Scott Cutlip
Dean Emeritus, School of Journalim and Mass Communications, University of Georgia
1987

"Architect of Modern Army Public Relations"

To download a printable version of this speech, click here.

It is truly a high honor for me to receive this recognition from your Society, It is most gratifying to me near the end of a 53-year career in public relations and journalism to be linked with the name of Arthur W Page, whom I have long admired and who touched my life in an indirect, but nonetheless meaningful way.

I count myself the luckiest of persons for having veered into university teaching in 1946. I can't imagine a higher satisfaction than the reward that comes from the success and gratitude of former students. High on the list of these satisfactions was guiding more than 130 military officers through their master's program at the University of Wisconsin from 1947 until I left there in 1975.

For this experience, Arthur Page was indirectly responsible. Thus, I have chosen to focus on his influential role in shaping the postwar army public relations program. As he has influenced my life, I know that he has influenced yours, as well as today's public relations practices and corporate business policies. His influence remains strong in all matters he touched.

I met Mr. Page only once when, on March 10, 1959, he kindly received me to hear my plea for the deposit of his papers in the Mass Communications Center of Wisconsin's State Historical Society, a project on which I worked for many years. After hearing me out, Mr. Page, in a wry understatement, said: "I do have a few letters that I want to read one of these days." He later called in his secretary, Ms. Ethel Betts, and said, "They want me to give my papers to the State Historical Society in Wisconsin, but I have made no commitment." These papers cover his work outside AT&T.

Now that I have come to know Mr. Page rather well through his correspondence and memos, I know that he wanted to consult his beloved wife, Mollie, and his children before coming to a decision in such an important family matter.

It is evident from his papers that he was a devoted husband and father and involved them in all major family decisions. For example, in 1927 when it became clear that the second generation of Doubleday Page had different goals for the firm, he recalled "I finally got it into my mind that I didn't want to follow Nelson Doubleday's path for the rest of my life. I told Mollie, 'I am going to quit this thing.' " She was fully supportive. The next day by chance he met with his Harvard classmate, Walter Gifford, to give Gifford his reaction to a proposed history of AT&T which Gifford had asked for.

As Page started to leave, Gifford asked him, "Arthur, are you wedded to the publishing business?" Page recalled later, "So I told him that if AT&T were serious about it... that is, I didn't want to go in there as a publicity man, but if they were serious about taking my point of view as a general policy, nothing would please me more than to try to do something instead of telling everybody else to do it."

Thus this is how Page came to AT&T to build one of the strongest, most sophisticated corporate public relations programs in the nation.

I got off the track back there, but I thought you would be interested in knowing how he came to what he always referred to in his correspondence as "the telephone business."

Incidentally, the parting of Page and Nelson Doubleday was evidently not pleasant. When he was asked to write a piece for Doubleday's 50th anniversary publication, he handed the letter to his secretary with this.note, "Let's file this and let it die a natural death."

The upshot of my visit with Mr. Page was more successful than I sensed at the time. We kept in touch with him and kept him informed of the progress on the Center until his death in 1960. Two years later, we were informed by his son, Walter, that Mrs. Page was donating his papers to our Center. This was a great coup for us. I doubt that his alma mater, Harvard, for which he did so much, has forgiven us to this day.

In 1963 Walter and Jane Page kindly invited me to the Page home, County Line, to sort out the papers we thought important to preserve. When I got there I found that those "few letters" filled 14 four-drawer filing cabinets in the study he had built behind his home at Huntington, Long Island. When I finished my three-day task of coming to know this remarkable man through his writings, I had sorted out enough papers to fill six filing cabinets. It was a rewarding and exhilarating experience.

By the way, I found one folder missing from the inventory his secretary had prepared. It was entitled "Bourbon." I asked Walter about it and he said, "I am keeping that one."

As some of you who knew him are aware, Arthur Page enjoyed his bourbon. His interest in his favorite drink shows up repeatedly in his letters. One reflected great impatience with National Distillers, makers of Old Granddad, because they didn't know the origin of bourbon whiskey. Mr. Page wrote a friend after the 1952 election, "With Eisenhower in the White House and a case of Jack Daniels in my house, all's right with the world." Mr. Page played a meaningful role in pushing Eisenhower toward the Presidency, a matter I will touch upon later.

Right here let me stop and urge you of the Arthur W Page Society to put your records, papers, addresses and so forth in the Mass Communications History Center. They will provide a rich supplement to the Page Papers, which are now carefully cared for by the Historical Society.

To assess Mr. Page's role in the craft we ply today, I can't improve upon what Allen (Center) and I have written in our books: Among the pioneers shaping today's practice, Arthur W Page stands at the summit. Page built three successful business careers, yet found time to contribute his talent to many public-service endeavors.

In public relations' first half century, Arthur Page was truly the foremost architect of corporate and military public relations as these are practiced today.

Page's philosophy is summed up in this statement: "All business in a democratic country begins with public permission and exists by public approval. If that be true, it follows that business should be cheerfully willing to tell the public what its policies are, what it is doing, and what it hopes to do. This seems practically a duty."

Here I will take a slight detour to take note of unfair attack on Theodore Vail and the public relations practices he used to put AT&T on a sound footing in the first two decades of this century.

Marvin Olasky of the University of Texas in a recent monograph lumped Vail in with the railroad and utility buccaneers of his time. Unlike his counterparts in the utilities business, Vail saw the need for public regulations as the price of a monopoly, which he argued would produce more efficient service at a lower cost.

It is grossly unfair to put Vail and the crook Samuel Insull in the same basket. This does not deny that AT&T did some foolish things in the early '20s, in the immediate years after Vail's death.

A star former student of mine, Connie Conway, laid out Vail's public relations philosophy and practices in a thesis in the late '50s, excerpts of which were printed in the Bell Telephone Magazine Autumn and Winter 1958. She summarized:

"Vail's public relations with the general public were based upon (1) sound financial operations; (2) efficient, economic; and continually improving service to the public interest; (3) the providing of full and honest information regarding the company, its policies, and its purposes; and (4) the creating of an 'army of telephone personnel' trained to recognize and carry out their part as its public relations representatives."

It was upon this platform that Walter Gifford and Arthur Page erected the sophisticated public relations programs of their day.

Second only to Page, in my opinion, in his genius for this new vocation was Louis McHenry Howe, who, more than any other person, put Franklin Roosevelt in the presidency and thus changed our nation's history. Page too left his mark on the nation far beyond the practice of public relations. Both men, for different reasons, shunned the public spotlight and preferred, as one Page biographer has written, "to walk in the shadows."

Arthur Page, true to his Southern heritage, came of age as a conservative Democrat. He was finally driven to register as a Republican at the age of 61 because of his disenchantment with FDR. But he and FDR did have one thing in common: They referred to their evening drinks as "The Children's Hour."

When I got the heartwarming call from Ed Block, happily I was in Madison, where we spend our summers. This sent me to the archives and the Page Papers. I spent many pleasant days getting reacquainted with Arthur Page.

Poring over his correspondence from 1945 to 1949, I gained an even greater admiration of him as a person and of his influence as one of the unseen movers and shakers in politics, in philanthropy, in education and the military of that period. My estimate of Mr. Page is this:

He was a most uncommon man, yet a man with a common touch, one who never forgot his roots in the sand country of Aberdeen, North Carolina. He was a man of great wisdom whose counsel was sought by more persons and institutions than he could accommodate, yet was uncommonly modest. A man of considerable power in the worlds of business, government, philanthropy and education, yet his was a power exercised quietly and with a heavy sense of responsibility.

This is all through his correspondence. He was a man of great integrity but without solemnity and with a wry sense of humor. He wrote effectively in the simplest of prose. John J. McCloy, World War II leader and international banker, once described Mr. Page as "one of the wisest men I have ever known."

Arthur Page lived life to the fullest in his 77 years. He was a strong family man, one totally devoted to his wife and four children. He never let his work rob them of his companionship. He was an enthusiastic and skilled sailor. Many of his happiest moments were sailing with family and friends on Long Island Sound. He enjoyed fishing and hunting, although he professed to be a lousy shot. He played golf, but like many of us was a duffer. He once proudly wrote a friend that he had gotten his game down to 5 or 6 strokes a hole. I can understand that.

