[17] German assertions that their armies were never defeated in a military sense regularly arouse and will long continue to arouse anger and scornful indignation among their enemies, yet here we have official testimony to support their contentions. It is no detraction from the valor and military successes of the Allies to assert again that if the German troops had not been weakened physically by starvation and morally by enemy propaganda, they could have carried on the war for many months more.
The propaganda literature was prepared by historians, journalists and advertising specialists, and even some psychologists were enlisted to help in its writing. Germany's borders, however, were so carefully guarded that it was difficult to get the matter into the country. Mr. Creel relates interestingly how this was done. Aëroplanes were employed to some extent, but these were so badly needed for fighting purposes that not enough could be obtained for distribution of propaganda literature.
"The French introduced a rifle-grenade that carried pamphlets about six hundred feet in a favoring wind, and a seventy-five millimeter shell that carried four or five miles. The British developed a six-inch gun that carried ten or twelve miles and scattered several thousand leaflets from each shell. The Italians used rockets for close work on the front, each rocket carrying forty or fifty leaflets. The obvious smash at German morale was through America's aim and swift war-progress, and for this reason the Allies used the President's speeches and our military facts freely and sometimes exclusively.
"To reach further behind the lines, all fronts used paper balloons filled with coal-gas. They would remain in the air a minimum of twenty hours, so as to make a trip of six hundred miles in a thirty-mile wind. On a Belgian fête-day such balloons carried four hundred thousand greetings into Belgium, and some flew clear across Belgium. Fabric balloons, carrying seventeen or eighteen pounds of leaflets, were also employed, but with all the balloons the uncertainty of the wind made the work haphazard.
"The attempt was made to fly kites over the trenches and drop leaflets from traveling containers that were run up the kite-wire, but this method could be used only on fronts where aëroplanes were not active, because the wires were a menace to the planes. The paper used in the leaflets was chemically treated so that they would not spoil if they lay out in the rain.