26 SEPTEMBER 1941, Page 4

I find. it a little difficult to follow Major Dwight

Whitney, who told the English-Speaking Union on Tuesday that Americans completely misconceived this country, thinking that we were wanting Americans to rescue us from defeat, when what we really asked for was merely the tools to enable us to win victory ourselves. That, he said, was due to the complete failure of British propaganda. But do Americans really prefer interested propaganda to objective news ? Here we have in London a couple of score or more of the ablest American journalists living. They are sending to America hundreds of thousands of words nightly about Britain. Are they misrepresenting us ? Are they so incompetent professionally that they are leaving unsaid all the things that ought most to be said ? Is British official propaganda needed to make up for American corre- spondents' deficiencies? This is the question that seems to emerge from Major Dwight Whitney's speech—at any rate from the report of it that I read. Surely Americans trust their own newspapers about Britain.