Photo of Edward Bernays with various members of the USIA as they prepared to depart for the Paris Peace Treaty in 1918

Photograph

-

Museum of Public Relations

Name/Title

Photo of Edward Bernays with various members of the USIA as they prepared to depart for the Paris Peace Treaty in 1918

Category

Public Relations

Acquisition

Source (if not Accessioned)

Shelley and Barry Spector

Made/Created

Date made

1918

Lexicon

Legacy Lexicon

Object Name

photograph

Location

Location

Binder

White Binder "Edward Bernays"

* Untyped Location

Book Shelves

Room

Exhibit Room

Date

July 8, 2025

Deaccession

Notes

Photograph of original at the home of Edward L. Bernays. "When WWI started in 1918, like many other Americans, I wanted to enlist as a soldier but unfortunately my vision was 20/18 and nobody could enter the armed services of the Untied States whose vision was not 20/20. A few weeks after that I noted that George Creel, a member of the group that fought for greater liberalism with Ida Tarbell, Ernest Poole and others, had been appointed head of the United States Information agency called USIA and it was the first time the United States was to use ideas as weapons to win a war. I applied to the USIA to become a staff member and was accepted. I was the only person on the staff in New York that had ever had any activity in publicity, press agentry or the like. The others were mostly professors and I served in the foreign office that dealt with materials sent to other media and with overt acts to make the world safe for democracy and make this a war to end all wars. To my surprise and delight I was invited over to the Peace Conference in Paris which Woodrow Wilson was to come to and this is a picture of the various members of our group of the foreign policy office of the agency in New York. And we traveled as I recall it for 10 days on the Atlantic Ocean, landed in France and were each assigned a separate apartment in Paris and worked on Wilson's 14 Points as I said to win the war to win the morale of our allies to win over the neutrals and to deflate the morale of the enemy." —Edward Bernays, in a 1987 videotape

Created By

[email protected]

Create Date

February 14, 2020

Updated By

[email protected]

Update Date

July 8, 2025