Ministry Of Information TARGET OF CRITICISM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 24 October 1940, Page 9

Ministry Of Information TARGET OF CRITICISM

Once again Britain's Ministry of Information is the target of criticism, this time in the House of Lords. This important department has been the most feeble part of Britain’s war effort. To prune, reshape, and give it more forceful purpose, Mr. Frank Pick, the genius behind the London Passenger Transport Board’s brilliant publicity department, where he received £IO.OOO a year, has been appointed Director-General of the Ministry. A reorganizing of the staff will follow. Mr. Pick has epitomized his aim: “I shall try to get some business organization into the Ministry.” Foreign Service Inadequate The principal complaint levelled against the Ministry by critics of all political shades, who desire only to be helpful, has been that its foreign propaganda and its news services are wretchedly inadequate and fall dowu by comparison with those of Germany. Actually, of course, Dr. Goebbels and his vociferous staff of propagandists have tended to overreach themselves, but nevertheless, it is largely true that the British Ministry of Information has concentrated too much on propaganda at ho"me, substantially ignoring foreign fields, apart altogether from the needs of the Empire countries. Most of the Ministry’s propaganda abroad is seeu as colourless. Repeatedly it fails to capitalize a first-class service story; and, says the Loudon correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald,” if it has any idea of the value of photography as a means of propaganda, it could not more securely conceal it. American newspaper representatives have written and cabled from the United States beseeching pleas to British newspapers, asking if something could not be done about supplying American newspapers, cinemas, and radio stations, to name only three important channels for the spreading of news, with something, anythiug, to counter ttyi vast flood of Nazi propaganda which began to roll steadily into the United States and into Asia for months before September 3, 1939. Like thistledown on a summer breeze, most of the pleas have flown harmlessly over I the heads of Ministerial departmental- \ ists. Most of its critics are agreed that the Ministry of Information is a peculiarly organized, unimaginative and unsatisfactory department whose main activity is the supervision in Great Britain of propaganda done by other organizations, the Press, the 8.8. C. and the cinema. Top-Heavy Structure Last autumn the blast of ridicule directed at the Ministry, when it was uncovered in the House of Commons that 999 persons were on the Ministry’s payroll, swept away approximately half the total; but the structure is still topheavy, the initial fault persists. Today the Ministry of Information employs 373 persons in London and 50 in the country, exclusive of minor and clerical jobs. Salaries aggregate £204,000 yearly; 49 persons receive £IOOO a year or more, and 236 others £3OO a year or over. The total staff employed at home and overseas numbers 1687, with a salary list of £473,000. So far Mr. Duff Cooper’s cardinal error has not been his belief in the efficacy of the now famous blit nonexistent Silent Column (almost whimsically buried by Mr. Churchill V.i the House of Commons), nor in his institution of a door-to-door canvass with the idea of securing a crosssection of public opinion on a number of interesting questions. Fleet Street Restive Neither was Mr. Cooper’s chief error his belief that it would be a good thiug to supply clergymen with sermons about the Empire’s war effort. Rather it has been his failure to think out the real purpose. At present the Ministry is practically as far away as it ever was from cementing that bond of confidence between journalists and the Ministry which President Roosevelt lias achieved with the American Press. Mr. Pick’s appointment, an excellent one, which should have been made early in the Ministry’s life, may help to bring this about.

One cannot for a year have worked in close proximity to the Ministry and have failed to appreciate 4hat, in order to achieve this desirable object, au entirely different personnel and organization is necessary. The core of llie criticism of the dual control over the vital field of overseas propaganda by the Ministry and the 8.8. C. is that the Ministry’s large staff of foreign experts amount to no more than negative controllers, since their main job is to see that propaganda, which is principally thought and written in English, is translated into foreign languages, and that this is done stiffly and not in the lively and spicy idiom of the peoples to whom it is directed. The Fundamental Problem In support of the charge that Mr. Cooper does not understand the fundamental problem facing him, a finger is pointed at Sir Maurice Petersen, who is now in charge of overseas publicity. It may be, it is said, that Sir Maurice Petersen was a first-class Minister iu Madrid, but that, whatever his qualifications are. they do not include those likely to justify him as a director of propaganda to a Europe writhing under the iron heel of a fanatical and strong Nazi tyranny. The job of propaganda is not to talk iu diplomatic language to embassies abroad, but to stir the oppressed peoples into action. Whether the movement which has begun in some quarters of Fleet Street and in the Commons for the appointment. of a Minister of journalistic distinction (Lord Beaverbrook’s name lias been suggested, but it is insisted that bis fine work as Minister for Aircraft Production cannot be dispensed with) will eventually carry such a figure to the Ministerial portfolio, is a matter for speculation. What is certain is that, till the Ministry has squarely faced and answered the question of what is its prime function and fill D sets about 1 discharging it, Britaui is likely to remain eclipsed by Germnnv in one of the most important brandies of modern warfare.