PROPAGANDA AND its ORIGINS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 264, 4 August 1936, Page 5

PROPAGANDA AND its ORIGINS

Professor F. Wood’s Lecture

As an introductory lecture of a short series for the Workers’ Educational Association on “Propaganda—Past and Present,” an interesting address on “Propaganda and its Early Origins” was given by Professor F. Wood, o£ Victoria University College, at the Trades Hall on Wednesday evening. To use propaganda effectively it was necessary to have certain conditions, such as a considerable number of people Who could be persuaded to do things, and the suitable technique for getting at them, said Professor Wood. Certain dominant social trends have had a determining influence from time to time and the patt actively played by propaganda had varied immensely., Its importance had gradually increased owing to greater freedom in life and scientific invention. .Professor Wood sketched the background of propaganda in early times, and stated that for about 1100 years there was a rigidity in many things where we now have flexibility. The Roman Empire was something like our own—a civilisation based on a complex economic structure, with a complicated transport system and a legal code. He explained how the Church was organised ns an institution suitable for propaganda, and put forward an ethical ideal by methods such as pageantry, music, pictures, statues and the spoken word. He referred to the educational work done by the Church during the Middle Ages, and to the more primitive methods of passing on information to the people when communication was slow and uncertain and the villages were small and scattered. After the economic collapse of Western Europe due to the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a gradual recovery of trade and an improvement in the standard of living. Internal trade, as well as trade between the larger centres, developed from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, and this was the beginning of the modern economic world, yet these conditions did not bring anything like modern propaganda with them. In his second • lecture to-morrow evening Professor Wood will deal with the gradual development of propaganda.