We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
INDIANA STATE COUNCIL OF DEFENSE 135
council also co-operated with the Y.M.C.A. in furnishing and distributing tobacco to our soldiers at the front.
By December of 191 7 our council was already considering a suggestion of Major McWhirter that some provision be made for the return of veterans after the war was over. The plan suggested was to raise a fund— actually a Governor's Staff Fund— to take care of disabled veterans until either the state legislature or Congress made appropriations to cover the situation.
As I think of our efforts to build up civilian morale, I believe they were chiefly directed toward a simple, obvious objective: giving people the truth. We believed that facts were the best antidote for the malicious rumors which enemies of various sorts were spreading. This proved to be true. The council realized that the burden of war rested on the whole people. We wanted to remind them continuously that our cause was wholly right and that, deservedly, we would be victorious. It is hard now to realize how new to our people this whole war experience was and how stunned they were to find the world in such dreadful, destructive conflict. Some of the first war pictures brought back from the front were more shocking than we can realize today.
Strangely, one of the most interesting questions developing during these months was that of motion pictures. Technically this came under George Ade's publicity bureau. For a while we received frenzied protests against the adverse effects of some pictures. Movies were then relatively new, especially as a form of world-wide communication, and some producers and exhibitors were more interested in making money than in responsibility to give the public accurate information. Further, the whole method of war in Europe was new, even to the generals of the line. It is no wonder that our people were profoundly shocked by the nature of these battle scenes and of other strange revelations coming from abroad. Many were frightened and resentful over what our sons were facing. But within a few weeks some of our council members began to see that these films had a tremendous educational value, especially if selected with care and distributed with purpose and some proper introduction. The committee set out to do just this.
George Ade himself was tremendously interested in studying the possibilities. He personally selected seven specially prepared war films on such subjects as torpedoes, Red Cross work, submarines, and so on, all of which could go on one program. The council authorized their exhibition. These particular films, prepared with the help of the national council's Committee on Public Information, revealed how we were preparing for war and how war was being carried on across the sea. Considering my later years of association with motion pictures, I must confess that although these films seemed to me useful I probably did not realize their influence as fully as I did four years later, when my