A Study in War Propagand Secrers oF Crewe House.
By Sir Campbell Stuart, x.n.z.
(Hodder Stoughton 7s. 64, net.)
For what Napoleon said as to the relative weight of the moral and the material in warfare we have found a special application in the matter of propaganda. That branch of polemics is still in its infancy, but its significance has become so well appreciated that no {Power will take the field in future without looking as carefully to its argument as to its artillery. War propaganda—has well-defined branches of offence and defence: it jis as necessary to guard against the percolation of the enemy's sophistries into the community at heme as it is to spread abroad the positive merits of a nation's own lease, to secure the support of and neutral opinion, and if possible to produce ethical and prudential misgivings in "the ranks of Tusjeany" itself.
Propagandist organization must eventually become part of the apparatus of peace, for progress is a constant battle against the forces of passion and self-interest, both of which find much of their support lin prejudices, delusion, and conscious, unconscious or' half conscious falsehood. If the State cannot realize its ideals without ed-neating away the errors of youth, it is scarcely less impeded by the ignorance and confused thinking of maturity, Tue Arr or Trors.
This conviction, we should say, will force itself upon most readers of Sir Campbell Stuart's account of one branch of propaganda work in the late war. The task of in-fluoricing enemy opinion was not undertaken on a thoroughly. systematic scale until Lord North-diffe received his commission in the matter in the beginning of i918. It was in every way a specialized branch of the propagandist's art, and much attention had to be concentrated overcoming difficulties not affecting the instruction of neutrals or of the home public. But nowhere were more telling proofs gained of the effects to be reaped from sustained effort or of the fundamental requisites of success. "First. of all axioms of propaganda is that only truthful statements be made. Secondly, there must be no conflicting arguments." The latter principle goes far, and its bearings were illustrate ed upon both sides of the struggle. Germany's efforts to convert
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.