Documentary News Letter (1941)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER, OCTOBER 1941 A CALL TO ACTION False men were afraid and feigned blindness; Some laid their legs under them, as such liars can do. And made their moan for mercy. . . . "This is a wild way without a leader To follow each foot", said the folk together, But Perkin the Plowman answered, "By Saint Peter, I have half an acre to harrow by the highway!" The Vision of Piers Plowman [N THE MIDST of war there is the stirring of a new life, the stirring of people who are young and of the new age. But still in the midst of war there is another stirring, the bustling and bombination of an older age frightened of what is coming. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the field of propaganda, where timidity, evasiveness, ignorance and inaction are 'orming a smokescreen against facts which should in all lonscience be inescapable. The Nazis are waging a total war. This means that all effort s geared to the military scheme. Their use of propaganda, no ess than their use of new strategic tactics in the air or by means )f panzer thrusts, is part of a basic challenge which must be aken up. Our propaganda has had its Norways and its Cretes, 5ven if the defeats have been less immediately obvious and spectacular. In face of facts and of events it is no longer possible to conceive )f propaganda as anything other than a weapon of equal military mportance with Army, Navy or Air Force. We have not mobiUsed our propaganda forces in the national risis. What is the record? Has the film industry been mobilised? Have the production itudios been incorporated in a definite and well-understood 3lan? Have the newsreels been properly utilised? Have short ilm makers been given definite central guidance in their proluction work? Has the dynamic force which lies in the docunentary movement been allowed full outlet? Has there been my planned division of effort in the various fields of propaganda needs? Have the public screens of the country been jiven a fair deal in the matter of propaganda? To all these questions the answer is — No. What are the reasons? Firstly, a basic weakness which is a matter of national ;onscience. Here we refer to our present national leadership vhich, pace Churchill's genius, is coming to be regarded as the eadership of a bygone rather than of a present age. In a world war in which systems of production, economics and ;ocial life are perforce being forged anew by both sides we :annot afford to have our efforts directed by those whose outlook s still dominated by the 19th century. While the R.A.F. is the living example of an organisation of 'outh redressing the tottering balance of age, our services of )ropaganda still represent the strangling of the new by the old. This war has in part consisted most tragically of a series of exposures of inefliciency in all spheres of effort. In each case the inefficiencies have been due to failure to think in new terms. But to think in new terms is the commission of propagandists no less than of generals or admirals or air marshals. Today all over the country people are seeing inefficiency and a laissez-faire (if not reactionary) attitude holding back progressive action in their own particular jobs, and thereby they are, not without justice, beginning to question the efficiency of effort in other fields of which they have not first-hand experience. Said The Times Leader on September 24th : Lay opinion can hardly pass judgment on issues of detail. But it is entitled to tiie assurance that the adjustment (of aid to Russia) is made in accordance with a considered plan of campaign, in which strategy and production both play their part. ... It is also entitled to insist that man-power allocated to industry should produce to full capacity, and should be shackled to no considerations irrelevant to the winning of the war. Here too uncomfortable questions are being asked. Indeed, questions are being asked. And it is the task of propagandists not merely to answer them, but to ask them too. The official propagandists have failed to come up to scratch. There is the sectional interest represented by the Civil Service — as for instance in the exploitation of the propaganda system by departmental politicians. In spite of the machinery which has been set up at the M.O.I., there is still no effective system by which the work of the 25-odd public relations officers of Government departments can be related to a common plan. There is the sectional interest represented by the Film Industry, and we as an industry must in this respect realise that the Trade in all its sections has in itself failed largely to take up its own responsibilities. There is, too, the sectional interest represented by the intelligentsia, who have infected the M.O.I, with the virus o^ dilettantism, which brings with it epidemics of inadequacy blandly self-confessed and excused, epidemics of unbelief, and a constant rash of second-rate energies breaking out in footling and unco-ordinated little enterprises. The question must be asked: Is the present leadership capable of dealing with a new phase of hard and dynamic effort which we must at all costs pursue, or perish? Without for a moment trying to evade our own responsibilities as leaders in our own half-acre, we ask the Minister of