The American psychological warfare effort of 1917-1919 also drew heavily on familiar skills: the American press, second only to that of the British at the time; the church, Y.M.C.A., and Chautauqua groups; and the wealth of private clubs which flourish under our liberal system of laws and usages. Other nationalities made efforts similarly in keeping with their peacetime facilities. The Japanese were adroit, but even at that time confused by the mix-up of trying to be a "civilized" power but simultaneously expansionist. The French showed high professional skill in adapting their military and diplomatic personnel to propaganda tasks. France's position as battleground ensured her of the rage of her own people and the sympathy of neutrals, giving propaganda from Paris a hearing. The Chinese, though undergoing the downfall of the Yüan Shih-k'ai dictatorship and lapsing into chaos, maintained an impeccable diplomatic front and played a weak hand for everything it was worth; they had their private quasi-war with the Japanese in 1915. That they did so while putting the blame for Allied disunity squarely on the Japanese where it belonged is to their credit. The weight of the propaganda war, as of the material war, fell on its prime contestants, Britain, Germany, and the United States. The private and revolutionary groups which emerged as the revolutionary governments played a vigorous part because they had few other functions to distract their attention. The Republic of Czechoslovakia got its start in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1918, and fought psychological warfare from the instant it took form; not till later did it assume the weightier and more expensive responsibilities of ruling and warring. =The British Effort.= In World War I, the British made most of the mistakes and learned most of the lessons which the Americans were to make and to learn in World War II. The British Foreign Office formed a War Propaganda Bureau in 1914, but a great deal of the effort was done by private facilities (patriotic associations) or by lower political and military echelons of the government and armed forces--and without coordination. Things became so confused that at the mid-point of the war, the British organized a Department of Information with Colonel John Buchan at its head. (Buchan will be remembered by all adventure-lovers as author of _The Thirty-nine Steps_, _The Courts of the Morning_, and other first-class thrillers; he was also made a peer under the style, Lord Tweedsmuir, and became a popular Governor-General of Canada.) Buchan did not always get along with the committee which floated above him, telling him how to run his business.