Oct, 30, Tuar the pen is mighter than the sword is a truism admitted by everyone; that it can be more deadly than poison gas is equally true though not so often re= cognized. In any keen dispute, such as an election to parlia~ ment, propaganda is employed to eke out the resources of logomachy and sometimes degencrates to such depths of sycopliancy as Dickens has carieatured for us in his sketch of the Eatanswill Gazette, In the great war both sides wielded the pen as vigorously as the sword and with as much disregard of the sanctions of the rules of war. It is probable that none of the disputants look back with unmixed pleasure to this aspect of their part in the great struggle. Propaganda is a form of adv fisement and, to be effective, must be conducted on the same principles as this important branch of commerce. A blatant advertisement defeats its own. aims. The pills that cure every= thing make no appeal except to the superlatively simple or the densely ignorant, The best a vertisement camouflages itself the guise of information and, even so, unless there be a substantial core of truth. beneath the sugar coating, its effect is bound to be transient. Propaganda of a wild nature acts like a boomerang; it injures those who use it rather than those it ix directed against. There is comfort in this for those Britons who are distressed by the flow of abuse that comes from low-class organs issued by, so-called labour unions, which often represent only a few scrupulous agitators. There is a Chinese proverb that says "The long road tests the strength of the horse and time, at length, reveals the hearts of meu." That insult and opprobrium are d to bear and may have a certain success for a time, but straightforward conduct and honesty of purpose will win in the long run. This is not Sunday school morality, but the experience of the ages expressed in tense proverbial phraseology.
Propaganda must appeal to something in the nature of those to whom it is addressed. Tt may appeal to cupidity or prejudice or it may appeal to higher motives such as patriotism or self-interest. In the great war the appeal was made to patriot~ ism and in that case it. awoke a noble response. It appealed also to the lower motive of self-interest and then. the response was on a correspondingly lower plane. Both sides warned their ray
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.