The War Office document made observations on the influence of the press in times of war in the following fashion:
The press, powerful in peace, may become more so in war. By its editorials and presentation of news it may sway the people for or against the war, and thus stimulate recruiting and hearten and encourage the fighting forces in their work, or, by adverse criticism, may tend to destroy the efficiency of these agencies.
It may by publishing names of organizations, numbers, movements, accounts of victories or defeats, furnish information to the enemy that will enable him to deduce the strength and location and intended movements of our own troops.
By criticism of the conduct of campaigns, the action of certain officers or exploiting others, the people will be led to lose confidence in the army with the result that the moral support of the people is lost; they cry for and obtain new generals and new plans of campaign, not based on expert knowledge and thought with a consequent lengthening of the war or even defeat.
War has added greatly to our information about foreign countries. We studied their geography as we followed their armies, their history as we became interested in various regions. We have come to know of their resources, their products, their agricultural and their financial condition. Every day for more than four years, in hundreds of newspapers’ columns, we read of their statesmen, their generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, their people, their purpose, their patriotism, and their courage. We know of their cabinets and their parliaments as never before, their industrial troubles, their petty politics as well as those larger problems that require diplomatic interference. The war brought us into a new intimacy with almost all the nations of the globe. It incubated hundreds of new problems.
It must be quite impossible for the public to appreciate the patriotic assistance and the pecuniary sacrifice of the newspapers in the war. They surrendered hundreds of pages to appeals for aid, to arousing interest, to patriotic propaganda. Let us glance at the work of a single sheet:
Mr. William H. Field of the Chicago _Tribune_ attested (April, 1918) that at that time his newspaper was devoting fifty per cent of its space, other than advertising, to matters concerning the war. In response to the question, “What can we do to help win the war?” it was decided to serve patriotic purposes both practical and inspirational. Mr. Field said: