Beware the British Serpent: The Role of Writers in British Propaganda in the United States, 1939–1945

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. His latest works are Who Killed Canadian History?, Who Killed
the Canadian Military, and Hell’s Cor

During the two world wars, Britain worked assiduously to bring the
neutral United States into the struggles. Both times it succeeded, in
part at least because of its efforts at getting its story out to
Americans. The propaganda war was real, and it was harder to manage in
World War II partly because of British success in the 1914 conflict.
“Beware the British serpent!” isolationists cried in their
advertisements, pointing back to 1914–18, as they struggled to keep
the United States out of the European War after 1939. Their efforts were
ultimately doomed by the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, that
turned the war global. In fact, British propaganda seemed markedly less
successful in World War II, in part because lesser lights were involved.
Even so, writers like Somerset Maugham and Vera Brittain and actors like
Noel Coward did their bit; so too did filmmakers and the BBC, the
productions of the latter suffering from the tony accents that it
inflicted on North American listeners.

The University of Saskatchewan’s Robert Calder has written a full
account of the British effort, a study far better than Peter
Buitenhuis’s earlier book, The Great War of Words (1987). Curiously,
Calder has neglected the Canadian role in propaganda in the United
States. Canada was a small player to be sure, but it did work with
Britain in trying to affect the debate in America.