He was an avid reader and became quite knowledgeable on American history, for which he had great passion. His correspondence is laden with letters to his sons, daughter and then son-in-law about books to read and with orders for books and magazines to be sent to them.

Busy as he was, he was never too busy to annually order maple syrup from Vermont, hams from Virginia for the holidays and special spices from many climes. All these were ordered for his home in Manhattan and always equal orders for the children. He also found time to order pipes and tobacco, or to complain about the cracked bowl in a pipe he had received.

However trite the line, Arthur W Page was truly a wonderful and influential person, a man for all seasons.

You of the Arthur W Page Society know full well the lasting effects of his role in shaping the philosophy and practice of corporate public relations.

Thus, I will devote my time to something you perhaps know less well, Arthur. Page's role as the architect of the Army's postwar public relations programs. It was here that our paths crossed, however remotely.

I use the title of "architect" in this paper advisedly. When young and pondering his career choice, he intended to be an architect. But because of his great confidence in his father, Walter Hines Page, he agreed to go into editorial work with Doubleday Page.

Arthur Page's involvement in Army public relations dates from World War I and came about somewhat accidentally. He sailed to England in the summer of 1918 to see his father and accompany the Ambassador home because his ill health was compelling him to resign his post.

As an aside, Woodrow Wilson's final decision to run for President was made in the Walter Hines Page home on 66th Street in New York. Page provided Wilson with one of his World's Work staffers, Frank Parker Stockbridge, as a publicist, then an innovation in politics, for Wilson's Western speaking trip which ultimately led to his nomination a year later.

Diplomat Hugh Gibson, a family friend then serving in the French Embassy, suggested to General Noland, the G-2 in Pershing's headquarters, that he send for Arthur to help with the Army's propaganda. Page was offered a captain's commission to come to Paris for this purpose. Captain Walter Lippmann was in charge of editing propaganda documents, assisted by Page and Lt. E. M. Wooley.

As Page remembers it, Lippmann was in the unit "for a few minutes" and then 'bent on the other things." Page was asked to prepare leaflets to be dropped behind enemy lines. His main effort was leaflets intended for German soldiers in an effort to get them to surrender. Page very simply set forth the Army's regulation for treatment of captured soldiers, the POW menus, and the number of Germans who had surrendered the previous week, a very simple piece of communication.

From September 6, until the end of the war, nearly 5 million pamphlets and leaflets were sent by Page's unit to GHQ for delivery to the Germans. On November 10, 1918, Page received this telegram: "CAPT. ARTHUR W PAGE; AMERICAN EMBASSY, PARIS; NOV. 10, 1918. CEASE SHIPMENTS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. OUR WORK HAS BEEN TOO SUCCESSFUL. BLANKENHORN."

Incidentally, the first commission issued to Page was lost en route, sunk by a German sub. The second one arrived about a week before the end of the war and Page chose not to accept it for fear it would delay his return to civilian life. Thus his no-pay service ended with the Armistice.

Page would later write in a War Department memo, "Propaganda is a maternity gown out to hide the true figure of fact . . . . public relations, to the contrary, is a way of life."

Thus did Page begin a 42-year association with Army public relations.

He would write in his consulting years, "I also keep working for the Army in one way or another. There is no profit in it but it is interesting." In another place he wrote, "I believe in the Army as much as anyone." No civilian supporter of the military ever contributed more to its support.

Page's next involvement in military affairs came with the onslaught of World War II. Page was a close neighbor, friend and confidant of Col. Henry Stimson. He recalls in his reminiscences that after the Pages moved to Long Island, near the Stimsons, "three times out of four we would go up there for Sunday dinner. He was an inherited Republican and I was an inherited Democrat but there was no difference in our views."

When Stimson became Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover in 1929, he urged his friend and neighbor to become an assistant secretary of state - presumably for public affairs. Page declined because "I couldn't see any way of making a living from there on, which I had to do." Stimson was able to persuade Page to accompany him to the London Naval Conference in 1930 as an advisor and to handle the US. delegation's press relations. Page served with Stimson for three months on this assignment.

