Truth And Propaganda

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 196, 16 May 1936, Page 20

Truth And Propaganda

4 4 BOES Tru th, as a matter of fact, always rise again? Isn tit rasometimes counted out?” asks Mr. NY ill Irwin. ] B “Will it always operate in the long run? Certainly truth • | or perhaps I should say fact—is woven of very tough fibre. Also, so long as we have a free Press and free speech, the corrective for any one-sided presentation of the news, while it may work slowly, seems to work almost automatically. . . . “However, the question whether Truth rises again usually generates very little anxiety in the bosom of the insincere propagandist. He can do his work while she is down. He is striving for a quick effect—to rum a disarmament conference on behalf of a munitions maker, to win an elec.ion on behalf of a party, to pass a Bill on behalf of a corporation, to stir up a revolution on behalf of a faction. “The sense of truth works in the period of sober second thought. All he needs is to generate an intoxicated first thought, and to maintain the mood in his public until his end is accomplished. That is dangerous enough, ol course. It remains to be seen whether in free conditions propaganda, conceived and executed as propaganda, will work over the long pull.’

"When the bloody struggle at Verdun proved fruitless, Germany, in the words of General Joseph E. Kuhn, ‘found that she had a wild cat by the tail and looked for some way to let go.’ A negotiated peace, with the status quo or a little better, became temporarily the diplomatic object. They played on the pacifist sentiment in all neutral countries. On their own initiative, the Socialists called a world conference at Stockholm. "This seemed to be an opportunity, since Socialists, before the War, were notoriously pacifist. Germany did her best to encourage and to foster this assemblage. The Allies had taken heart, temporarily, from the check at Verdun. Even to whisper of a negotiated peace constituted treason ; no hint of the German yearning was allowed to leak to the public. "Perceiving the uses of this conference to the Central Powers, France, Great Britain and Italy refused passports to their own Socialists. Control of cable facilities nt the London plexus did the rest; real news of this affair, it became plain, would bo confined to the Scandinavian countries, and to the Nauen service. In these circumstances the Socialist Conference fizzled and adjourned without definite tielion."