Propaganda Successes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 400, 21 February 1947, Page 5

Propaganda Successes

campaign during the Christmas holidays may not mean that the roads are now safe; but it does mean that they are safer; and it means more than anything else that most of us can be lined up on the right side in a good cause. The risk in such campaigns, as we have more than once emphasised, is nagging. On the other hand everyone who has had anything to do with the circulation either of news or of views knows that one teiling is not enough; one hearing or one reading. Lessons have to be repeated and rubbed in, but at the point at which friction develops the rubbing must stop. There was no stop in the road safety campaign and the success was almost sensational; which means of course that there was far more direction than most of us imagined. But another factor was our readiness in that case to be persuaded. We were afraid, not merely of other people, but of ourselves, and we are at least beginning to be afraid of ourT HE success of the road safety selves in the case of forest fires. If it is astonishing to note how many people still throw lighted cigarettes. about, or leave camp fires still smouldering, it is interesting to see how many are careful not to do such things any longer. Sense in these matters comes slowly, but it does come, and it is now coming a little faster. It is not easy to drive through a place like the Waipoua Forest, for example, without catching the note of anxiety in the fire notices. and feeling a little ashamed to smoke. If propaganda could now be turned on the litter vandals they too would be roused to new standards in a year or two. For .they are of course careless rather than stupid, forgetful rather than delighters in dirt. The key to success with them is the fact that more and more of them this year. visited the places that they or someone else fouled last year.