28 SEPTEMBER 1945, Page 10

Some at least of the causes of this general scepticism

can be recognised and defined. Our popular education, which is still in a transitional phase, has obliterated the old distinction between the educated and the uneducated ; the younger generation are today sufficiently educated to wish to form their own judgements, but not sufficiently educated to have personal confidence in their own judge- ments. They know enough to be conscious of their own ignorance and to realise the fact that the education which has been given them is incomplete. A mood has thus been created in which they resent, and therefore suspect, the knowledge which they do not themselves possess ; and they are inclined to dismiss as " propaganda " all information or instruction which does not fall within their own orbit of thought or feeling. During the last election, for instance, I was much distressed to notice that, whereas my audiences would listen with 'attention to my remarks upon such problems as came within their own orbit of experience, they would become contemptuous when I touched upon matters of which they themselves were wholly unaware. I was conscious, when speaking on such matters as finance, colonial development or foreign affairs, that my audience felt that I had introduced these alien matters for the purpose of reminding them of their own ignorance or of inserting some subtle and diver- sionary theme. It was sad, for instance, to observe that when I reminded them that the inevitable cessation of Lease-Lend would expose us to a serious financial and economic strain my remarks were greeted with a guffaw of disbelief. And I was obliged, there- fore, to revise my former opinion that the British public are, on the whole, impervious to propaganda and to conclude that they are impervious only to such propaganda as may seem to them to have a governmental or expert tinge. * * * *