NARRATOR: “It was a plain publicity proposition,” Creel recalled, “a vast enterprise in salesmanship.”

DAVID M. KENNEDY: Creel was a pioneer, you might say in the field of public relations. And then Wilson appoints him the head of something called the Committee on Public Information, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is essentially the U.S. government’s agency for propaganda.

ALAN AXELROD: Creel saw his problem as transforming the American people into one white hot mass of enthusiasm for the war and the CPI went from a bureaucracy of one person to an army of about a hundred thousand people in the space of a couple of months.

CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZOLA: The CPI mobilized movie stars for the Liberty Loan message. Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, all of the greatest stars of their day. Celebrity culture is just starting to emerge, and they can turn out crowds, and those crowds then become some of the biggest rallies that you see on the home front during the war.

NARRATOR: Creel even found a way to push his message when the movie screens were dark. 

CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZOLA: In between every reel of film, there was a four-minute break when the projectionist had to change the reels. Someone at the CPI hit on the idea that this was a perfectly captive audience for the delivery of the war message. 

NARRATOR: Prominent members of the local community would stand up and deliver short patriotic speeches. They became known as the “Four-Minute Men,” and what began in movie theaters quickly spread to any venue where an audience assembled. In New York, Creel’s volunteer army addressed half a million people each week.  Ten men gave talks in Yiddish, seven in Italian. President Wilson himself gave a four-minute speech. 

A. SCOTT BERG: These four-minute men would give a talk on some aspect of Americanism. Why are we fighting? What are the principles we are fighting for? 

The appearance of spontaneity masked a carefully scripted government message.  “These were no haphazard talks by nondescripts,” Creel insisted, “but the careful, studied, and rehearsed efforts of the best men in each community, each speech aimed as a rifle is aimed, and driving to its mark with the precision of a bullet.”

ALAN AXELROD: They were guided by a central authority, but always in the own words of the individual giving the speech and he was usually a person who was known in the community. He was not saying this is what the government says. He was saying I’m an intelligent person, successful person, this is what I think, you should think this way too.