Documentary News Letter (1941)

DOCLME.NTAKY NHWS I.EITKR MAY .1941 r.iNtcr than Hnglishnicn I replied thai when it is a problem of thinking in a straight line, Canadians think much lastcr ; but that when it comes to thinking in live concentric circles, the Englishmen are undoubtedly the best. Our policy. hov\evcr. when we send Canadian tilms abroad IS to invite the countries receiving them to remake them in their own style and use their own editorial comment It sounds curious but there are re;illy vast dilVcrenccs o\' mental approach as between ourselves and England. There is even a vast dilFcrencc of approach as between New Zealand and Australia. Me is a very optimistic propagandist who thinks he can pen a mesvige or strike a style which can be called iiilornaiional. I think most of you will have seen LnmUm ( \in Take li. it was a beautiful film but it raises another very special issue of relativity in propaganda, rhal is the difference between primary eUccts and secondary effects. You might call it the difference between conscious and subconscious effects. Lotuton Can Take It created enormous sympathy for England and so far so gix)d. The question is whether crc;iting sympathy necessarily creates confidence. I am going lo le;ivc you to work out that pyschological problem for yourselves. I only cite it to indicate that in the art of propaganda many deep considerations have to be taken into account. Short range results arc not necessarily long range successes. Conscious effects may not necessarily engage the deeper loyalties of the sub-conscious. In propaganda you may all too easily be here today and gone tomorrow. ,MI in all, however, one may be proud of many things in England's Information Service. It has followed its own native light and no one will siiy it has not been a noble light. It has not been scientific, but neither has it been cynical. To its scientific critics it has said with Sir Philip Sidney "If you will only look in thy heart and write, all will be well". I am of the scientific school myself and would leave less to chance in a hard and highly mobilised world. But no one will deny that at least half the art of propaganda lies in the ultimate truth that truth will ultimately conquer. I i>r mvself, I w.itch the German procx'dure and wish a little sometimes that we could, without running over into harshness and bl.ii.mcy, brag a little more about ourselves and put our propaganda more plainly on the olfensive They have flooded the world with pictures of action, of their young troops on the in.irch and going placxs. of deeds done. I confess 1 hate to see them getting away with it. Ihc dermans have, in their pictures to Amcrici, laid a spcci.il emphasis on youth and eHiciency and. to peoples starved o[' tx:licf in the luiiirc, they have drummed away with their idci of a new world order. They have most subtly shown grc.ii respect in their presentation of ihcir I rcnch and I nglish prisoners of war Hi! . ■ I K.l the model dis«.iplinc of their ' ipicd territories They h.ive most * nied the I uhrcr as a gentle and ;'U .o .!. .keeping over his wounilcd soldiers. kind to children, humble in his triumphs. It is a calculated, impressive and positive picture as they present it. The Germans' careful study of the requirements of particular countries must have had particular effect in South America. They have appreciated the South American objection to being exploited b> alien capital and have posed carefully as the outside friend who wished nothing so much as to help them be themselves and develop themselves. They have known how to pump in free news services to countries which appreciated them by radio from Berlin, translated and typed out and put pronto on the editorial desk by local German agents. On the special national days of these countries to the South, they have known how to shoot flattering broadcasts from Berlin, in the language of the country and with the fullest knowledge of the local vanities to be flattered. The Germans have known better than to say, as a certain well-known American said of cultural relations with South America, that "the idea was to spread the American idea to the South American Republics". I have no doubt he thought the American idea God's own blessing to mankind, but it is worth remembering that not a few South Americans, allied to a more aristocratic and courtly tradition, still regard the American idea as the ultimate in barbarism— or as a French jester has put it, an idea "which has passed from barbarism to degeneracy without any intervening period of civilisation". The Germans certainly know better than to define their interest in South America with the naivete of an advertisement in Time. "Southward", it declares, in a phrase which will raise every hackle South of the Rio Grande. "Southward, lies the course of Empire". Where the Germans fail is in the lact that their cold-blooded cynicism spills over and is spotted. You can impress other countries with your might and your will. You may even impress them with your new world order. But you can't start blatantly talking of conscicntx as a chimera ; morals as an old wives' talc : the Christian religion .IS a dream of vvc;iklings; and the pursuit of truth as bourgeois fiddle-faddle, without raising a few doubts in the heart of m.inkind. PART III Dcmocraey's Special Need of PrnpaKandd iiNMtY, there is propaganda within our gates. I suggested earlier that faith must be met with greater faith and that our first line oi defencx is in the unity of our purpose in these ideological struggles which arc now upon us. It would be Ignominious if. in spite of the bravery and sacrifice by land and sea and air. Hitler's terrible dictum were to prove right ; that democracy has no convictions for which it will light to the end that it is divided in interest and ide.i that, divisible, it can be defeated. The challenge to us IS very plain. It is to discover within ourselves a singleness, surety and unity of purpose which will defy all ideological cnticxmcnt and temptation. It is the function of propaganda to ensure this result within our gates. A democracy by its vrry nature and bv very virtues lies wide open to division and i. cxrtainty. It encourages disc'ussjon: it permits free criticism; it opens its arms wide to the preaching of any and every doctrine. It guards jealously this liberty of the individual, for it is of the esseiKC of dcn>ocracy and. in the long run, makes for justice and civilisation. But in times of stress it IS difikult to sec the wood for the trees. Whilst we arc consulting this freedom and that, we may lose that discipline, that centralised power and dynamic, by which the principle of liberty itself is safeguarded from those who are less punctilious. When we are challenged in our philosophy and our w-ay of life, as we arc today, the beginning is not in the word but in the act. The Nazi viewpoint is that we have not found within our democratic way of life a suflicicnt dynamic of action to meet their challenge — that it is not in our nature to find it and that we shall not find it. "The opposition," says Hitler, "is dismally helpless, incapable of acting, because it has lost every vestige of an inner law of action." In the long run they will find that is noi true but it would be folly for us to dismiss \^ criticism without thinking about it. All of know that the self-respect of free men prov;. the only lasiinn dynamic in human society . if you want to sec the most powerful and vivid statement of this proposition I recommend you to read again Walt VS'hitrrun's preface to his Leaves of Grass. But w« also know that free men arc relatively slow in the up-take in the first days of crisis. We know that much that has become precious to free men in a liberal regime must be forsworn in these days of diflkxilty— the luxury of private possession and private security -the luxury of private deviation in thought and action the supreme luxury of arguing the toss. Moreover, your individual trained in a liberal regmK demands automatically that he be pcrsuoiled <o his sacrifice. It may sound exasperating but he demands as of right — of human nght that he t-ome in only of his own free will. .Ml this points to the fact (hat instead of propaganda being less necessary in a democTBcy. it IS more neccs-sary. In the authoritarian State you have powers of compulsion and powers of repression, physicd and mental, which in part at least take the placx of persuasion. Not so in a democracy. It is y.iur dcmocTat who most needs and demands guidance from his leaders. It IS the denuKratic leader who most must give It. If only for the sake oi guick decision and common action, it is democracy for which propaganda is the more urgent rnxcssity. There IS another deep rcasttn for the dcveJopnKnt of propaganda in a dcnnvracy . You know how the educational beliefs of democracy have licen criticised. "Lniverxil education." say iIk Na/is. "is the most corroding and dismtcgniii poison that liberalisin ever invented for its .< destruction." This, of course, is another o tortion. but there is again a gram of truth. W iih univcrvil education. denKxracy has set iLscIf an enormous and an enormously ditlkult task. We have had it '•" •■• > " -'"rr pencrTitions