PROPAGANDA IN LITERATURE

Southland Times, Issue 22345, 9 June 1934, Page 11

PROPAGANDA IN LITERATURE

Speaking at a London gathering of literary people, Mr A. P. Herbert said the chairman had referred to the attitude of some critics toward authors’ works which had a serious purpose in them and which they sneered at as “propaganda” or “novels with a purpose.” It was typical of our general attitude of hypocrisy, he said, that what were regarded as ideals, if put forward in one way, became propaganda when put forward in another. For instance, if Lady Astor proposed that all “pubs” be shut at six o’clock, that was idealism, whereas if he urged that they should be kept open till ten, that was brewers’ propaganda. If farmers ran a campaign for consumption of more milk, that was ideal; if brewers urged greater consumption of beer, that was vicious propaganda. If a writer was a journalist he could express the strongest opinions on any subject, but if he was a novelist he must confine himself to discussing such things as psychology. Even the great paper The Times only the other day, in one of its brilliant leading articles, gave a rebuke to the modem Novelist, and said he might be content to entertain and even amuse his readers, instead of endeavouring to tell the world how to conduct the world’s affairs. He remembered a writer named Dickens, who did all those things; and there was Bunyan, whose “Pilgrim’s Progress” was propaganda work far in excess of its entertaining value. He thought it was in the great tradition of English letters that anyone who found he had something to say of value to the community did not shrink from saying it for fear of the consequences to his royalties, or of what people might say of it.