“By Far the Best of Our Foreign Representatives:” Vira B. Whitehouse and the Origins of Public Diplomacy

Abstract

The Committee on Public Information’s efforts during World War I marked the beginning of American public diplomacy, but its influence has been overlooked. This paper examines the role of suffragist Vira B. Whitehouse in the pioneering endeavor in Berne, Switzerland. Scant research has looked at Whitehouse’s significant contribution to public diplomacy and, even then, it largely ignores the challenges she faced. Nor does the research link her work as a suffrage leader with her success in creating a brand-new form of diplomacy.

Notes

1 Cedric Larson and James R. Mock, “The Lost Files of the Creel Committee of 1917-19,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 3, no. 1 (1939): 5–29.

2 John Maxwell Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020), 4.

3 “Inventory of Furniture and Fixtures in Executive Office,” n.d., entry 1, Records of the Committee on Public Information, Record Group 63, National Archives Building, Washington DC, hereafter referred to as CPI. Creel’s report was transmitted to Wilson on January 7, 1918. Wilson endorsed it on January 14, 1918. Wilson’s comment on American harmony was to Ambassador Spring-Rice; Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946), 447.

4 Lauren Claire West, “The Uneasy Beginnings of Public Diplomacy: Vira Whitehouse, the Committee on Public Information, and the First World War,” (master’s thesis, Louisiana State University, 2018), 76.

5 See Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses, passim.

6 Official Bulletin, May 10, 1917, entry 49, CPI.

7 Bruce Pinkleton, “The campaign of the Committee on Public Information: Its contributions to the history and evolution of public relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research 6, no. 4 (1994): 229-240.

8 “Editorial,” The Times (London, England), January 15, 1856; “House of Representatives: Miscellaneous Bills and Resolutions,” New York Times, January 20, 1871; For more information regarding these early references, see West, “The Uneasy Beginnings of Public Diplomacy,” 8.

9 Nicholas J. Cull, “‘Public Diplomacy’ before Gullion: The evolution of a phrase,” Center on Public Diplomacy (blog), University of Southern California, https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/public-diplomacy-gullion-evolution-phrase.

10 Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull, “Public diplomacy in a changing world,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616, no. 1 (2008): 6-8.

11 Cayce Myers, “Revising the Narrative of Early U.S. Public Relations History: An Analysis of the Depictions of PR Practice and Professionals in the Popular Press, 1770–1918” (PhD dissertation, University of Georgia, 2014): 215; Cayce Myers, Public Relations History: Theory, Practice, and Profession (New York: Routledge, 2020).

12 Margot Opdycke Lamme and Karen Miller Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History,” Journalism and Communication Monographs 11, no. 4 (2010): 281-362.

13 Sue Curry Jansen, “The World’s Greatest Adventure in Advertising;” Walter Lippmann’s Critique of Censorship and Propaganda,” in The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies, eds. Jonathan Auerback and Russ Castronove, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 303.

14 “The Reminiscences of Edward M. Bernays,” 1971, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 59.

15 Alan K. Henrikson, “What Can Public Diplomacy Achieve?” in Discussion Papers in Diplomacy, ed. Dominic Kelly (Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael), 11.

16 Henrikson, “What Can Public Diplomacy Achieve?” 9.

17 Robert H. Gass and John S. Seiter, “Credibility and Public Diplomacy,” in Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, eds. Nancy Snow and Nicholas J. Cull (New York: Routledge, 2008).

18 Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses, 200.

19 J. Michael Waller provides a history of the Founders’ influences on public diplomacy in “The American Way of Propaganda: Lessons from the Founding Fathers,” in Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare, ed. J. Michael Waller (Washington DC: The Institute of World Politics Press, 2009), 26-42.

20 Carl Berger, Broadsides and Bayonets (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

21 Wilson Dizard Jr., Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the U.S. Information Agency (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), 14.

22 Cowan and Cull, “Public diplomacy in a changing world,” 6.

23 US Congress, House, Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations, Sundry Civil Bill for 1919, Hearing. Part III. 65^th Cong., 2d Sess., 1918: 4.

