RUMOUR MONGERING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 July 1940, Page 3

RUMOUR MONGERING

DISTEMPER OP PRESENT DAY; I DEFEATIST TERMS CONDEMNED, j ARE YOU ON THE BERLIN PAYROLE? "Are You on the Berlin .Payroll?" .is (he title of an editorial in last week's "New Zealand Motoring World." The article reads as follows: — Do you repeal the propagandist news you hear from Germany or Italy? Do you criticise the truth in news from Daventry? Do you moan about a lack of news from Daventry? Do you expect Daventry to satisfy your detached interest in the war by supplying detailed news which our leaders in tile Motherland know would assist the enemy? Do you waste your time and that of other people in street corner strategy? Do you form your own export opinions on tvar incidents and problems, and give voice to them in pessimistic comment?

Do you pass .your expert judgment on the British race in defeatist terms? Do you form a link in the chain of idle rumour mongers?

Do you know the fellow whose sister's friend knows the man whose wife's aunt had a letter from the grandmother of a soldier who sent a cable to his wife wishing her many happy returns? Do you know what the cable meant?

Do you make a habit of decrying your own country's war effort?

If you do any of these things, you may as well be in the direct pay of Berlin or Rome because you are a mental saboteur, a spoiler of individual confidence, a wrecker of national morale. You are aiding the enemy. The distemper of the times is rumour mongering, much of it nothing less than national slander, stupid, insidious stuff serving no other purpose except that of undermining public stability and of sowing distrust of the efficiency of the race and its leaders to meet the threat confronting them. You have read and heard much of the fifth column. This kind of attack assumes many forms, and rumour mongering is one of them. Filtered through the millions of refugees cluttering the roads of Holland, Belgium and France were the rumour mongering fifth columnists. Without intention, but just as effectively, thousands of citizens in this country are playing the same role by spreading news lacking foundation and actual information. They pass on “confidential hearsay." they misconstrue or exaggerate, they speculate, and prophesy, and their melancholy in foreboding and demeanour would make of the gloomy Chopenhauer a rollicking jester at the court of folly.

The British reply to the fifth column is British spinal column 2 —the backbone to wade through defeats to that victory we, as Britons, are determined to achieve. We must put "I” into victory. The British breed is as tough and true as ever it was and in this supreme hour of testing there is no time for anything else but positive action, positive talk, positive national effort. You can pul “I" in victory as a fighting force unit, as an earnest civilian with a discreetly silent tongue, a cheery, patient outlook, loyalty to the country whose shield you are and .in whose protection you live. Idleness begets rumour mongering and hearsay. Exert your faculties for the good of your country and the preservation of a glorious heritage. There are thousands of avenues of national service open to men. women and childyen—avenues of practical patriotism which are the greatest of all antidotes for the distemper of mental sabotage. You can support our soldiers, sailors and airmen by discontinuing and discountenancing hearsay and rumour, bj expressing frank disbelief in what jou are told, and by guiding the attention of thoughtless people into positive directions along the lines of British official news issued from Daventry or through New Zealand official sources. “I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as 'twas said to me.” So wrote Scott in “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” If you cannot speak positively and of personal knowledge of the affairs of your country and of the Empire. you are just an idle purveyor of rumour and hearsay. You have a defeatist mentality, you create lies. fear, uncertainty, confusion, the very psychological factors to which other countries have fallen prey to the advantage of the enemy.