Secret Warriors

by Taylor Downing

  14

  Masters of Information

  The long suffering and sacrifice of the Battle of the Somme left a general sense in Britain that the war was not being run efficiently, and that something needed to be done. Most politicians could not decide what was required. David Lloyd George, on the other hand, felt that he alone possessed the ideas and leadership to win the war. He had made the Ministry of Munitions work. He had run the War Office since Kitchener’s death in 1916, when the ship in which he was sailing to Russia was sunk off the Orkneys. Unlike many of the old-style grandees who were running the country, Lloyd George was a man of the people. In December 1916, barely a few weeks after the guns ceased firing on the Somme, he outmanoeuvred Herbert Asquith in Parliament and became Prime Minister of a new coalition. He had the support of the Conservatives and Unionists under Andrew Bonar Law, while the Labour Party agreed to back him and entered the coalition. The Liberal Party, split between support for Asquith and Lloyd George, would remain divided for the next twenty years.

  Lloyd George’s entry to Number 10 marked a victory for those who wanted a more ruthless prosecution of the war. He created a new War Cabinet to run the war, a sort of political-strategic politbu-reau consisting at first of only five members. For the first time, Cabinet meetings were minuted, agendas were prepared and action points circulated, while Maurice Hankey moved from the Committee of Imperial Defence to become Cabinet Secretary In a move that gave him almost presidential status, Lloyd George created a new private staff, a sort of think tank, to report directly to him; housed in temporary huts erected in St James’s Park behind Downing Street, they became known as the ‘Garden Suburb’. Four new departments of state – the ministries of Shipping, Labour, Food and National Service – were established almost overnight. There was now a sense that the whole nation must be mobilised to win the war and that the Home Front would play an essential role in final victory.

  In the very first meeting of the new War Cabinet on 9 December, it was decided that the whole question of propaganda ‘would require consideration at an early date’.1 By this time three separate government departments had a hand in propaganda; each guarded its own ground jealously and was suspicious of the others. The War Office had accepted the need to send propaganda to foreign nations. Its press bureau had opened up its operations and John Buchan was one of several authors writing material to be sent abroad weekly. The Admiralty too had come around and was issuing material through naval attachés abroad. Even the Foreign Office had overcome its original scruples and accepted that propaganda was a necessary evil in wartime; it was using the Agence Service Reuter as well as distributing material supplied from Wellington House to opinion makers abroad. The situation had become a complete muddle. Now all these bodies submitted their arguments to the War Cabinet, claiming that they should take control of any new organisation. However, Lloyd George decided not to listen to any of them. He turned instead to an old friend and supporter, Robert Donald, to investigate and make recommendations. The editor of the Liberal-leaning Daily Chronicle, Donald had been involved with all the different groups who now set out their case. He was an independent arbiter who, at least in Lloyd George’s eyes, was well suited to his task. And having the Prime Minister’s backing was all that mattered.

  Donald spent a week exploring the current arrangements for the management of propaganda. It was not a lengthy investigation, but Donald concluded the situation was a shambles. He thought British propaganda too defensive, in contrast to the more offensive German output; too reactive to foreign criticisms rather than proactive in promoting Britain’s interests. And Britain was far too slow to get its messages out. Alarmed to find that news of a recent important speech by Lloyd George had not been sent abroad, he came down hard and said, ‘It is through news that public opinion in neutral countries is most easily influenced. At present our news propaganda department seems to be asleep for more than ten hours out of twenty-four (it does not work at night) and it is not alert during the rest of the time.’2 This was just what Lloyd George wanted to hear. He saw his role as to wake up a sleepy establishment and make it fit for total war.

  With the aim of establishing a single straightforward message that would be sent out clearly, both at home and abroad, Donald suggested the creation of a centralised organisation that would direct the output of all the existing groups with an interest in propaganda. He probably hoped to run it himself. However, when the War Cabinet discussed the proposal, Lord Milner suggested John Buchan. Not only was Buchan already doing good work, but Milner still admired the administrative abilities he had displayed when he was on his staff in South Africa a decade before. So, on 9 February 1917, Buchan became director of a new Department of Information. He would report directly to the Prime Minister.

  Almost immediately, however, the new department lost some of its teeth. Arthur Balfour, Lloyd George’s new Foreign Secretary, insisted that information should still be distributed abroad through conventional Foreign Office channels. Many of the other officials who had been organising propaganda for the last two years also argued their corner forcefully. Buchan, skilled though he was as a writer, had no experience in settling bureaucratic rivalries and rather than abolish any of the existing organisations he kept most of them, albeit with slightly different names. His changes were more of a rationalisation than a root and branch reform: for instance, Charles Masterman at Wellington House now reported to Buchan, rather than the other way around. And Buchan’s decision to base himself in the Foreign Office led many outsiders to think he was under the heel of this ancient department of state.

