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Draft* Paper for the 9th International Conference on War, Civil Conflict, Security & Peace Salzburg Austria, November 7-­‐9, 2012 Dr Krystina Benson, Assistant Professor Public Relations School of Communication and Media, Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, Bond University, Queensland, Australia kbenson[at]bond.edu.au Please contact the author before quoting The Four Minute Men and the Red Cross: 1917-1918
Krystina Benson
Abstract
This paper answers the question: focusing on the Red Cross in the Four Minute
Men Bulletins, how did the CPI’s campaign translate into different areas of culture,
and what were the implications? It focuses on the significance of war propaganda
created by the Committee on Public Information (CPI), entering the domains of
journalism and popular culture. The CPI was an American World War I
propaganda organisation that mobilized the nation for war. It worked with a variety
of non-governmental organizations including the Red Cross. One division of the
CPI was the Four Minute Men (FMM), a national network of orators who spoke
locally about war aims between changing film reels at motion picture theatres. The
speaking campaigns supported the Red Cross by raising money for the Red Cross
war fund, including two “Red Cross Weeks” and the Red Cross Christmas Roll
Call. The study of the CPI was undertaken using close reading and archival
contextualization, composed of historical contextualization and semiotics of CPI
archival materials from the National Archive and Records Administration in
Maryland, USA. The analysis reveals emotional persuasive tactics found in Four
Minute Men Bulletins, which were sent out to local chairman to inform their
speeches and the Four Minute Men News Bulletins, sent out as an organisational
tool for the FMM. The research shows an overlap in the cultural domains of war
propaganda, journalism and popular culture evidenced in a systems analysis using
Yuri Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere. The implications of propaganda
entering other domains of culture can be found by comparing their functional
expectations: propaganda as rhetoric, journalism as a form of truth-seeking and
popular culture as amusement. This analysis found that the CPI’s campaign was a
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The Four Minute Men and the Red Cross
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transmedia campaign that used journalism as a means to generate media credibility
across multiple media forms.
Key Words: Committee on Public Information, Creel committee, journalism,
media and cultural studies, popular culture, propaganda, public relations, Red
Cross, semiosphere, transmedia.
*****
1. Introduction
The Four Minute Men (FMM) were a national network of men who gave four
minute speeches in motion picture houses as propaganda orators.1 They were part
of a much larger transmedia campaign created and run by the US government,
which created the Committee on Public Information (CPI). Its purpose was to
mobilize the American people to fight in World War I. President Wilson stated,
“…it is not an army we must shape and train for war, it is a nation” (1917). Before
his presidency, Wilson wrote The Leaders of Men (1889), in which he outlined his
perspective on leadership and persuasion:
Men are not led by being told what they don’t know. Persuasion
is a force, but not information; and persuasion is accomplished
by creeping into the confidence of those you would lead. Their
confidence is gained by qualities which they can recognise, by
arguments which they can assimilate: by the things which find
easy entrance into their minds and are easily transmitted to the
palms of their hands or the ends of their walking-sticks in the
shape of applause.2
The CPI was the official source of government news. The CPI coordinated
communication between government agencies including the Navy and Army with
non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army to
propagate war information to the American public.
2. Research Question, Methods and Data
CPI correspondence and campaign materials are used to create a cultural
archival-based account about the systems of propaganda, journalism and popular
culture. This paper answers the question: focusing on the Red Cross in the Four
Minute Men Bulletins, how did the CPI’s campaign translate into different areas of
culture, and what were the implications? Each of these systems are held in
theoretical tension by examining the context, medium and content of CPI
propaganda materials in historical context, and in relation to Lotman’s concept of
Krystina Benson
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the semiosphere by defining the function of each system as persuasion, truth-telling
and amusement3. Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere is based on the biosphere.
It has similar qualities to the noosphere and logosphere in that it sets out what is
‘in’ an area of culture and how different elements interact.
The semiosphere outlines a systems theory of culture, which examines how
new information is created by the ‘translation’ of overlapping systems. Originally,
it was applied to the translation of languages, but it has also been applied to
examine journalism (Cf. Hartley, 1996) and the relationship between journalism,
propaganda and popular culture in relation to the CPI’s war propaganda campaign
(Cf. Benson 2012b). The semiosphere makes available the agency of the user, for
example, to understand that CPI propaganda posters were collected for their
entertainment value, despite, or in addition to their promotion of war aims. The
concept of the semiosphere “allows semiotics of culture to reach a new
understanding of holism, a holistic analysis of dynamic processes” (Torop, 2005,
169). It takes into consideration technological functions of media generated
through dynamic relationships that rely on shared meaning and at the same time
involve multiple interpretations during transmission. This leads to the creation of
new information within a cultural context (Lotman, 1990, 13–15).
