BRITISH PUBLICITY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 232, 29 June 1939, Page 13

BRITISH PUBLICITY

New Office Not A Factory For Propaganda

(Received June 29, 12.10 a.m.)

LONDON, June 28.

The Foreign Under-Secretary, Mr. Butler, addressing the Empire Press Union, said that the new foreign publicity department of the Foreign Office would aim at improving and coordinating the supply from Government sources of information about Britain which would be of interest to foreigners, and at assisting its How through ordinary non-offieial channels. Its success would, therefore, depend upon the voluntary co-operation of official and unofficial organizations, and It would accordingly clearly be seen that they could not, even if they wished, disseminate highly-coloured, blatant propaganda, which would be alien to the country’s traditions. “We aim not at establishing a factory of propaganda, for the word factory Implies that something is made up,’’ he said. “We aim rather at having a studio at which pictures of ourselves may be taken. We do not seek for highly-coloured artists’ portraits which a discriminating foreigner might think owed more to art than to nature, but for well-taken photographs of ourselves as we are.”

All they proposed doing as a result of setting up the department wag to have morf of such photographs taken and pay more attention to their distribution, he added.