Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1938. MIDDLE EAST PROPAGANDA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 45, 21 January 1938, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1938. MIDDLE EAST PROPAGANDA

Foe months past the Italian Government has been treating the Arabs in the Middle East to broadcast propaganda, which soon developed into attacks on Britain and Britain’s policy in the Middle East, and . the Arabs have been asked to believe that Italy is their friend and protector, and not Britain. This propaganda was made.up of false statements, false deductions, ingenious innuendoes, and many deliberate untruths. These Arabic broadcasts became so very anti-British and so full of menacing untruths that on several occasions the attention of the Foreign Secretary (Mr Eden) was directed .to the matter by members of the House of Commons. So recently as last month, Mr Eden sent for the Italian Ambassador (Count Grandi) and chided him regarding some flagrant misstatements in the broadcasts of the previous evening. Every time the Italian authorities were reminded of the inaccuracy of the broadcasts, promises were given that they would not be repeated, but those promises were never kept. There has been a limit to the patience and forbearance of Britain, and now she is broadcasting in Arabic to the Arabs in the Middle East, and that has disturbed the serenity of the Italian Dictator. Britain’s broadcast was taken down by stenographers in Italy and Italy promises to entertain the Arabs with better news than the British.

Signor Mussolini must have a very poor opinion of the Arabs, at all events, he does not understand Arab psychology and Arab philosophy. The Arabs get thennews in the bazaars and market places, and they are quite competent to sift the wheat from the chaff. Britain lias been intimately associated with the Middle East for well over a century; at all events ever since the Battle of the Nile. British diplomats have played their part in spreading Britain’s prestige. The Arabs have innumerable examples of British justice and fairness, of Britain’s particular care to respect the religions of the people. Britain has changed Egypt from a vassal of the Turkish Empire to an independent kingdom. Signor Mussolini, with all his statements and bombast, will never succeed in undermining British prestige in the Middle East, for it is based on example and not on precept. The peoples of the Middle East have not forgotten Abyssinia, and the brutal methods adopted in conquering that country. Nor have they forgotten that the Italian authorities suppressed the Coptic Church in Abyssinia, and that the Ethiopians are passively resisting the conquerors. The Italians are

not colonisers. They have not improved the position in Abyssinia, but practically ruined it. The Arabs, the Turks, and the others in the Middle East know this. Britain has a high reputation in the Middle East, which Italy has not and never will have. It is the difference between justice and injustice.