The concepts of transmedia and mediation can further enable an understanding
of dynamic processes. The Red Cross Campaigns orated by the FMM were
propaganda campaigns; however they illustrate that propaganda is a system which
can be used for positive purposes. As Lasswell (1928) noted propaganda is “no
more moral or immoral than a pump handle” (264). However, in a transmedia
campaign, defined as the production and distribution of specific parts of a narrative
in different media forms to heighten a users experience (Jenkins, 2006), meaning is
translated into various systems. It is significant to understand that messages about
the need for donating money to help wounded allied soldiers were also based in a
semiotic system that propagated hatred of the enemy. The impact of transmedia
involves the circulation of credibility from one cultural system, or one
semiosphere, into other semiospheres.
Silverstone’s (1999) theory of mediation can be applied to understand why a
transmedia campaign encourages movement between semiospheres in terms of the
cultural expectations of function. He defines mediation as a process of “the
circulation of meaning”, which can involve “the movement of meaning from one
text to another, from one discourse to another, from one event to another”
(Silverstone, 1999, 13). Mediation “involves constant transformation of meanings,
both large scale and small, significant and insignificant as media texts and texts
about media circulate in writing, in speech and audiovisual forms” (13). A war
propaganda transmedia campaign is able to take advantage of this process. The use
of key influential media to tell different parts of the war narrative – newspapers,
songs, art, fashion, word of mouth and the combination of political and personal
life-changing propaganda – is a technique used in the CPI’s campaigns.
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The Four Minute Men and the Red Cross
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A systems semiotic analysis may be a rather contentious method for examining
the CPI’s materials4 in relation to journalism studies literature and non-systems
semiotic studies. However, Lotman wanted the work to be used as “general
concepts that are applicable within a variety of methodological approaches to the
study of cultures” (Andrews, 2009, xx). In this case, propaganda, journalism and
popular culture are analyzed as semiospheres, areas of culture that have distinct
norms, enabling the scoping of an area of culture which examining different media
forms. Using the concept of the semiosphere “offers a more unified and dynamic
vision of semiosis than the study of a specific medium as if each existed in a
vacuum” (Chandler, 2005 p.15). Close reading was used to determine relevant
artifacts in the thousands of CPI archival files and archival contextualization was
used to inform the study with relevant historical factors. What was ‘relevant’ was
determined by asking questions of the context of the archival material (what are
relevant events, trends and factors to know about e.g. muckraking journalism),
medium (what is it made of? e.g. a poster the implications of that medium at that
time), and content (what does it say? e.g. what are the messages in the material
using semiotic analysis?). (for further detail cf. Benson 2012b).
Data is composed of the two sets of newsletters that were distributed to FMM
around the country: the Four Minute Men Bulletins used to and the Four Minute
Men News Bulletins. A typical FMM bulletin contained a letter from the director,
short news pieces about relevant topical information and pointers about content.
They concluded with a section of illustrative speeches, which provided examples
of how all of the material in the bulletin could be utilized in one four-minute
speech. The news bulletins served as an internal communication tool, keeping all
members up to date about everything from proper speaking dress, to ethics and
publicity. The news bulletins differ from the bulletins because they were
distributed about every three months, totaling six in all “to keep the thousands of
separate organizations in touch with each other and with developments of the
actual application of the work” (CPI Report, 1920, 28). Materials from other
divisions also examined in relation to the FMM archival material, such as those
from the Division of Pictorial Publicity and the Division of News.
