and articulating sentiment swiftly, with organization secondary.” Much like the John Price Jones Corporation, Selvage emphasized the quality of the message and its recipients more than the quantity.Footnote ⁴⁸

America First was receptive to this message, along with other assistance on publicity, press releases and how to respond to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes's suggestion that Robert Wood and Charles Lindbergh were Nazi fellow travelers. However, America First ignored other more radical suggestions from Selvage. Chester Bowles criticized Selvage's idea of attacking the seemingly biased and pro-war Gallup poll as unconvincing. The America First leadership also rejected Selvage's provocative idea of inviting William Allen White – recently resigned as CDAAA chairman – and defeated 1940 Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie to join the committee. Selvage also drafted a set of ten principles for America First and sent them to the national committee for comments, but the largely unfavorable response criticized the proposals for being overlong, for trying to cover too much ground, and for highlighting what the committee was against rather than what it promoted. As with the internationalists, the America First Committee often rejected bolder proposed policy messages from the public relations professionals due to reasons of political complexity.Footnote ⁴⁹

Nevertheless, Stuart still sought the full-time services of Selvage and Smith through April and early May. After more pleading requests to join as a salaried member of the committee, Selvage finally detailed the reasons why he was reluctant to formally come on board. Despite his deep sympathy for the noninterventionist cause, he was genuinely concerned that he would lose clients as a result of any such association with America First. He feared some clients would disagree with his noninterventionist views and leave his firm, and that his ability to represent other clients would be reduced if he took a role with America First that required fighting with media outlets for air time. In his own words, he “could hardly raise hell with Columbia [Broadcasting System] one week for not giving us time and go the next week, nice-like, and say, ‘I have a nice manufacturer who wants to talk over your air about something you don't object to so violently’.” The full realization of Selvage's fears came following a conversation with Bill Benton, who, despite his own considerable wealth, was unwilling to risk formally joining America First for fear of a similar business backlash against noninterventionist views. As the public relations firm was Selvage's only source of income to provide for his family, he believed the risk was too great.Footnote ⁵⁰

Selvage did not explicitly say why he believed that joining America First would alienate clients and media from NBC to the New York Times to Time, Life and Fortune. Yet the America First Committee had an unfortunately toxic brand in 1941. The slurs of internationalists such as Ickes stuck in the popular imagination, and the committee, however unfairly, was portrayed as one filled with Nazi sympathizers. Comments such as those made by Charles Lindbergh in Des Moines in September 1941 certainly opened the committee up to charges of anti-Semitism. To repair the committee's image was a vast undertaking, and even though Selvage believed in the cause, to try and support it would have been an all-or-nothing proposition in 1941, especially as he conceded that the America First assignment would be immediate and all-encompassing. Working for America First would betray Selvage's existing clients in the short term and leave him with little security in the long term.Footnote ⁵¹

Although Selvage continued to correspond with Stuart into July, the America First Committee struggled through the remainder of 1941 without clear public relations direction. Chester Bowles occasionally consulted with the organization, and while Bill Benton and Bruce Barton had reservations similar to those of Selvage, they did what they could on an informal basis. At a lower level, the role of director of organization was filled by Robert Bliss, Richard Moore, then Page Hufty, who did what little they could with limited finances to build on the advice from Selvage, match the CDAAA, and expand the America First membership in a qualitative sense. Hufty in particular worked to incorporate women and African Americans into the committee, the latter through the Charles A. Young division in Washington. Sidney Hertzberg's exit as director of publicity in March 1941 was one of the reasons Stuart was so desperate to secure Selvage. Although Richard Moore replaced in Hertzberg in July, it was never quite enough. Attempts to develop a more formal publicity unit under the active but abrasive John T. Flynn, another staunch anti-New Dealer and head of America First's New York chapter, had only just begun to be discussed by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.Footnote ⁵²

