Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MARCH 1942 VALE ATQUE AVE the British Empire, as originally conceived, is breaking up before our eyes. This is not simply because Japan has captured Malaya and the strategic bases of Hong Kong, Singapore and Rangoon, but because, throughout the Colonial Empire and the Dominions, the old bonds are weakening and snapping. When Canada looks for an ally close in spirit and ultimate ambition, she looks not across the Atlantic, but to the United States. In her moment of panic at the rapidity of the Japanese advance, Australia appeals, not to Britain, but to the United States and to Russia. These are signs of a situation to be faced. What was the British Empire? Surely for all practical purposes it was nothing more and nothing less than a variety of conceptions built up in the minds of the peoples of the world by a variety of propagandists. Some of these propaganda conceptions had been created to preserve the Empire, others were designed to destroy it. The images of the Empire which existed in peoples' minds ranged at the one extreme from that of the Empire Day organiser leading British school children in a ritual of map worship, to the Nazi propagandists' opposing picture of a vast slavelabour camp. Both of these pictures are false and out-of-date. In recent years more modern and more enlightened interpretations of the functions of the Empire have grown up. During its unfortunately abbreviated life the Empire Marketing Board did what it could to spread the conception of the Empire as a group of peoples bound together, not by force and exploitation, but by the need to move to a common goal of social and scientific advancement. The Dominions have been coming more and more clearly to see themselves as free creative agents within a forwardlooking commonwealth of nations. Yet black spots of repression and exploitation remained. Imperial policy in the West Indies and in India gave the lie to many an idealistic conception and added fuel to the fire of anti-Imperialist hatred. The Empire has meant many things to many men, each one seeing it in the light of his own ideals and purposes. But the conceptions of Imperialism which move people to action in the present time of testing are the ones that matter. How do the peoples of the Empire see themselves and the Commonwealth to which they belong when the Axis military machine is at the gates? In Malaya the breed of Empire-builders — a special creation of British Imperialism — was suddenly revealed to the Malays and to many other watching races as being not only incompetent in military and civil administration but completely unequal to its responsibilities. This is how the Empire looked in Malaya when the test came. How will it look in India? Is it for images such as this that we dare ask the free peoples of the world to fight and die? It is crystal-clear that whatever the outcome of the war may be the original conception of the Empire is finished. This does not mean that the Japanese are likely to be left in control of their new conquests. The contrary is certain. The Japanese conception of Imperialism is less enlightened even than that of our most apoplectic die-hards. The Japanese will be thrown out and it is possible that the British will go back to some of the territories from which they have been so ignominiously ejected. Yet it is certain that the peoples whose countries have been ravaged by two rival imperialisms are by now too disillusioned to have us back on the old terms. If all that is good in an enlightened interpretation of the responsibilities of empire is to survive, then the successors of the propagandists who designed the old imperial images must create new ones which will serve present and post-war human needs. We must worry less about the white man's burden and more about the white man. The events of recent months have demonstrated that in many territories the white man was capable of carrying no burden whatsoever. Let propagandists have nothing more to do with such anachronisms. The present situation demands that we regard the Empire as a form of organisation which stands in the line of development from nationalism to internationalism. The Empire must be a loose federation of free peoples looking always for new associations outside. It must be prepared to attach itself to any other existing group of peoples on a basis of pure equality. Once fascism is destroyed the world will have no further use for the theory of a dominant race. In any future conception of empire there can be no question of any included people — white or coloured — dominating the rest, economically or militarily. The opportunity already exists for the propagandist to begin building the new federation of nations which must supersede our out-of-date imperialisms. The peoples of the Empire must be encouraged to make direct contact with the great freedom-loving powers outside. Canada must exchange information and ideals with Russia and China; India must make itself known to America and our exiled European allies, and, in return, must communicate to its own people a knowledge of the nature and purposes of these other countries. A recent leader in The Times makes clear the first steps to be taken : "The establishment of full political accord between Britain and Russia will help to make the alliance effective in another sphere im portant for the prosecution of the war. The hopes of a co-ordinated programme for political warfare raised by Sir Walter Monckton's visit to Kuibyshev last autumn have not been realised. Little evidence can be seen of cooperation between British and Russian propaganda services, even in so elementary a matter as broadcasting to enemy countries. 'I he exploitation in broadcasting to Germany so dramatic and fruitful a theme as M. Stalin's Order of the Day was clearly a matter of as much concern to British as to Russian propaganda. So far as can be judged, even the machinery of co-operation scarcely exists at present. The forthcoming appointment of a Press attache to the British Embassy in Russia should provide an opportunity for remedying this defect. But the first condition is undoubtedly a wider political agreement. The lesson that policy is a necessary foundation of effective propaganda is one which this country has been lamentably slow to learn." Such a propaganda-exchange would be for the immediate purpose of winning the war. But the self-protective instinct which is throwing the free peoples together in defence against Fascist aggression is a healthy and a necessary instinct in peace as well as in war. The aggression of the Fascist powers has achieved amongst their enemies a sense of common interest and purpose which would have been unthinkable three years ago. It is the duty of the propagandist to see that this will to common action is forged into a weapon which not only will win the war but which can build the peace. The first necessity is to establish channels for the exchange of information, not so much between Governments as between the peoples they claim to represent. Here is the first task of the propagandist. Until it has been carried out ha\e we any hope of victory? In a time of desperate crisis Australia willingly entrusts her defence to a United States general. The Governments of Australia and the United States set up machinery to operare a common military policy. These are vitally important measures but they symbolise a link of less revolutionary significance than do the thousands of American soldiers, airmen and technicians who throng the streets of Australian cities, rubbing shoulders with citizens of the Empire whose task they have come to share. The war has already seen British airmen lighting in Russia. American airmen in China, Chinese troops defending Burma. It is the job of the propagandists of the United Nations to sec that these emissaries come to mean more to the peoples of the world than the expeditionary forces of previous wars. By a propagandaexchange amongst the warring nations, the pooling of military responsibilities must be maele to symbolise the united aim and the united power of all freedom-loving peoples to build a new order of society vigorous enough to demolish the old national and imperial boundaries.