“Creel, Lippmann, and the Origins of American Public Diplomacy": A Select Annotated Bibliography

Arndt, Richard T. The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century. Washington: Potomac Books, Inc. 2005. A book critical of the very concept of “public diplomacy,” it contains a chapter castigating the CPI. It places Thomas Paine in the “propaganda” tradition in which Creel was placed himself. See John Brown, “Richard T. Arndt on George Creel and the Committee on Public Information (1917-1919),” Notes and Essays [Blog] (October 12, 2014) http://johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com/2014/10/richard-t-arndt-on-george-creel-and.html


Auerbach, Jonathan and Castronovo, Russ, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Contains article by - Sue Curry Jansen, “The World's Greatest Adventure in Advertising': Walter Lippmann's Critique of Censorship and Propaganda”: 301-325. This section of the book is accessible at http://books.google.com/books?id=HW9BAQAAQBAJ&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=Sue+Curry+Jansen,+%E2%80%9CThe+World%27s+Greatest+Adventure+in+Advertising%27:+Walter+Lippmann%27s+Critique+of+Censorship+and+Propaganda.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=7cfdK5JR7P&sig=4xgr_PI-nowr_hWe_2Kn0f1PsUc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y6lXVM-KG6PGsQTF-ICYAQ&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Sue%20Curry%20Jansen%2C%20%E2%80%9CThe%20World's%20Greatest%20Adventure%20in%20Advertising'%3A%20Walter%20Lippmann's%20Critique%20of%20Censorship%20and%20Propaganda.%E2%80%9D&f=false

Bean, Walter E. George Creel and His Critics: A Study of the Attacks on the Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919. Corrected carbon copy of Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, 1941. Stored in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, George Creel Papers, Box 7.

Blankenhorn, Herbert. Adventures in Propaganda: Letters from an Intelligence Officer in France. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1919. Lippmann, who was Blankenhorn’s colleague at the Military Intelligence Division, is rarely mentioned in the book, but it is a useful (but too laudatory to be fully believed) account of the MID’s work. Includes an introduction (rhapsody might be a better word) by Blankenhorns’s wife, Mary Dewhurst, as well as (in Appendix II, pp. 160-164) an article from Stars and Stripes (January 3, 1919), “Gen. Propaganda Explains How He Won Boche Over.” Online at https://archive.org/details/adventuresinpro00unkngoog

Brewer, Susan. Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Contains a chapter critical of the CPI.

Brown, John. “Empire of Ideas” [Review of Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of U. S. Foreign Policy by Justin Hart].” American Diplomacy (April, 2013). Suggests that, contrary to the book under review, the origins of American public diplomacy can be found in the CPI -- and in the Declaration of Independence. http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2013/0105/bk/book04_brown_empire.html

Brown, John. “Public Diplomacy and Propaganda: Their Differences." American Diplomacy (September, 2008) http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2008/0709/comm/brown_pudiplprop.html

Brown, John. “The Anti-Propaganda Tradition in the United States.” Public Diplomacy Alumni Association (July 4, 2003).http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/19.htm

Brown, John. “The Purposes and Cross-Purposes of American Public Diplomacy.” American Diplomacy (August, 2002). http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2002_07-09/brown_pubdipl/brown_pubdipl.html

Brown, John. “Two Ways of Looking At Propaganda.” Public Diplomacy Blog, University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy (June 29, 2006). Mentions two ways of looking at this phenomenon: moralist (e.g., Plato, Ellul) and neutralist (Lasswell, Taylor). http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php/newsroom/pdblog_detail/060629_two_ways_of_looking_at_propaganda/

Bruntz, George G. Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918. Stanford Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1938. A clear, concise account which covers Creel and the CPI; only slightly dated, it contains succinct foreword on propaganda by Harold D. Lasswell that summarizes well his view son Propaganda.

Cone, Stacey.“Pulling the Plug on America's Propaganda: Sen. J.W. Fulbright's Leadership of the Antipropaganda Movement, 1943-74.” Journalism History, 30, No. 4 (Winter 2005): 166-176. An article which shows the persistence of the hostility toward propaganda in the U.S.

