BROADCASTS IN GERMAN [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Sta,—I believe that the letter headed " Broadcasts in German " from your correspondent " E. B." contains a suggestion of vital importance. We know that the German people are not told the truth about events either in Germany or the outside world. News is doctored to suit the aims of National Socialist policy. Thus, for example, the Czechs are being misrepre- sented just now as a turbulent and lawless people whose harsh treatment of the Sudeten Germans may presently have to be remedied by war-like measures on the part of the Reich.
The German people in 'the mass do not want war. That is a commonplace. What we have- to fear, however, is the deliberate creation of a war mentality throughout Germany by the falsification of news and other propaganda methods. The average German today lives behind a sort of psychological wall fabricated of the misrepresentation of the truth of events and the euppression of outside opinion, and he has simply not the means of thinking or acting rationally where political or even moral issues are concerned. The desperate need of the hour, as it seems to me, upon which the whole issue of European peace and war may well hang, is somehow, to break through this wall and let the light in where we can.
I am not a wireless expert and therefore do not know how far it might be possible for German stations to interfere with the reception of News Bulletins in German from English stations. I recognise, too, that the German Government might employ means to discourage listening-in to such trans- missions. But the success of. such an experiment as " E. B." envisages would not be measured solely by the number who listened-in. At a time of crisis it might make all the difference if only a few had been influenced by the voice of the outside world.
At any rate the German nation will unite in a war against Britain only if they do not know all the facts. That I submit is a safe prediction. Dissemination of the truth then, so far as lies within our power—the truth whether of events or opinions—is a first line of defence which we neglect at our
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