The Government's best friends can hardly congratulate it on its
publicity methods. The " optimism " outbreak of a week ago was on the best Goebbels model. Every London paper had the same story to tell, reproducing with variations, ranging from restrained paraphrase to the crude reproduction of dictated declarations, the statement of a prominent Government spokesman—who is not, I think it is safe to say, connected with the Foreign Office. There may have been a case for reassuring a too pessimistic public. In that case the Prime Minister could have made a speech to that effect, or adopted the time-honoured device of replying to an enquiry from a correspondent on the subject. The picture of the whole London daily Press simultaneously and identi- cally inspired by some unnamed mouthpiece of the Cabinet is much too suggestive of the methods of Rome and Berlin. And even if complacency had not been so calamitously shattered within a week the patent resort to optimism as a policy is psychologically a mistake when you are dealing with the British temperament. * *
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