Propaganda and censorship during Canada's great war
Canadians entered the Great War in August 1914 viewing armed conflict as a rather majestic affair. But before long, opposing armies were slaughtering each other on the battlefield in numbers never equalled before or since. With victory hanging in the balance, both private and governmental opinion-makers began working to prop up notions of the conflict - and the enemy - that sometimes had little to do with the facts. They were guided by concern for security and morale, but they played upon long-established and war-heightened attitudes of imperialism, romanticism and racialism. The press of the day competed for readers with ridiculously upbeat stories. Patriotic editors killed most of the disheartening reports filed from the front, and Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest J. Chambers, Canada's Chief Censor, killed most of the rest. In November 1918, Canadians waited to welcome home the troops. They expected the brave and Christian conquering heroes manufactured by the opinion-makers, rather than the combat-scarred, weary, and often embittered men who disembarked back in the Dominion. It took another decade of less-filtered information - ten years of pain and dislocation for returned veterans - before the Great War imagined by Canadian noncombatants began to resemble the war really experienced by Canadians overseas.