PROPAGANDA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 45, 22 August 1938, Page 9

PROPAGANDA

NOT FOR DEMOCRACY

M. Chautemps, the Vice-Px-emier, in a speech to foreign journalists drew a distinction between "propaganda" and "the proper organisation of French information and news services for foreign use," says the Paris correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." He thought that it was impossible for a democratic State to practise "propaganda."

State propaganda, he said, implied a monopoly in the distribution of news, whether true or false, and in a country of free -opinion it was useless for the Government to try to ram its views down people's throats.

M. Chautemps spoke, not without a touch of sarcasm, of the office of Minister of Propaganda that "my friend M. Blum" had created for M. Frossart in his last short-lived Cabinet. The Ministry of Propaganda, he said, had existed for only three weeks and had consisted of one room with a desk and a folder containing nothing except an ar T tide he CM. Chautemps) had once written. The article was entitled "Propaganda—No." M. Chautemps went on to say that he was not aware that anything had been done at the Ministry of Propaganda during its short existence, and the State, he added, was still' owing M. Frossart his salary. (Laughter.)

Whether it is called "propaganda" or "organising of opinion" or simply "publicity," it seems certain that the totalitarian countries know their job better than France, where it is assumed a little too readily that "France requires no publicity abroad."