"Just the old-fashioned grippe": wartime censorship and the 1918 flu

Series: How minds are moved · The official line vs what people lived · 7 of 7

Around 20 September 1918 the Arkansas Gazette quoted Dr J.C. Geiger of the US Public Health Service in Little Rock: the new disease, he said, was “the plain old ‘La Grippe’”. On 29 September, a young army doctor at Camp Devens near Boston wrote to a friend that the camp was burying about a hundred men a day, turning blue and suffocating within hours. On 28 September, Philadelphia let about 200,000 people pack the streets for a war-bonds parade. Within a few weeks, the city was losing thousands a week. The pandemic killed about 675,000 Americans, and tens of millions worldwide.

And we still call it the “Spanish” flu, because Spain was the one big country whose newspapers were free to report it.

Contents · 8 sections

TL;DR #

• In 1918, countries at war censored news of sickness to protect morale and keep the enemy in the dark. Neutral Spain’s press reported its epidemic openly, so the disease got its name.
• In the US, the Sedition Act of May 1918 made “disloyal” speech about the war a crime. Editors did not need orders to play down bad news.
• The official line ranged from “the plain old ‘La Grippe’” to “don’t frighten people” to blaming German agents. The President never spoke publicly about the pandemic.
• Philadelphia held its parade on 28 September; St. Louis cancelled its own and closed public places early. A 2007 study found St. Louis’s peak weekly death rate was about one-eighth of Philadelphia’s.
• The lesson is not “officials always lie”. The bulletins were mixed, and the doctors honestly did not know the cause. It is about what happens when keeping calm becomes more important than keeping people informed.

What it is #

The first chapter of the book I am writing, SHTF vs STFU, is about 1918, and it is called “Just the Old-Fashioned Grippe”. It comes first because so many reassuring sentences I later found in other centuries and countries appear here first: don’t frighten people, it’s the ordinary kind, the enemy did it, talk about cheerful things.

The mechanism is morale-first communication: when a government is fighting a war, every piece of bad news is judged first by its effect on the war effort, and only second by its use to the person reading it.

How it works #

Make the law, and let self-censorship do the rest. The US Sedition Act of May 1918 made it a crime, with up to twenty years in prison, to publish disloyal language about the government or the war effort. The Committee on Public Information existed to keep morale up. Nobody had to order newspapers to minimise an epidemic; editors understood that frightening news was close to disloyal. Britain, France and Germany had military censors keeping news of sick troops out of the papers. The enemy must not know your army was ill.

Name it after someone else. Spain was neutral, and its press was not under wartime censorship. When the flu reached Madrid in May 1918, Spanish papers reported it, and when King Alfonso XIII fell ill, the story went around the world. Readers in countries whose own papers said little about the sickness at home read about an epidemic “in Spain”. The Spanish, for their part, called it the French flu. The name of the pandemic is itself a monument to censorship: the country that reported honestly got the blame.

Reassure, then advise not to talk about it. In Little Rock, the federal health officer called it “the plain old ‘La Grippe’”. In Philadelphia, according to later studies of the newspapers, the press criticised health officials for frightening people and suggested not even discussing it. A maker of cold remedies advertised that this was just old-fashioned flu under a new name.

Blame the enemy. On 17 September 1918, an official of the government’s shipbuilding programme, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Doane, suggested that German agents landed from U-boats might have released “Spanish influenza germs” in theatres. There was never any evidence for this.

Say nothing at the top. President Woodrow Wilson never made a public statement about the pandemic. When he caught it himself in Paris in April 1919, his doctor told the press he had a cold.

What people lived #

In my library, on the Gutenberg shelf, there is a dry report published in 1920 by Oscar Jewell Harvey for the relief committee of Luzerne County, a coal-mining county in Pennsylvania. Read closely, it shows where the priorities were. Nurses and doctors were recalled to war service in the middle of the epidemic; the committee begged Washington to let them stay so that coal production could continue. The instructions to volunteers said to impress on people how serious things were, but: “Don’t frighten people about the situation.” On 28 October the committee decided all epidemic news would come through one official, because newspaper reports were “not accurate”. Perhaps they were not. But the answer chosen was not better figures. It was control over who could publish any.