24 Melvin D. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (New York: Pantheon, 2009), 87; Louis D. Brandeis, “What Publicity Can Do?” Harper’s Weekly, December 20, 1913, 10.

25 George Creel to Norman Whitehouse, November 4, 1918, Papers of Vira Boarman Whitehouse, 1889-1957, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Cambridge, MA, hereafter referred to as VBW.

26 Vira Boarman Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1920).

27 New York Times, May 5, 1986.

28 For prior works on Whitehouse’s role in the CPI, see Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses; West, “The Uneasy Beginnings of Public Diplomacy;” Gregg Wolper, “Woodrow Wilson’s New Diplomacy: Vira Whitehouse in Switzerland, 1918,” Prologue, The Journal of the National Archives 24, no. 3 (1992): 226-39.

29 West, “The Uneasy Beginnings of Public Diplomacy,” 77-80.

30 Tibor Glant, “Against All Odds: Vira B. Whitehouse and Rosika Schwimmer in Switzerland, 1918,” American Studies International 49, no. 1 (2002): 34-51.

31 Wolper, “Woodrow Wilson’s New Diplomacy,” 226-39.

32 George Creel, 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: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1920).

33 Brooke McDonald and Tara Schwagerl, “Biographical Sketch of Vira Boarman Whitehouse,” in Part III: Mainstream Suffragists- National American Woman Suffrage Association (Alexander Street, 2022), https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009860066.

34 McDonald and Schwagerl, “Biographical Sketch of Vira Boarman Whitehouse,” https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009860066.

35 Times-Picayune, November 8, 1917.

36 New York Times, April 5, 1908.

37 Johanna Neuman, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 152.

38 Wolper, “Woodrow Wilson’s New Diplomacy,” 228; Ronald Schaffer, “The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909-1919,” New York History 43 (1962): 282.

39 Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Colombia University Press, 1999), 170; Joan Marie Johnson, Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870-1967 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 170; Neuman, Gilded Suffragists, 152.

40 Woodrow Wilson, “Remarks to the general meeting of the Committee of Labor of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense,” August 15, 1917. Image of this poster is provided by the New York State Library. Retrieved from New York Heritage Digital Collection, “Winning the Vote in New York State.”  

41 New York Times, September 28, 1914; New York Times, August 7, 1914.

42 New York Times, June 1, 1913.

43 Whitehouse to Alice Paul, July 9, 1917, boxes 50-51, National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, Library of Congress, Washington DC.

44 Finnegan, Selling Suffrage, 170.

45 Johnson, Funding Feminism, 20.

46 Whitehouse to State Committee Members, August 10, 1917, New York State Woman Suffrage Party records, 1915-1919, slipcases 1-2, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. New York, New York, hereafter referred to as WSP.

47 Whitehouse to Club Presidents, Up-State Assembly District Leaders, Campaign District Chairman, City Chairman, and the New York City Borough Chairmen and Organizers, April 7, 1917, WSP; Whitehouse to Upstate Assembly District Leaders, Campaign District Chairmen, and the New York Women’s Suffrage party Executive Board, April 17, 1917, WSP.

48 For more information on the Federal Food Conservation Committee see Frank M. Surface and Raymond L. Bland, American Food in the World War and Reconstruction Period. Operations of the Organizations Under the Direction of Herbert Hoover 1914 to 1924 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1931).

49 Whitehouse to Up-State Assembly District Leaders, Campaign District Chairmen and Organizers, and the New York Women’s Suffrage party Executive Board, June 26, 1917, WSP.

50 Whitehouse to Up-State Assembly District Leaders, Campaign District Chairmen, Organizers, and the New York Women’s Suffrage party Executive Board, June 26, 1917, WSP.

51 McConnell Printing Co., New York (1917). An image of this poster is available through the New York Heritage’s Digital Collection.

