HATE TO ORDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 January 1939, Page 7

HATE TO ORDER

PROPAGANDA LN EUROPE GERMAN AND HUNGARIAN CAMPAIGN. BOGUS STORIES OF CZECH CRUELTY. The recent crisis through which Europe has , passed provided striking illustrations of the devastating effect of false propaganda, writes R. H. Markham from Budapest to the "Christian Science Monitor." A number of Governments wished to arouse public indignation, and to achieve this they ordered the Press to write gruesome stories about Czechoslovakian cruelty. The dlcrman papers led in this and the Hungarian papers were a close second. The cruelty stories in Budapest papers were grossly exaggerated. This reporting of atrocities was a deliberate campaign to stir up a people that shrank from war. It was a sad example of journalism at its worst.

In expressing this opinion, I am not especially condemning the Hungarian journalists. Bad as they were, they merely followed to a new low a deplorable newspaper tradition, practised in many countries, by both liberal and conservative editors. A great many papers in all lands overstress or suppress news in a way to keep their readers uninformed regarding real situations. Most Hungarians have a distorted picture of their own country, as well as their neighbours’, and in this they resemble most nations. Sad to say, crusading liberal publications are sometimes just as bad as crusading authoritarian ones, and liberal cartoons are just as vicious, though usually not quite as vulgar, as authoritarian cartoons. MAGYARS STIRRED UP. The task of the Hungarian Press during recent weeks has been to stir up hatred against the Czechs. Among the .‘’intelligentsia" such a task was superfluous. for they have long detested the Czechs. The masses also have been glad to do their duty and accept the tradition that a Czech should be hated, but they so dread war and were so burdened by their own cares that they were not aggressive haters. Of course, they wanted their brothers in Czechoslovakia to be freed, but were not avid lo participate in an armed crusade <o bring that about. So the newspapers had to stir them up. Each day the reporters had to turn out a stream ol "Uncle Tom's Cabins.” In making such an assertion I am not insinuating that the lot of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia has been enviable. Like many others I have from the beginning maintained that the boundaries of’ Czechoslovakia were poorly drawin, that it was a fatal error to tear compact masses of Hungarians away from the mother country and place them under foreign domination. The Hungarians in Czechoslovakia were as aliens; they did not “belong”; they were in a foreign State.

It is true, however, that few. if any. Hungarians in Czechoslovakia were cruelly treated. They had proportionally as many of their own schools as in Hungary. They enjoyed as much Press and political freedom as the Hungarians enjoyed in the mother country. FALSEHOODS & FACTS. The public health and economic situation of the Hungarian villagers in Czechoslovakia was fully as good as that of the Hungarian peasant in Hungary. These facts are established beyond dispute.

But during the crisis the Hungarian Press portrayed the life of the Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia as a 20-year Calvary. It drew lurid pictures of Communists raging in Czechoslovakia. of "Hussites” murdering and plundering. of refugees streaming over the borders, of deserters pouring into Hungary.

Such stories were essentially false. This correspondent visited the frontier many times and always found it astonshingly quiet. There was never a tenth as much excitement at the fronier as among the Budapest agitators. And there were practically no refugees. It is certainly just that the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia bo allowed to rejoin the mother country. The Hungarian journalists were justified in urging that; they would have been unworthy of their place in Hungary if they had not urged it. What was deplorable is that they supported their cause with falsehoods. They fabricated atrocities and fed their readers on untruths.

Some papers in every land do this. One can only say that they were almost as bad as their worst colleagues from other lands. And it must be added hat the Hungarian masses wore exceedingly reserved and disciplined They were not bloodthirsty.