“Creel: An Announcement.” Everybody’s Magazine, 13 (January 10): 24.

Creel, George. “George Creel Replies.” The New Republic, 2, Issue 21 (March 27, 1915): 209-210. Marks the beginning of the contentious Creel/Lippmann relationship.

Creel, George. How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information that Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe. New York and London: Harper’s and Brothers, 1920. Creel's P. J. Barnum-style marketing of reports on the CPI cited here. Public diplomacy (as it was not yet known) on steroids. Full of Soviet-style statistics on how many propaganda items were produced by the CPI; far less specific on how many people were actually influenced by them.

Creel, George. “Propaganda and Morale.” American Journal of Sociology, 47, No. 3 (November, 1941): 340-351.

Creel, George.“Public Opinion in War Time.” Carl Kelsey, ed., Mobilizing America’s Resources for the War. The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 78 (July 1918): 185-194.

Creel, George. Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1947. How factually reliable this autobiography is open to doubt, but it provides valuable insights into Creel’s family and professional background. When covering Creel’s early years, it gives an amusing Tom Sawyer quality to them. It has been neglected by the scholarly literature literature. Available online at http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000469431.

Creel, George. Wilson and the Issues. New York: The Century Co., 1916. Creel’s ode to Wilson (when Wilson was against getting the U.S. into a world war, which Creel, appointed by the president as Chairman of the Committee on Public Diplomacy, enthusiastically propagated). Available online at https://archive.org/details/creelwilsonissue00georrich

Cull, Nicholas. “Engagement Is The New Public Diplomacy or The Adventures of a Euphemism,” USC Center on Public Diplomacy (June 5, 2009). http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/engagement_is_the_new_public_diplomacy

Cull, Nicholas. “'Public Diplomacy’ before Gullion: The Evolution of a Phrase.” Public Diplomacy Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy (April 18, 2006). Essential reading on the linguistic origins of the term “public diplomacy.” http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/060418_public_diplomacy_before_gullion_the_evolution_of_a_phrase

Cull, Nicholas J. The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. The most definite history, to date, of the United States Information Agency (1953-1999), a Cold War successor of the CPI (l917-19) and Office of War Information (1942-45). Some would say its well-written treatment of the USIA, the product of enormous research, reads too much like an "official" history and is insufficiently critical.

Cull, Nicholas J. The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989-2001 Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. The USIA may not have been the Roman Empire, but it did decline and fall as this book documents. Some would say for the better.

Eulau, Heinz. “Wilsonian Idealist: Lippmann Goes to War.” The Antioch Review, 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1954): 87-108.

Fraser, Lindsey. Propaganda. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. There is no better introduction to the study of propaganda than the initial pages (3-14) to this jargon-free, seldom-cited volume. Fraser worked for BBC German Service during WWII.


Freedman, Max. “Lippmann on Democracy.” [Review of Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann.] The Nation, 180, Issue 10 (March 5, 1955): 202-203.

Gary, Brett. The Nervous Liberals: Propaganda Anxieties from World War I to the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. A useful source on the anti-propaganda mood that developed in the U.S. after World War I.

“George Creel.” Wikipedia. A surprisingly good short entry on Creel, despite some omissions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Creel

Isaacson, Walter. “A Declaration of Mutual Dependence.” The New York Times (July 4, 2004). The former Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (2009-12) and author of a biography on America’s first “public diplomat” Benjamin Franklin, argues that “the Declaration of Independence is, in effect, a work of propaganda -- or, to put it more politely, an exercise in public diplomacy.” One wonders why no journalist asked him about this statement when he was BBG chairman. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/opinion/a-declaration-of-mutual-dependence.html

Jansen, Sue Curry. “Walter Lippmann, Straw Man of Communication Research.” David W. Park and Jefferson Pooley, eds. The History of Media and Communication Research. New York: Peter Lang, 2008: 71-112.

Jowett, Garth S. and O'Donnell. Propaganda and Persuasion. Beverly Hills, California, 1986. Of some use in distinguishing the tricky difference between persuasion and propaganda.