The friendship of these two able men spanned 35 years. They were great friends but in the view of contemporaries there appears to have always been an "aide to colonel" spirit running through their relationship. The formality of their extensive correspondence belies their deep mutual respect. This is reflected in this passage in Elting Morison's biography of Stimson:

"Then in the first days of 1945, he [Stimson] asked Arthur Page to come down to the Pentagon where Page was to be given an office with practically nothing to do. As the days passed, it dawned on Page that he was there to listen to the Secretary, who wanted 'someone that he knew he could trust, that had no stake in the game, with whom he could talk about the atom bomb'."

Incidentally, Stimson asked his son-in-law, McGeorge Bundy, and Page to serve as his literary executors and it was they who chose Morison as Stimson's biographer.

But back to the beginning of Page's World War II service . . .

As the war clouds grew darker over the United States, President Roosevelt, in an effort to build bipartisan support for the defense and later the war effort, drafted two prominent Republicans into his cabinet - Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy and Col. Henry Stimson as Secretary of War.

Stimson didn't wait long to, in turn, draft his friend and counselor, Arthur Page. Early in 1941 Secretaries Stimson, Knox and Federal Security Administrator Paul V. McNutt came to realize that a joint effort would be required to provide for the recreational and social needs of the burgeoning military forces. The new organization, called the Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation, was to coordinate the programs of all government and private agencies concerned with the welfare of troops. Incidentally, out of this committee came the USO.

Page first became involved in the Committee's work in 1942, as chairman of the subcommittee on radio. That committee's principal task was to obtain radio-phonograph units for the troops. The work of this subcommittee was barely under way when the general chairman, Fowler Harper, resigned. Stimson insisted that Arthur Page take the general chairmanship. Page proceeded to build a powerful committee with a far-reaching effort to minister to the social, welfare, and recreational needs of our global fighting forces. That, perhaps, is a topic for another paper.

It appears from the Page correspondence that by the spring of 1944 Arthur Page was becoming restive. All the programs he had devised for the Joint Committee were running smoothly. The three Page sons and his son-in-law were serving in the Navy in the four corners of the earth. Wartime restrictions limited his recreations of hunting, fishing and family visits. He felt he was not doing enough in the war effort.

It may be presumed - there's no evidence for this - that he communicated this to his good friend and neighbor. That spring, Page was sent to the European Theater to help orient the troops with information for the pending invasion of Europe. He was sent to assist Col. Oscar N. Solbert, Chief of Special Services for the European Theater. He expected the job to take about six weeks, but he stayed for three months, until after the invasion of Normandy. He went with the assimilated rank of colonel, because he thought that he could be more effective as a civilian than as a Johnny-come-lately officer.

In this assignment, Page outlined a program of information for the invading troops. In the process of this work he came to know General Eisenhower, a relationship that would mean much to both men down the road.

To the Atomic Bomb. On April 5,1945, Secretary Stimson asked him to come to Washington on a full-time basis for duty as a temporary special consultant.

"I was given an office and a stenographer with little to do. A lot of papers would cross my desk but they didn't mean much to me," Page later recalled. After about a month, Page discovered what was troubling the Colonel. He needed someone in whom he had absolute trust to talk to about the atomic bomb and whether to use it.

Page recalls: "The Colonel had to make up his own mind and then make the recommendation to President Truman. I didn't have half as much conscience about it as he did." Page also admitted that this "was a tough secret to live with."

The New York Times reported the appointment and said Page would work with Major General A. D. Surles, chief of the Army Bureau of Public Relations. This was in a sense a "cover story" but one that would, in time, come to have great significance for Army public relations. There is between the lines evidence that Page helped sway Stimson in the direction of using the bomb. Understandably, Stimson was deeply troubled by such a terrifying decision.