3. The Four Minute Men
Larson and Mock (1939) give a comprehensive overview of the CPI, explain its
origins and give an overview of the FMM and its campaigns. The FMM division
has been studied as a national network during the war (Oukrop, 1975), in terms of
their rhetorical speech training (Yost, 1919), and in relation to patriotism (Graham,
1995). Mastrangelo (2009) analyses the FMM in terms of public speaking and
civic participation. Additionally, this is further examined in relation to rhetorical
theory and practice by Sproule (2010). Cornibise (1984) analyzed the Four Minute
Men bulletins, including Red Cross activity. His work focused on the content of
the bulletins and he concludes that the Four Minute Men were a key part of the CPI
Krystina Benson
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propaganda campaign. This study draws upon the knowledge collected and
disseminated from these and studies of the CPI in its entirety, but examines CPI
material within a semiotic system, focusing on the Division of FMM and their
promotion of the Red Cross.5
The strategy of the CPI was to advertise to the nation the need to enter the war,
what was required to win it, and to persuade each and every citizen, from child to
grandparent, regardless of skill or location, as to how they could contribute. In
effect, the FMM bulletins targeted opinion leaders, and then asked these leaders to
spread the opinion via social contact with audiences in motion picture houses. This
helped enable the FMM to set an agenda for public discourse. Film had “quickly
emerged as the dominant form of popular entertainment” (Bakker, 2007, 93), and
the FMM obtained official and sole permission to use motion-picture houses for
their speeches. The FMM have been deemed successful for three main reasons:
they utilized ready-made audiences; locally respected volunteer speakers generally
spoke in their own communities; and “tight control from national headquarters in
Washington” (Vaughn, 1979, 120). The FMM persuaded audiences to join the
food drive with the Food Administration, recruited for the Army, Navy and war
industries, and propagated nationalism, patriotism, hatred of the enemy and
democracy promotion. They also ran educational and fundraising campaigns for
the American Red Cross.
4. Four Minute Men and the Red Cross
Four Red Cross campaigns were orated by the FMM. This included two ‘Red
Cross Weeks’ during the war, and the Red Cross home service and Christmas Roll
Call after the war. The first Red Cross Week Campaign was created to raise a
billion dollars for Red Cross work. The purpose of the speaking campaign was to
inform and help the community accept (if needed) the quota that had been
estimated for their town or city, to encourage them to show their patriotism by
“exceeding its quota” and to explain how to donate money (CPI, B:5, 1917, 1). The
speakers were asked to educate the audience to help them “appreciate the
occasion”, “understand the need”, “accept the local quota”, “feel the personal
obligation”, “get the spirit of patriotic sacrifice”, “correct certain
misapprehensions”, “understand how to subscribe” and finally, “feel the sentiment
that moves to action” (CPI, B:5, 1917, 1–2).
The second Red Cross campaign also raised money for its war fund. This
bulletin has an image of a woman in a Red Cross hat, wrapped in a gown holding a
hurt bandaged soldier, posing in the form commonly associated with the Virgin
Mary. Underneath, a caption reads: “The Greatest Mother in the World” (see
Image 1) (CPI, B:30, 1918, 1). FMM director McCormick Blair addresses the
30,000 FMM in a bulletin dated 27 April 1918. He explains that the purpose of the
drive is not to ask citizens for subscriptions or pledges, but rather “to arouse our
listeners to action” by giving them the “will to give” because they “must be stirred
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The Four Minute Men and the Red Cross
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in the heart of every man and woman so that they will seek out the Red Cross
office early in the morning rather than wait for someone to call” (CPI, B:30, 1918,
2). One section describes the “terrible tales” of “the shortage of bandages and
shortage of anesthetics in European conflicts” and continues, “let us hope that an
American soldier’s wounds need never be dressed with straw and bandaged with
newspaper” (CPI, B:30, 1918, 3). This campaign targets an audience’s emotions
because it graphically details the consequences of underfunding.
Image 1: Four Minute Men Bulletin cover:
“The Greatest Mother in the World” (CPI, B: 30, 1)
Typical features of propaganda campaigns are found throughout the Red Cross
campaign bulletins. First, in and of themselves, the bulletins are an example of
agenda setting. The campaigns speak to the individual within a mass group.
Furthermore, they dismiss contrary arguments by attributing them to the enemy.
(Benson, 2012a).
Krystina Benson
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Speaking to a group of people about a topic – which, from the propagandist’s
perspective, could and should be able to be internalized by everyone in the group,
while having a personalized effect on each person individually – is the key to
Ellul’s (1973) concept of speaking to the individual within the mass in a
propaganda campaign (6). When an orator encourages people to think of
themselves during a speech, it enables a person to personalize their own message
while being in a crowd. For example, the first “short talk on the Red Cross”
example starts with “We all want to help win the war. So let me ask you: what
have YOU done?” (CPI, B:30, 1918, 8) The outright focus on the individual within
the audience, and what they personally have done is encouraged by the directive
use of the word “you“. These personal messages are then combined with emotional
appeals such as:
We must have another Hundred Million Dollars now. It must
recruit 25,000 nurses – make millions and millions of bandages
and dressings – but it must have a Hundred Million Dollars.
What are you doing? What are you giving? Are you helping or
hindering? For you are hindering if you are not in step with the
Army of Liberty – and your Division is the Red Cross. Give!
