WAR PROPAGANDA
AT the time when I was following all political l \ events with attention, the business of propa¬ ganda was always of extreme interest to me. In it I saw an instrument which the Socialist-Marxist organ¬ ization had long controlled with masterly skill and employed to the full. I soon came to realize that the right use of propaganda was a regular art, which was practically unknown to the bourgeois Parties. The Christian-Socialist movement alone, in Lueger’s time especially, applied the instrument with a certain vir¬ tuosity and owed many of their successes to it.
Had we any propaganda at all ? Alas ! I can only reply no. All that was under¬ taken in that direction was so inadequate and wrong¬ headed from the start as to be not of the slightest use —sometimes it did actual harm.
Insufficient in form, wrong psychologically ; there can be no other outcome of a systematic examination of the German war propaganda. They even seem to have been uncertain as to the first question : Is pro¬ paganda a means or an end ?
It is a means, and must be judged from the point of view of the objective it is to serve. It must be suit¬ ably shaped so as to assist that objective. It is also clear that the importance of the objective may vary from the standpoint of general necessity, and that the essential qualities of propaganda must vary so as to be in harmony with it. The objective we fought for, as the War went on, was the noblest and most compelling which is imaginable to man. It was the freedom and independence of our nation, security for future nourish¬ ment and—the nation’s honour.