  Buchan did bring in as advisers some of his own new men, including explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, cricketer Pelham Warner, and Roderick Jones, the head of Reuters, who was put in charge of sending news cables. The latter worked part time, in a voluntary capacity, while still managing Reuters as a neutral and objective news agency.3 And a distinction was drawn between news propaganda and literary publications. News was to take priority, with a renewed emphasis on the cinema and on sending war artists to the front. An office was opened in still-neutral America, and American journalists were invited over for tours of the front and of war factories. In addition, propaganda was to be directed at enemy countries as well as to neutrals. These were all important steps forward. But Buchan found the going difficult, especially when he came up against the domineering position of the Foreign Office. The core of the dispute was that the news-oriented propagandists wanted to gather information from all the relevant departments and then feed appropriate versions to the public in each country by getting sympathetic or pro-British stories out into the press. The Foreign Office view was still that the diplomatic corps abroad, with their links to the great and the good in each country, were better placed to influence the key decision-makers.

  The clash between these two points of view would rumble on. Meanwhile, Military Intelligence was drawn into propaganda: the War Office set up its own unit, MI7, which jealously retained control of the release of military information from the front to the extent of censoring every photograph in case it revealed details that might be helpful to the enemy. Buchan was losing control over many aspects of his operation. And to add to his frustration, he found it impossible to access Lloyd George, who was always too busy to see him.

  When the Cabinet also criticised Buchan for not doing enough to direct and organise propaganda for the Home Front, he complained that he did not have the finances or resources to handle this huge responsibility as well. In the absence of any coherent plan for domestic propaganda, therefore, Parliament set up the National War Aims Committee (NWAC), an all-party organisation run by the three party whips which opened offices in constituencies up and down Britain. The NWAC presented its work as purely voluntary, thereby maintaining the pretence that government was not directly involved with propaganda at home. By the end of the year it was represented in one-half of the constituencies in the country. These local branches encouraged and briefed speakers to address meeting
s in order to remind audiences about the causes for which Britain had gone to war, and of the objectives in winning. This presented speakers with a problem: the government had not yet defined what its war aims were. It was not until the following January that Lloyd George, largely under pressure from President Woodrow Wilson of America, by this time of course an ally, formulated Britain’s official war aims.

  The speakers of the NWAC were instructed to talk on a specific range of subjects. Mostly they were to combat the population’s increasing war-weariness. This often came down to attacking the occasional voices of pacifists, whom many people were beginning to take more seriously as the war entered its fourth year. Pacifism was equated by many with socialism, which in the light of the Russian Revolution was seen as a growing threat. So speakers were encouraged to denounce pacifism and call upon British workers to make further sacrifices for the war effort. The committees specifically targeted areas that were thought to be experiencing particular industrial troubles. So, for instance, speakers were sent to Wigan and Hull, where it was said workers were willing to ‘down tools’ at the slightest provocation. This offensive was by no means always successful; in Brighton the local trade unions voted to reject any speakers and not only to burn the literature that had been sent to them but also to send back the ashes to the NWAC head office.4 In the light of these concerns, it is perhaps not surprising that when Lloyd George finally made a speech outlining the nation’s war aims, it was addressed to an audience of trade unionists at Caxton Hall in London.

  By the summer of 1917, the conflicting interests within Buchan’s department were once again pulling propaganda in many different directions. Desperately needing someone at Cabinet level to argue his case, Buchan appealed to Milner, and the War Cabinet appointed Sir Edward Carson to supervise the work of the Department of Information, NWAC and MI7. Carson was a strange choice. A fiery Ulster orator, he was almost a one-man propaganda machine in his own right. In the two years before the Great War he had mobilised the people of Ulster into resisting all calls for Home Rule and had formed the Ulster Volunteer Force, overseeing its growth into a powerful separatist militia with its simple slogan of ‘No Surrender’. But in 1917 he did almost nothing to support Buchan or to focus the various arms of propaganda. He was in any case preoccupied with Irish matters for much of the time, obsessed with guarding the interests of Ulster that were always his principal passion. Only a month after Carson’s appointment, in October 1917, Lloyd George turned back to Robert Donald and asked him to review the whole system of propaganda once more.

  For the second time, Donald came up with damning criticism, this time of the very department that he had helped to create. He felt that the work of the news propaganda division was still amateurish, despite the presence of Roderick Jones at its helm. He thought there was still far too much literary work coming out of Wellington House and that it was not having enough impact. He argued that experienced journalists like himself were not being consulted enough. And with a staff of 300 people, he believed the department had grown too big and too wasteful.

  Both Masterman and Buchan felt they had to defend their record. Masterman claimed that his pamphlets and books had indeed had a major impact in neutral countries. He pointed out that ‘19 countries have declared war against Germany and 10 have broken off relationships with her. At the same time she is continually complaining of the poor results of her own propaganda contrasted with that of the British and announcing that “malignant British lies” have turned all the world against her’ How could this be a sign of failure? Masterman asked.5 The problem that he could not escape, however, was that his work was done in total secrecy; not only was it impossible for the public to know the details, it was also extremely difficult to accurately assess the effect.

