The Empire of the Eggheads
/SHALL be sorry if the Government decide to jam the Greek broadcasts to Cyprus. It is wrong of the Greek Government to use Athens Radio for the purposes for which they are using it; and for the Greeks to pretend that the broadcasts are nothing to do with them is unbecoming and silly. But to jam the broadcast does involve the. sacrifice on our part of a principle; and 1 find it impossible to believe that jam- intng would achieve the object it is supposed to achieve.
This object is to prevent the Greeks from subverting British authority on the island by direct incitements to violence and other forms of hate-mongering. But AthenS Radio is not the only, or even necessarily the most effective, vehicle for sub- versive propaganda; and it would hardly be possible for the British authorities to stop the Greek Government from getting propaganda into the island either with the help of ordinary wireless transmitters or in writing.
The fact that this stuff would have, initially, only a limited distribution does not mean that its net effect on the Cypriots would be less than that of broadcasts which they can all listen to all day if they want to. If I was a Cypriot, and I heard an emotional gentleman in an Athens studio telling me to go out and knock an Englishman on the head, I suppose I might do something about it; but the broadcaster in these contexts cannot help forfeiting some of his influence over his listeners by virtue of the fact that he is in the Duke of Plaza Toro's position. People do not in general like being urged to take risks by other people who do not share them.
If on the other hand I—as a patriotic Cypriot—was shown a grubby bit of paper with `Go out and knock an Englishman on the head' written on it, and I was told that it had been brought from Greece by a carrier-pigeon or a smuggler or a secret agent after the broadcasts had been jammed. 1 should be much more impressed by it than by any amount of booming and yapping on the radio. It may of course be that my reactions and mentality are utterly different from those of the Cypriots; but I think it is broadly true that, as soon as you drive propaganda underground, it ceases to be propaganda, becomes a form of news, and carries a heavier punch. * * * I do not know what effect the Athens broadcasts are having, or are thought to be having, on their intended listeners; but I do know that broadcast propaganda has two end-products, one very large and one very small, whose relative importance is sometimes in inverse ratio to their size.
The large end-product is the sound of a man's (or a woman's) voice reading a script. It is available over a wide area to all who possess or have access to a wireless set. It is heard by as many of these as listen to it. In the case (with which we arc dealing) of war-type propaganda it is not normally possible to discover what impression it makes on them.
The small end-product is a ' monitored transcript of the broadcast, usually in a summarised form. This has a lithited but elite circulation. Its contents are analysed by experts, who produce periodical reports on 'trends' or other noteworthy features of the broadcasts. It is available to every official whose sphere'of activity might be affected by propaganda; and closely studied by those concerned with counter-propaganda.
The people who in this way read broadcast propaganda are far fewer than those who listen to it; but the former, unlike the latter, wield or help to guide executive power and are normally alert-minded and conscientious. They are, moreover, the only consumers of broadcast propaganda who consume the whole of the output. They consume it in tabloid form but are regularly provided with commentaries on everything from its undertones up. They, and they alone, receive the full force of the charge which was fired from the studio at the listeners like so much grapeshot into a thick fog.
Upon this small but influential clientle broadcast propa- ganda is apt. not unnaturally, to produce a disproportionate effect. During the last war monitored transcripts of the BBC's transmissions were in keen demand among the German bosses and their satellites. They were often too busy, if not always too loyal, to listen to the BBC themselves; and each, in any case. had only one pair of ears and could only listen to one trans- mission at a time. The monitors' reports gave them, through the whole gamut of his propaganda in different languages to different parts of the world, a glimpse of their enemy's mind. Distribution of these reports was jealously restricted; but research (were it possible) might well indicate that the Bros legumes who surreptitiously read them were, from the British point of view, more worth-while propaganda-fodder than the small men Who surreptitiously listened to the broadcasts.
It is certainly true that in the anxious summer of 1940 the German 'black' radio—the 'New British Broadcasting Station' and its three largely inaudible satellites--had a much greater impact on Whitehall than on the public at large. A number of citizens were prosecuted for retailing the horrific threats and the rumours of widespread treachery which were the Germans' main stock-in-trade; but reception was poor, and both the BBC and Lord Haw Haw were powerful competitors. It was only official circles, and in particular those concerned with security and morale, who got the full dose via the monitors. It gave them food for thought and even—in the uncertain atmosphere of those times—for misgivings.
* * Propaganda is the egghead's empire. Words (of which it basically exists) are a serviceable handmaid to deeds, but help- less without them. Those who are good at words are not always equally good at deeds, and naturally tend to think that the former could, or should, be made to do duty for the latter. 1 remember, from a long time, ago, this fallacy being ,crystallised for all time in a letter to the New Statesman and Nation. I had just returned from the military fiasco in Norway, and took a keen though perverse pleasure in the point of view advanced in this letter. The writer, after more or less accusing the Ministry of Information of responsibility for the Norwegian disasters. ended up: 'Let the Government come to a belated under- standing that propaganda is such a powerful instrument that a whole campaign can be won by it without the military forces having a chance to intervene.'
This risible illuSion is always likely to survive in a modified form. Two important factors increase its chances of doing so. One is that the alleged efficacy of the other side's propaganda has become, both in war and in politics, a classic excuse for your own side being worsted. The other is that both the output of propaganda by one side, and its intake, analysis and refuta- tion by the other are in the hands of highly intelligent and articulate people who tend to exaggerate the importance of their functions. We all do this, but for the most part we do it unilaterally, in a vacuum. We cannot rely on somebody at the other end carefully digesting all our pretensions and making us out much bigger than we ever appear to those who only casually and intermittently become aware of them.
Although I know nothing about it at all, I suspect that it is in this sort of perspective that the tiresome question of the Greek broadcasts ought to be viewed. STRIS
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