An interim committee was established to advise the President on whether to drop the bomb or not. As we all know, the fateful decision that changed the history of the world was made in the affirmalive. Stimson asked a military aide in his office, Lt. Col. Charles T. Arnett, to draft the memorandum for the President to give the background of the development of the atomic bomb and the public announcement. The Secretary then gave these to Page to edit and rewrite if necessary. Stimson did not make a single change in Page's version, but Page thinks Truman made some minor changes before issuing the announcement. Here's where it gets a little fuzzy. In writing to a friend 10 years later, Page recalled: "That war period seems a long time back now. It seems another world. In that period I wrote the first atomic message for Truman. I haven't even a copy of it now." So, to what extent he did or did not write, he certainly edited and presented to Stimson and the president the edited versions.

Now we come to our topic - the significant role Arthur Page played in building the foundations for today's modern military public relations - or public affairs, as it is now called in the services.

In the course of his wartime service, Arthur Page came to be highly regarded for his sagacious advice and imagfnative solutions to difficult problems by Generals George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, and other wartime leaders. To expand on an earlier quote by John J. McCloy, then Under Secretary of War under Stimson: "Arthur Page was an excellent team worker during the war and he had the very close confidence of Secretary Stimson. His judgment and advice not only on public relations matters, but indeed on many thorny problems which arose during the war was, in my judgment, invaluable."

Two examples which reflect the esteem in which Page was held:

Many generals and other high officials in the War Department, quite apprehensive at the public opinion forcing rapid dismantlement of our Army after the war, thought the Army should pursue the example of having an Army League or a National Defense League. General J. Lawton Collins sought Arthur Page's advice. Page recommended against such an Army League saying, "Its bad features are that pressure groups often do as much harm as good because the opposition to their wishes find in them a target."

Page recommended as an alternative the establishment of civilian advisory committees to each post commander. Collins responded in a letter dated September 20,1945: "I agree fully with your views and several weeks ago issued instructions to discontinue action toward such an overall organization for the Army." He also adopted the idea of civilian advisory committees. Collins, with whom Page worked closely in building the postwar army program, died three weeks ago at the age of 91.

The second example of the validity of McCloy's judgment: Soon after President Truman appointed General Marshall as Secretary of State in 1947, the general asked Page to join his administration as an Assistant Secretary of State. This was the second time such an offer had come to him.

In a letter dated October 21, 1947, Page wrote Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett: "I cannot cut all the connections I have established and ever get back to them again in their present form. Nor would it be easy to establish a one-man business twice - once at age 63 and again on a new basis at age 65. I write this with genuine regret." He also offered to continue to serve on a volunteer basis. And did.

The Page Report: In the spring of 1945 Arthur Page was doing much more than serving as Stimson's confidential sounding board. Ostensibly assigned to the War Department Bureau of Public Relations, he was studying the Army's organization for public relations, internal communications and legislative liaison.

As a result of his study, he came up with the now famous - at least in Pentagon circles - Page Report, entitled "Good Public Relations - Its Aims and Principles." You of the Bell System would recognize its contents as the sound doctrines which guided AT&T for so long.

Page once remarked to a military audience: "We have all the same problems in business you do - except for venereal disease." Page's simple, straightforward report made so much sense that it had far-reaching effects on Army thinking. For a slow-moving, tradition-ridden bureaucracy, the report came to be fully implemented within two years, which is breathtaking if you know the military bureaucracy!

The opening lines were these:

"There is a steadily mounting recognition on the part of the Army, that public opinion is a part of its structure. We are in the public relations business to stay." Thus he renounced the Army's turning inward after this war as it had, to its detriment, after World War I.

He took on the traditional military attitude which scorns public relations, an attitude still prevalent but in lesser degree: "Many officers will argue strongly," Page wrote, "that military reasons alone should govern military decisions. Nothing in their intensive military education has indicated to them that public reaction is actually a major factor in many planning and command decisions made on a high level. In fact, some will contend that such a consideration is a sign of weakness."

'To counter this military attitude, Page wrote: "For the Army, more than any other commercial establishment, public relations is a very important function because, in a democracy, the people are the Army's boss. In the final analysis, they run the Army. They are the ultimate CO. In that status, they are entitled to know everything about how it runs and what it does. Only to the extent, furthermore, that they have confidence in its policies and leadership, can the Army put into effect the action it believes necessary to national defense."

