As regards the question of humanity, Moltke has said that in war the essential is to bring the matter to a finish quickly, and that the severest methods conduce most effectually to that end.
Propaganda in the War was a means to an end. It was a struggle for the life of the German nation ;
therefore propaganda could only be founded on prin¬ ciples which were of value to that objective. The crudest weapons were humane, if they conduced to a speedier victory, and indeed they were the only method which helped the nation to secure a dignity of freedom.
This was the only possible attitude to adopt towards the question of war propaganda in a life and death struggle such as this.
If those in high positions had been clear about the foregoing there would have been no uncertainty as to the form and employment of this weapon ; for it is nothing more nor less than a weapon, but a really terrible one in the hands of one who understands it.
All propaganda should be popular and should adapt its intellectual level to the receptive ability of the least intellectual of those whom it is desired to address. Thus it must sink its mental elevation deeper in proportion to the numbers of the mass whom it has to grip. If it is, as it is with propaganda for carrying through a war, a matter of gathering a whole nation within its circle of influence, there cannot be enough attention paid to avoidance of too high a level of intellectuality.
The receptive ability of the masses is very limited, their understanding small ; on the other hand, they have a great power of forgetting. This being so, all effective propaganda must be confined to very few points, which must be brought out in the form of slogans, until the very last man is enabled to compre¬ hend what is meant by any slogan. If this principle is sacrificed to the desire to be many-sided, it will dis¬ sipate the