52 Whitehouse to Up-State Assembly District Leaders, November 26, 1917, WSP. In the letter, Whitehouse enclosed a “copy of [the] plans” on behalf of women suffragists. These plans include “work for the federal suffrage amendment, educational classes upon political and civic questions and problems of government” by trained speakers, “legislative work particularly in the interest of women and children in industry and in rural districts,” and “government and war service” efforts.

53 Genevieve C. McBride, On Wisconsin Women: Working for Their Rights from Settlement to Suffrage (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1993), 283. McBride’s study on the suffrage movement in Wisconsin describes how the success of the New York State campaign increased spirits for suffragettes elsewhere.

54 Daniels, “Building a Winning Coalition,” 79.

55 Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 118-141.

56 Wolper, “Woodrow Wilson’s New Diplomacy,” 228.

57 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 2-3.

58 Whitehouse, “Report of Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse,” n.d., VBW.

59 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 4.

60 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 13; Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 6-7.

61 West, “The Uneasy Beginnings of Public Diplomacy,” 52; Whitehouse to Kerney, August 14, 1918, entry 148, CPI; Wolper, “Origins of Public Diplomacy,” 72.

62 Martin Weil, A Pretty Good Club: The Founding Fathers of the US Foreign Service (New York: WW Norton, 1978), 46-47; Secretary of State Robert Lansing, whose wife was a vocal member of the anti-suffragist party, resisted Whitehouse’s appointment and criticized Creel for appointing a woman to the position, see Goodier, No Votes for Women, 122; Minister Pleasant Stovall of Switzerland was also an anti-suffragist and strongly opposed the appointment of a woman, see Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 71.

63 Creel to Whitehouse, December 31, 1917, VBW.

64 New York Times, December 31, 1917.

65 Der Bund, January 28, 1918; Frank L. Polk to Embassy Paris, telegram, January 22, VBW.

66 The wording for the denial was taken from Creel to Polk, January 21, 1918, box 4, Frank Lyon Polk Papers, Archives at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, hereafter referred to as FLP.

“Paraphrase of Telegram Received from Department of State dated January 26 [1918],” VBW.

67 Hugh Wilson to Robert Lansing, January 3, 1918, in General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC.

68 Hugh Wilson to Secretary of State, cable, February 8, 1918, VBW.

69 Whitehouse to Creel, February 24, 1918, entry 1, CPI.

70 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 57-59.

71 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 71-72.

72 Whitehouse to Stovall, March 9, 1918, VBW, emphasis on “honest” added by author.

73 Hugh R. Wilson, Diplomat Between Wars (New York: Longmans, Green, 1941), 17.

74 Robert Lansing to Embassy Paris, March 15, 1918, VBW.

75 Whitehouse to Creel, March 18, 1918, VBW.

76 Creel told Wilson that he wanted to avoid open conflict with the legation. Creel to Wilson, March 26, 1918, Woodrow Wilson Papers Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. Washington, DC, hereafter referred to as WW-LC.

77 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 88.

78 The New York World, March 29, 1918; State Times Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA), April 16, 1918.

79 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 88-89.

80 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 98-100.

81 Stovall to Woodrow Wilson, March 27, 1918, WW-LC; Creel to Norman de R. Whitehouse, April 12, 1918, entry 1, CPI.

82 Whitehouse to Joseph Tumulty, April 27, 1918, attached to Wilson to Tumulty, May 8, 1918, WW-LC.

83 Philip Patchin to Hugh Gibson, May 27, 1918, box 56, Hugh S. Gibson Papers Stanford University, Hoover Institution, Stanford, California.

84 Wilson to Whitehouse, May 23, 1918, WW-LC; Wilson to Stovall, May 23, 1918, WW-LC; Wilson also told Lansing that Whitehouse went “with this approval,” see Wilson to Lansing, May 23, 1918, WW-LC.

85 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 108-110.

86 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 112-115; Whitehouse to Paul Kennaday, July 17, 1918, entry 183, CPI; Whitehouse to James Kerney, August 5, 1918, entry 148, CPI; Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 121-123.

87 West, “The Uneasy Beginnings of Public Diplomacy,” 54.

88 Whitehouse to Kennaday, August 5, 1918, entry 183, CPI; Whitehouse, “Report of Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse;” Wolper, “Woodrow Wilson’s New Diplomacy,” 46.