Give til it hurts! Work! Work as long as there is work to be done,
Help the Red Cross, because the Red Cross is helping to Win the
War.6
The message –that the Red Cross needs help and money – in combination with
a direct appeal to the individual encourages comparison between what has been
done by an individual and what can be done. It is a natural human tendency for
people to want to minimize the difference between what they have already done
with what they feel that they should do.
Aristotle explained that persuasion must be “employed”, and in doing so
“contrary views” must be explained (Aristotle, 1954, 22–33). This is a useful
method because once an easily provable lie is attributed to the enemy; other
questionable information about the US government can be attributed to the enemy
in the future. The government casts itself as the sole trustworthy source of
information. “SPIKE THE LIES!” calls out one section, which then describes how
“innumerable tales have been circulated about the Red Cross” and how some are
due to “idle gossip”, while others are “believed to have originated in malicious
propaganda” (CPI, B:30, 1918, 4). Overall though “suffice it to say that all the
stories about the sale of goods by the Red Cross, about poison in sweaters, and
similar stories when traced down have been found to be baseless rumours” (4).
This easily dismissible rumour is then used as a basis to attribute other information
to the enemy. The next bulletin discusses that “there still remains the whispered
propaganda: ‘Why send our boys to France to bleed and die?’” (CPI, B:31, 1918,
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The Four Minute Men and the Red Cross
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8). This is a reference to the US propaganda article series “The German Whisper”,
written by the Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation. Following this line
of thought, any information explaining that it is not worthwhile to send soldiers
overseas because they may die can then be attributed to enemy propaganda.
The third and fourth FMM Red Cross speaking topics were different kinds of
campaigns because by this time the war had been won. The third Red Cross
campaign was about the Red Cross Home Service. The bulletin reminded the FMM
to tell their audiences to purchase a membership of the Red Cross so that the work
of helping soldiers and families both in America and overseas could be continued.
It explains its promise to “stand by “the disabled soldiers” until they are “restored
to health, retrained for a new vocation, and replaced in industry” (CPI, B:43, 1918,
1). A brief synopsis of the work that the Red Cross did throughout the war is
explained in the fourth and final FMM Red Cross campaign entitled the Christmas
roll Call (CPI, B:45, 1918, 4). Financial accountability is given through figures
from the first and second War Fund drives, with explanations of how the money
was spent (4). It also asks that 100 per cent of Americans purchase memberships to
the Red Cross in order to raise the required money (4).
5. Movement in the Semiospheres
Associate Director of the FMM Professor Bertram G. Nelson, who taught
public speaking at the University of Chicago, toured around the country in 1917
and 1918 teaching the FMM the “art of putting talks across” (Creel, 2006, 89).
Nelson (1918) explained that the purpose of the FMM was to reach the public:
Not through the press, for they do not read; not through patriotic
rallies, for they do not come. Every night eight to ten million
people of all classes, all degrees of intelligence, black and white,
young and old, rich and poor, meet in the moving picture houses
of this country, and among them are many of these silent ones
who do not read or attend meetings but who must be reached.7
The FMM were utilizing popular culture to draw an audience, both through the
crowds at theatres and through promotion in newspapers. The FMM were
encouraged to read newspapers to educate themselves in addition to the
information supplied in the bulletins. Speakers were told that they should “read all
the papers every day, to find a new slogan, or a new phraseology, or a new idea to
replace something you have in your speech” (CPI, B:1, 1917, 1). In some
instances, bulletins would direct speakers to specific newspaper articles. This was
in part because the:
Four Minute Men know that only the spoken word will ever
“reach” millions of Americans. We know how men skim instead
Krystina Benson
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of reading, and how even when they have read they fail to absorb
the printed words. Many a listener at a four-minute talk has thus
gained for the first time a clear view of facts long before fully
explained in scores of newspaper articles.8
The CPI’s silent black and white films Pershing’s Crusaders (1918), America’s
Answer (1918) and Under Four Flags (1918), as well as its weekly release of the
Official War Review were motivation for audiences to attend the theatre, but the
FMM also attracted the audience. The films were composed of a variety of lengths
and types. A typical evening would begin with a film and then “when the hero and
heroine had walked hand in hand into the sunset, ending the ‘first show’ of the
evening, the pianist might shift from ‘Hearts and Flowers’ to ‘Over There’, a slide
would be thrown into the screen and one of Mr Creel’s Four-Minute Men would
take the stage” (Mock and Larson, 1939, 114).
