Words that Won the War: the Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919

Used, has cover scuff but text like new. From Omni Reference Library collection.
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\nThis huge volume investigates the propaganda that was used
\nby President Wilson and George Creel during World War I.
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\nExcerpt from the book's Preface:
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\nOn July 6, 1937, trucks rolled up to The National
\nArchives in Washington, bringing to their last resting
\nplace 180 cubic feet of records which for the previous
\nsixteen years had been all but lost in the Munitions Building
\nbasement at 20th Street and Constitution Avenue. The
\nprecious cargo represented virtually all that is left of the files
\nof the Committee on Public Information, the so-called Creel
\nCommittee of the World War. Here in these papers is the
\nstory of America's first "propaganda ministry"' and its dy-
\nnamic leader, George Creel.
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\nThis book goes to press at a moment when no one can say
\nthat America will surely avoid facing once more the issues and
\nproblems of 1917-1919. The lessons of the Creel Committee
\nare calling aloud for recognition in this tense year of 1939.
\nTherefore, this book attempts whenever possible to consider
\nnot only the actual mechanics and the work of the CPI but also
\nthe larger and more gravely urgent questions which are with
\nus today or may be tomorrow.
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\nWho was George Creel?
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\nGeorge Creel was born on Dec. 1, 1876, on a farm in Lafayette County, Mo. His father, Henry Clay Creel, was a former Confederate officer. George spent his boyhood in Missouri, where he attended what public schools were available.
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\nCreel's real education began at 20, when he secured a job as a reporter on the Kansas City World. In 1899 he became editor of the Kansas City Independent. After joining the Progressive wing of the Democratic party, he enjoyed considerable influence in Missouri politics. In 1909 he moved to Denver, Colo., where he edited the Denver Post (1909-1911) and the Rocky Mountain News (1911-1913). His pamphlets for the Democratic National Committee in 1916 brought him to the attention of President Woodrow Wilson, who named Creel chairman of the Committee on Public Information at the outbreak of World War I.
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\nCreel directed the flow of government propaganda on the war and faced, for the first time in the 20th century, the issues of censorship, news manipulation, and the public's "right to know," so important to the freedom of the press in a democratic society. His task was to convince a divided country of the wisdom of Wilson's decision to join the war against Germany. Creel established a system of voluntary press censorship. He refused to distribute information on most of the cruder Allied atrocity stories; instead he blanketed the nation with official information which portrayed the United States as crusading for freedom and democracy to save European civilization from Germany's brutish despoliation. Private American organizations such as the National Security League and the American Protective Association were far less careful in their publications than the Creel committee. Whoever was at fault, the result was an outbreak of war madness unparalleled in American history.
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\nCreel always insisted that private groups rather than the Committee on Public Information were responsible for the wartime hysteria. In three books, How We Advertised America (1920), The War, the World and Wilson (1920), and his autobiography, Rebel at Large (1947), he defended his committee. But he never fully escaped the cloud that World War I cast over his name.*
\n*....summary from answers.com
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\nGeorge Creel books:
\n- How We Advertised America
\n- The War, the World and Wilson
\n- Wilson and the Issues
\n- Sons of the Eagle Soaring - Figures from America's Past