To implement such a program requires skilled, specialized personnel. Page addressed that need this way: "There are two ways of building an organization to handle public relations. One is to get outsiders who profess to know what public reactions will be and train them to know the Army. The other is to select men in the Army who know it and let them learn public relations by study and practice. It is after all chiefly a matter of common sense and application to the job. I am sure this latter method will be more attractive."

Out of this recommendation flowed what is today's Defense Information School at Ft. Benjamin Harrison, the successful graduate program which still sends - in smaller numbers however - bright military officers to graduate school, and a few years later, the summer Army Short Course, started in 1959 and still going.

Page's memo was given to the director of the Bureau of Public Relations, to the chief of the legislative and liaison division, and to the general in charge of I. and E. Each gave his enthusiastic support to Page's recommendations.

Next, the Chief of Staff appointed an ad hoc committee consisting of Page, the three division heads and representatives of the major Army commands, to "study and make recommendations concerning the future organization, functions, responsibilities and methods for effecting coordination of these three components in Army public affairs."

In what was record-breaking time for the military, the committee made its recommendations on September 8, 1945, to the Deputy Chief of Staff, stating "the principles, as expressed by Mr. Page, are sound and should be adopted as policy by the War Department." It is surely something of a record in the Pentagon that only 20 days later the Army issued a press release announcing the reorganization as a fait accompli.

But there was still one of Page's recommendation hanging fire: that public relations, legislative relations and internal information be coordinated "under a Deputy Chief of Staff who would have at least three stars." Page never lost sight of the vital need for public relations to function at a top policy level.

Support for this principle came with the return of General Dwight Eisenhower to the Pentagon as Army Chief of Staff on November 19, 1945. As he has demonstrated in Europe, Ike had a keen appreciation of the importance of public opinion. He wrote in this period as Chief of Staff "National security, as I see it, is a state of organized readiness to meet external aggression by quick and effective mobilization of public opinion, trained men, proved weapons and essential industries, integrated into the most efficient of armed defense, and reinforced by every citizen."

Note that Eisenhower puts first in this list of requirements, "a quick and effective mobilization of opinion" - a lesson recent leaders seem not to understand. Eisenhower and Page saw eye to eye on these and broader matters. They dined together frequently in the Chief of Staff's dining room.

Out of their association, Page developed a profound admiration for the general. He recalled: "I had discovered when I was helping these fellows on the public relations thing, that Ike had been one of the best expositors in the Army. He was one of the best writers they had, facile and clear. He was a fellow of very wide knowledge."

A by-product of this relationship was Page's introduction of Ike to the New York power structure in a series of dinners. The implication in the Page correspondence is clear that Page did much to promote Eisenhower into the presidency of Columbia.

One of Eisenhower's earliest actions to put Page's thoughts into practice was his appointment of Lt. Gen. Collins as Director of Information. Page worked closely with the general in getting things moving. Collins put Page's proposals into effect. "Lightning Joe" later wrote: "I came to know Mr. Page and greatly admired him. His advice and counsel to me was invaluable."

One of the first steps was to establish an Army Information School where officers and enlisted men could be trained in the techniques of publicity and the principles of public relations. Page had observed that the practical relations of the Army with the people who support it and who in war make up the bulk of it is not a subject of instruction to any extent at West Point or in the service and staff schools.

Late in 1945 he won an agreement on the establishment of an information school, which was located at Carlisle Barracks the next January. Brig. Gen. W. B. Palmer was placed in charge. General Palmer knew little of public relations but did know how to go about setting up a military school. The first class opened on March 12, 1946, and General Palmer asked Page to address the first class because:

"You personally are more responsible, I believe, for the establishment of this School than any other individual. I shall never feel that the School is properly inaugurated until you come here to address it." Page accepted and his talks became a standard part of the curriculum. Page also recruited other outstanding speakers for the school, such as Arthur Sulzberger and Tommy Ross. He kept in close touch with Palmer and his successors. In late 1946 the school and Army public relations appeared threatened by an economy wave being imposed on the Army.

