Abstract
The yin and yang of communication in wartime; censorship and propaganda are the positive and negative of the same idea; telling official stories and drawing out unofficial ones.
As we approach the centenary of the beginning of World War I, the time to examine the role of propaganda, communication and censorship during conflicts could not be more appropriate. The word propaganda in the sense we use it today first came into use during the WWI period. Before then, the word was mainly used in a religious, particularly Catholic context, and not necessarily with the negative overtones we associate with its modern definition; previously its context was about increasing knowledge.
That’s not to say propaganda techniques were not known before 1914. Kings, queens and national leaders have, throughout history, known the importance of rallying public spirits via the mass media of the day; from hiring town criers to paying press barons, to endowing playwrights with funding, they found numerous methods of projecting a supportive message to the wider public. The Bayeux tapestry, first commissioned in the eleventh century, is an early example of the art, colourfully weaving the story of William I vanquishing King Harold on the hillsides of Hastings to win the English throne for the Normans.
However, modern propagandists really learnt their stuff during WWI, with use of a whole palette of options: posters, postcards, advertising, caricature, photography, early film-making and newspaper stories. Here was Intro to Twentieth Century Propaganda Techniques 101; a fertile lecture series, full of practical tips, that others that came after would mine for ideas. In the first two decades of the century technological changes, such as high speed printing presses and early film, combined with enormous newspaper readership, were the fertile ground on which to plant the seeds of ideas and campaigns that had the potential to reach millions.
Kaiser Wilhlem II knew about the power of propaganda as our regular cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson outlines in his article. The Kaiser had the original idea for the 1896 cartoon Nations of Europe, with the plan of signing up European leaders to his campaign against the “yellow peril”, the growing power of Japan. The Kaiser presented a copy of the sketch to his cousin the Tsar of Russia, perhaps he stuck one in the post to his other cousin Britain’s George V too. Art’s power to persuade was undeniable during the Great War. A century later Kitchener’s poster with the thrusting finger demanding that “your country needs you” remains in the public consciousness in Britain, and its influence stretches further, continuing to spark copies and pastiches. Stereotypes, phrases, songs and ideas invented during this period have been resilient, and are remembered even 100 years later. So the idea of “packing up your troubles in your old kitbag” continues, the “Hun” of WWI cartoonists is still a reference, while the phrase “Spanish flu” continues to be used without many of us realising its root is in the censorship of WWI, when an influenza epidemic carried off millions around the world. Spain was one of the few countries without media censorship in place when the epidemic struck and when it was reported on by the Spanish media, the flu consequently became “the Spanish flu”.
ABOVE: A Soviet propaganda poster from 1975 celebrating the 40th anniversary of the launching of the Stakhanovite movement in 1935. The slogan reads “Use the traditions of the Stakhanovite movement!”
Credit: C. and M. History Pictures / Alamy
The WWI global flu epidemic encapsulates both propaganda and censorship, and is an illuminating tale for all its manifestations. Many experts now believe the pandemic killed more than the war itself; at least 50 million across the world, more in a single year than the Black Death, as Alan Maryon-Davis charts in his fascinating article Into The Valley of Death. But when the first symptoms of this modern plague started to come to the attention of doctors and governments, large swathes of the world were at war. As young men tramped from all reaches and corners of their own countries to war zones, they were risking not only being hit in battle, but the chance of succumbing to the world’s deadliest flu outbreak. With the world at war, governments were loathe to acknowledge the disease, and how many it was felling. It was feared the news of the deaths would undermine the war effort, and cause panic, if the full extent of the epidemic was acknowledged. Posters and newspaper advertising challenged the public with “Don’t Let Flu Frighten You”. Meanwhile, doctors struggled to identify what was causing the outbreak and how to tackle it. When censorship regulations finally began to relax, governments started to use propaganda methods of wartime to fight the medical battle. Public health posters with a simple message were placed in newspapers, to finally warn the public of the problem.
The tale of the WWI flu epidemic illustrates the great risk of cutting off the public from vital knowledge. But today things would be different. With our access to all sorts of social media, as well as the official outlets, it is unlikely that any government, or set of governments, could be able to keep a lid on news of a global disease sweeping through countries, leaving millions dead. The word would get out. In most parts of the world we have experienced an information revolution in the one hundred years since 1914; we are no longer in thrall to what governments deign to tell us; the question now is what and who to believe when we see it.
But plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. As we approach the 1914 centenary the masters of the universe are still at it, trying to reach the public by swirling their magic. French cartoonist Plantu told one of our writers that he came under pressure from Nicolas Sarkozy to stop drawing him as a short man. Sadly, for Sarkozy that is, the whole thing backfired as every time he pushed Plantu, the artist’s pen made the French big man smaller and smaller. And lately England’s larger-than-life Education Secretary Michael Gove has been trying to bring the arts world into line with his line, writing of how culture has hi-jacked the reality of WWI with “left-wing” messages hidden in forms such as the television series Blackadder. Only an idiot would suggest that children be taught nothing but Blackadder; Mr Gove, no idiot he, is surely aware that it manages first to make people laugh, and then, in at least some children, to pique an interest in finding out what actually happened, in much the way that, say, Dumas or Walter Scott did as wildly best-selling historical novelists in the nineteenth century. Their novels were not always rigidly accurate, but so readable that at least some of what they wrote had an enthralled child asking: “What really happened here?” Fortunately, in increasingly non-deferential Britain, Mr Gove’s anathema on a programme is likely only to increase interest watching it. For one thing has always been true – tell someone what they cannot read or watch or listen to, and they will sure as eggs is eggs reach for it the second you take your eyes off them.