COUNTER-ATTACK

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 37, 14 February 1938, Page 8

COUNTER-ATTACK

RADIO PROPAGANDA

! BRITAIN FINDS AN AtLY

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

NEW YORK, January 19.

British and American correspondents in Europe are in agreement in their findings regarding the use of radio, for the first time, by Great Britain in counteracting insidious propaganda emanating from Italy that aimed at sowing discord in Palestine. In fact, they aver, according to dispatches published here, that a: long-suffering democracy' has successfully routed its traducers and caused confusion In the minds of, propagandists in the dictatorship or authoritarian countries. Adding zest to the issue, is the fact that Britain, hi its desire to present the truth to the people of Palestine, has found an ally in an unexpected quarter—the United States. * | ' President Roosevelt's reflections on peace and war, in his recent message to Congress, were eagerly awaited on the Continent as well as in England— so eagerly, in fact, that assurances were sought, on the eve of the opening of Congress, .that listeners on the other side of the Atlantic would be able to hear the address. The reaction amply complements the effect of the' 8.8.C. news broadcasts to Palestine.

"Italian newspapers vied with each other in vituperation and abuse of everything British immediately after the first presentation of facts, not only in relation ,to Palestine, but the situation in Europe, as" well as the Japanese invasion of China. Their outbursts against "British lies" and. "democratic sheep fables" were repeated, with commensurate endorsement, by German journals. . IN SEVEN LANGUAGES. The demand abroad for an opportunity to hear Mri Roosevelt led to his address being translated and relayed by radio in seven languages. That it came as a severe shock is amply demonstrated by the immediate reply from Germany, which contrasted the blessings conferred on the masses by the Hitler regime, through the abolitionof unemployment, with the vqljme of unemployment disclosed by.1 the recent United States census. In newspaper'articles and letters, alleged to have been written in America, the economic and social picture here was painted in lurid colours.

Ever since the dictatorship countries built the highest-powered radio station's in the world, for purposes of propaganda, their leaders have been well satisfied with Ihe result of the campaign. But they did not count on the universal appeal to reason that rare broadcasts from democratic'countries inspire. The counter-offensive, long delayed, apparently has pierced the wallof silence and one-sided representation of fact about contemporary events' that has kept authoritarian peoples isolated from the rest of the world.

It is one thing, observers say, to muzzle the Press and prevent unwelcome nsws from abroad being disseminated; it is another to sterilise the radio. In the case of broadcasts from Moscow the German police had succeeded in punishing those who had lent an attentive ear. Arrests, as recently as a month ago, were reported. But the new British programme has enhanced the problem of tracing offenders against the laws of the Reich, which have not yet chosen so to regard Britishers. Now Uncle, Sam enters the arena, avowedly an advocate of world peace. His judgment, pronounced by President Roosevelt, that democracies alone respect the sanctity of treaties, has caused considerable embarrassment to Governments such as Germany and Italy which, until now, have specialised in the field of foreign propaganda.