BRITISH SELF-ADV ERTISEMENT T HE necessity laid on this country of
countering the propaganda with which the broadcasting systems of certain totalitarian countries is nightly filling the air, was discussed in these columns last week. That the necessity exists is indisputable, and it is satisfactory that a Cabinet Committee presided over by one of the more energetic Ministers, Sir Kingsley Wood, has been appointed to consider this among other matters. Among other matters, because a great deal more than the question of foreign broadcasts is involved. Whether we like it or not—and we emphatically do not—the fashion of national self-advertisement has been set and we cannot complacently ignore it. In a world of national. rivalries it is not enough for a nation to be strong ; it must be known and seen to be strong. It is not enough for it to be efficient, in its industry, in national and municipal undertakings, in the housing and feeding of its people ; its efficiency must be manifested to the world. If international understanding is to have any enduring basis each nation must be understood through accurate representations of what it is, not through misrepresenta- tions or travesties of its national characteristics.
Those, it is to be presumed, are the considerations out of which the work of Sir Kingsley Wood's committee arises. Certain nations are making the proclamation of their national vitality a serious business. They carry it almost to the point of claiming a monopoly of the air. Italy, with a few hundred thousand Arab-speakers under her flag, resents as almosra hostile act the initiation by Great Britain of news broadcasts in Arabic for the Arabic-speaking populations of the British mandated territories of Palestine and Transjordania, and of her allies Egypt and Iraq ; and when Czechoslovakia, responsive, to the solicitude of her German-speaking subjects for their cultural economy, provides for their benefit a station for broadcasting in German, newspapers in Germany salute it as a wanton outrage. Thus can emotions be stirred by questions of access to the ears of the common man. Absurd though they are, they serve to indicate how important access to the ears of the com- mon man may be. We are beginning to realise that in this country. If we have not realised it sooner, it is not because we are notoriously slow starters, but because the whole business is distasteful to us. To be compelled to demonstrate British ethos by means repugnant to that ethos is a paradox we do not readily accept. But accepted it must be, and once the job is undertaken it must be done as well as any country is doing it or better.
That means that it cannot be handed over to any existing Government department. There may have to be a new department created to take it in hand. You cannot fight a Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda with a Principal Clerk and a couple of typists. Three media at least of communication—or, as Sir Stephen Tallents puts it, of projection—are involved, broadcasting, films and news services. With broadcasting a beginning has been made. The first regular radiations in Arabic were heard on Monday, and others in Spanish and Portuguese will shortly follow. Their strength will lie, as Sir John Reith observed, in their accuracy and reliability ; those qualities will tell in the long run, but it may take time ; vituperation makes more appeal than prosaic fact. One practical question, moreover, arises which it is to be hoped is getting some attention. If the foreign broadcasts are to have effect they must reach the potential listeners, and for that to be achieved the potential listeners must possess receiving-sets. How far it is practicable to make such sets available at a low figure in the countries most concerned is a matter which the authorities responsible for the new departure have clearly to consider. Receiving-sets and loud- speakers in public places will only cover a fraction of the ground. As to the quality of the broadcasts, where music and other adjuncts to the " straight news " service are concerned, they must be such as to satisfy the most exacting critic.
More has still to be done in the matter of the films and news services. Films provide a field of enormous potential importance. Nothing can so well portray to foreign eyes what Britain in its numberless manifesta- tions is. What is being done, what more can and should be done, to exhaust the immense possibilities of such a medium ? Here again two factors are involved ; films of the right kind must be made, and means must be found to bring them before foreign audiences. About the former there is no difficulty—except the finan- cial. In the short documentary, or instructional film, this country leads the world, and a list such as the Travel Association has published of British documentary films available at the beginning of 1938 shows how many and varied are the features in our national life thus represented. But even so only a fringe of the field has been touched, and full-length films as well as " shorts " are needed. British industry, British sport, British administration, British social services, British education, British family life, British transport, the countryside of England and Wales and Scotland—the tale of subjects not merely possible but necessary if this country is to - be understood by foreigners is endless. To get films on such subjects exhibited abroad is not so simple. Already British documentary films are getting fair publicity in many countries, mainly in universities and other educa- tional institutions. If they are to find a place in the ordinary cinemas they may have to be supplied for a time for an uneconomic fee or no fee at all. And we had better make up our mind to that expense, and bear it.
News services are a more formidable question. It may be accepted as an ideal that the news columns of a daily paper ought to consist of a record of ascertained facts objectively presented. It has equally to be accepted as a fact that in totalitarian countries that ideal has been contemptuously rejected and that every column of every paper must be capable of being used to serve political ends. When that practice is pursued internally it would be surprising if a sudden objectivity prevailed where the supply of news to centres outside Europe was concerned. It is in fact a matter of the first moment that South American countries, for example, should receive news of affairs in Europe through agencies which present them accurately and fairly. Is that to be looked for from an agency under Dr. Goebbels' or Signor Alfieri's supreme control ? To ask that points clearly enough to the root of the trouble. How the trouble is to be remedied is another matter. Any great news agency is in a sense national, in that its directors and staff have a natural and proper national loyalty, but the difference between an agency controlled by a Government to which propa- ganda is an essential weapon and an independent agency working on purely commercial lines is fundamental. A newspaper which is read and re-read often makes a deeper impression than a broadcast listened to and half-forgotten or a film which is seen and left behind. The question of news services to extra-European countries, inside and outside the Empire, cannot therefore be neglected. But it presents more difficult and perplexing problems than either broadcasting or films.
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