Can Peace be Advertised ?

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 144, 14 March 1931, Page 20

Can Peace be Advertised ?

“What the League should have done when it started was to get the Governments joining it each to spend a ffew .thousands upon advertising the League in their Press, telling the man in the street in very simple language what this League of Nations was going to mean to him.. By such means, it might really have become a League of Peoples, instead of a ’ League of Governments in the sense it is to-day” (said Sir Charles Higham, the well-, known publicity expert, in an interview in “The New World”). “Now, if Peace isn’t a good thing, no advertising men can sell it. All the advertising in the world won’t sell bad goods, it can’t get an assured market for them. “The first need, then, is faith. Is this Peace of which we hear so much either something .the public want or something that they will want when the case for it is properly presented ih terms that they can. understand? The great appeal of peace is to motherhood. Convert the- womenfolk and the greatest power of advertising in the whole world has been released. If on some morning it could be arranged for all the mothers of the world to resolve to tell their children they must not kill, but find another way, the, task of advertising Peace would be finished. “The greatest social forces of our day are threefold: the'Press, the cine-_ ma, the wireless, and. these are the means to be explored,..The older methods of publicity are out' of date, and their value is continuously decreasing. The wise and effective use of these three will make all .the rest superfluous.” '