In Philadelphia, the city’s public health director, Dr Wilmer Krusen, was under pressure to let the Liberty Loan parade go ahead, and did. Within days, the historian John Barry writes, the hospitals were full. On 3 October the city closed schools, churches and theatres. In October about 4,500 people died in a single week. Bodies lay in houses for days; a steam shovel dug trenches for burials. Historians still argue how much the parade itself, rather than the virus already spreading, made the difference.

In St. Louis, the health commissioner Dr Max Starkloff closed schools, churches, theatres and gatherings two days after the first civilian cases, and the city’s parade was cancelled. The 2007 study of seventeen US cities by Hatchett, Mecher and Lipsitch found St. Louis’s peak death rate, about 31 per 100,000 a week, was roughly one-eighth of Philadelphia’s, about 257.

The starkest pair is in the Pacific. In Western Samoa, under New Zealand administration, a ship with sick passengers was allowed to dock on 7 November 1918, and about one in five people died. In American Samoa nearby, the governor closed the ports. Influenza deaths there: zero. New Zealand later apologised to Samoa.

Romania met the flu exhausted by war and typhus. It peaked as the country was being reunited. On 1 December 1918 more than 100,000 people gathered at Alba Iulia. According to a historian at the Museum of the Union, several leaders came sick, and many people wore garlic around their necks for protection. Whether the gathering spread the flu, the archives do not say.

What it can and cannot do #

Two cautions, for fairness. First, the official line was mixed, not simply false. The US Surgeon General, Rupert Blue, described early cases as looking like ordinary grippe, but also warned of sudden onset and, by late September, called for closures. Second, the doctors genuinely did not know what they were fighting. Most believed influenza was caused by a bacterium, and made vaccines against the wrong germ. At the end of 1918 England’s chief medical officer, Arthur Newsholme, admitted he knew of no public health measure that could stop pandemic influenza.

So censorship did not cause the pandemic, and no honest message would have stopped the virus. What morale-first messaging did was delay the one thing that demonstrably helped in some places: acting early to keep crowds apart. It also left people to learn the truth from undertakers.

And it can cut both ways. San Francisco made masks compulsory and arrested hundreds who refused; in January 1919 an Anti-Mask League drew about 2,000 people to its first meeting, arguing masks did not work and the order was an attack on liberty. A century later the same arguments came back, almost word for word. Trust lost to reassurance is hard to rebuild for the measures that follow.

How to notice it #

• “Just the ordinary kind.” A new threat described as an old, familiar one, before anyone knows, deserves a question.
• Morale as the stated reason. When “keeping spirits up” is the reason for withholding numbers, ask whose spirits and at what cost.
• One official source only. Centralising news “because the papers are inaccurate” is sometimes justified; check whether better numbers follow.
• The enemy did it. An outside villain with no evidence is a classic way to turn fear into loyalty.
• Silence at the top. If the highest official says nothing during a crisis, that silence is a message too.
• Compare places. Two cities that acted differently will tell you more than any statement.

Frequently asked questions #

Did the 1918 flu start in Spain? #

Almost certainly not. Its origin is still debated: Kansas, France, Britain and China have all been proposed. It is called “Spanish” because Spain’s uncensored press reported it openly.

Was Philadelphia’s parade the cause of its huge death toll? #

It probably made things worse, but how much cannot be measured. The virus was already spreading in the city, and historians still argue about the parade’s share.

Did governments lie about the flu? #

Some messages were misleading, many were mixed, and wartime censorship and self-censorship clearly limited what people were told. But doctors honestly did not know the cause, and some officials gave sound advice.

What actually worked in 1918? #

Early closures and limits on gatherings, kept in place long enough, as in St. Louis, and strict quarantine, as in American Samoa.

The lesson #

The pandemic’s very name is a reminder that the country which told the truth was blamed for it. In 1918 the reassuring sentence was “don’t frighten people”. It was said by people who meant well, during a war, and it cost time that some cities used and others did not. The defence is simple to state: when you are told not to worry, ask what the numbers are, and compare what the next town over is doing.