FREE OPINION

Evening Star, Issue 23350, 21 August 1939, Page 2

FREE OPINION

“ The last thing required or to be attempted in this country is the direction of opinion by the Government. It is sometimes asked why there is no machinery hero comparable with that which totalitarian Governments employ for the schooling of sentiment at home or to impress the foreigner. “The answer is that it is neither desirable nor necessary. The creation of opinion, by whatever means, to the pattern required from time to time is one of the inescapable necessities of totalitarianism. “Here opinion can bo trusted to form itself through a free Parliament, a free platform, a free Press, and a broadcasting system with chartered autonomy—all of them institutions which are forthwith closed down by the party-State. “ The activities of Dr Goebbels are lo be neither envied nor emulated. Whatever he and his kind may achieve sn the home front, they cannot in the long run rival the depth and permanence of unforced conviction. Abroad they have without question done as much to impair as to promote the national interest they are supposed to serve. There is less than no case for ‘ British propaganda ’ on the German or Italian models. “ It is precisely its freedom from control and its diversity which give the British Press its power to be heard, and it is the austere impartiality of foreign broadcasts from British stations which has won them their huge audiences _ abroad. The diverting spasms of indignation in propagandaridden countries which have heralded the Prime Minister’s announcement may after all ho a kind of homage to liberty.”—‘ The Times,’ London.