America First's continued, yet limited, efforts to secure public relations assistance reflected how valuable they deemed that assistance to be. The knowledge that the organization was at a disadvantage compared to their opponents was partly responsible for those efforts: General Wood openly conceded that “we have never had a professional fund-raising organization such as the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies,” and that applied to public relations more broadly. But the search for support also reflected the organization's strong belief that public opinion could be – and indeed needed to be – molded and steered in a particular direction, away from war. In attempting to express complicated ideas to an increasingly “mass” public spread across a continent, the organization needed all the help it could get.Footnote ⁵³

LEGACY

While the citizens’ organizations on the eve of war were confident in their own message, they recognized that the urgency of the great debate required more than a series of press releases or advertisements for newspapers. The heightened sensitivity to public opinion – due to the international context, the democratic nature of the debate, and new polling methods and public relations techniques – meant that they sought new and effective ways to amplify their message to an increasingly interested and politically important public. The public relations assistance of the era helped in a number of key ways that went far beyond simply selling advertising, writing copy and getting the internationalist or noninterventionist message out. They helped with administration and organization, notably with the John Price Jones Corporation's staffing of the CDAAA office; they helped the organizations address questions of public image; they brought force and clarity to arguments, though sometimes without full consideration of the political implications; they provided telling critiques of organizational weaknesses; and they urged the cultivation of widespread popular support, to secure political clout. However, more often than not, the message was to prioritize quality over quantity and breadth rather than depth in order to secure popular legitimacy. In that sense there was a tension in the public relations message which sought the appearance of democracy without always being especially democratic.

Nonetheless, assisted by public relations professionals, the organizations certainly had national impact. The America First Committee crystalized the national reluctance for war, while the efforts of the CDAAA mobilized opinion to aid victims of aggression. The Roosevelt administration greatly appreciated the work of the internationalist organizations. Roosevelt had a preference for multiple agencies and decentralized control, but he was also wary of the memory of the Committee on Public Information and reluctant to create a national propaganda agency before the nation was at war. Yet through the CDAAA he received an informal propaganda service. As historian Michael Sherry has noted, Roosevelt rejected a more formal propaganda agency in peacetime “in favor of an informal public–private cooperation that would largely prevail for decades after the war.” Public relations considerations were a key part of that ongoing cooperation.Footnote ⁵⁴

After the great debate, close links between public relations and foreign relations became commonplace. When the government finally did create a domestic wartime propaganda apparatus – first under the Office of Facts and Figures, then with the Office of War Information – it was all too aware of the heightened importance of domestic public opinion when it came to American foreign relations. The director of the wartime Office of Facts and Figures, Archibald MacLeish, sought to utilize “all the techniques of public opinion research which have been developed in the government, private foundations, business, and industry in the past several years,” which included the work of public relations professionals. MacLeish and others later took these techniques into the Department of State following its reorganization in 1944 and the creation of the Office of Public Information, later the Office of Public Affairs. Undersecretary of State Edward Stettinius even went so far as to send the department's John Sloan Dickey to meet with public relations pioneer Arthur Page, vice president of public relations for AT & T, to test if Dickey's ideas about public relations were up to the highest standards of the private sector. By 1945 politicians accepted the need for public relations strategies, adopting them into both domestic public affairs management and in public diplomacy efforts overseas.Footnote ⁵⁵

The expansion of public relations ideas only continued in the Cold War and beyond. Even as the concept of public relations broadened out to be incorporated by numerous government departments, and the definitions of public relations and propaganda became increasingly blurred, the involvement of private public relations firms in matters of American foreign relations continued. This included the work of Harold Oram, whose firm – among other roles – did public relations work for Ngo Dinh Diem in the United States in the 1950s. In the same decade, the French hired an American public relations firm to try and influence attitudes on their war in Algeria. More recently, Hill and Knowlton sparked controversy over their work for Citizens for a Free Kuwait prior to the first Gulf War. For as long as wars of ideas continue, the need for successful public relations will follow.Footnote ⁵⁶