VOODOO VOICE

Hokitika Guardian, 29 August 1938, Page 7

VOODOO VOICE

1 OF PROPAGANDA. I , (Sydney “Daily Telegraph.”) “Hello, Tokio, we are not afraid!" I shouts a Russian broadcaster. “The easiest way to curb the bloodthirsty appetites of the Japanese liiilii tarists is to destroy them like vermin.” I Russian children assure’ Comrade Stalin they are ready to fight. Russians newpapers seethe with remarks about “Fascist, snakes” and their “dirty brood.” | A great nation of 140,000,000 people is whipped overnight into a primitive frenzy of war. j And across a narrow sea another great nation of 90,000,000 people is shouting, similar threats in Japanase I instead of Russian. I In neither country are the people ; concerned with the rights of wrongs of the border dispute in Manchukuo. ) They do not ask questions about it. J If they did there woi|ld be no .answers. From Moscow and from Tokio come brazen blasts of propaganda. Bowed Before Loud-Speakers And millions of men and women are prepared to kill and to be killed at tile command of ioud-speakeis. it is a terniying vision of the new voodooisni at work, a pre-view of what confronts tne world it the fight from leason is unchecked. Education is the only antidote to this evil. Whereas propaganda feeds hatred, education, if it is free and ’ honest, feeds tolerance. H. G. Wells gave a memorable address on the task of educationalists .ast year. The honest teaching of history, he pointed is all-important. History should not be a farrago of national wars and dynasties, but a story of human cultures' and their development in all countries and times. In his words:—“l do not see either the charm or the educational benefit of making an important subject of the criminal history of Royalty, the murder of the Princes in the Tower, the wives of Henry the Eighth, the families of Edward 11, Sweet Nell of Old Drury, and all the rest of it. I suggest that the sooner we get all that unpleasant stuff out of. schools, and the sooner that we forget the border bickerbigs of 'England, France, Scotland, Ire'and, and Wales, Bannockburn, Flodden, Crecy, and Agincourt, the nearer our world will be to a sane outlook upon life.” And he pleaded for the development of the inquiring, sceptical mind. The Art of Being “Anti.” To-day, he said, we send out our young people “absolutely unprepared

for the heated and biased interpretations they will encounter . . The? most the poor silly young things seeni able to make of it is to be violently and anti-something oxother ... . Anti-Red } anti-Capital-ist, .anti-Fascist. The more ignorant you are the easier it is to be an aiiti.” “The more ignorant you are thq easier, it is to be an anti • Here the educational theory of the totalitarian States is summed up perfectly. Keep.the Russian ignorant of everything but the glories of Joseph Stalin, the unique destiny of Russia, and wickedness of al other nations, and he will shriek for blood whenever his rulers lift a finger. Keep the Japanese ignorant of everything but the glories of the Sfin-Cod Emperor, the unique destiny of Japan, and the wickedness of all other nations, and he will gladly throw himself on a bayonet when he is told to. Indoctrination is the Black Plague of the 20th century. Whether or not it can he replaced by free and undiassed education is a question around which the future of civilisation may revolve.