PROPAGANDIST METHODS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6334, 28 April 1923, Page 3

PROPAGANDIST METHODS.

A GROWING PEST. Some time ago we read in an American monthly a very interesting and suggestive article on the tendency in modern democracies of various sections of the people to thrust their opinions and their social and political theories and nostrums upon their fellow country men and women. If any sect or cult wishes to spread its opinions and has the money for a publicity campaign, it worries the life out of the quiet citizen who wants to live his own life, and form his own opinions. According to the writer quoted, these people have in the United States become a perfect pest, and the propaganda habit with American features is spreading to other countries. The methods of the propagandists are psychologically sound, for it is possible to stampede a mob in any direction, if you go about it properly. But what the world wants, is not the opinions and the rule of a stampeded mob, but the reasoned and logical conclusions of undisturbed thinking people. Again all propaganda is untrustworthy, for it is one sided, “ex parte” as a lawyer would say. There are at present three important questions upon which, owing to propaganda, it is practical!} impossible for a New Zealander to come to any trustworthy conclusion. These are: the real effects of prohibition in America, the real position of Russia under communism, and the real capacity of Germany to pay reparations. Each of these questions is of vital interest, not only to the countries concerned, hut to the whole human race. Where can we find absolutely trustworthy information about any of them? What a war sick world wants at present is less propaganda and more truth. Then we could set about putting our houses in or der with much better hopes of success and finality.