  Buchan, who was now increasingly under attack in the press for failing to make the propaganda system work, made his own defence and argued that ‘We welcome such criticism when it is not merely ignorant gossip, for propaganda is not an occult science, but a matter on which every citizen has a right to judge... Moreover, there is no finality to it; it may be improved but it can never be perfect.’6 He claimed that it was unreasonable to say not enough was being done as most of the department’s work was surrounded by strict secrecy and so was invisible to most observers. He put the case that what was needed was leadership at Cabinet level, not by the constantly distracted Carson but by a more prominent figure. Buchan was not resisting change, but he was in effect asking for a new supremo to seize control.

  The end of 1917 was a particularly black period for the British people and their Allies. The war had been going on for well over three years. The grinding, gruesome struggle at Passchendaele that ended only in November had achieved little, but had filled the newspapers once again with long lists of the dead and missing. The triumph at Cambrai had been only brief and short-lived. The French army had mutinied after the Nivelle Offensive, threatening to undermine France’s position on the Western Front. The defeat of the Italian allies at the Battle of Caporetto in October had nearly knocked Italy out of the war. Russia meanwhile was negotiating a treaty with Germany after the Bolshevik Revolution and so had completely removed itself from the conflict, freeing dozens of German divisions to leave the Eastern Front and head west. The U-boat campaign had caused massive destruction to shipping and the lack of supplies was becoming evident in the shops; almost everyone felt they did not have enough to eat. Meanwhile workers were being called upon to work ever harder. The one bright spot was that America had joined the war – though it had so far contributed nothing to the titanic struggle on the Western Front. Across Britain there was a profound sense of war-weariness. Some people began to wonder if the war would ever end. It was clear that Britain needed a powerful tonic to lift morale.

  On 23 January 1918, Sir Edward Carson resigned from the Cabinet to concentrate on Irish affairs. This provided the opportunity for Lloyd George to act. His chief whip suggested that Lord Beaverbrook, the former Max Aitken, should be appointed to the propaganda job. Beaverbrook had by now taken control of the Daily Express and the Sunday Express and had also acquired the Evening Standard. Lloyd George enjoyed a close relationship with many press men and editors. He did not fear their hostility, rather, he embraced their support. And both Beaverbrook’s and Northcliffe’s papers had supported him when he challenged Asquith for the leadership of the country a year before. Sensing the nation’s black mood and the need for dramatic action, Lloyd George decided to go one step further than his chief whip had suggested and created what would be the last new ministry of the war, the Ministry of Information, appointing Beaverbrook as minister with a seat in Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.7 He also offered a role to Northcliffe, who had just returned from running the British Mission in the United States.

  Northcliffe was at first reluctant to accept office, as he prized his journalistic independence and did not want to be put in a position in which his papers could not attack the government. And he refused to play second fiddle to Beaverbrook, whom he regarded as his junior. It was Beaverbrook who came up with a clever compromise. Northcliffe would take charge of propaganda against enemy countries and report directly to Lloyd George. Beaverbrook would himself take over the rest and the Cabinet position. After a few days of bargaining a deal was done.8 On 4 March 1918 the new Ministry of Information opened for business at offices in Norfolk Street.

  The story of propaganda in Britain had turned full circle. At first it had been a case of the utmost secrecy and of withholding information from the press, who were seen as little more than a nuisance when it came to fighting a war. Now the two top press barons in the country had entered government, bringing their professionalism and expertise to help buck the nation up, lift morale and sustain it for the long fight that was to come, and to lead the efforts to undermine the enemy’s fighting spirit. It was a sign of how far the political leadership had come in accepting the concept of total war. Propaganda, whether in words or pictures, would now b
e as important as the fleet at sea or the armies on land in bringing victory.

  With his experience as Canadian Eye-Witness on the Western Front, his role in setting up the Canadian War Records Service, and his responsibility for commissioning photographers, war artists and film-makers, Beaverbrook was well suited to take charge of propaganda. But his arrival was not universally welcomed. Many of the staff of the political intelligence section, including Arnold Toynbee, Lewis Namier and other academics, refused to serve under a newspaper man, and the section was quietly transferred to the Foreign Office to avoid a confrontation. Others in Whitehall were equally horrified at the thought of press men being appointed to senior positions; it was almost an affront to their dignity as civil servants and gentlemen. Even today, the idea of bringing media moguls into the heart of government would be difficult for the establishment to accept. But Lloyd George was not bothered by this reaction, and neither were Beaverbrook and Northcliffe. Desperate times required novel solutions. As if to rub the new situation in, Beaverbrook was made answerable not to Parliament, the Treasury or the War Cabinet, but directly to the Prime Minister himself.