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THEME FOR PROPAGANDA

From: Francis Williams

1. We now need a great campaign to reinforce confidence and build a moral defence against future military shocks. It must be based on both material and spiritual considerations.

2. On the material side it must convince the anxious that victory is possible. It must show on hard practical grounds that we can avoid defeat during the next twelve months and defeat the Germans after that.

3. On the spiritual side it must convince the apathetic that this war is a struggle between good and evil, in which the Nazis threaten not only our own material prosperity, but the dignity of man and the integrity of his soul. Men and women must feel that they are fighting in a crusade so momentous and so noble that war's misery and hardship, the risk of wounds and death, are small things compared with it.

4. Reasoned Appeal

The appeal to reason must, if it is to be successful, do the following things:

I. Create confidence in our ability to avoid being starved into submission. To do this, full and continuous explanation about the Battle of the Atlantic, and naval warfare generally, is necessary.

II. Show that German night bombing, even if continued on a larger scale, is incapable, even at the present stage of our defences, of being decisive.

III. Show that our land and air defences, plus our sea power, are now so strong that we cannot be defeated by invasion.

IV. Show that what is decisive in modern, war is not large numbers of men or the control of large territory, but machine power, and that the combined industrial strength of Britain and America is so much greater than that of any other actual or potential grouping of powers that we can achieve machine power superiority over the Germans by the end of 1942. Our sea power will enable us to fling these forces against Germany at several points with crushing effect.

V. Show the extent to which every man and woman is a participant in the war and that success depends upon the combined efforts of all working as a team.

The whole success of our reasoned propaganda depends upon it being reasoned. It must treat the British public as a politically adult public, capable of being presented with the whole picture. Moreover, if reasoned explanations of the general war situation are to convince, they must be accompanied by a more adult treatment of day-to-day news . If the public feels that it is not being treated as intelligent in news statements or that bad news is being kept back unnecessarily, or minimised, it will not trust our propaganda explanations of the general situation. The Foreign Office, the Service Departments and the Home Defence Departments must agree to give both more facts and more explanation. As an example, more explanation is particularly needed of the scope and limitations of sea power in this war.

5. For some time we shall inevitably be on the defensive militarily. If morale is to be kept high, the appeal to reason must, therefore, be reinforced by a moral appeal which will carry men and women through this period by making them feel morally and emotionally on the offensive.

6. Moral Appeal

Apart from the general moral case which can be made on the basis of the Christian doctrine with special emphasis upon the virtues of unselfishness and tolerance, there is a further moral appeal represented by such conceptions as the rights of men and the rights of nations. The theme might also be used that human history has been marked by certain definite phases of advancement, each one of which produced its own special contribution to the improvement of Man (E.G. Greece: the freedom of human intelligence. Rome: the sanctity of contracts. Middle Ages: Chivalry. France: intellectual sincerity. Britain: fair play). Each one of these advances in understanding and morals is not only denied, but attacked, by the Nazi system. Apart from such obvious considerations, our moral appeal should be guided by the following considerations:

I. It should not depend upon terms which can be used equally successfully for their own purposes by the Nazis. For example, an appeal to the team spirit, although a valuable ingredient in the campaign, should not be used without explaining how the team spirit of a free country differs from that of a totalitarian.

II. It should not be of such a character that it might be twisted in a crisis to justify defeatism on specious ethical grounds. This is the danger of a purely spiritual appeal which might be turned - as it was in France - into a justification for spiritual regeneration through suffering and defeat.

III. It should take into account the distrust of the British for what seems to them highfaluting. It must not fall into the error of trying to make them take themselves too seriously. The British capacity for humour in the midst of change and crisis is one of our strongest weapons.

IV. It should use the powerful aid of history and the Anglo-Saxon “tradition of victory” and should show that this record of victory is not due to accident or to military power alone, but to qualities in the Anglo-Saxon character engendered by the Anglo-Saxon way of life.

V. It should take into account the fact that all active-minded men and women work and fight better if they feel they are marching in step with history, and are not simply defending the past, but helping the birth of the future for ourselves and for humanity.

7. With these considerations in mind, it is suggested that the best master-theme for our “moral propaganda” is Democracy - or rather the moral and social principles which fired the democratic conception in the days when it really was a flame which inspired men to the last ultimate tests of devotion and swept the World.

8. Democracy is founded on beliefs in liberty, justice, human dignity, the equal right of all to happiness and to seek the truth after their own fashion, in freedom of opinion, in tolerance and kindness and comradeliness, and on the conviction that “the people are, under God, the original of all just power.”

9. It is recognised that Democracy in some of its political manifestations has lost sight of its original purpose and become identified with delay, humbug, materialism and selfish exploitation. Our propaganda must face these weaknesses and prove them to be transitional.

10. For Democracy is not only a set of abstract political principles. It is a way of life which is given unity and purpose because it is inspired by great principles. The principles of democracy do not simply affect our political system. They determine and colour the whole pattern of our lives. They are reflected in our family life, in our attitude to children, to marriage, to all personal relationships, They shape our social relationships not only in big things, but in little things, in the way a tennis club is run or a village cricket club or a Women's Institute, or a free and easy discussion in the corner pub. They are to be found throughout our Friendly Societies and our Trade Unions and in the principles of collective bargaining honoured by employers and workers alike. They are woven inextricably into the texture of our daily lives, In fighting for democracy, it is for all that is good in that pattern and texture that we fight. It is all this that Nazism seeks to destroy.

11. Democracy is a way of life which is precious to us, but it is also a great movement of history whose roots lie far back in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. It was born out of the passion for liberty. The qualities of vigour and daring, of initiative and comradeship which the tradition engendered are the foundation of the Anglo-Saxon success in peace and war and of that “tradition of victory” which Hitler so much fears. They were - and are - qualities particularly called for in a naval power. They are the qualities which air combat calls forth and they account for the success of our fighter pilots against the heaviest odds. And, increasingly, they are the qualities demanded by the new mechanised war of movement on land.

12. The roots of democracy lie back in our history, but the conception of democracy as a system of practical government is startlingly new - only forty years older than the steam engine. Democracy is the young doctrine. During its short history, it has released immense reserves of human energy, enterprise and inventiveness, and has made possible triumphs of human progress unparalleled in any earlier age. But its work has only just begun. It is only on the march. Again and again in that march it has had to fight against the embattled forces of reaction which seek to turn back to the closed, autocratic world of the past. Nazism is the latest manifestation of those forces. But Nazism, like the others, is fighting against history. Hitler is the modern Canute trying to hold back the wave of the future which is democracy. He cannot succeed. Democracy marches on.

13. It is suggested that the reasoned appeal and the moral appeal outlined in this paper are complementary to each other and that both lend themselves to development in every form of propaganda, the spoken and written word, the film and the poster, the pamphlet and the display advertisement, the full dress speech and the short slogan, and that, used as a combined theme, they would be irresistible.

F.W.