Kazin, Alfred. “Walter Lippmann and the American Century.” The New Republic, 183, Issue 7 (August 16, 1980): 35-38. Kazin, in a not overly complimentary portrait of Lippmann based on his reading of Steel’s biography (see below), notes that Lippmann, marked by a “hatred of his Jewishness … thought it inadvisable for his ‘mixed marriage’ to produce children” (p. 38). “Is it possible,” Kazin asks, “that Lippmann will be remembered more for the life he led in American history than for anything he said about it? That he will be remembered as historical actor rather than as a thinker? He would not have liked that.” Kazin’s review suggests the tension between the literary (Kazin) and the philosophical (Lippmann).

Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society – Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. A thoughtful analysis that argues that “the American experience in World War I … darkly adumbrated the themes Orwell was put at the center of his futuristic fantasy” (p. 60).

Lasswell, Harold D. Propaganda Technique in the World War. New York: P. Smith, 1938. [First published in 1927.] A classic, pompously written academic study of that early twentieth phenomenon, modern propaganda. Online at
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015000379902;view=2up;seq=8

Laurie, Clayton D. “The Chanting of Crusaders: Captain Heber Blankenhorn and AEF Combat Propaganda in World War I.” The Journal of Military History, 59, Issue 3 (July 1995): 457-481. This excellent article sheds much light on Walter Lippmann’s stint with U.S. Military Intelligence Division in the summer of 1918 in the small town French town of Chaumont.

Lennox, Sarah and Lennox Frank. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964).” New German Critique, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974): 49-55 Online at http://markdpepper.com/3070/3070_reader.pdf. There is a srong case to be made that “public opinion,” as a social/political phenomenon, appeared in the 18th century in Europe, but of course cavemen had opinions too.

Lewis, Sinclair. “An American Views the Huns.” The Nation, Volume 121, Issue 3130: 19-20. Lewis, who defeated Creel for the Democratic nomination for governor of California in the 1934, writes sarcastically that “[d]uring the Great War I learned thoroughly at the skilled hands of Mr. George Creel that whatever the Germans were, they were brutal.”

Lippmann, Walter. “For a Department of State.” The New Republic (September 17, 1919), 20, Issue 254: 194-97. A merciless attack on the State Department and its diplomats during the Great War.

Lippmann, Walter. “Paul Kellogg Muckraked.” The New Republic (February 20, 1915): 60-61. [See Creel’s reply cited above.] Perhaps the first Lippmann attack on Creel, written anonymously, and the start of their antagonistic long-distance relationship (if they ever met face-to-face, it must have been very briefly).

Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922. One of Lippmann’s most influential works. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456-images.html

Lippmann, Walter. “The Intimate Papers of Colonel House by Charles Seymour” [Review]. Foreign Affairs, 4, No. 3 (April, 1926): 383-393. Interesting insights on how Lippmann thought Wilson thought of propaganda (negatively).

Mock, James R. and Larson, Cendric. Words That Won the War: The Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1939. Despite the date of its publication, the most thorough account of the Committee of Public Information, based its records at the National Archives. Available online at https://archive.org/details/wordsthatwonwars00mockrich.

Noah, Timothy. “The Rise of a Not-so-great Communicator: Charles Z. Wick, Entrepreneur.” The New Republic, 186, Issue 15 (April 14, 19820: 11-14.

O'Connell, Joseph. Letter to the New York Times, “U.S.I.A. Is Guardian Of Fulbright Program,” New York Times (June 27, 1986) http://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/26/opinion/l-usia-is-guardian-of-fulbright-program-675886.html

Osgood, Kenneth. “Propaganda,” Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy (2002) http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3402300123.html. An admirable introduction to the subject, focusing on the United States. Ideal for a survey course on American propaganda.


Osipova, Yelena.“Fulbright on USIA.” Global Chaos [blog] (January 11, 2012). http://lena-globalchaos.blogspot.com/2012/01/fulbright-on-usia.html

“Paul Kellogg Muckracked.” The New Republic, 2, Issue 16 (February 20, 1915): 60-61. This article, available suggest, began the Creel-Lippmann warfare.

