Propaganda

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 6, 8 January 1936, Page 3

Propaganda

“Denmark is the natural larder of Britain. . . Britons have always enjoyed Danish bacon, butter and eggg, , , Denmark is the collaborator in Britain’s expansion.”

These announcements are blazoned by the Danes in English newspapers with such prominence that they almost seem to be true. They are proclaimed with such confidence that those middleaged people who recall the days when these Danish products were almost unknown here begin to doubt their own

memory. The Danish propaganda first began in an intensive form in the grim year of 1931, when Great Britain was struggling desperately to reduce the adverse balance of trade. It was conducted by a body of Danish land-owners called the Twelve Men’s Union. These apostles first murmured soothingly in the ear of those politicians who still had faith in free imports. Soon their secretary was established in a London hotel. He came, of course, out of pure solicitude for British industry. Had he not been born in England himself? He lunched at the House of Commons, and spoke seductively of markets for British goods in Denmark. Afterwards Members of Parliament enjoyed lavish return hospitality in Copenhagen, and were gently chidden for their neglect to study tho Danish market. These persuasive Danes were trying to answer in advance an awkward point, which “was bound to come u{ whenever they should ask Great Britain to continue to take their produce. Thu point was that we already bought £53,000,000 from them in 1930, though they took only £10,000,000 from us. With propaganda such as this the Danes prepared the ground for the Ottawa discussions. They prepared it again before the Anglo-Danish trade agreement. At the present moment .their voice is uplifted louder than ever.

Why? Because once more the British Government is negotiating with Denmark, this time over the imposition of bacon tariffs with increased quotas. So the Danes take page after page of national newspapers, in w'hich they trumpet the “world-fame” of Danish “health-foods”—a fame so curious that the world is content to leave them all to Great Britain. They also displaypictures of ships fully' laden with British goods for Denmark. The mere statistics of the balance of trade since 1930 is a sufficient reply But there is a ready answer if these pictures were true. It is bad business to buy from Denmark what our own farms could produce. Denmark is not our natural source of supplies. Nor have the Danes any agricultural superiority over us. What they have is superiority in organisation at home, and in propaganda in Britain. Let us import their skill in these things, rather than their goods. With better organisation and better publicity we can supplant the Danes. But better organisation includes political effort, and a united support from all British agriculture for its defenders in public life.

—The Farmers’ W'eekly (Britain)

The Danes are evidently great salesmen as well as skilled producers, lhe trade figures aro of interest to us, in view of the propaganda put out here, that endeavours to tell us that we arc poor customers of Britain.