The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1929-06-28
DEVISED PLAN TO
SPREAD PROPAGANDA

Eleven years ago this week, Lieut.
Matthew Volm, Imperial German in
fantry, stood watching a group OF
queer little balloons, made apparent
ly of colored paper, float to the
ground behind his lines. To each
was attached a six-foot thread at
the end of which dangled a packet
of papers.
A German soldier ran up with
two of them and reported:
Millions of these are floating be-
hind our lines. They stick in trees
and come even into the trenches.
Lies are printed in German on the
papers. See?"
And back of the Allied defense,
French and British intelligence
officers were sending up two and
one-half millions of these tiny oil
paper carriers each week. They
were released to travel with domi
nant air currents and timed to drop
at specific distances in Teutonic ter
ritory, bearing messages to teach the
German masses that the war was
fought for world freedom, not for
Allied conquest.
1t was the idea of an American
teacher, whose contribution to AL
lied victory came to light this week
in connection with the retirement of
DR.. Henry Louis Smith, president of
Washington and Lee University,
Lexington, Va. President Smith,
physicist and meteroligist, who de-
vised the plan in 1918 for the Amer
lean National Defence Council, will
retire at the close of this year to
writing and lecturing, after half
century as an educator, the last
Twenty-Five years of which have
been spent as university president.
American leaders needed plan
to undermine German spirit and to
present the American point of view
to the German people.
The National Security League Of
fered reward for the best plan to
distribute Allied propaganda over
Germany. The acceptable scheme
came from President Smiths study
at Washington and Lee.
For fourteen years before coming
to Lexington, Doctor Smith had serv-
ed as professor of physics and
meteorology. He knew that north
temperate air currents blow north
eastward almost continuously over
Germany.
So he prepared map of the cur
rents and experimental with the
escape of gas through slightly por-
GUS paper and other substances.
Then he proposed releasing large
numbers of these colored paper and
rubber balloons, filled with coal gas
and hydrogen. Born by the airH
drift, each balloon would carry
message -oxer. the anemy lines Il "a u
papers, at the end of a two-yard
thread, would futter conspicuously
as the carrier descended. Size and
gas content was to determine the
distance travelled before the balloon
settled to earth.
Success was apparent when Amer
lean officers found that eight out of
every ten prisoners captured car
ried Allied propaganda in their
pockets.
Before August, 1918, twenty
seven million leaflets had been drop
ped into Germany. They contained
President Wilson's speeches, true
news OF vast activities in America,
millions of cartoons, statements OF
causes, significance and aims of the
war.
Doctor Smith was born at Green's
boro, N. c., in 1859. He reaches
the official retirement age this July,
but was asked by the trustees of
Washington and Lee university to
continue in office as president until
January /, 1880.
Since coming to Washington and
Lee in 1912 to take administrative
charge of the institution, Doctor
Smith has lived in General Robert
E. Lees former home on the campus
where the Southern chieftain died
while president of the college in
October, 1870.
THE money l won as prize for
this balloon DEVICE President
Smith smiled, ':'went toward buying
the first automobile l ever owned
and l was college president, not a
college student, when l bought it,"
n