Yesterday a friend and fellow reader of H.L. Mencken dropped by the store for a personal call. Our acquaintance actually began years ago when he entered my original store in its first year, wondering whether I had any Mencken in stock. That I did sufficiently impressed him to strike up a conversation on the subject of the late essayist and critic. We have been exchanging letters since. Actual – as in written on paper – letters!
Anyway, yesterday I was presented with two copies of The American Mercury, Mencken’s own monthly magazine. One is Volume 2 Number 8, for August of 1924. The other is Volume 7 Number 27 for March of 1926. In the past hour I have had a chance to read a few articles, and came across this in Mencken’s own column in the August 1924 issue:
“The most certain way in which to impress, persuade and convince the American public about the virtue of anything, from a war to a pill, is first, to devise a catchy slogan and, secondly, to make sure it has in it only a minimum of accuracy. The invention of the catch-phrase, ‘To Make the World Safe for Democracy,’ was a masterpiece of boob-fetching, and a not less masterful instance of technic that was displayed by the late Creel Press Bureau when it enlisted the services of a number of writers of popular fiction to make the public swallow the slogan, and the war, whole……” He later writes as a conclusion, “The American public thinks in terms of catch-phrases. It remembers the Maine, says it with flowers, and needs no stropping or honing to sharpen its gullibility.”
Insightful even 85 years later.