89 Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses, 279; West, “The Uncommon Beginnings of Public Diplomacy,” 60.

90 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 132; Whitehouse to W. F. H. Godson, August 7 and September 24, 1918; Whitehouse to Walter Rogers, September 3, 1918, entry 183, CPI; Whitehouse, “Report of Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse,” VBW.

91 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 136-142. Whitehouse quotes the German news story in her memoir.

92 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 139.

93 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 148.

94 Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses, 280.

95 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 151.

96 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 152.

97 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 179.

98 Norman Whitehouse to Vira Whitehouse, September 26, 1918, James Norman Whitehouse Papers, New York Historical Society, New York, New York, hereafter referred to as JNW. The visiting journalists’ trip is chronicled in Norman Whitehouse’s letters to his wife, for instance, Norman Whitehouse to Vira Whitehouse, October 19, 1918, JNW.

99 Whitehouse to Kennaday, August 24, 1918, entry 188, CPI; Kennaday to Whitehouse, October 8, 1918, entry 183, CPI.

100 Whitehouse to Kerney, August 27, 1918, entry 183, CPI.

101 Whitehouse to A.L. James, October 15, 1918, entry 239, American Expeditionary Forces, Record Group 120, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, and Washington, DC; Whitehouse to R. H. Van Deman, August 14, 1918, and Whitehouse to A.L. James, November 4, 1918, entry 183, CPI.

102 Details of this mission are found in Wolper, “Woodrow Wilson’s New Diplomacy,” 235-236, and Glant, “Against All Odds,” 34-51.

103 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 239-240.

104 Stovall’s attitude toward Rosika Schwimmer is outlined in her letter to Whitehouse, December 7, 1918, Rosika Schwimmer papers, 1890-1983, New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts, New York, New York.

105 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 262.

106 Glant, “Against All Odds,” 34.

107 Whitehouse to Creel, October 22, 1918, entry 183, CPI.

108 Herbert Walter, the London Times correspondent in Berne, carried out propaganda for Northcliffe. Walter criticized Whitehouse’s openness. Whitehouse—reported an American intelligence officer—“requested that Mr. Walters be recalled.” The intelligence officer went on to say that French and Italian reporters and Swiss editors thought her openness “advantageous as far as the Swiss people themselves are concerned.” See J.C. O’ Laughlin to Nolan, August 10, 1918, entry 235, Word War I: Records of the American Expeditionary Forces, and Diplomacy in the World War I Era, ProQuest History Vault.

109 Dulles to Lansing, August 24, 1918, box 37, Allen W. Dulles Papers: Digital File Series 1939-1977, Princeton University. Princeton, New Jersey.

110 Whitehouse, A Year as a Government Agent, 142.

111 Whitehouse to Creel, June 14, 1918, entry 186, CPI; A description of Northcliffe’s plan is in Campbell Stuart, Secrets of Crewe House (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920), 99; Wolper, “The Origins of Public Diplomacy,” 56.

112 Sacramento (CA) Union, December 25, 1921; New York Times, November 9, 1926, and April 12, 1957.

113 New York Times, April 12, 1957.

114 Creel, How We Advertised America, 317.

115 Wolper, “The Origins of Public Diplomacy,” 60; Whitehouse to Creel, June 14, 1918, entry 186, CPI.

116 New York Times, February 9, 1919.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ayla Oden

Ayla Oden is a fourth-year doctoral student at the Louisiana State University Manship School of Mass Communication. She received her bachelor’s in strategic communication (2017) and her master’s in mass communication (2019) from the University of South Alabama. Her work looks at political communication and appears in the journals Plos One and The International Journal of Communication.

John Maxwell Hamilton

John Maxwell Hamilton, a longtime journalist, author, and public servant, is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor of Journalism at the Louisiana State University Manship School of Mass Communication and a global scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC. Hamilton is the author or co-author of seven books and editor of many more, including Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda and Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting.