With a background in journalism and academic scholarship, Dr. John “Jack” Hamilton is a professor at Louisiana State University under the Manship School of Mass Communication Department. Ayla Oden is a doctorate student at Louisiana State University where she is studying social media’s influence on contemporary social movements and political campaigns and how they communicate issues.
Q: What inspired the two of you to research Vira Whitehouse’s legacy? What was your most interesting discovery?
Oden: I was struck by Whitehouse’s involvement in the Committee of Public Information (CPI). I don’t think you hear a lot about women in public diplomacy, especially at the time of World War I. When I was first introduced to Whitehouse in John’s book, Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda, I thought that her suffrage involvement had to play a larger role in her position as a foreign commissioner in the CPI. I was really interested in looking at how that suffrage experience really supported her work in Berne, Switzerland. I was most intrigued by her involvement in the New York State Military Census and the Federal Food Conservation Committee because those projects helped her form ways to reach the Swiss audience. Whitehouse was able to build connections and her time in Berne allowed her to be such a successful commissioner for the CPI.
Hamilton: Whitehouse appeared earlier in my research in Manipulating the Masses. There wasn’t anybody who worked in the CPI who qualified as a bad person. They were all good people, but they ended up doing bad things, such as suppression of speech and over-the-top propaganda. They were progressives and constructive people who had dedicated their lives up to that point to making the United States a better place. The one person who stood out among them was the hero, Vira Whitehouse. I should mention that there are a couple others too, such as Arthur Bullard—he deserves a biography of his own. But Whitehouse, she was one of the two or three people who really qualified as a hero.
Whitehouse was a trailblazer, and she was a woman who had to have a much steeper climb to do her job because the Embassy of Switzerland didn’t want her around. On top of all that, she was an extraordinary woman. She had a family, and she was often known as the most beautiful woman in New York. When you read more of her, you learn that Whitehouse was a really tough, no nonsense person and that makes a good model for what we want for ethical communication.
Q: Though you identified (George) Creel to be a “strong proponent of woman’s suffrage,” why do you think he caused Whitehouse so much trouble during her time in Switzerland?
Hamilton: The reason Creel caused her problems wasn’t because he was against suffrage, but because of his terrible management. Though he was a chaotic manager, the people who knew him well tended to like him; The people who didn’t know him hated him in many cases. He was a strong, energetic, funny, and good-hearted guy to the people he worked with. With Whitehouse’s case, the State Department didn’t want a woman going overseas. Creel decided to send her and later realized that his plan wasn’t going to work the way he intended. He didn’t communicate clearly, tried to work around the bureaucracy and he was extremely busy. There was so much confusion because he didn’t communicate the job very well to Whitehouse. There was so much resistance to her position that it fell apart in the first months.
Thanks to Whitehouse, she went to see President Wilson and made him get things under control. Creel did not believe that she could make it work and he was prepared to give her another job. He thought she wasn’t going to succeed, but Whitehouse was not an easy woman to say no to.
Q: Do you believe the CPI would’ve succeeded in its mission without Whitehouse’s contribution?
Oden: I would argue no. The impact in Berne, Switzerland would not have had the same effect that it did without Whitehouse. She faced a lot of animosity from the other diplomats. Those diplomats were more comfortable with performing diplomacy in traditional ways, and they didn’t like the idea of directly communicating with the Swiss public. Direct communication was an idea that Whitehouse pushed for, especially in forming the position as a foreign commissioner. She wasn’t going to agree to the idea of going undercover as a journalist studying the war or children’s and women’s issues in Switzerland.
Whitehouse made it clear that she wanted to be known as a commissioner in Berne, Switzerland so that she can make connections with different editors and newspapers. She wanted to make an impact by sharing articles and information from the CPI through papers such as the Swiss Telegraph Agency and other local entities. I don’t think we would have seen the same impact had it not been for Whitehouse convincing President Wilson and Creel that with CPI’s resources, diplomacy can be achieved in a more public manner.
Hamilton: We don’t know who they would have sent in Whitehouse’s place. If they sent Arthur Bullard, for example, he probably would have done as good a job, but he was sent to Russia. It’s hard to imagine anyone having done a better job in Berne, Switzerland under the circumstances- man or woman. But I think Ayla hit the nail right on the head in terms of one of the most important things: Whitehouse advocated for open diplomacy. That didn’t’ mean that she wasn’t susceptible to duplicity. There are a couple of letters we found where she seemed willing to step back from that, but relative to what other people were doing, these were minor lapses. We have to remember that this was a time when public diplomacy did not exist- they were trying to invent it. When you’re inventing, you look at all kinds of possibilities.
Oden: Whitehouse advocated for a more transparent form of diplomacy, but not fully transparent. So, it was a big step of course, but there was still progress to be made.
Q: Did Whitehouse and Rosika Schwimmer work together after their collaboration in Switzerland? If not, has she worked beside anyone else?
Hamilton: I don’t have evidence that she did work with Schwimmer again, but she may have. She did work with Schwimmer earlier during the Suffrage Movement in New York City and they differed on whether the suffrage committee should argue for going to war or not. Whitehouse believed that it was not relevant and argued that they should remain focused on getting the vote. Schwimmer was also a very strong woman, and she advanced in her career. Whitehouse did work with several women, but Ayla can speak more on that.
Oden: After the war, Whitehouse returned to New York City to further push for woman’s suffrage. Even though New York had passed laws in support of woman’s suffrage, there was still the national fight. She ended up working a lot through the New York Woman’s Suffrage Party and she worked alongside several suffragists to help promote women’s rights. In terms of her international legacy, most of that occurred during her time with the CPI in Berne.
Q: What do you see as the most important experience Whitehouse had in leading the New York Suffrage movement that helped prepare her for her role as a CPI commissioner in Switzerland?
Oden: Whitehouse wrote to several newspapers and editorials to promote the idea of women’s suffrage. She also implemented one of the first forms of telephone polling that we know of. Whitehouse called citizens to try and convince them to support women’s suffrage at the polls. In an effort to sway legislative support towards the issue, she interviewed elected members of the New York State Congress to talk about their ideas and positions towards suffrage. I think her efforts formed a connection between both citizen public opinion and elite level public opinion.
Whitehouse also believed that you could make a difference with government assistance, so she really pushed for partnerships. Her relationship with the New York Military Census and the Federal Food Conservation Committee allowed her to help support the war and push against any claims that argued suffragists were anti-war. She also went door to door and talked to people about their attitudes and opinions on women’s suffrage. Her experience helped her build connections in Switzerland with the editors and she was able to gauge how people were feeling about the war efforts. It gave her a more savvy understanding of ways to work with newspapers and government officials within the space.
Q: Did Whitehouse’s participation in the CPI open new avenues for women to serve as diplomats?
Hamilton: The short answer is no. The CPI representatives did not officially attest to the embassies as a matter of process. In some cases, they were, and in other cases, they weren’t. Today, we have the Country Committee where people who work in diplomacy always report directly to the ambassador. That’s an innovation that didn’t exist during Whitehouse’s time.
I think to be clear on this question, we need to start from the point that she was an anomaly for some time. In other words, it wasn’t like somebody said, “Hey, now it’s a great idea to have women in these jobs.” It’s also important to be clear about her title as a diplomat; She technically wasn’t one. Public Affairs Officers are diplomats, and they belong to the foreign service. They report to the Ambassador and that is a concept known as the Country Team. So, whoever is in the country, whether that be the military or someone from the Labor Department, the Ambassador is in charge. This didn’t happen during World War I and that was a huge problem because people were out doing all kinds of things on their own. There were times when the Ambassador didn’t even know what they were doing and couldn’t tell them not to do it. In other Embassies, the tensions were sometimes palpable. For example, in Italy, they finally had to recall the CPI commissioner because he was telling people that he was more important than the Ambassador. His name was Merriman, and he was a very interesting guy.
