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J. M. WINTER

the spread of democratic ideas. Altemative justifications of the war effort had to be constructed. Consequently, the main European combatants stream-lined tlieir propaganda effort. New public agencies and new approaches appeared. The German high command hitherto had run the war without much tliought as to the State of public opinion. Now, under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, there was a new sensitivity to counter the growing grumbles over the need for a compromise peace. The same scattered but persistent doubts as to the wisdom of a fight to the finish impelled the British govem-ment to create a Ministry of Information—the first in British history. Lloyd George tumed to two press magnates—Lords Beaverbrook and North-cliffe—and handed them the assignment of managing propaganda abroad and at home. Thus, by the last phase of the war, propaganda became a sepa-rate and essential element of war policy. We will examine its effects below.

The political history of propaganda does not disclose its fuli significance within the history of the twentieth century. This stoi)' lies morę in the cultural and social history of mass mobilization. Here propaganda produced much that has characterized political and social life throughout this violent century.

The mobilization of the imagination: cultural dimensions

Propaganda contiibuted to the cementing of the solidarities essential to the endurance required by four and a half years of war. It did not shorten the war, or win it; rather propaganda helped trans fonii the societies that waged it into morę effective tools of war. Since 19x4, alongside tlie mobilization of men, munitions, and labour, alongside war against civihans, came the mobilization of minds. This phenomenon was one of the most strildng and disturbing fea-tures of the Greał War. Here the boundaries between the private and the public realms, between individual expression and thought control, were redrawn or obliterated.

As we have noted, state propaganda in wartime is only part of the story. The propaganda efforts of both sides stretched from atrocity stories to barbarie caricatures to childrens tales to outright lies. The most powerful propaganda did not come from the centres of power, but rather from within these societies themselves. The politics of hate was mass politics; it was as much visual as verbal, and it was effective. It worked because it drew on images and notions broadcast from below, through commercial advertising, through cartoons, through posters and posteards, through sermons, through sentimental songs and the amateur poetry which flourished in wartime.

One particular class of images deserves special attention. The Great War mobilized sacred images and words on behalf of the cause. This is hardly sur-prising, given the amdety felt by millions at home about tlie welfare of their loved ones in uniform. Thanks to the Virgin for the survival of individual sol-diers, in the form of ex voto plaques placed in churches throughout France, hint at the upsurge of religious language from the earliest days of the war. This was a 'holy war', one consecrated by every established church and most unconventional ones too.

At the same time, within these nations at war, religious divisions began to

fade. Othei boundaries were crossed in impor-tant ways. In France this had profound conse-quences. Much of Catholic opinion before the war had been hostile to die Republic. In tum, the moderate Radical Party in power waged war againśt tlie privileges of the Church, formally separated from the French State in 1905. In a cultural (rather than institutional) sense, tlie Great War nationalized Roman Catliolicism.

The ancient and distinguished martial traditions of German history supported the men in the trenches, accordingto this wartime poster. Germania embodied the nobility of arms, and the invincibility of the men who borę them.

And not oiily in France. The great celebration of German victory over France in the war of Sedan day, was, in many parts of Germany, an anti-Catliolic festival. After 1914, German Catholics could show how German they were. As in France, tlieir language of sacrifLce and martyrdom infused wartime culture. The patriotic spirit ofjews in all combatant countries did much, at least for a time, to eelipse endemie anti-Śemitism. Everywhere, sermons were preached proclaiming the righteousness of the cause, and' invoking Gods protection for the nations men at arms. Witliin each nation, war was an ecumenical event.'

Propaganda entered eveiy home. There was a vast array of stirring messages for children, and, tojudge by the essays of French children written

during the war, tlie citizens and soldiers of the futurę shared in the culture of wartime. And that meant first and foremost hatred of tlie enemy.

Children stood as images of bravery and vietLmhood as far back as the Napoleonie period. But after 1914, they not only suffered, they also killed, and waited for the time when they could wreak vengeance on the enemy. One British childrens ditty eaptured tliis new mobilization of children in total war. Accompanying a drawing of a devastated house, a child intoned:

This is tlie house that Jack built.

This is the bomb that fell on tlie house that Jack built.

This is the Hun who dropped the bomb that fell on the house that Jack built.

This isthe gun that killed tlie Hun who dropped the bomb that fell on the house that Jack built.

Tliis time, it was tlie child who carried tlie gun and intended to use it.

At the outset of the war, propaganda was morę verbal than visual. Notables in all major combatants put pen to paper to denounce tlie enemy and en-noble the cause of national defence. A galaxy of German scientists and hmnanists threw back at tlie allies tlie accusation that German troops had behaved barbarically in Belgium. It was not Germany, the professors opined,

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