Page wrote General Collins: "As one who has for 10 years given the Government in taxes nearly twice as much as I have had left with which to do a number of things, I have sympathy with economy... whatever degree the Information Services are cut down in Army personnel no saving is made whatever. It merely means that these men's pay is shifted to another part of the budget. To reduce an old established service such as the engineers does not indicate a lack of faith. Any serious reduction to a small budget of a newly established service... may indicate a lack of confidence in it and endanger its usefulness." With good reason Col. Frank Dorn, the assistant commandant of the school at that time, praised Page as "the father of the Army Information School."

Page's recommendation for the graduate schooling of bright Army officers with PR aptitudes was implemented in late 1946 by General Jacob Devers, commander of Army Ground Forces, taking the initiative. The following comes out of Page's correspondence. Generals Marshall and Eisenhower, reflecting on their World War II experience in the matter of Army personnel, had concluded that officers who had been sent to engineering schools for advanced degrees and those who had become Rhodes Scholars performed, on the whole, with more distinction than straight West Point graduates. This led to a post-war civilian schooling program in several disciplines, among these journalism.

At the urging of his PR aide, Lt. Col. Chester V. "Ted" Clifton, General Devers sought applicants for a graduate program in journalism. Some twenty applied. The schools of journalism at Columbia, Wisconsin, and Missouri were queried, chosen on the basis of their reputations. Columbia declined to participate because its Graduate School of Journalism would accept only liberal arts graduates and this eliminated West Pointers.

We at Wisconsin readily responded, but before we were through, our Graduate School also had reservations because they couldn't interpret West Point's numerical grading system. Finally, they accepted West Pointers on probation. The Army officers' performance soon erased all doubts.

Lt. Col. Clifton then presented General Devers with six names, three to go to Wisconsin and three to go to Missouri. General Devers struck off one name and inserted Lt. Col. Clifton's.

In January, 1947 Clifton, Lt. Col. Kenneth Lay and Captain Kenneth Stark arrived on a snowy Wisconsin campus to launch a most successful educational effort, one that has given me both great pride and satisfaction.

While a graduate student at Wisconsin, the brilliant Clifton drafted a blueprint for the celebration of the university's Centennial celebration in 1948-49, which in turn led to my being made assistant to the president - no collusion. In 1961, while serving as deputy chief of Army information, Clifton was drafted by President-elect Kennedy to be his military aide. Kennedy was urged to make this choice by his close friend, Charles Bartlett, columnist Marquis Childs, and other newspaper writers. They told the young President that he could get two for the price of one - an experienced public relations officer as well as a professional soldier, to serve as his military coordinator. Clifton was deeply involved in JFK's public relations.

Incidentally, when Col., later General, Clifton went in to inform the then Chief of Staff of the Army, General Decker, he said, "He can't do that, he didn't go through channels." General Clifton said, "General, if you want to tell the Commander in Chief he can't do something, you'll have to tell him. I won't."

Clifton retired from the Army half way through the Johnson Administration as a Major General to become a Washington counselor. He is still active in that capacity. He was the first of many outstanding students to go through the program at Wisconsin. Five of my former students have served as chiefs of Army public affairs - as it is now called; two as chiefs of Naval Public Affairs, two as chiefs of Marine Corps public affairs, and others in high posts in the military and in the White House. One became a 4-star general, another a 3-star general.

One of these outstanding students, Capt. Robert B. Sims, stepped down only last week as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. The military got its buck's worth in this program which, unfortunately, has been permitted to diminish in effectiveness.

In 1959, now General Clifton and I put together an eight weeks summer course for Army information officers to supplement the work of the Defense Information School, which is primarily for enlisted personnel. This program, too, was quite productive for Army public relations. It continues at the University of South Carolina where it was moved sometime after I left Wisconsin.

After this and more flowed from the now celebrated Page Memo of 1945.

Two years after he drafted the Army public relations program, architect Page appeared gratified with the results. In May, 1947, he wrote Capt. Arthur Dreyer, then in graduate school at Missouri, "As far as I know, the Army's are set up on as sound a basis as the public relations of any industry." Two weeks later he wrote General Collins, "The Army seems to me to be building its public relations on a sound basis which will increasingly produce good results as time goes on."