In Whitehouse’s case, she was a commissioner and had to work with the embassy because they gave logistical support. It makes sense that you want to have some help from the embassy because they do have infrastructure in addition to just being able to help you get an office. We argue that she was a diplomat because she had a diplomatic role. However, she wasn’t technically a diplomat, and she wasn’t an employee of the State Department. It was several years before a woman was sent abroad to represent the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer, not in public diplomacy. The first woman that went abroad was a regular Foreign Service Officer and by amazing coincidence, that person happened to go to Berne, Switzerland.
We really don’t have women in diplomacy in any meaningful way until a much more modern period. So, in that sense, Whitehouse is a trailblazer, but it’s not as though everybody wanted to follow the same trail. She showed what could be done and she did it magnificently. In the end, it didn’t change the way the foreign service operated at all.
Q: You mention that Whitehouse’s legacy was “largely forgotten.” Why do you think this is the case?
Hamilton: The entire history of the CPI had not been adequately written, which is why I did it because it was a story that hadn’t been told. Whitehouse received some attention by diplomatic scholars as an article here and there, but it doesn’t really focus on her being a feminist or being a woman. There are a lot of people who were involved in the CPI who did interesting things and they got attention here and there. A lot of these people haven’t really been pulled together into a uniform story about the CPI.
The second problem, strangely enough, World War I (WWI) is a remarkably uncovered history. World War II gets lots of attention, but WW I isn’t talked about as much. I mean, I’m talking to you right now from Washington, D.C. and not too far from me is the Willard Hotel. They’re just now getting around to putting up a memorial for World War I. There are memorials for World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, but there’s no memorial for World War I until just recently. It’s strange because there wouldn’t have been a World War II without World War I. I don’t mean that just because you can’t have two without the one. I’m referring to the conditions created by World War I that led to World War II.
I am constantly astonished by how many good subjects there are out there who have not gotten attention. There are so many stories that haven’t been told and in mass communication, we really have the capacity to tell a lot of really interesting and important stories that deserve to be told. In the area of foreign policy and foreign affairs, it’s quite extraordinary how it gets even less attention from mass communication scholars than you would expect. Foreign affairs is rarely covered, but it doesn’t mean it’s not covered at all.
Q: Why do you think Whitehouse isn’t highlighted as one of the many notable Suffragists in American History?
Hamilton: I wonder about that too. You go look at books on suffrage and you don’t see that many books about many figures. I don’t get it.
Oden: I agree. I was surprised to learn just what a large role she had in the New York Suffrage Movement because she’s not a name that you hear about. We do hear about New York suffrage, but Whitehouse’s name doesn’t come up. She was really focused on the state’s efforts, and she later addressed suffrage on the national level. I think we need to devote more attention to some of the state level movements throughout the country because I’m sure there are probably a lot of other Suffragists that deserve a lot more attention as well.
Hamilton: One thing that distinguishes Whitehouse from others is that her engagement with the Suffrage Movement didn’t span decades before the war. I don’t think you would find her name in 1905 because most of her work started in 1913. That’s a relatively short period to be an organizer. Subsequently, she still gave support to the movement, but she wasn’t one of those names that had been fighting for this year after year. The second thing is that she did other things. She worked for the CPI and decided to start her own business which turned out to be extremely successful. Whitehouse had an advantage because her husband was fabulously wealthy, so they bought an old company, and she made it into a prosperous company. Whitehouse wanted to show that women can be in business.
Maybe there’s another way to talk about her than we did in the paper. Whitehouse had the capacity because she came from wealth, she had time and she had assets. So, Whitehouse had her advantages, but she also had her own idea of what she wanted to be. She wasn’t a conformist, instead she was a strong person and didn’t want to be just one thing.