Music was an important part of popular culture used to encourage Americans to
support the war. “Tin Pan Alley” was the name of the place in New York where
musicians created combinations of jazz, blues and ragtime music. They were
popular musicians of the time, and their:
popular music reflected and capitalized on the new national
mood. Tin Pan Alley had developed into an efficient machine. If
the country demanded a particular type of song, the Alley could
produce it. And the demand for war songs was phenomenal. Tin
Pan Alley also responded to the government’s encouragement.9
The CPI encouraged these musicians to write pro-war songs (71). One
indication of “how important the government thought music was to the war effort
was that despite paper rationing, music publishers continued to receive their full
quota of paper for printing sheet music” (71). The song “Over There” is possibly
the best known of these songs (see image 2). It is an upbeat song about Johnnie
that tells him to “get your gun” and “take it on the run” and “every son of liberty”
to “Yankee Doodle do or die” to “show your grit, and do your bit” (Cohan, 1917).
The chorus continues:
send the word to beware.
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over
Over there.
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The Four Minute Men and the Red Cross
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Image 2: Cover of sheet music to
Over There (Cohan, 1917)
The words “over there” took on the meaning of the war front during the war
years, and posters of the Division of Pictorial Publicity illustrated works using
similar wording for the Division of Advertising such as A.G. Hill’s illustration for
the phrases “Over There–Over Here” and “He’ll come back a better man” (CPI, 1B1). During the intermission occurring after 8.00 p.m., the speeches would be
presented during the four minutes it took to change reels (Mock and Larson, 1939,
117).
In addition to the volunteers, ready-made audiences and control from
Washington, another factor should be considered as key to the success of the
FMM: that the campaign took place across a variety of media channels. Publicity
was given to the speakers in newspapers, pamphlets and posters. The FMM were
advertised in the local newspapers in the cinema entertainment section, which also
listed the names and times of movies (Mock and Larson, 1939, 133). In his official
report on the CPI’s activities, Creel details how “articles containing the pith of
each bulletin were sent out from headquarters and released through local chairman
and publicity managers in thousands of communities for use in the local papers”
(CPI Report, 1920, 29). This is an example of propaganda advertised in journalism
for a popular culture event, and therefore shows all the areas of concern sharing
purpose and media space.
5. Conclusion
Krystina Benson
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The FMM Red Cross campaigns were successful not only because of the
obvious need to take care of American and ally soldiers in a time of total war, but
because their promotional strategies and tactics were well in-tune with the needs of
journalism, the main medium for disseminating information nationally at the time.
Furthermore, the CPI tapped into the system of popular culture through film, which
as a vehicle for entertainment and served persuasive messages and influenced peer
pressure. The term propaganda is generally thought of as a negative influence on
society, but focusing on the positive and negative aspects develops of an
understanding about how a ubiquitous method of mass persuasion actually
functioned in cultural systems. The CPI is still relevant today not only because of
its impact on the development of American journalism, but also because it serves a
case study to develop a better understanding of how persuasive materials circulate
in cultural systems.
10
Notes
1
They also spoke at lumber mill meetings, Churches, colleges and other areas
which held public gatherings. The FMM also performed at pro-war rallies, state
fairs and war exhibitions. Women gave speeches mainly at matinees and women’s
clubs (Creel, 2006, 90); African-Americans also had local units in some states, as
did Yiddish and Italian-speaking localities (Vaughn, 1979, 120). Children became
Junior Four Minute Men as part of a school-targeted education campaign (Creel,
2006, 92).
2
Wilson, 2005, 215
3
Cf. Benson, 2012a for details regarding the methods and methodology and an
overview of how Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere is applied.
4
Cf. Benson 2012b for an overview of findings of the larger study which purport
the coming together of the three semiospheres under study
5
This is published in part from a doctoral thesis entitled, The Committee on Public
Information: A transmedia war propaganda campaign, 2012.
6
CPI, B:30, 1918, 8
7
Nelson, 1918, 252
8
CPI, B:20, 1917, 5
9
Smith, 2003, 71
Archives and Collections
National Archives and Records Administration, Archives II, College Park,
Maryland.
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The Four Minute Men and the Red Cross
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Record Group 63 Committee on Public Information
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Bulletin/4 Minute Men 4. [Washington, DC: Division of Four Minute Men,
Committee on Public Information], 1917–1918. LC Control No.: 85064817
Key to in text citation: (Author, Bulletin: Number, page, year). E.g. (CPI, B:F, 8,
1918).
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Krystina Benson is an Assistant Professor of Public Relations at Bond University.
Her teaching focus is crisis communication and social media. Her research interests
include Her professional and research interests include social media strategy
development, crisis spokesperson discourse, online activism, public opinion
research and the circulation of persuasive messages.