BATTLE OF WORDS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20107, 29 November 1939, Page 3

BATTLE OF WORDS

S. AMERICA AND THE WAR BOTH SIDES ACTIVE Europe’s warring nations are conducting a battle of propaganda in South America which, says the Argentina correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, in intensity and vigour compares With the actual fighting on the Western Front. A heavy foreign population and huge commercial interests of both factions in South America - particularly Argentina—makes this continent fertile soil for such conflict.

Using every possible means of information from newspapers, the radio, and signboards to common whispering campaigns, Allied and German propaganda workers daily hurl barrages of pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi stories at the people of the American republics. In Argentina the German and British Governments carry on their battle of words openly through regular "news" releases. The British official wireless report in expanded form is translated into Spanish and distributed daily to anyone interested. The German Embassy makes regular “releases” of news about the war to Argentine newspapers and other publications.

©uenos Aires, centre of .European shipping and the residence of thousands of Germans. English, Poles and other Europeans, became a hotbed of propaganda with f he opening of war. Tile city’s two German language newspapers—one pro and the other anti-Nazi—added Spanish sections to their editions. The anti-Hitler paper distributes pamphlets published in Spanish and English. The English language newspapers, both strongly pro-'Allied, are but slightly less active. Both print long dispatches from the British official wireless. The most intense of the English newspapers headlines the most, recent session of the German Reichstag thus: "Liars in Council.” * One pro-Nazi .paper referred to the British as "lndrones" —Spanish for thieves. 'Powerful European radio stations fill (lie air with steady barrages of coloured dispatches about the war and its results. Argentine stations broadcast little of the propaganda because of Governmental restrictions against too open discussions of the European situation from a biased point of view. As yet the Government of Argentina has taken no steps to halt the free play of British, German or French propaganda.