The Propaganda Front

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 13, 22 September 1939, Page 12

The Propaganda Front

HATEVER posterity says about the present war it will be remembered as the first war conducted by radio. The €panish and Abyssinian wars were announced by radio, and in Spain at least radio played an active part to the end. But the present war depends on radio for its driving forcean entirely new experience. Nor can we yet say what the change means. The immediate consequences are plain enough-knowledge of events almost as soon as they happen, comment on them, and some kind of world reaction to them. But the distant consequences are far from plain. If radio has the power we have all in our rash moments attributed to it, it is already saving or destroying civilisation. But all we can see et present is that it is undergoing a test with ourselves as the subject of the experiment. There is, however, this significant factthat radio has nowhere been used yet with the irresponsibility that most people antiSora ne or as we are concerned in New BRC, heme ‘one stern and eternal" principle it is that its news bulletins should be true. But it isa sign also of the restraint of the governments of all the belligerent countries, who quite clearly do not wish to release forces that they may not be able to control. This of course does net mean that restraint will be observed indefinitely. As the war advances we may expect a rapid deteriora-. tion in its propaganda. But it is still roughly (and amazingly) true that the boundary between fact and fiction has not been forgotten.