BATTLE OF WORDS

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 267, 4 December 1939, Page 4

BATTLE OF WORDS

s. AMERICA AND THE WAR . s V. •"■ . % fU •;> . {BOTH ftIDES ACTIVE "Europe’s warring nations .arc conducting a battle ot. propaganda in South America which; .says' tiu'a, .correspohdent ot the Christian Science Monitor, in intensity and vigour coni pares with the actual fighting cut••.tlie- Western Front-. A heavy foreign population arid huge commercial interest's of both tactions *in. Sou tli Ain or ic-a—pa rt i onl ar I y A f gen ti n a makes this continent tortile Soil lor such conflict. Using, every possible means of in'formation from the radio, and signboardls to common whispering campaigns,'Allied and Gorman propaganda workers daily hurl barrages of pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi at the people of the American republics. J.n 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 t-a anyone interested. The German Elmbassy 'makes regular “releases” of news about the war to Argentine newspapers and other publications. Buenos Aires,, centre of European •shipping., andl the resilience of thousands of Germans, English; Poles and other Europeans, became'a hotbed of propaganda with the opening of war. The city’s two German language newspapers—one pro and the other an-ti-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 hut slightly less active. Both print long dispatches irom the British official wireless. The most intense of the English newspapers headlines the most recent session of the German Kcichstag thus; “Liars in Council.” One pro-Nazi paper referred to the British as “ladlrones” —Spanish lo'r thieves*Powerful Euro-jfean radio stations lilt the air.with steady barrages of coloured dispatches about the war and its results. Argentine stations broadcast little of the .propaganda liecause 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 stops to halt the lroe play of British. German or French propaganda i