Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/402

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information in regard to actual conditions or the precise needs

of special places or districts ; no information is given , comparable to what is found in commercial advertising, as to the methods by which the funds collected are administered, or the results

that have followed from the efforts made. Enormous sums for relief work have been collected through advertising, but since the appeal has been so largely emotional, it is not surprising to

learn through the press that the funds raised have sometimes been dissipated in extravagant expenditure.13

Governments have entered the lists and have extensively used the advertisement to secure recruits ,14 to further govern ment loans, and to carry on their commercial and industrial ac tivities. But although a government may be behind all of these

classes of advertising, the appealmade through each class differs and hence they are in reality fundamentally unlike. Since war is always war, the inducements held out for entering

the regular army have never varied in principle since the days when Paul Jones issued his broadsides inviting " gentlemen

seamen ” to join his expedition,15 to 1919 when the Federal 13 Reports of the Army and Navy Bazaar, daily press, October, 1917.

The profits were " amazingly small,” since agents and promoters of the bazaar had received enormous fees . 14 At a meeting of the American Luncheon Club in London , June 11, 1915, H . Le Bas ( later Sir Hedley ) , who had been directing the great advertising efforts to raise British armies, said that nothing had ever demonstrated so

clearly the usefulness of advertising . – New York Tribune, June 12, 1915. More than a year later he stated that the British governmenthad been carry ing on an advertising campaign of such a nature and extent as had never

before been undertaken by any nation . It comprised not only pleas for army volunteers and loans ofmoney, but also condemnation of extravagance in every form . Display advertisements werekept running in 1500 newspapersand spread on myriads ofbillboards. He estimated that by this means 5 ,000 ,000 recruits had enlisted and “ billions of dollars raised in loans.” The working classes turned over to the Government £100 ,000 ,000 from their savings during the first two years of the war and Sir Hedley believed that the

advertisements had been responsible for the deposit of a large proportion of this amount. — Correspondence of the Associated Press, New York Times,

August 6 , 1916 .

The number of recruits secured through advertising was apparently overestimated by Sir Hedley . See statementsmade a year later, infra, p . 343 . Advertisements for recruits in America seemed to be less successful, and

in at least one town the advertisements were torn down. — New York Evening Post, August 15, 1916. 15 " A very rare broadside inviting enlistment under Paul Jones, 1777 , "

is headed “ Great Encouragement for Seamen ” and announces that for