Plato. Gorgias. Athens, Greece: 380 B.C. :) No study of propaganda can begin without reading this dialogue focusing on the tensions between rhetoric and philosophy. Jowett translation at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html


Pope, Ellen Dittman. Pleasants Country. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2009. According to the author, Creel’s grandfather, Alexander Jerbet, saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary encouraging him to complete the foundation of the town on St. Marys on the now West Virginia side of the Ohio River.

Qualter, Terence H. Opinion Control in the Democracies. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. One of the best treatments of propaganda in the scholarly literature that regrettably is seldom mentioned.

Sproule, J. Michael. Propaganda and Democracy: The American Experience of Media and Mass Persuasion. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. An enlightening account of the historical background to the establishment of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1937-1942), which sought to educate the American public about the dangers and duplicity of propaganda. The book lacks a bibliography.

Steel, Ronald. Walter Lippmann and the American Century. Boston and Toronto: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1980. A magnificent work of scholarship, based on many unpublished sources, that is thus far the definitive biography (without glorifying him) of Lippmann.

Steel, Ronald. “Walter Lippmann: Journalist and Historian.” Society 36, Issue 5 (July/August 1999): 77-79.

Stolberg, Benjamin. “Walter Lippmann, Connoisseur of Public Life.” The Nation, 235, Issue 3257 (December 7, 1927): 639-642.

Stone, I. D. “Creel’s Crusade” [Review of Monk and Larson’s Words That Won the War]. The Nation, 149, Issue 24: 647-649. Perhaps the best short evaluation of Creel and his work. Recommended for any college course pertaining to the subject. Stone: “One learns from Creel story that the idealists are as necessary as brass bands in war time. One also learns that the idealists tend to suffer from the delusion that they are running the war, when it is the war that is running them.”


Taylor, Philip M. Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Nuclear Age. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: P. Stephens, 1990. An informative, workmanlike historical survey of propaganda, unmarked by subtlety, that does not delve into its moral or philosophical implications.

The Committee on Public Information [CPI]. The Activities of the Committee on Public Information. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918. Assuming that the CPI told the truth (including regarding the statistics it cites), this is an indispensable resources to its activities.

Vaughan, James. Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Meticulous and thoughtful scholarship, based on archival research that provides valuable data about the origins, organization, and programs of the CPI. In many ways surpasses the Mock and Larson volume (see above).

Viereck, George Sylvester. Spreading Germs of Hate; with a foreword by Colonel Edward M. House. London: Duckworth, 1931. Viereck, a German-American who was editor of the pro-German paper The Fatherland, was an astute commentator propaganda, which he also practiced in support of Nazism. His work is seldom cited, perhaps because of his admiration for Hitler in his later years. It is most quite intriguing that House, who played a significant role in the implementation of USG propaganda in WWI as a very pro-British adviser to Wilson, should have written a foreword to a book by a German-American more than just sympathetic for Germany during the Great War. The second edition of the book did not contain House’s foreword.

Winkler, Henry. The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (Yale Historical Publications: Miscellany, 118). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Still the best account of the OWI.

Wolper Gregg. The Origins of Public Diplomacy; Woodrow Wilson, George Creel, and the Committee on Public Information [unpublished dissertation]. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991. A detailed and largely sympathetic treatment of CPI activities in parts of Europe: “[B]y creating an developing the [CPI’s] Foreign Section Creel performed a remarkable feat” (p. 347).

Wolper, Gregg.“Wilsonian Public Diplomacy: The Committee on Public Information in Spain.” Diplomatic History, 17, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 17-34. An excellent, detailed “case study” of the CPI’s overseas operations. More such studies are needed to evaluate the CPI’s overseas impact; the focus on the scholarly literature has been on its domestic programs.

Wolper, Gregg. “Woodrow Wilson’s New Diplomacy: Vira Whitehouse in Switzerland, 1918.” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 24, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 227-239. A “slice of life” account of a female CPI operative and her travails with State Department diplomats. Whitehouse’s complaints against turf-conscious Foggy Bottom male diplomats has a contemporary ring to it.